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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 65 of 265 19 October 2009 at 6:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, I'm back. I didn't include my normal heading (day, goal, achieved) because today was a sort of hodgepodge of language study. I got a good amount done, though.
The first thing that I did was I did a list of vocabulary from STG: Italian. It was a really huge list, about 90 words, so I had to break it up into two parts (the optimal size for a list for me is between 20 and 60 words, more than that, I explode). However, I learned a pretty cool expression from it: in fretta e furia = in a great hurry (lit: in hurry and fury). :) Then I did a Livemocha lesson for Italian. Hooray. One lesson closer to being done (finally) with Italian 102. Thankfully 201 and 202 go really quickly. I also did the last German Livemocha lesson in German 102. Yay!!! But I will refrain from starting German until my other courses on there are all complete. I also typed up my Japanese vocabulary list, to do tomorrow morning. I also skimmed through the actual lesson material. Unit 6 is not nearly as scary as I thought it was. It just wasn't smart of the writers of the book to put as the very first thing that adjectives to be in the past tense. It made me hate Japanese for a bit. Now it's favorable again. I only learned a couple kanji, so this week I shall have to learn about 30... Hm... It seems like I did something else too... Perhaps not? Oh, I did some speaking/writing exercises for Greek 102 on Livemocha that hadn't been published when I had originally done the lessons. I consider myself to be pretty good at Greek, just lacking some vocabulary. I keep getting good scores on my submissions. OH! I remember what I was forgetting. I did the vocabulary from my Easy Italian Reader book. From the first two lesson thingys. It was just a few words. But that was the first thing I did this morning after writing that great bit post before this one. Finally, I just typed up my Portuguese vocabulary and read the entire lesson for tomorrow. Yay. Ahead. Sort-of. Except not (Japanese..?). This Portuguese-typing-up-and-doing-lesson business took me about the same amount of time as writing this post, or less. Yay. Good 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 66 of 265 21 October 2009 at 6:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Monday: Portuguese
Goals: 1) 1 lesson of Ultimate Portuguese, 2) A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese (AFDP) to #200, 3) 2 tutor reviews on LM Achieved: 1) yes, 2) yes, 3) yes Tuesday: French Goals: 1 lesson of Ultimate French Achieved: yes Hooray. I'm posting again, just in case you were wondering if was starting to not post again. Yesterday I just somehow didn't have time to post... So, I did my Portuguese vocabulary yesterday and also my Japanese vocabulary from (hehe) Saturday. So other than last week's kanji, I'm up to date on last week. My other goals I did today, because I only remembered that I had them before going to bed yesterday when I saw them written on my dry erase board in my room with my language goals. So, this morning I pulled out my Routledge Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese for pretty much the first time on my bus to school and read through the first few hundred entries. There was only one word that I positively didn't know (além, beyond), but I marked some more so that I could practice them. I have not yet made flashcards in BYKI for them yet. I did the two Livemocha tutor reviews (I have to write in Portuguese for those, that's why I have it as a Portuguese-day goal) and earned $2 for my hard work and toil at grading a Brazilian guy's English pronunciation. Then, I read through the French lesson this morning and just now finished doing the vocabulary. Hooray, done with French for the week. I have also now done a Swedish Livemocha lesson (a goal for tomorrow) and typed up the dialogue for tomorrow's lesson out of SEGR. On a slightly different note, my friend (hi Nick!) went and accidentally bought three (or two?) virtually identical copies of the same book: Teach Yourself Afrikaans. He is a bit obsessed with Dutch and Afrikaans and really wants me to start studying one or both. He was very excited about my brief Dutch-studying interval. Well, he gave me one of his extra copies of the Afrikaans book. I have been going through and reading a little bit of it and MIGHT have that going as a tiny little side-burner thing that I would do when I have time or when I feel like it. I don't want it to detract from my other languages. However, I think that