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| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 97 of 212 27 November 2013 at 10:14am | IP Logged |
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Today I finished Rosetta Stone Russian 1 and started RS Russian 2. It still feels like an incredibly foreign language to me, although I am reading the Cyrillic a bit better. There are some things that I can say easily, but there is so much that I need to learn.
There are some words that I see so often in practice, like the word for apple, that when I think of an apple, half of the time the Russian word comes to my mind. That's only for a very limited set of words though, not for everything. Despite the fact that the six week challenge is going on, I spent a good deal of time on Spanish today. First I did my Anki cards, of course, and then I read another section of the article that I've been reading on Australian birds. It's particularly interesting to me because I spent five weeks in Australia while I was in college, and I have been to Cairns, which is close to the area where these birds live. I even took a walk in the rainforest out there, although I never saw one of the birds that they were writing about. After I finish reading this year of National Geographic issues, I will probably be fairly knowledgeable about words for basic animals and plants... today I recognized the words for bat and lizard that I had seen before. I'll probably want to work on vocabulary in other areas more though. There are a couple of Spanish magazines on different topics that I can check out of the library, I'll probably look there. In the meantime, I'm pretty busy with the one magazine that I subscribe to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 98 of 212 01 December 2013 at 9:35am | IP Logged |
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It was Thanksgiving in the US, and even though I had a day off, I didn't have much time to study. Our friends came over for the weekend, and we spent all day on Friday shopping. I did get a nice TV though, so now I don't have to watch television on the laptop. That will be nice.
I did manage to get a little bit of Russian done today, and some Anki today and yesterday. I work tomorrow, and then get two days off. I'll be able to get some studying done probably starting tomorrow night. So very tired. In the last five days, I've only had one soda. That doesn't mean that I'm wide awake without a steady influx of caffeine though. I was sleepy at work for a lot of the day. Sleepy now too, but it's time to sleep. Hopefully this tiredness will get better soon. As of today, I have tied last year's record of days without soda (I've been trying to give up soda for a few years now). That doesn't have much to do with languages, I suppose, although it does in a way, because when I am tired, I don't really have enough brainpower to study languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 99 of 212 08 December 2013 at 9:21am | IP Logged |
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It's been more than a week since I last wrote here; I've been pretty busy and haven't had a great deal of time to study... and between work and everything else, it's been eating up most of my time. In addition, the lack of soda in my life is making me a lot sleepier than I otherwise would be. I've only had soda on two of the last twelve days, which is quite an accomplishment for me. I hope to get to the point where I'm not so darned sleepy all day, but I'm not quite there yet. I guess that there are times in the day that I'm not sleepy, but in the late evenings, when I would be studying, I am quite tired.
Today I did get the chance to do some studying. Anki has been backing up, and I did all of my Spanish words there. I finished September's National Geographic En Español, and started reading at the beginning of October's issue. I also listened to two Notes in Spanish podcasts: one was new to me, and the other one I had listened to before, but since we're in the Christmas season, I thought that I'd listen to some of their Christmas podcasts. I also got some Russian done. It was only 1/2 hour, but I had been neglecting it. I started on the next lesson. The new lesson seems confusing, but like all lessons, it probably won't be so hard when I get to the end of it. One of the things that I do like about Russian is that it seems to be easier to pronounce (for me) once I get the hang of it. There are just some things in Spanish that I can't seem to pronounce well for the life of me. It was nice to get back into the swing of things. I have Monday and Tuesday off, so hopefully I'll have a little bit of time to get some studying done. One of the things that I've noticed is that it is so hard to make any sort of conversation in Spanish. When I want to say something, my mind goes blank. One of my coworkers speaks Spanish (English too, but she knows that I'm interested in learning Spanish). Anyway, I can never seem to think of the words in Spanish that I want to say. It seems like anything more difficult than "Como Esta?" flees from my mind. I'm sure that I'm not the only person that experiences that, but it seems weird that I can successfully translate all of these Anki words, as well as read and comprehend quite a bit of magazine articles that I read, yet when it comes to speaking, I can remember about as much as a Spanish student in their first week of lessons. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 100 of 212 31 March 2014 at 12:09pm | IP Logged |
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It's been a while since I updated this... I guess that probably life has crowded out language learning for a while. My job, which is supposed to be part time, has been scheduling me at practically a full-time schedule.
