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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4728 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 34 10 June 2015 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll wrap up with the languages that I'm really learning just for the purpose of this
trip. I know I'll still be working on Japanese, German and Portuguese after I get back, and I may continue with Spanish and French to some degree, but the other two are really unlikely. Still, I'm hoping I can squeeze enough out of them that if I am in a monolingual situation, I can acquit myself with a minimal level of embarrassment. For Slovene, I found a cheap copy of Teach Yourself Slovene, a phrasebook for "Eastern European Languages," and the free resource Online Slowenisch Lernen from Uni- Hamburg. I don't know to what degree I'll use which, but surely I don't need to convince all of you that when you see such things at a used bookstore, they're coming home with you, no questions asked. Interestingly, the TY Slovene describes the dual in one of the first lessons, says that it is used all the time by native speakers and then proceeds to ignore it completely! This is a truly curious choice for what is otherwise designed as a full course. I actually studied Italian for a year at college, including a not particularly inspiring six week summer course in Siena. I was fully prepared to ditch my compatriots and insinuate myself into the local student population, but of course the students had all headed to the beach for the entire summer! I ended up shifting my focus to German, and I never felt particularly drawn to Italian again. Still, I have a couple friends in Milan and it's convenient for this trip, so I will be spending some time there. My only resource right now is a phrasebook and some rusty memories. I'll be following a phrasebook-centric approach for both, something that I don't have a lot of experience with. I learned about the same level of Norwegian before a trip there, and the one time that I had a Norwegian conversation it went fairly well (that doesn't mean I wouldn't learn more seriously if I had the chance again!). I do think that learning some basics is worthwhile, even if I eventually rely on switching to English or other languages. I may also add some online classes in Slovene if I have time, out of general interest and to customize the material that I'm learning. Also, having taken another look at my schedule over the next two months, I don't think there's any sense working on Esperanto. Although if I change my mind, it looks like there's a fellow trying to start an Esperanto group in L.A., so I would have all the resources I need! I plan on starting Slovene in a few weeks, and Italian only towards the end of July, but I'll post if that plan changes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4728 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 34 12 June 2015 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||
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A bit of a detour here- I just came across the following quote from A Gentleman's
Guide to Etiquette by Cecil B. Hartley, published in 1875. How little has changed.
I've traveled in various countries with all different levels of understanding of the local language, and clearly it's not always possible to develop my ability as much as I'd like. But I can sincerely say that I've never regretted the time I put into studying that language- whether that meant familiarizing myself with the alphabet on the flight over there or spending years refining my abilities. Despite some antiquated notions, I think Mr. Hartley has very neatly summarized the value of language learning for travel. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4513 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 19 of 34 12 June 2015 at 2:01am | IP Logged | ||
Quoting Chung on the matter of TY Slovene:
I still haven't started with any formal learning in Slovene, only listening practice, so I'm curious how this will turn out for you. How much time are you planning to spend on it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4728 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 34 12 June 2015 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think realistically I'll only be able to spend about 20 hours of focused studying,
along with another 10-20 of on the go studying- reviewing audio, maybe doing some anki. I'd like to push the total up to about 60 but that seems wildly optimistic at this point. Yes, the reviews of Albretti's work are less than inspiring. The main advantage for me now is that, apart from the phrasebook, it's my only paper resource, and I find those much more relaxing than staring at a computer all day long. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4728 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 34 17 June 2015 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I thought it would be good to go into a little more depth on my philosophy of
treading water, something that has been very useful for me in the past, and will likely become even more important in the future. The nature of language learning is that progress requires an ongoing investment of time, and neglecting a language for a significant amount of time will result in a serious backslide. So let's say you're faced with a period in your life where you have to reduce your study hours from, say, 20 to 3 per week. Your options are to give up on one or more languages, hopefully to revive them later, or to find a way to maintain your languages with a minimum of time invested. Alternatively, when you have twenty hours per week, you could assume that you'll eventually have to cut back, and therefore keep your goals modest to begin with. But assuming you're already in this precarious situation, is it better to cut out some / all study, or keep it to a minimum? And what level exactly is required to maintain languages? I don't intend to make any blanket statements, but I have some experience with both strategies and I think I'm well informed to decide what to do in the future. My main experience with hibernation / revival is in German and Spanish. I learned German to a B1/B2 level in college and let it waste away for around six years afterwards. When I