Afrikaans would be a nice easy interlude into Dutch, when I begin to study it. As Nick put it, "Afrikaans is Dutch for five-year-olds, and Dutch is German for five-year-olds." Yes... I would agree. So, for Dutch, I would have close relatives, German and Afrikaans (basically more complex and simplified versions of it), a slightly more distant sibling, English, and a more distant cousin, Swedish. Hooray. Afrikaans looks funny and interesting, though. Anyways, when I told Nick that I would consider studying Afrikaans since he gave me a book for it, he said that if he just happened mistakenly to find himself in the language section of a bookstore and he somehow bought a Dutch book for me, would I study it? Maybe, Nick, maybe. It's either one or the other for now, and that's if you're lucky. Yes, well, I shall consider that. Ummm... Anything else? No, I don't believe so. Bonne nuit! 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 67 of 265 23 October 2009 at 6:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Wednesday: Swedish
Goals: 1) 1 lesson ofSEGR, 2) 2 LM lessons Achieved: 1) yes, 2) 1/2 done Thursday: German Goals: 1) lesson of Ultimate German, 2) Review Aktuelles vocabulary Achieved: 1) yes, 2) no I am a master at the art of wasting time and not knowing it. And knowing it too, but not really caring until I'm kicking myself later that I didn't get enough done. I'm also thinking that I might have ADD or something, because whenever I get even the slightest bit distracted or frustrated or confused or something, that's the end of my concentration and I will be unlikely to continue with it for a few hours, until when I have forgotten sufficiently about the unpleasant experience to attempt it again. Apparently I can't just sit down and do things in one sitting, either. It's very annoying. Anyways, I think I shall only post from now on on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. I noticed that my languages are nicely grouped within the week into different language groups: ROMANCE (Italian, Portuguese, French) - Sunday to Tuesday GERMANIC (Swedish, German, and possibly Afrikaans) - Wednesday and Thursday GREEK - Friday JAPANESE - Saturday So, I will only post on the last day of each of these groupings to report on the progress for all of those languages. This will save me time and make my posts shorter and more to the point because I will only remember the actually important stuff. So, to Swedish. I did my lesson of Swedish yesterday and today, but the vocabulary was rather reluctant to stick at first, so tonight I had to do a second pass of vocabulary. I'm glad that I have those "translate" sections in my Swedish book so that I can remember if I know how to say something or not. This week, my vocabulary for lesson three was a whopping 72 words, so that may have been part of the problem (I had to split it up into two lists because I can't really handle lists bigger than 50 words). Like I mentioned before, I intend to post my translate sections here for Swedish-speakers to correct. Since I forgot to do this last week, here are the sections for lesson two and three: --- LESSON TWO - Translate into Swedish: A Swedish girl is reading in the room. It is Wednesday. They have a good home. Erik is at home. The friend is understanding. Two girls are playing records in Erik’s flat. The boy borrows four cups and three chairs from a friend. The flower is very beautiful. We want to see many flowers. Sweden has many lakes. Erik makes sandwiches in the kitchen. The neighbor’s friend has seven chairs, one writing desk and one bookcase. The girl’s guest has a record which he wants to play. Where is the gramophone? How many gramophones have you? What does the boy borrow from Erik? Where do his neighbors live? When are his guests coming? There are five boys in Erik’s flat. The girl loves dancing with students. Who is in the kitchen? When can we come? Here is Erik’s fourth sandwich. This is the girl’s second home. This is his first flat. En svensk flicka läser i rummet. Det är onsdag. De har ett bra hem. Erik är hemma. Vännen är förstående. Två flickor spelar skivor i Eriks lägenhet. Pojken lånar fyra koppar och tre stolar av en vän. Blomman är mycket vacker. Vi vill se mycket blommor. Sverige har mycket sjöar. Erik gör smörgåsar i köket. Grannes vän har sju stolar, ett skrivbord och en bokhylla. Flickas gäst har en skiva som han vill spela. Var är grammofon? Hur mycket grammofoner har du? Vad lånar pojken av Erik? Var bor hans grannar? När kommer hans gäster? Det är fem pojkar i Eriks lägenhet. Flickan vill gärna dansa med studenter. Vem är i köket? När kan vi komma? Här är Eriks fjärde smörgås. Detta är