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Lorinth’s log - 劳伦的博客 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4262 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 1 of 408 13 March 2013 at 3:42pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everybody.
After lurking for some time, and having learnt many interesting things from this forum, I've decided to register. I'm a translator by trade. Almost all of the texts I translate are in English, so the other languages I keep on learning are just for fun and out of linguistic and cultural curiosity. My profile is somewhat misleading. I have two mother tongues, one of which was not among the languages I could choose from in the list on the registration page. One is French, the other one is Walloon, which has (I would guess) the same relationship with French as Scots towards English, or Plattdüütsch towards German. My level in Spanish used to be pretty good. I like to read contemporary fiction in that language but I seldom speak it nowadays. I guess I could reactivate my knowledge with relative ease. Among other languages, Mandarin is the one to which I devote the biggest share of my active study time. Latin and Finnish come second and third. My knowledge of Dutch is dormant and I make no active attempt to improve it (for the time being). I also toy with the idea of learning to read Italian and/or Catalan and/or Portuguese, using the EUROM5 method. As I already know three romance languages plus Latin itself, to one extent or another, I can already read a lot of non-fiction in those languages without ever having studied them. I have been keeping a private log of my activities for some time. I intend to keep it here from now on, for the sake of motivation. EDIT: The TAC 2014 entries start on page 26! Edited by lorinth on 04 March 2015 at 11:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dcbaok Groupie United States Joined 4470 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 408 13 March 2013 at 3:54pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome! Glad to have another Mandarin learner.
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4262 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 3 of 408 13 March 2013 at 4:04pm | IP Logged |
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Ok so let's start. In theory I'll write semi-daily entries about what I've been doing
during the previous day(s). ZH Studied (with a SRS) HSK4 vocab, writing included, HSK5 vocab (recognition only) and my list of 2300 basic characters. Also studied (no SRS) 20-30 words underlined on the day before while reading vol. II of 名侦探柯南 (Detective Conan). Reset my SRS queue to zero in Pleco (I plan to do that regularly). Blind shadowed lesson 210 of Chinese Learn Online. Read some more of 名侦探柯南 Vol. 2 LA Continued reading chapter XLIV of Oerberg's Roma Aeterna. ES Finished reading Roberto Bolaño's Estrella distante. It was the first time I read one of his books and I was floored. The way I see it, he's the heir of Borges and Bioy Casares (I had read La invención de Morel just before, and on the very first page of Estrella distante, the ghost of Pierre Menard appears…), with a mixture of crime fiction, horror and poetry to create an allegory of the political history of South America since the 1970s. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4262 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 4 of 408 13 March 2013 at 4:05pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks dcbaok!
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4262 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 5 of 408 14 March 2013 at 11:08am | IP Logged |
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For once, I had to drive to work instead of sitting in the metro, so I had less time to
read, but more time to listen. ZH Studied HSK4 (Skritter) and HSK5 vocab + list of 2300 basic characters (Anki). Also studied (Pleco) 20-30 words underlined on the days before. Note: In addition to SRS (with Anki and Skritter), I use this simple system to study new vocab (with Pleco software for Chinese). Everyday: - While reading or listening, I add 20-30 words to a vocab list named after that day's number in the month (i.e. 01, 02, 03... 31). If I have time, I try to peruse this list once later during the day or in the evening, read definitions in Chinese, understand examples, etc. - I review (simple flashcards) all words from the lists of days -1, -3, -7. - I add the words of day -8 to an ever growing list that I study with an SRS. Once in a while, when it has become unwieldly, I delete this list and start again. While driving, blind shadowed Learn Chinese online, lessons 203-208. Read an article about the election of the new pope 也看了一篇关于网络安全以及中美两国经济关 系的 文章 (and another one about internet security and economic relationships between China and the US). LA: While driving, blind shadowed Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, I.5-I.8. At this stage, I have little problem understanding Caesar. In fact, it feels much easier than the extracts of Livy in Oerberg's Roma Aeterna! ES: Fue a la librería española a comprar otro libro de Bolaño (Putas asesinas). También compré una revista acompañada de un CD para escuchar mientras conducía mi coche regresando a casa. Desgraciadamente, el CD no funcionaba, así que escuché rock chinés (二手玫瑰, PK14). Antés de dormirme he leído un artículo sobre los piratas de hoy y cómo los pescadores europeos y asiáticos tal vez contribuyeron a reinforzar este fenómeno en África del Este. Suomen kieli: With Learning with texts, I studied some vocab from articles I'd read previously. I read two new articles, one about the pope's election (it's funny, no, it's useful and helpful to read the same things told in different languages), the other about problems between Russia and Finland regarding child custody. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4262 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 6 of 408 15 March 2013 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
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ZH
