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Amerykanka’s Adventures - 2015 and Beyond | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5163 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 49 of 55 12 July 2015 at 6:12am | IP Logged |
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A full update is coming tomorrow, but for now, I just wanted to muse/rant. I have always encountered the "you
know x-language so well" problem; there is very little that is more frustrating than having a native speaker tell you you speak perfectly when you are fully aware that you don't and that you have a long way to go. Part of my problem has always been that I pick up accents extremely fast - I can pretty easily convince people after a brief exchange that I am from Poland or Latin America. Of course, if they engage me in a longer conversation they will figure out that I'm not a native speaker, but they are so impressed by the absence of the heavy American accent that they form a much higher opinion of my skills than they probably should. And then they assume that I must be thrilled with my level, when really I am sitting there thinking, "Thanks for the compliment, but there are still so many problems." I have been enjoying iTalki a lot, and the corrections are helping me to see my weaknesses in written Spanish, but I am having similar issues there. For instance, this morning I posted a 400+ informal essay on Borges' "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (very interesting story, incidentally) and within an hour I had two comments from native speakers, both of them saying that there was this one tiny correction and that everything else was perfect. I was excited, but skeptical; and sure enough, a few hours later another native got on and made 4-5 more corrections, all of which were legitimate and helped me a lot. So my question is: why didn't the first two natives catch these mistakes? After further consideration, I decided that I ought to feel flattered and be happy with this phenomenon. After all, if the average Spanish native is not catching the mistakes, then they can't be so very bad, can they? And as long as a more critical native comes along and makes the corrections, I'm not any worse off. This post is kind of rambling, but the general point is that my Spanish writing can't be that bad if some natives regard it as flawless. So, I think that, even though there WERE mistakes in today's composition, it was still a major success. Hopefully one day soon, I can dispense with the errors entirely. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5163 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 50 of 55 14 July 2015 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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So, I have decided that I will start doing one massive update every Saturday night instead of putting up hours,
minutes, etc, every day because, quite frankly, nobody likes reading endless posts about other people's stats and I am kind of boring myself, too. I'm just going to keep a spreadsheet and post the basic data on Saturdays, and that way I can do fun posts in between if I feel like it. I also restructured my study schedule because Spanish was stealing all my time. My new plan is to spend 5.5 hours daily on modern languages: 3 hours for Spanish and 2.5 for Polish. I just started yesterday but already things are going a lot better where Polish is concerned. I'll probably discuss specifics more later but for right now I just want to post my stats up through last Saturday; that way I will just be posting a week's worth of data this weekend. SPANISH UPDATE - 2 hours 30 min of reviewing in Anki - 5 episodes of Águila roja - 45 minutes of "Buenos Días América" - 154 pages of El sueño del celta - 22 pages of Ficciones ("Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius") - 2 compositions on iTalki (233 and 425 words respectively), 1 email, and 1 letter POLISH UPDATE - 1 hour 40 minutes of reviewing in Anki - 3.5 pages of the picture dictionary - 12 articles online - 1 email Clearly, a change had to occur if there was to be any hope for Polish. And now, I will conclude this update. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5163 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 51 of 55 14 July 2015 at 10:04pm | IP Logged |
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Time for celebration! I have finished El sueño del celta! At 450 pages, it is
possibly the thickest novel I have read in Spanish. In honor of the occasion, I am posting a photo of this amazing creature whose existence I have just discovered. 
I came across the word "ronsoco" in El sueño del celta and after a bit of Googling I figured out that it was the Peruvian equivalent of "carpincho" or "capibara". Of course I had heard of capybaras before, but I honestly had no idea what they were and the discovery that there are rodents over 4 ft long running around in South America totally made my day. I was so excited that I even wrote a composition about capybaras based on my research and posted it on iTalki. And then I talked about capybaras all day and was very impressed with my brother for knowing what they were before I told him. And then I started looking up other South American animals and since half of their names seem to be derived from Quechua or Guaraní my desire to learn one of the indigenous languages of the Americas has returned stronger than ever. And then I could travel to South America to practice and see capybaras as an added bonus! :) EDIT: Now the photo actually shows up. Edited by Amerykanka on 15 July 2015 at 4:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6097 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 52 of 55 14 July 2015 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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That's an impressive amount of anki-ing Amerykanka! I'm normally consistent with my reviews, but some days I have to skip it in order to stay sane.
Congratulations on completing the book. Edited by Mooby on 14 July 2015 at 10:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5163 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 53 of 55 15 July 2015 at 5:03pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you! Anki certainly has the potential to drive me insane, too. If I approach it in
the proper mood, I usually find it soothing - but then there are some days when I'm ready to pull my hair out after 10 reviews. Currently I am averaging around 40 minutes per day in both Polish and Spanish, and it is way too much. But I finally caught up on my largest Polish deck, so things should improve in that department, and even in Spanish my main deck is now under 2000 reviews. The end of the tunnel is in sight! Incidentally, a few days ago I found out that the Polish equivalent of "baby monitor" is niania elektroniczna or "electronic nanny". This is even more exciting than "answering machine" being sekretarka automatyczna! 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 54 of 55 15 July 2015 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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In Russian it's radio niania btw. Although not sure if it's common nowadays.
And wow, just realized how sexist these are :( 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5163 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 55 of 55 16 July 2015 at 4:02pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah, they are kind of disturbing - also from the perspective that they remind me of
all those sci-fi shows about robots taking over the world, etc. But they are still cool translations. Thanks for offering the Russian equivalent for comparison - Russian is high on my hit list and is going to make it into my language schedule sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. :) RANDOM THOUGHTS ON TV SHOWS In other news, I finished the first season of Águila roja a few days ago! Since this is the first time that I have watched a season of a Spanish TV show all the way through, I feel very accomplished. Only 6 more seasons to go! I've decided to alternate between shows, however, for listening variety; I need exposure to as many different accents and speech styles as possible. For this reason I started watching the first season of Gran Hotel; I am now 6 episodes in and I think that I may like it even better than Águila roja. I am also happy with my choice from a strictly practical perspective since the Spanish is very different. I understand almost everything (over 90%), which is refreshing after listening to Sátur babble on and on and wondering what on earth he was talking about. It's not that I didn't understand what was going on in Águila roja - I understood most of the characters very well - but every time Sátur started talking I was seriously tempted to put on the Spanish subtitles. He just mumbles, mumbles, mumbles, not to mention he uses all kinds of slang, and it was very frustrating. This was part of why I decided to watch a few seasons of shows with more modern Spanish before returning to Águila roja. After Gran Hotel and Águila roja I'm thinking of watching El internado, and also there was that Latin American show Los miserables that looked good. Honestly, I don't know why I didn't get into Spanish TV shows sooner. The only downside is that I don't have anyone to discuss them with. I can rant about 24, Lost, and Downton Abbey to my family and Once Upon a Time and Sherlock to my friends, but it's not quite the same with the Spanish shows. Fortunately I do have one friend who watches Águila roja - I need to kidnap her and force her to listen to my ramblings. And then force her to watch anything else that occurs to me. Edited by Amerykanka on 16 July 2015 at 4:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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