flickas andra hem. Detta är hans första lägenhet. LESSON THREE - Translate into Swedish Children like looking at animals. Many children on the boat are either looking at us or waving to us. The girl is waiting for me on the landing stage. The island has neither trees nor houses. The country has many harbors. The crossing to Stockholm’s open-air museum is beautiful. The crossing takes fifteen minutes. She likes to look at bears, sheep, and lambs. Erik’s friends are not buying apples, but chocolate. She is not looking at you but at him. His friends are waiting for him in the harbor. Are you waiting for me? Are you looking at us? We have two writing desks, but not many bookcases. Can you see them on the boat? Are they listening to us? Many Stockholmers love Skansen, especially when the sun is shining. You children must look at the view. The apple is not large, but it is fine. Barn vill gärna titta på djur. Många barn på båten antingen tittar på oss eller vinkar till oss. Flickan väntar på mig på bryggan. Ön har varken träd eller hus. Landet har mycket hamnar. Överfarten till Stockholms friluftsmuseum är vackera. Överfarten tar femton minuter. Hon vill gär titta på björnar, får, och lamm. Eriks kamrater köper inte äpplen, utan choklad. Hon tittar inte på dig unte på sig. Hans kamrater väntar på sig i hamnen. Väntar du på mig? Tittar du på oss? Vi har två skrivbord, men inte mycket bokhyllor. Kan du se dem på båten? Hörer de på oss? Mycket stockholmare älskar Skansen, särskilt när solen skiner. Ni barn måste titta på utsikten. Äpplet är inte stort, men det är fint. --- Okay, so now I just need to mention for Swedish that I only did one of the two Livemocha lessons that I had hoped to do. I'll try to catch up in the next couple days. Jetzt werde ich Deutsch besprechen. :) German is happyful. I did my German lesson today, which was introducing the past (present perfect) tense in German (yay for me already knowing this for a while and learning the irregulars last weekend!) and house vocabulary. It was pretty easy and straightforward. Nothing really to talk about. Some interesting words I learned: luftdicht - airtight die Tapete - wallpaper das Treppenhaus - staircase (lit. 'the stair house') der Dachboden - attic (lit. 'the roof floor') Yes, now on to Afrikaans. I'm still trying to decide whether I actually want to study it or not. As such, I have not added it to my profile on here. I actually heard real Afrikaans spoken for the first time this evening on an Afrikaans radio station and I would say that I like the sound of it better than Dutch. Plus it has more accents AND lots of double letters. So, I have typed up the lesson 1 vocabulary from Teach Yourself Afrikaans and put it into BYKI, but have yet to learn it. I get all the grammar stuff though and have read a bit into lesson 2, and so I know the past and future tenses too. Can you believe that it only has two irregular verbs!? They are wees (to be) and hê (to have). Well, that's about it. Well, it's 10:00 here so I must say good night in my Germanic tongues: Gute Nacht! (Deutsch) God natt! (Svenska) Goeienag! (Afrikaans) --Philip Edited by ellasevia on 24 October 2009 at 1:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5988 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 68 of 265 23 October 2009 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I just found your journal today, and it's been an interesting read as i browsed through it.
I'm really interested in your swedish goal of basic fluency by next May. Currently I'm working quite hard on German exclusively, but swedish is calling to me. Could you perhaps give a brief outline of what you intend to do for your next 8 months of swedish study, and what your definition of basic fluency is? Personally, I'm aiming at working up to a vocab of over 10000 words in German by the end of january, and it's going to be challenging, so i can't imagine how i'd be able to work on a different language every day and still get to "fluency" from scratch in 8 months...hence my curiousity. anyway, keep writing. i like reading your reports, and you inspire me to work harder. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ncruz Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5540 days ago 31 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Dutch, Portuguese, Afrikaans Studies: French, German, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic | Message 69 of 265 23 October 2009 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I knew you wouldn't be able to resist the the urge to learn Afrikaans. My nefarious plot is working :), finally I'll have someone in school to talk to in Afrikaans.