Before going to work, I took a 1-hour class with Skype (I do that twice a week). The sound was awful, it was almost useless. In addition, my new teacher decided to start with New Practical Chinese Reader 3, which I find rather boring. She wanted to test my level, we'll see what happens next. Studied HSK4 (Skritter) and HSK5 vocab + list of 2300 basic characters (Anki). Also studied (Pleco) 20-30 words underlined on the days before. Read an article about the election of 习近平 as 国家主席 and 中央军委主席. There were in fact 4 elections on March 14 and every delegate had four ballots which, quite fittingly, came in four different shades of red (whereas papal ballots come in two different shades of smoke), ie 深红色的、梁红色的、紫红色的、桔黄色的。 While walking home, I entertained passers-by by shadowing aloud “Chinese learn online” lessons 209 (x-1), 208 (x-2) and 207 (x-3) while reading the texts on my phone. ----------------- = Note about the meaning of x, x-1, x-2, etc. = Inspired by Prof. Arguelles’ method, I try to do the following. Suppose lesson 210 is a new lesson for me. I “blind shadow it”, i.e. I shadow it aloud without reading. Lesson 209 is x-1: I shadow it aloud while reading the English translation. Lesson 208 is x-2: I shadow it aloud while reading the English translation and glancing to the Chinese text if need be. Lesson 207 is x-3: I shadow it aloud while reading the Chinese text and glancing to the English translation if need be. Lesson 206 is x-4: I shadow it aloud while reading the Chinese text. Lesson 205 is x-5: I read it aloud (no listening). Lesson 204 is x-6. I read it silently and analyse it thoroughly. Lesson 203 is x-7 is used for a scriptorium exercise. As I have many other language activities, I don’t now yet whether I’ll try to apply the other elements of Prof. Arguelles’ method (copying by hand, typing, rereading, etc. Yet I do listen to old texts that have been studied in the past as a form of passive listening). ---------------- Finished reading 名侦探柯南 2. The "Kató Lomb" effect really works: I kept on reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen next! FI With "Learning with text", I studied some vocab from the texts I had read previously. Then I added two short articles taken from Selkouutiset, one about the European Parliament rejecting the EU budget as it stands, the other, again, about the new pope. I'll soon be a specialist. NL Op dit moment heb ik geen zin of geen tijd om mijn nederlands te verbeteren, maar ik moet mijn jongste dochter helpen om haar basiswoordenschat en somige zinnen met Anki te leren. Ik denk dat het overeenkomst is met “ik studeer ook nederlands”, niet waar? Although I don’t try to actively refresh my Dutch, I have to help my youngest daughter to study her (very basic) vocabulary and sentences with Anki. So I guess that counts as language studying for me too :-) LA With "Learning with text", reviewed some vocab seen in Caesar, Eutropius, medieval fables, etc. WA (Walloon) Al nute, dj' a-st apicî l' live di fåves da l' Anatole Marxhå "Li dérene chije". Dji vleu lére sacwantès pådjes mins dj' a-st avou si bon k' po fini, dj' a léjhou on bon tîss do live divant do doirmu. Vo ndè la onk k' a l' tour po maxhî les contes di macralreye eyet l' miråcoleye. At night I opened a book of tales by one of my favourite Walloon authors: A. Marchal's "Li dérene chije" (The Last Evening Gathering). I wanted to read a few pages and ended up reading a good third of the book. Marchal has a knack for mixing fantasy and melancholy. "Il est djustumint e trin do sondji k' il est prôpietaire d' on bounî d' brouyård a Mienåve. Mins dijh munutes di solea å matén et vo l' la rwiné." "He's dreaming that he is the owner of 2 acres of mist in Mienåve. After the morning sun has been shining for 10 minutes, he's ruined." 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4627 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 7 of 408 15 March 2013 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
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Hi lorinth, interesting log. And great to see someone write in Walloon. Although I lived in Brussels for seven years and travelled a lot in Belgium, I cannot remember actually hearing Walloon spoken, and it is the first time I see it written. I read in Wikipedia that it is considered an almost dead language, but at the same time they say there are more than a million speakers of it, so it doesn't sound all dead to me.
I can see the French connection, but without your translation I would not have been able to understand much. By the way, fun to see that Walloon uses the letter å, I thought that was a purely Scandinavian letter! Are people studying Walloon today, do they learn to write it? I would guess with the linguistically complicated situation in Belgium, there is little room for a fourth language community? I at least would be very interested in knowing more. Edited by Ogrim on 15 March 2013 at 1:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4262 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 8 of 408 15 March 2013 at 4:17pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Ogrim, you couldn't have heard Walloon in Brussels, because it has never been
spoken there - except by people who moved from Wallonia. As for the life expectancy of the language, my first hand experience is that the language is no longer transmitted to younger people. Over one million speakers? I would love that to be true. Serious sociolinguistic studies tend to say that there is a huge difference between the number of people able to understand the language and those who actually speak it. If memory serves, Walloon people who actually speak some form of the language (there is no spoken standard) amount to about 10% of the population. And most of them are older people. The å has been used for about 100 years. It is used to write a phoneme that is pronounced either /a:/ (French "â"; English "bass") or /o:/ (French "au") or anything phonetically in between. There's an article about that in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85 Very few schools teach Walloon. Yet, there are a handful of evening schools that teach the language to adults. Very few people know how to read it, let alone write it. Such is life :-( 1 person has voted this message useful |
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