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A Linguistic Odyssey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 9 of 265 19 September 2009 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Friday: Greek
Goals: 1) 1 lesson of Learn Greek Without a Teacher, 2) Finish Odysseas Unit 3 Achieved: 1) no, 2) yes I'm back. I went and did my Spanish homework reading, a nice story. And then I finished up Odysseas up through Unit 3, which took forever. I went through all three units and found all of the words I didn't know, and learned them. Then I finished the homework section of Unit 3. They have 12 exercises, but each exercise has on average 10 questions, and the questions take a while, because you have to click several things, so it takes a really long time. Needless to say, I am happy with any progress I've made, but and a little annoyed with the amount of time it took. I obviously did not have time to do my lesson of LGWT. Sadness. Well, I'm very tired now, and shall have to say good night, in Greek of course. Καληνύχτα! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 10 of 265 19 September 2009 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I did my LGWT vocabulary. Yay! Lots of interesting new words. I really like it when I can make connection between words I already know in the language and new vocabulary. It's exciting. For example:
το φως - light η φώτιση - enlightenment Yes. Well, we are leaving in like 2 minutes, so I shall go now. I will try to accomplish my Japanese goal in the car today. I'll be back tomorrow night. --Philip 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 11 of 265 21 September 2009 at 5:23am | IP Logged | ||
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GRRRRR. I hate it when that happens. Right as I was typing in one of the last words in my post, I hit a button and it went to some other page. And my journal entry was deleted. Well, I will try to re-create it a little bit, but shortened.
Saturday: 日本語 Goal: 1) Finish lesson 4 of Teach Yourself Japanese, 2) 14 new kanji, up to #190 Achieved: 1) yes, 2) yes Sunday: Italiano Goal: 1 lesson of STG: Italian Achieved: yes So anyways, the trip wasn't terrible and I got some language time in. Yay. I finished the Japanese lesson, but still have to do some exercises. And I will definitely have to review the lesson; it had a lot of new concepts that I didn't absorb completely. And I need to go over my vocabulary again... I did that last weekend, so I was forgetting some of it. And then there's kanji. Ah, kanji. Kanji is fun. It really is. Yes, so I learned the 14 new kanji for the week (2 per day). For Italian, I listened to a bunch of Michel Thomas (I’m really liking his method), a Learn Italian Pod episode on losing a wallet, and did my STG: Italian vocabulary. It was mostly words I already knew, but that’s okay. For now. If I want to reach my goal (and TRULY reach it) by December, I really have to start working harder. I also found out that two of my friends are starting to learn Italian. One is self-studying and one is taking classes at the university (her parents are making her). It would have been nice if they had started last December when I started, so that we could have studied together and been at approximately the same level, instead of me being WAY ahead. But I suppose I can always help them. :) Well, that’s all. My stomach is really hurting for some reason… Stupid gum. お休みなさい! // Buona notte! --Philip 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 12 of 265 23 September 2009 at 5:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Monday: Español
Goal: 1) Frequency list to #2000, 2) 1 vocab list from last year, 3) review previous frequency list vocab Achieved: 1) no, 2) yes, 3) no Tuesday: Français Goal: 1 lesson of Ultimate French Achieved: yep! Well, I'm back. I was just too lazy to post yesterday. Well, here is what has been happening with me lately, language-wise of course. Yesterday I did a list of last year's Spanish class vocabulary that the class never got around to, and neither did I. So that's good. I didn't have time for doing any frequency list stuff, though, so maybe I'll have time to do that this weekend. In French, we did boring stuff. Same with today. In Spanish yesterday, we did a near impossible listening comprehension lab. The problem was not that we couldn't understand, but was a combination of several factors: 1) Having to answer questions as we were going along 2) Questions were often very detail-oriented, out of order, and phrased differently 3) The people were speaking about the speed of a bullet train 4) The sound quality was not great and in several of the interview things there was annoying background noise, like distracting music Yep, so I think I failed that. But everyone else probably did too (I talked to several classmates), so I don't feel as bad. Chinese. I have been going in and out of wanting to study it. About four years ago, I was really into studying it, but then got a bit discouraged, stopped, and have since forgotten almost all that I knew. I went into a period of hating it for a while and saying, "No. I don't want to learn Chinese. I like Japanese better." But then I would randomly like it again and put it back on my hit list on this website. Around the time of my birthday (July 27th) this year, I was in my "hating-Chinese-Japanese-is-so-much-better mood" and then I got a set of Chinese flashcards for my birthday from my uncle who majored in Chinese... Well, it definitely annoyed me at first, but then it got me thinking about Chinese. Since then, it has been considered a language I definitely want to learn, and has been listed as medium (and I have been tempted to move it to high) priority on my hit list. ANYWAYS, where I was going with this is that this weekend, I was thinking about how I wanted to read the Tao Te Ching. In my World Literature class yesterday, guess what we read some excerpts from? That's right. So, it just made me realize that I liked it a lot more than I even thought. So on an impulse, I decided that I would learn Chinese just to be able to read the Tao Te Ching in the original. And I bought a copy on Amazon yesterday. Yeah, so I just thought that was pretty interesting and might be worth mentioning. This discussion about Chinese has led me to my wanderlust. So, I have made a pledge with myself of late, and I think it would be worth it to put it in writing. It is that I promise