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Four Little Birds, TAC 2015 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5544 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 17 of 54 11 January 2015 at 8:36pm | IP Logged |
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@Woodsei
Ahh...LR-ing "Siddhartha", "Der Vorleser", and "Das Parfum"...that takes me back. :) ありがとう for popping in, and I wish you oodles of success in your journey with Japanese this year too. Edited by Teango on 11 January 2015 at 8:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5544 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 18 of 54 15 January 2015 at 7:26am | IP Logged |
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Week 2
The first week of spring term is always chaotic and abuzz with activity at university. This year proves to be no different in this respect, and so I've only studied a modest amount of languages, the main focus of which has been Hawaiian. Hawaiian (3.5h) Resuming Hawaiian lessons after a seven week hiatus, I'm currently in catch-up mode. My first major port of call is to review vocabulary from the first half of my course book, which I didn't quite get around to last week as initially planned. Irish (0.5h) A few Duolingo reviews to revive my dying gold medals. Russian (2h) Five more episodes of Кухня down the road, and I'm already poised to jump into Season 2. I've experienced no major improvements or breakthroughs in listening since last week, but am enjoying the show, and can always turn to my wife to fill me in with the key plot points when completely lost. Other (Ancient Egyptian: 1h, French: 1h) My wife and I also re-watched "Guardians of the Galaxy" yesterday, but only on the proviso that we could watch the first hour in French. I was surprised at how much I could understand initially, but this quickly degenerated into unintelligible babble when the "baddies" started speaking in raspy accents, so I added French subtitles to the mix to help me understand everything once again. I noticed, however, that the dialogue and subtitles rarely matched up with each other, so it was more a case of simultaneously listening to two lines of overlapping dialogue (as well as translating into English now and again for the missus). Finally, I've been a bit of a wayward camel and left my Ancient Egyptian reviews to deteriorate beneath the sands of time over the last 2 weeks. So seeking to make amends, I've decided it's as good a time as any to get back to my Assimil. Well...the truth is I was perusing a bizarre book called "Why Cats Paint" on Amazon (oh Internet, the places you lead me!), and the introduction for the book was full of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs!! Immediately, guilt set in over my reviews. ;) (Total time spent on learning languages this week: 8 hours) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5544 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 19 of 54 22 January 2015 at 5:41am | IP Logged |
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Week 3
Things are starting to gradually heat up in my language studies, much like little bubbles forming on the base of a simmering pan, and this has lead me to putting in 4 more hours this week than last (or 2 hours a day with a break on Sundays). I'll aim for 3 hours a day as my next watershed... Hawaiian (7h) I'm really enjoying my Hawaiian classes at university. The instructor is a native speaker of Hawaiian and a lot of fun in the classroom (or as we'd say in Pidgin, "he one solid braddah"). We're currently reviewing the first half of the main course book (Ka Lei Haʻaheo) to get our heads back in the game, and I find that I'm learning a lot in class due to his clear and thorough explanations. Irish (1.5h) A little more dallying with Duolingo to keep Irish eyes smiling. :) I was particularly happy to find a Greasemonkey script to show me how many XP I need to reach the next level (a facility which was removed lately for some bizarre reason). Russian (3.3h) With 8 more episodes from Season 2 of Кухня under my belt, I was initially frustrated with all the relationship problems spilling over from Season 1. However the writers have given us impassioned watchers a short reprieve, and the scripts have been much lighter and more enjoyable recently. No doubt, this "мир" won't for last long, and "война" is just around the corner. Other (French: 0.2h) Having read so many good reviews for "Le petit Nicolas", I've gone ahead and ordered my own copy along with some accompanying audio CDs. I've also been enjoying the UK tv drama series "Musketeers" this last fortnight, which although in English, has piqued my interest in reading Dumas' original works in French. With this end in mind, I got hold of a parallel text for "Les Trois Mousquetaires" and had a little advance peak at the text (to read later this year). I also very nearly bought "Living Language Arabic" last weekend, but strengthened my resolve at the last minute not to wander too far from my chosen study languages this year. Just meters from the checkout, I circled back and returned the course to its shelf, and then distracted any further impulse to return by buying some classic compendia of fairy tales for my wife instead. I won't lie though, I'm still very tempted to return and reclaim the prize... (Total time spent on learning languages this week: 12 hours) Edited by Teango on 22 January 2015 at 7:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5322 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 20 of 54 22 January 2015 at 8:53am | IP Logged |
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That is actually quite a lot of study that you have got done, 2 hours a day is great! And I am really, really
proud of you for letting go of the Arabic book. I look forward to seeing more of Kuchnia. Being less impassioned, that should suit me just fine :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5544 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 21 of 54 23 January 2015 at 2:00am | IP Logged |
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@Cristina
Спасибо, сестра! It's always such a temptation to play with shiny new languages when I know fully well I should be focusing dutifully on others... And whilst I'm in the wanderlust confessional booth, I also admit to feeling strongly compelled to buy a Hindi TY course after reading one of the posts on the Forum today (don't worry, I didn't succumb, but I did get as far as adding it to my Amazon shopping cart during a tea break before seeing sense and deleting it!) Incidentally, where are you up to in Кухня? I'm finding the dialogue pretty tough so far, but luckily I can work out the better half of the plot from context, visuals, and a saucy imagination. ;) Edited by Teango on 23 January 2015 at 2:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5544 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 22 of 54 30 January 2015 at 3:07am | IP Logged |
