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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 417 of 646 05 May 2013 at 12:29pm | IP Logged |
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Til hamingju með það, tarvos! Það er gaman að heyra að þú sért að læra íslensku núna. Þú skalt bráðum sjá að það er virkilega frábært tungumál. Gangi þér vel!
Yeah, you're probably right concerning improvement. I should study Russian more regularly or it will start deteriorating sooner or later. The only problem is I'm on some sort of run with Japanese at the moment. It's a feeling like I'm onto something really big. I still think Russian is great and all, but Japanese might be a language I want to study really deeply and intensively. I even thought about dropping Gaelic in order to have more time for Japanese. Other than that, I will report about my experience with the French Hobbit when I've watched it. Not matching subtitles are somewhat annoying, but I hope I'll understand it nevertheless. I still have my problems with spoken French (probably because I never speak or listen to French...). Edited by Josquin on 05 May 2013 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6345 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 418 of 646 05 May 2013 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Josquin! I know exactly what you are talking about! It's a huge challenge to stay away from Japanese once you've started it. :) :)
By the way, speaking of Heisig, have you checked out this site? http://kanji.koohii.com/ It's pretty nice because people help each other coming up with good stories, and then you review it with SRS. Oh, and of course you should go with Hadamitzky if you think it's more fun/useful, just wanted to mention the site. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5335 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 419 of 646 06 May 2013 at 9:05pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Josquin!
Nice to see someone else falling under the spell of Japanese! I too have been getting my feet wet with Japanese lately, though I’m still trying to keep my focus on Swedish and Russian. But the pull towards Japanese won’t be denied and so I’m having a 20-minute daily dose of it to try and keep the yearning at bay. So you can imagine with what curiosity I’m following your new linguistic adventure hoping to get some interesting insight from another beginner’s perspective. I wish you the best of luck with Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 420 of 646 06 May 2013 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
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I admire you guys for feeling passionate about new languages. Ever since I set up a list and a schedule, I don't go much into wanderlusting, at least not for any languages other than the next two or three in my list, which are Estonian, Indonesian and Turkish. I think doing Chinese is enough for me for the time being, I have the feeling that Japanese would be easier now than at my first attempt but it's still not the moment for that.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 421 of 646 07 May 2013 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you everybody for your comments! It's nice to see I'm not the only one who is infected with the Japanese virus! :)
@M.Medialis: Yes, I have already had a look at that site, but I haven't registered yet. My kanji studies aren't that serious yet, so I'll check it out later. I'll learn the kanji from Colloquial Japanese first and then we'll see. I primarily use the Hadamitzky for looking up stroke order and different readings, but when I'll start cramming kanji seriously that site will certainly be useful. 有り難う！ @Emme: Thank you! I'll follow your log with interest, too. I hope you'll report about your Japanese adventures. 幸あれ！ @Expugnator: In fact, most of my language studies result from wanderlust. As I explained earlier in this log, my interest in languages results mainly from philological curiosity and wanderlust is an integral part of that. I want to try a new language and either it suits me and I go on with it or it doesn't and I drop it. I'm not even aiming for fluency as my ultimate goal. In most languages, I'm absolutely content with a good intermediate level and being able to read and understand native material. Russian and Japanese might be an exception from that, but I definitely don't want to reach fluency in Icelandic and Gaelic. When would I use those in real life anyway? In fact, I am at some sort of critical point in my Gaelic studies right now. Although I'm only half-way through the textbook, I'm thinking about giving it a break. It simply doesn't seem important to me any more. As we Germans say: "Die Luft ist raus." So, there's more space for Japanese, a language I hope I won't be only wanderlusting in. Edited by Josquin on 07 May 2013 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4695 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 422 of 646 08 May 2013 at 11:58am | IP Logged |
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I don't know about Gaelic, but my efforts to speak the 15 words of Icelandic when I was
last in Iceland two years ago were met with enthusiasm. Iceland is a VERY interesting country to visit if you like nature and hiking and trekking, and since I was raised with holidays visiting mountainous regions and sparsely populated landscapes, Iceland was paradise for me. I could certainly spend months in Iceland living, working and all that. It is true though that many Icelanders speak more than passable English (and often also Danish or Scandiwhatever). However, Icelandic is very much alive, it's not marginalised. I would eventually like to achieve fluency in Icelandic, although it would mean spending more time in Iceland (which I'm not against). However it is not on my current agenda. I will definitely return for future travels. My last visit was an experience. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 423 of 646 08 May 2013 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
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All you say is true, but I don't see myself visiting Iceland in the near future. If I did, my motivation would of course be quite different, but I don't see that happen at the moment. Don't get the wrong idea, I would love to go there, to be honest, rather sooner than later, but I'm just a poor PhD student with a part-time job that let's me hardly get by. I'm more than happy I was able to finance my short trip to Ireland, but that only worked because a) it's short, b) I'll stay at a friend of mine, and c) I could pay by instalments.
In my field, working abroad is not that easy either (unless I became a famous professor, which isn't that realistic), so making a trip to Iceland isn't more than wishful thinking at the moment. Of course, I could tell myself "I'll go there one day" and study Icelandic up to fluency (or as close as I could get), but that's not the way my mind works and doesn't motivate me at all. I'm a stay-at-home polyglot who studies languages just for fun and out of linguistic curiosity, not for living a cosmopolitan lifestyle - at least not at the moment. EDIT: All the above is also true for the Scottish Highlands and Gaelic. Edited by Josquin on 08 May 2013 at 6:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 424 of 646 11 May 2013 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
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SATURDAY, 11 MAY 2013
I have rethought my language goals, my participation in challenges, and studying in general. First of all, I have come to the conclusion that my life is not well-balanced at the moment. During winter, learning languages was literally all I did in my free time and I was fine with it. Taking part in challenges and competitions regarding language learning seemed like fun at that time. But now, I’m realizing more and more that this is not how things should be. I want other things in my life and not only study languages all the time for which I have no practical purposes. So, this whole thing has to change. I have been eagerly studying many languages and regularly updating this blog for the last year, but I have come to the conclusion that this can’t go on. Studying languages is fun, but it’s not everything to me. There are other areas in my life such as my career and my private life that deserve my attention right now. I won’t go on studying Gaelic and Icelandic. These languages have officially been downgraded to dabbling languages. Furthermore, I won’t study Russian the way I did until now, cramming new vocabulary with Anki. Instead, I’ll simply read, listen, and write for fun, assimilating the language in a more natural way. Japanese will be the only language I’ll study actively. Moreover, my language goals I set myself a week ago are of course null and void. I tried to make language learning into some kind of competition, but that didn’t work out for me. I want to study languages because I like them, not because I have a schedule that tells me to do so. In fact, I realized learning languages this intensively was only a strategy to distract myself from problems and inconvenient truths concerning where my life is heading right now. I won’t stop studying languages altogether, but I’ll reduce my work load and simply do what I please. This also means I will update this log less frequently than I used to. I just need some space to myself right now. Thanks for reading my log and supporting me over the last year. I hope we’ll see each other again soon. Auf Wiedersehen. Good bye. Au revoir. Arrivederci. Adjö. Tot ziens. До свидания. Verið þið blessuð. Slàn leibh. Valete. さようなら。 1 person has voted this message useful |
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