myself that I will not start any new language (Russian, Arabic, Chinese, etc.) until I have "finished" a few of the ones I'm working on. I cannot handle taking on any more, as demonstrated when I began Russian and tried to pursue it (along with all my current languages) this summer. Not a good idea. Too much. So...yeah, that's my pledge. The languages I had in mind about "finishing" were Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and hopefully Greek. And I don't intend to be like Liz (sorry, Liz, for picking on you!) and cheating on her devotion to Italian by starting up Ancient Egyptian. Oh, Greek! I just remembered that yesterday my new Greek textbook that I ordered on Thursday arrived. It looks pretty good, so when I finish the books I'm working on now, I'll start going through that. It also looks like a good book to use with my grandmother, who functions as a Greek tutor when she's here during the school year. But lately (aka last year) it was just "Yiayia-Philip" social time. Hopefully we'll get something done this year. I would like to reach at least basic fluency by the end of the year (not sure yet whether that means school year, which would be in May 2010, or on the calendar year, December 2010). Hm... Anything else? Oh, yes, French! Yes, so I did my French vocabulary. Mostly known stuff, but I'm just trying to get through the book at the moment, so it's progress. My French class is becoming increasingly boring and annoying. My teacher last year was spectacular (it was her last year, but she had also taught my mom and her siblings when they were in high school), but my teacher this year...uh, not so much. Sadness. My parents are telling me that if I'm still not getting anything out of the class at the end of the semester, I should drop it for the second semester. I don't know, though. The though of dropping a language class...it seems a bit "not right" to me. Finally (I promise this is the last thing), the last set of quotation marks reminded me: I think I'm getting worse at English. It's pretty scary to say that, seeing as how it's my native language and all. I mean, I SHOULD be able to speak it without stupid errors that English-learners would make, not native speakers. Well, I am making all sorts of mistakes when I'm speaking (and even writing) lately: pronunciation, verb-subject agreement, spelling, and other mistakes that make me shudder. It's all these foreign languages! Oh, well, it's fun anyways. That's all for tonight! ¡Buenas noches a todos! // Bonne nuit à tous! Philip P.S. Are there lurkers following me on here? So far only two forum members have bothered to post in this log, and that was after the first post. However, there are a couple hundred views, and those aren't all from me! Who are you? Show yourselves! Edited by ellasevia on 23 September 2009 at 5:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5674 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 13 of 265 23 September 2009 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I for one am constantly checking this out, however I have not come across anything particular that I've felt I should comment on : ) Your language studies are quite inspiring and certainly much more organized and thought-out than mine. The level of discipline you have is amazing, I could probably keep up with your kind of schedule for about a week at tops before just scrapping the whole thing, but you seem to be finding a nice groove here. Be sure to keep this thing going, after all if an odyssey came to a halt in less than a month it would've never been one in the first place.
By the way, is my mind just making this up or did you use to have five languages in the "Speaks" section of your profile? : D I recall that there were five of them back when you left comments in my log this summer, have you perhaps demoted yourself a little? : D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 14 of 265 23 September 2009 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I did in fact demote myself a little bit. Before, I had Greek listed in my profile as basic fluency, but then after further examination and re-evaluation of my standards, I decided it would be a bit of an exaggeration to say that. However, it is not a very big exaggeration, and I intend to be at basic fluency soon. You may also have noticed that I had to drop Russian. Sad, yes, but I couldn't keep my schedule flowing with more languages than days of the week, especially during the school year. But Russian is my next language once I "finish" a couple of the ones in my schedule. Edited by ellasevia on 23 September 2009 at 11:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 15 of 265 24 September 2009 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I've been lurking too. Obviously. If I don't comment it's mostly because I don't know what to say :-) It's pretty amazing that you're able to manage that many languages! And awesome that soon you'll be fluent in more languages than you can count on one hand. That's more than can be said about most high-school students, which makes it that much cooler... Keep at it, you're an inspiration to people.
Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 16 of 265 24 September 2009 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Wednesday: Português
Goal: 1 lesson of Ultimate Portuguese Achieved: yes Olá a tudos! Decidi hoje de escrever esta entrada no meu diário no português para praticá-lo, e porque hoje é o meu dia do português. Esta manhã acordei cedo (não devo dizer “cedo” mais porque agora é habitual) e fiz uma lição enteira do português. Foi muito fácil, como sempre, porque já sabia quase todo o vocabulário. Não vejo a hora de terminar esse livro... No ônibus à escola, eu lei outra lição, mas ainda não memorizei o vocabulário. Esquecei de dizer ontem que também comprei um livro de listas de freqüência portugueses ao mesmo tempo que comprei o Tao Te Ching. Esta manhã também terminei finalmente a lista de freqüência pelo espanhol até o número 2000. Estou muito feliz de ter-lo feito por fim. Não sei o que dizer... Se alguém quiser que eu traduza esta mensagem ao inglês, eu posso fazê-lo. Minha mãe está olhando-me agora, ela disse que tenho que apagar a computadora. É bom que ela não compreenda o português... Boa noite!! -Philip Edited by ellasevia on 24 September 2009 at 2:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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