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Week 4
Each week that has gone by so far this year has led to more weekly language study. Admittedly, I’m only half an hour up on my weekly total since last week, but at least this is headed in the right direction. I’ve also met some more Russian and Hawaiian speakers lately, which has boosted my motivation to up gears and get serious next month. Hawaiian (8h) Lots of reviews this week, both in class and as part of homework assignments. The classes continue to be “choke” (Pidgin: a lot of) fun, and the pace is just about right. We’re due to start the second half of our course book next week, but before this takes place, there’s a big test on Friday to make sure we’re all ready to venture forth into the new material. Irish (1h) Nothing unusual to report this week. I just kept up with Duolingo reviews and wrote a brief introduction in Irish on the Team Celts thread as a part of a challenge. Russian (3.5h) Another half a dozen episodes deeper into season 2, but my listening skills still don’t seem any stronger. It’s early days, I know, but listening comfortably to idiomatic speech seems like a faraway dream right now. If anything, I feel my listening ability has deteriorated чуть-чуть (a little bit) lately, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Perhaps the roller-coasting ups and downs are a positive sign for the long run, and it’s just a matter of integrating new variability for the words I already know. Or maybe I simply need to get better organized and start explicitly learning more related vocabulary in tandem with my lighter skill-based activities. I also spent about 4 hours altogether talking to Russian speakers on campus, although I only count this as 1 hour for speaking in Russian, as much of the conversation was in English. I particularly enjoyed playing the game “Taboo” in Russian with eight or so members of the university Russian club, and was surprised how many words I knew. My grammar on the other hand…well, that’s a another story. ;) Other (French: 0.2h) “Le petit Nicolas” arrived this week, and on the whole, it looks like a fun intermediate level text! I understand about 96% of the words in the text so far, which isn’t too bad considering I only ever learned French for a year, and that was quarter of a century ago. I look forward to diving into this book later… (Total time spent on learning languages this week: 12.7 hours) Edited by Teango on 30 January 2015 at 3:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5544 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 23 of 54 06 February 2015 at 1:01am | IP Logged |
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Week 5
My main focus over the last month has been on Hawaiian, for which I'm averaging around an hour of study per day (excluding Sundays). And although it's early days yet, I already feel I've made substantial progress. For example, when I bought "Ke Keiki Aliʻi Liʻiliʻi" (The Little Prince) last autumn, I couldn't understand a single word amongst the first flurry of 100 words. Sure, I could guess a few words from the context of having read the story before in other languages, but not solely on the basis of legitimately knowing each word. Now, just a few months on, I tried to read the same passage again whilst in bed (simply out of curiosity), and found that I could understood at least 84% of all the words and follow the plot. This was a happy discovery and quite unexpected! Hawaiian (8.2h) My Hawaiian class has finally finished the first half of Ka Leo Haʻaheo, for which I spent a fair amount of time reviewing the first 12 chapters in this book (especially chs. 8-12). So I'm looking forward to getting my nose out of the book, and practicing a bit more ʻōlelo (speaking) instead at a big get-together outside on the university lawn this Friday (Lā Launa Pū). Hopefully I'll get a chance to put what I've reviewed into practice, as there will be a lot of people attending, and we're all encouraged to speak only in Hawaiian. I'll be making some haupia (coconut pudding) with my wife to bring along for pupus, and will probably try my hand at some kuʻiʻai (poi pounding) again. It's so much tastier when you make poi fresh from kalo yourself to a really smooth consistency and wrap it all up in a banana leaf! :P Irish (1.2h) I'm up to "dates/times" so far in Duolingo, which is about a quarter of the way through the course. I'm not really too keen on the audio recordings (which are a little harsh on my ear and even questionable at times), nor do I like being asked to translate new words or phrases without being given some time to learn them off first (curiously, only some of the words are initially highlighted, whilst others it assumes you know without any prior introduction). However, the strength of Duolingo is that it just takes 5 minutes or so to complete a new step or review, which is quite doable on a daily basis whilst on the phone during a break or whilst waiting on my computer online. Russian (3.1h) Although I haven't officially started studying Russian again, I have been following plenty of fast-paced and varied Russian dialogue on tv over the last month (41 episodes of Кухня and counting!) It's therefore difficult to objectively asses how much progress, if any, I've made in my listening skills over this time. I personally feel I've only got worse and more frustrated with my inability to grasp all the details in the dialogue, whilst my wife believes my listening skills have clearly improved and I understand so much more on my own. I'll need to come up with some more objective way to record my comprehension over the coming months, and am open to any good suggestions on how to record progress in listening skills...? Other (French: 0.4h, German: 0.1h) I read a bit of "Le petit Nicolas" and spoke briefly with a French taxi driver, had a quick chat with a couple of German speakers, and learned a word in Portuguese this week: pão de queijo (a very tasty cheese bun I discovered at my local farmer's market, and which I'm now totally hooked on). Also, after almost 5 months of misdeliveries and prolonged waiting, the correct audio for my German Assimil course "Perfectionnement allemand" has finally arrived. This should be useful for review and maintenance later in the year. (Total time spent on learning languages this week: 13 hours) Edited by Teango on 06 February 2015 at 1:04am 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 24 of 54 06 February 2015 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
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Pão de queijo is typical of the state of Minas Gerais, where I live (not where I come from originall, though). I eat it every week, though I still miss some different buns we have in my hometown which aren't as famous.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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