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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 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 241 of 265 10 May 2010 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH. Procrastination is bad, people, DON'T DO IT!!!
Can you guess what MY weekend was like? Well, Saturday was a bit lazy and little got done, especially since my friend compelled me under false pretenses to come with her "for just a little while" to just keep her company while her brother played a sports game, and she said I could bring stuff that I had to get done. Well, once in the car it's revealed to me that it's actually her brother's birthday party which I have been tricked into helping out with for several hours... Sunday was also a bit that way, but for better reasons since it was Mother's Day (do they celebrate that elsewhere?) and there was a luncheon at my uncle's house for several hours. Let's see, language wise I did all of my kanji-related activities (new ones to #1590: 奏, 実, 奉, 俸, 棒, 謹, 勤, 漢, 嘆, 難, 華, 垂, 睡, 錘, 乗, 剰, 今, 含, 吟, 念) and my Anki reviews too. I also did one chapter from my Italian Vocabulary book, 4 lists from my Spanish Vocabulary book (BTW, the lists are much shorter, generally around 10 words or so per Italian lesson, but usually around 30-50 for Spanish lists, so that's why there are fewer of them), and lesson 13 from TY Esperanto (just two more lessons left!). I also did one lesson from Ultimate Japanese, lesson 17, and found it to be (well the vocabulary at least) rather difficult--it was on transportation. That lesson caused me to be up until 4:00 in the morning on Saturday! It was not pleasant. I think I will need to go back and review that. Yesterday I also managed to go through my Beginner's Swedish lesson and type up all of the vocabulary, but then it occurred to me that homework and [cough, cough] AP Exam review existed too and that I shall have to read like 30 chapters of my review book by Thursday...not fun at all. So, for this week, my goals up until Thursday are merely to do my kanji and Anki and whatever goal for that day which wasn't accomplished last week. I have an insane amount of world history reading to do (8 chapters per day including yesterday, so I'm already behind by five chapters--that means 13 today). After that scary AP World History exam though, I can be all happy and do language stuff until I remember about finals, which are the week after next. But after that, FREEDOM! Okay, I should probably leave for school now. Bye. --Philip EDIT: Forgot to mention that I did my Νέα Ελληνικά vocabulary as well and finished CD4 of MT Polish (even though I'm forgetting those words left and right because of inconsistency of studying that). Edited by ellasevia on 10 May 2010 at 2:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 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 242 of 265 11 May 2010 at 6:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I haven't really done anything yet today besides reviewing Anki and looking at some kanji while at school today. I have SOOO much schoolwork right now because the teachers are panicking about how we only have a few more days before the end of the year and are trying to cram in as much as is humanly (or super-humanly in some cases) possible.
I just wanted to post a link that might be a bit motivating (in a negative way, though) to some people. It is essentially just a screensaver for your computer that quite literally shows time passing by on a timeline. It shows as seconds whiz past and as minutes and hours slowly creep by. In addition, it shows how far through the day, month, and year you are. I have set this as my new screensaver so that I get scared about wasting time whenever I see it so that I will want to make the most out of any spare time I have... The link to download it is here: http://beeks.eu/Screensaver.htm (it's the second one) Also, I thought I might mention a little bit of a deal I've made with myself. I've decided that if I can finish off all (or almost all; some of it will just take forever) of my study material for Spanish, Portuguese, and Esperanto (preferably French too) by the end of June, I will allow myself to begin on Russian after I get back from Africa. This is just a little teaser for myself in order to be super-motivated to finish my studies of those languages as soon as possible. I really want to start Russian, since it and other (Slavic and otherwise) languages are calling to me. I do regret having dropped it back in August under the pretense that I didn't have enough time. Now I'll have to start almost from scratch again. :( I'm also feeling pretty badly that Swahili has been getting neglected so much lately especially since I'm actually visiting a Swahili-speaking area in less than two months, so starting when school is out it will be getting its own day (I have yet to figure out how that will work exactly) and I will be intensively studying it. This brings me to two other points. The first is that I will try to have a "monastic" schedule of study this summer, meaning regulated, predetermined sleeping schedules of no more than six (or seven max) hours per night and then extreme organization during the day so as to allow for maximum achievement. (I'm just a little obsessive, right?) The second is that this log is going to be coming to a close within the next few weeks. It has been a nice