-Nick Edited by Ncruz on 23 October 2009 at 9:20am 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 70 of 265 24 October 2009 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks, Doviende. Here are my previously-written definitions of basic and advanced fluency. BASIC FLUENCY: -know about 5,000 words -understand most grammatical structures, have mastered the most essential, but perhaps still making mistakes in some of the more difficult or uncommon structures -relative ease in speaking, can converse on many topics, occasional mistakes -understand much of the spoken language (specific dialect?) but may have lapses in comprehension because of vocabulary or an unforgiving listening environment -skillful writing, may write with ease and few mistakes -reads fairly easily, but with some lapses in comprehension, especially in fiction -has good accent, but may be a bit compromised when attempting to speak quickly ADVANCED FLUENCY -knows at least 10,000 words -understands and can produce all grammar as needed and mistakes are usually small and rare -can converse very easily on a wide variety of topics, few errors -can understand almost everything heard, but may still lose comprehension because of the environment -advanced writing and minimal mistakes -reads with ease and fluency, but may still miss some words or expressions -has a very good accent, either native or very near native SWEDISH PLANS -Finish Swedish course(s) on Livemocha (currently there is only one, but more are in the works) -Finish going through Swedish: An Elementary Grammar-Reader After that, I'm not really sure yet. I will try to see if I can practice speaking with my uncle, who used to live in Sweden. It also depends on if just the Livemocha courses and the SEGR book will truly bring me to basic fluency. I doubt it, so I was thinking of buying Le Suédois sans Peine (Assimil with French base) or the cheaper Teach Yourself Swedish or Colloquial Swedish. However, I would really like to try out Assimil (however expensive that may be--I don't even want to think about that) and have heard much better things about it than about Teach Yourself Swedish. My Swedish book supposedly brings me to a level of being able to read classic plays and short stories in Swedish, which I probably would consider basic fluency. Good luck on your German goal. --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 71 of 265 26 October 2009 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm feeling very, very angry with myself and depressed. A bit earlier, I thought I was downloading a new set of BYKI vocab lists from that UZ Translations site that Crush showed me, when I was actually re-installing the program. I opened BYKI to see my new lists and all were gone, save the ones I had just installed. Three years of vocabulary in about 10 languages--all gone. I have pulled out all my language books from my shelves that had vocabulary lists saved in BYKI...there are sixteen, not including books I no longer have access to (old school textbooks, books I borrowed, etc) and not including every vocabulary list I made from online courses (every Livemocha lesson, Odysseas, etc).
Should I start over and re-enter all my lists for all my courses?? Or should I just take this as a sign and start a new hobby? Is this the end of my language-learning? I could just start re-entering all the lists (a good review, I suppose), but that would take ages. At this point, I would have to re-enter the following courses (alphabetical order by language), with multiple lists each: -Teach Yourself Afrikaans*** -Livemocha Dutch 101*** -Ultimate French Beginner-Intermediate -Bon Voyage! 3* -French Vocabulary -Misc. French lists -Ultimate German Beginner-Intermediate -Livemocha German 101 -Livemocha German 102 -Aktuelles Deutsch 1* -Misc. German lists -Modern Greek for Adults** -Learn Greek Without a Teacher -Cortina Method Modern Greek in 20 Lessons -Livemocha Greek 101 -Livemocha Greek 102 -Odysseas -Misc. Greek lists -STG: Italian -Easy Italian Reader -Italian Vocabulary -Livemocha Italian 101 -Livemocha Italian 102 -Misc. Italian lists -Teach Yourself Japanese -Livemocha Japanese 101 -Misc. Japanese lists -Teach Yourself Beginner's Chinese*** -Misc. Mandarin Chinese lists*** -Ultimate Portuguese Beginner-Intermediate -Livemocha Portuguese 101 -Livemocha Portuguese 102 -Livemocha Portuguese 201 -Misc. Portuguese lists -Teach Yourself Romanian*** -Misc. Romanian lists*** -Livemocha Russian 101*** -STG: Russian*** -Misc. Russian lists*** -Realidades 3* -Misc. Spanish lists -Livemocha Swedish 101 -Swedish: An Elementary Grammar-Reader -Misc. Swedish lists *No longer have access, for one reason or another. **May have access to, not sure. ***Don't really have to re-enter (yet), since I'm not currently studying this language. That is all I can think of at the moment, but there may be more. There were also some lists from new books/courses waiting to be entered. I am awaiting your thoughts on this. Should I try to recover what I've lost? Should I give up on languages and find something else? Help, please. I'm having a major crisis. --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 72 of 265 26 October 2009 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
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At this point, I think I'm just going to take a week's break from languages. It will give me some time to cool down and think. And catch up/get ahead on my schoolwork. In a week or so, I will decide what I'm going to do. I guess I'll have to postpone some of my goals because of this potential massive recovery session, which will undoubtedly take some time.
Bye for now. -Philip 1 person has voted this message useful |
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