decided to revive it, I found active study methods to be extremely frustrating, but L/R really did the trick. At that point in time, I could barely piece my way through a newspaper article even using a dictionary, and I had no chance of understanding native speed speech. After L/R'ing through Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy my comprehension was much better, and I noticed my spoken German improving after about 10 or so hours of conversation. On the other hand, my Spanish was maybe at A2 after four years of high school classes, and I attempted to revive it about three years ago- a project I later gave up on due to time constraints and a lack of motivation. I found that L/R'ing literary fiction (something by Allende, I think) was too difficult, but when I studied traditional textbooks for "intermediate" (most likely A1-A2) learners, I had a decent passive recall of grammar and some vocabulary. Since then, I've had several periods of a few weeks to a few months where I had no time for one or all of my languages (Japanese being the exception, in that I work in that language). With German and Portuguese, I found I could maintain my level, and even progress in some limited areas, just by having a 45 min. - 1 hr. conversation per week, combined with incidental reading. By incidental reading, I mean looking at twitter and maybe skimming a few silly huffington post articles, only looking up a word or two, if at all. I did notice that my reading speed would drop a bit in these periods of treading water, but on average, my conversational abilities weren't hurt. My main problem was that a good conversation always made me want to study that language more! I also don't know whether I could decrease the frequency of conversation without starting to see regression, but practically speaking, it's easier to maintain a weekly conversation partner anyway. So which is better? Well, first off, I don't know how I would attempt to get this kind of incidental reading and periodic speaking without at least a B1 level. I don't think I could maintain my interest just reviewing old Assimil lessons or whatever. Apart from that, if I think it would be several years before I have the time and interest to pick up a language again, I wouldn't feel too guilty letting it hibernate. But for a language that I still enjoy, especially if I can find a regular conversation partner, it's good to know that I can maintain it with that conversation and a few minutes here and there throughout the day. Once I get back from my trip, I'll be starting Japanese, German and Portuguese on that plan- the big question is whether I'll be close enough to B1 in French and Spanish to take advantage of this strategy. Italian and Slovene will almost certainly be hibernating- if I even consider dropping a language at A0/1 to be hibernating. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 22 of 34 17 June 2015 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Soooo familiar about not wanting to use Assimil for keeping the language alive! I've started a wikia article which is mostly about grammar, but many ideas apply to vocabulary too.
Honestly my experience with Portuguese/Spanish/Italian/Catalan is that you don't have to be a real B1, the comprehension skills are more than enough. Related languages keep one another alive too. For a non-linguist, maybe Italian and especially French would be more difficult to improve through casual learning. See also bow wave theory, btw. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4728 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 34 18 June 2015 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's interesting, Assimil for me is something that I really love, but I have to keep
moving forward with it- a break of more than a day or two will kill my motivation. I'll probably be around lesson 95 by the time I leave and I don't plan on bringing the book with me, so even if I want to continue, I'll probably just switch to mostly native materials after I get back. We'll see though. Yes, Spanish is really just riding the coattails of my Portuguese now anyway, I suppose that probably won't change one way or the other. I'm not a tremendous believer in the bow wave theory- I suspect anyone who sees a benefit after taking serious time off probably just wasn't perceiving the results they were getting while studying, or they were too stressed out about studying for it to be effective. A few short updates: [DE] Ich habe endlich Alle Tage, von Terezia Mora zu Ende gelesen. Am Anfang haben ihre Schilderungen der Figuren mir gut gefallen, aber inzwischen ist die Hauptfigur so leidenschaftslos, dass ich die Lust, weiterzulesen, nach und nach verloren habe. Als nächstes nehme ich etwas lustiger- vielleicht den dritten Winnetou- Band. [FR] J'ai commencé la deuxième vague, et j'ai arrangé un cours en italki. Ça sera ma prèmiere foix a parler le Français. Je n'ai encore apprendu l'imparfait, le subjonctif, et beacoup d'autre choses. [PT] Poucas novidades. Fiz contato com alguns Portuguêses em italki para conversar e, se der certo, fazer amizagens. Troquei algumas mensagens, mas ainda não chegou ao nível de falar em Skype. Escrevi alguns textinhos (em português brasileiro, não pretendo aprender escrever nem falar o português europeu)- o último aqui: http://www.italki.com/entry/570519 I also started editing the audio from the TY Slovene course- cutting out the English prompts so that I can review it more efficiently. I went through the first lesson a month or so ago to get a taste, I think I'll pick it up again and start more seriously tonight. I've been a bit sick recently, I think I'm starting to feel better now. I finally got back to waking up at six today, which gives me some quality time for studying. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4728 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 34 18 June 2015 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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And just for fun, the utterly insane cover of the "Eastern Europe Phrasebook" that I
picked up for $3 (with Hungarian cut out): 
Is Eastern Europe full of vampires? Edited by osoymar on 19 June 2015 at 3:22am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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