companion to my studies for this school year (I started it about a month into school), but since school is getting out before the month is through, my studies will shortly be changing dramatically for the better and becoming more intensive. As such, I will be starting a new log for my summer language pursuits which will cover from the beginning of June until mid-August. Once that time period is over, I will start a new one to document my next school year of studying OR continue where this one left off (but it's now over 30 pages, which is a bit too long...). Well, I have time to decide. In any case this post has turned out to be much longer than I intended and it's much later than I thought it was too... Okay, I shall just add an edit to this post appending any more information about when and if I get any actual study done today. Otherwise, good night! Edited by ellasevia on 11 May 2010 at 6:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5486 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 243 of 265 11 May 2010 at 6:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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You're going to be starting Russian again!? Yay :D! I am super willing to help you to the best of my ability (since it
will be at a time when I will hopefully be at a satisfactory level). Get started with that Swahili. I can only imagine how much you'll pick up while you're in Tanzania. Just get to it once finals are over and don't stop until you step off the plane. (I guess I should start taking this attitude since I will be traveling to Germany pretty soon as well and my abilities still leave something to wish for :P). I wish you luck. Oh and that time wasting thing would just creep me out. I can't stand the thought of wasting precious hours of my life, even though I do it anyway :). I guess I should take a more "live in the moment" take on life. Why am I writing this in YOUR log? Ok I'm gonna stop writing, good luck with your goals for this week Philip :). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5677 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 244 of 265 12 May 2010 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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How do you reckon you'll start studying Russian? Unfortunately I do not at this point remember for certain if you have studied it before, but apparently you'll be starting from pretty much a clean slate nevertheless. Therefore, do you have any specific programs or courses in mind for it? I'm asking this since I kind of find it almost impossible to keep my interest away from the language for a long while too. I did study it for some time last summer with the MT course but that didn't really lead anywhere... it'd be interesting to hear what you're thinking of using. Oh yeah, and about that summer learning schedule of yours, it's almost insane in my view : D How can you keep that up? You must really be into languages, holy moly. Edited by Thatzright on 12 May 2010 at 8:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 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 245 of 265 14 May 2010 at 12:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank God that's over with. I don't think I will be able to look at world history again for a long time without wanting to scream.
If you haven't worked that one out yet, this morning was my AP World History test. Yesterday I stayed home from school in order to rest and study for it, but because I was sick (I didn't know this until today), I ended up sleeping for half of the day. Oh well. So, last night I could barely sleep and woke up feeling horrible. Just my luck to get sick on the day of my big AP test, right? Well, I went to school and ate doughnuts (yummy!) at the party my teacher held before the exam, and finally after waiting for so long, I took the much-anticipated test. It was okay. The multiple choice was very easy and on the whole the essays weren't bad either. I'm just glad that it's over (now I have all that other schoolwork to catch up on). So...languages. I haven't done ANYTHING all week. I don't feel very motivated either, because I have over 300 kanji reviews to do, 40 new kanji to learn, and tons of Anki to review. Like I said, I also have a bunch of work which I'll have to do this weekend for school, so I guess I'll make it my new goal to try to get caught up on kanji and Anki through Sunday and then to do some small and easy stuff which won't drain me any more. I have been thinking about my summer plans and goals and coming up with schedules. I think I am going to have the following structure for the summer, with studying 3 languages per day, with one main focus language and two lesser study languages. Since I'll be studying nine languages (I anticipate finishing Esperanto before summer) and the week only has seven days, I have combined Spanish and Portuguese into one entity, called "Iberian" (Ibérico), and from the resulting eight languages have crafted this genius eight-day plan: DAY 1: Kiswahili, Svenska, Ελληνικά DAY 2: Deutsch, Ibérico, 日本語 DAY 3: Français, Kiswahili, Svenska DAY 4: Italiano, Deutsch, Ibérico DAY 5: Ελληνικά, Français, Kiswahili DAY 6: 日本語, Italiano, Deutsch DAY 7: Svenska, Ελληνικά, Français DAY 8: Ibérico, 日本語, Italiano Of course, this is only for before I go to Africa. After Africa, since I will have only seven languages (stopping Spanish, Portuguese, and