That doesn't mean that I haven't been doing anything with languages. I've been working more with Spanish, speaking it with one of my coworkers (although it's usually very superficial and I can't remember many words beyond the basics), reading signs, and watching a little CNN in Español. I have been reading some in the National Geographic in the past week, and broke out Anki today. Hopefully I'll have some more time soon. I even had the chance to use a little of my Russian listening skills the other day. I was watching a movie about Soviet history, and they had some people speaking in Russian in parts of it. I was able to pick out more than I thought that I would be able to. That same movie had some German speakers as well, so that was an added bonus. I have some extra motivation to improve on my Spanish over the next couple of months... I will be going on another cruise, and will be stopping by Mexico for a day, where I will be able to see some Mayan ruins. It's only for a day, but it's better than nothing. No matter what, my Spanish is better now than it was last year when I went to Mexico for a day. So I've been plugging along with language slowly for a while. I guess that it can be a good thing to focus more on other things now and then. Hopefully I'll be able to find some time to ramp it back up a bit so I can improve and refine my Spanish, work on Russian, and perhaps later on in the year, get back into German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 101 of 212 03 April 2014 at 1:30pm | IP Logged |
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I did some Spanish reading today, as well as some work with Anki. I still haven't really gotten back into working on Russian, although with all that is going on in the world, now would be a great time to do so.
I have to hand it to people that can speak well in more than one language. It seems like an onion where you need to constantly peel back more and more layers. The basics that you would need when meeting someone or traveling seem to be fairly easy to get down, but there's so much more out there. I guess that the more that I work on it though, the better I will get. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 102 of 212 08 April 2014 at 9:51am | IP Logged |
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While it sometimes seems like I still know very little Spanish, especially when I overhear some of my Spanish-speaking coworkers speaking to each other, sometimes I am reminded of how far I have come. Like today, I was reading a passage from National Geographic En Español, and I understood that it meant "born in two different zoos in 2010, a trio of puppies was raised in captivity...". To be fair, I had just looked up the word they used for puppies, cachorros, a few minutes before that. I was surprised at what I could understand though. Some of the words I practice in Anki, but others I've just seen and learned otherwise.
Another sentence that was able to understand without too much trouble was "a baby elephant whose mother was killed by hunters sneaky rests in a guardería in Nairobi." It took a little thinking to realize that the sneaky hunters were "poachers", but I figured it out. I was a little off on the translation of guardería, which I thought was like a wildlife preserve, but after looking it up, found out that it actually meant "nursery". While the words might escape me when I'm checking in a Spanish speaker at my work at a hotel (I was able to remember how to say "thank you for coming"), I've come a long way from a year ago, where I remembered asking a tour guide "how to you say whale in Spanish?" 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 103 of 212 09 April 2014 at 8:18am | IP Logged |
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Today I had more reminders of how far I have come with Spanish, at least with reading it. I went to McDonald's for dinner tonight, and I saw a sign in Spanish. It was talking about flavor, and I was able to understand it. Later, I read a small section in a magazine about artificial insemination of rhinoceroses in a zoo for endangered animals.
I do have a goal of being able to sit down and read Spanish publications without having any trouble or having to sit in front of a computer so I can look up words. The more that I am able to sit down and read about relatively complex subjects like this while only looking up a handful of words, the closer I realize that I'm getting towards my goal. My listening comprehension is far beyond this, and actually being able to recall the words that I want is even farther behind. However, if I've come this far in a year, then in another year I will be that much closer to my goal. I've been thinking about what I might want to do when my subscription to National Geographic En Español runs out. I´ll probably want to finish reading the issues that I do have first... but do I want to resubscribe, or subscribe to something else (which might focus on different words)? I can't find too much, as far as traditional print magazines go, that I'm interested in. I noticed today that there are Zinio electronic magazines that I can subscribe to though, and read on my iPad. To me, it's not exactly the same as a print magazine, but Zinio is actually pretty good. There is one historical magazine in Spanish that would probably be interesting... maybe I'll try that. I can always resubscribe to National Geographic later on, but I figure that getting a little variety might help expand my vocabulary. That's farther down the road, but a little planning and dreaming doesn't hurt. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4195 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 104 of 212 12 April 2014 at 10:52am | IP Logged |
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Reading in Spanish is becoming a lot easier for me. Today I read ten pages with mostly pictures and some words, and I had to look up 12 words. The words that I had to look up were words for things like ruffle, taxation, sweetener, overweight, pipeline, bubble, and revelation. Certainly not words that you would need to know to "get by" when visiting a Spanish speaking country, but words that most people who speak the language well would know.
My trip to Mexico is only weeks away. Like last year, I'll only be spending one day in Mexico, but it gives me a good excuse to focus on Spanish because I'll be able to use some of what I learn. There is certainly a disconnect between what I can read, what I can speak, and what I can comprehend while listening, but if I was to hear something like "El frío es parte tambíen de mi" (from Libre Soy from the Spanish version of Frozen) then I can pick out some of the main words even listening. Speaking of Frozen (I had to go look it up), the Blu-Ray disc I bought comes with Spanish audio :-). I'll definitely have to watch it a few times for the Super Challenge that's coming up. Considering that I know that movie quite well in English, it seems like a good movie to watch in Spanish to improve my listening skills. I still don't intend on abandoning my Russian studies or even, further on down the line, German, but since I'm currently pretty busy with my job and my parents visiting, they are a lower priority. Plus, I'm really enjoying reading a passage in Spanish and actually understanding most of it without having to look up every other word in Google translate. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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