French; adding Russian), I will have a seven-day plan for study, which is popularly known as a weekly schedule. During the summer it won't really matter which day of the week each day corresponds to, but when school starts again, each day will have a day of the week and only the main language listed. It would probably look something like this: DAY 1: Kiswahili, Svenska, Italiano DAY 2: Deutsch, Русский, Ελληνικά DAY 3: Русский, Italiano, Svenska DAY 4: Italiano, Kiswahili, 日本語 DAY 5: Ελληνικά, Deutsch, Kiswahili DAY 6: 日本語, Ελληνικά, Deutsch DAY 7: Svenska, 日本語, Русский Now, to answer Thatzright's question: I have in fact studied Russian before. Actually about a year ago from now, I began to study and continued all the way through August. Unfortunately, I had a ton of work going into the beginning of the school year and assuming it would continue like that, I decided to drop Russian since it was the lowest of my priorities even though I love the language. I can still read the alphabet well, I can remember a few words, and I remember some basic grammar (basic verb conjugation, some case endings). Last summer I didn't want to buy anything for Russian because I wasn't sure I would be able to commit to it, so I was using just the website www.russianlessons.com, which was actually very good. Oh, and I used Livemocha a little bit too. Right before school started though, I bought a couple books for Russian (a dictionary, this vocabulary book, and this coursebook). For Christmas I got the New Penguin Russian Course, which I've heard is great. I have since also found the Michel Thomas course and might consider using that. Very recently I also purchased the Cortina Russian course. So I think I'll be doing a combination of all of those. I also have people who I can practice with, namely my grandfather and my great-uncle. The former studied Russian at the Army Language School and speaks Russian at a native fluency level (or at least he used to, his level may have deteriorated a bit). The latter also studied Russian to a native fluency level (I think he also may have studied at the Army Language School too) and translated Russian radio messages for the government and went on to later teach university Russian. I think that's about it. I am slightly horrified at how long it took to write this post, mainly because of all of the HTML coding for the colors and formatting and such, and also to coordinate the days for the languages so that it's relatively balanced and not too hard on any given day. Now, off to study languages and/or do homework. I wonder which I will choose... --Philip EDIT: I just remembered that I have the beginning of the Russian Pimsleur course which I got from the library. Edited by ellasevia on 14 May 2010 at 3:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 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 246 of 265 15 May 2010 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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NOOO! I just deleted my entire message. And I was so close to being done! I hate that. Okay, to summarize...
So, I have had lots of schoolwork, but since caring too much and stressing about it only made me sick, I have been trying to relax more and ignore it a bit for now. So I have been reading on here a bunch and also doing some catch up language work. Like I mentioned before, I had a LOT of kanji to review. At one point I had almost 400, but now I've reduced it to 70 due cards and 16 restudy cards. I also still need to study 60 new kanji to be up to date for today. In addition to kanji studies, I caught up on Anki and also did some Spanish and Italian vocabulary this morning. I got up early, which was nice, because for a biology project my group wanted me to film the sunrise (but just my luck, this morning it was too cloudy and I couldn't see it). However, my early awakening allowed me to read and study a bunch this morning. It still feels like it should be a lot later than it is--in a good way. :) The Spanish vocabulary I mentioned was very easy; it was just some art-related vocabulary. The Italian, on the other hand, was very annoying. First of all, the chapter was much longer than I expected (something like 17 pages!). It also had a bit of a difficult/weird/annoying theme: "Body care, health, and life." So that took a while. Actually, I decided to just not include some of the words in my Anki lists. So, my goals for this weekend are minimized because of the work I have to do for school, unfortunately. I would like to get all caught up on kanji reviews, no more than 30 behind on new kanji (meaning that by tomorrow, when I should be at #1660, I will have to be at at least #1630), do lesson 14 of TY Esperanto, and finally learn that Beginner's Swedish vocabulary from last weekend. Time permitting, I would also like to do those things I've been putting off for a long time, namely my lessons from Colloquial Portuguese, TYIYF, and Spoken World Swahili. I would also like to announce that I think I am going to stop dabbling in Polish (for now at least). I think the MT course is actually very good, but because of my inconsistency of studying, I keep on forgetting words and some grammar (but on the whole, I'm retaining the grammar pretty well). In addition to this, the fifth CD seems to have a lot of weird glitches in it, which is making it skip back and forth through random material, have blank sections, and just go crazy in general. This is unfortunate, because I really would have liked to continue through to the end and get a more accurate idea of how far the course alone can bring you. However, I am glad that I have participated in this experiment for three reasons: 1. I have enjoyed learning more about the Polish language, which I did not really know much about before, and also comparing it to other Slavic language I want to learn, like Czech and Russian. 2. It has opened another option to me for the future. Whereas I was planning on studying only Czech for my West Slavic language, I am now leaving Polish as an option as well. I might decide to study it instead of Polish in fact (or both). 3. It has kept up my motivation for learning Slavic languages. After I had to drop Russian, I got a bit depressed about them and didn't have much motivation. Now (well, since Christmas approximately) I feel really excited and passionate about them and can't wait until July to start Russian. :) Oh, and I forgot about my Swedish proverbs for a while, so I'll update that right now: 1. Anfall är bästa försvar. – "Attack is the best defense." 2. Arga katter får rivet skinn. – “Angry cats get scratched skin.” 3. Av barn och dårar får man höra sanningen. – “From children and fools you get to hear the truth.” (I love this one) 4. Alltid är det något sa flickan som blödde näsblod. – "'It's always something' said the girl with a nosebleed." 5. Av skadan blir man vis. – “Damage makes you wise.” 6. Blod är tjockare än vatten. – “Blood is thicker than water.” 7. Borta bra men hemma bäst. – “Away is good but at home is best.” (cf. There’s no place like home.) 8. Bränt barn skyr elden. – “Burnt child shuns the fire.” Here are some more foreign language proverbs that I found and liked: - (Albanian) Po nuk u turbullua, nuk kthjellohet. - "If it does not get cloudy, it will not get clear." - (Finnish) Älä itke ruma lapsi, huomenna ostetaan naamari. - "Don't cry, ugly child, crying won't make you any more beautiful." - (Hungarian) Sok lúd disznót győz. - "Lots of geese can conquer pigs." - (Japanese) 馬鹿は死ななきゃ治らない。(Baka-wa shinanakya naoranai.) - "Unless an idiot dies, he won't be cured." - (Romanian) Dragostea e oarbă, dar căsătoria îi găseşte leacul. - "Love is blind, but marriage finds the cure." - (Greek) Το κρασί και τα παιδιά λένε την αλήθεια. (To krasí ke ta pedhiá léne tin alíthia.) - "Wine and children tell the truth." (Like #3 for the Swedish ones) - (Greek) Η γλώσσα κόκαλα δεν έχει, αλλά κόκαλα τσακίζει. (I ghlóssa kókala dhen éhi, allá kókala tsakízi.) - "The tongue has no bones, but it crushes bones." - (Russian) Церковь близко, да идти склизко, кабак далеко, да идти легко. (Tsyérkov’ blízko, da idtí sklízko, kabák dalekó, da idtí legkó.) - "Church is close, but the road is slippery, the pub is far, but the road is easy." - (Italian) Tra il dire e il fare, c'è di mezzo il mare. - "Between saying and doing lies the sea." (Alternate non-literal translation that I like better: "Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out.") - (Czech) Zakázané ovoce chutná nejlépe. - "Forbidden fruit tastes best." (Could this possibly apply to languages and wanderlust when you can't deal with taking on a new language, do you think?) - (Turkish) Zemheride yoğurt isteyen, cebinde bir inek taşır. - "Who wants yogurt in winter must carry a cow in his pocket." - (Haitian Creole) Yo pa voye wòch sou mango vèt. - "You don't throw rocks at a green mango." One more thing. I started learning the Georgian alphabet earlier this week, because it's just too beautiful and compelling not to learn it, even if I don't get to the language itself. I can only remember the first three or four letters of the first ten that I learned. Maybe I can also make a goal to know all of it by next Sunday. So, that's about it. I'm still mad that I deleted the post before though, because I think it was written a lot more nicely... Well, I need to go work now. I'll report back tomorrow with an update. --Philip ANKI STATISTICS: ESPERANTO: 2100 FRENCH: 3622 GERMAN: 1925 GREEK: 2130 ITALIAN: 2440 JAPANESE: 840 PORTUGUESE: 2752 SPANISH: 3782 SWAHILI: 450 SWEDISH: 1658 TOTAL: 21,685 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5469 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 247 of 265 16 May 2010 at 2:03am | IP Logged | |||||
Great news Philip! I'm going to secretly hope that you get enticed into studying this crazy language. I need people to push me on! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 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 248 of 265 16 May 2010 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Haha, as much as I'm sure I would enjoy studying Georgian too (because I have so much time, right? ;)), I think just the alphabet will suffice for now. For now. Think...concentrate...don't think of Georgian now... Anyways, I was doing the course from Smart.fm for the Georgian alphabet, but I think it would be better to learn it the same way I learned to read hiragana, which worked really well. This was to take a big text written all in it and slowly parse through it, letter by letter until I have looked up each one enough times that I can just remember. I never seem to forget hiragana (katakana is a whole different story). :) Edited by ellasevia on 16 May 2010 at 4:05am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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