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Ellasevia’s TAC 2011: Team Ohana | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6140 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 169 of 392 13 March 2011 at 7:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Quarter 1: Swedish, Persian, Dutch   
Week 10: March 5 – March 11 Total Study Time This Week: 22.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 197.75 hours Average Study Time This Week: 3.18 hours/day Average Study Time in 2011: 2.83 hours/day 
It’s now Saturday night, my commitments for the day are done, and I’m exhausted – I’ll be lucky if I can get through this update without falling asleep. The week started off well and I was able to keep up an average of 3.9 hours per day up until Thursday, and since then I have only done a total of 2.75 hours. I managed to break 20 hours nonetheless, so I’m happy with that. I’m just annoyed at how close I made it to 200 total hours, yet didn’t break it! My almost four-hour-long SAT test this morning went well; I thought that other than the tiring length of the exam it was quite easy, which is good. Then there was the birthday party only about an hour and a half later, where we were mentally and physically exhausted by an intensive across-town scavenger hunt. My friend’s parents seriously overestimated both our general intelligence and our knowledge of our hometown. All of this is the cause of my current fatigue, so I think today shall be the first this month that I don’t study at all. :(  SVENSKA
Total Study Time This Week: 3.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 37.25 hours - Assimil Lessons 60-62 (passive wave), 11-12 (active wave) - Swedish Radio - Milestone: Basic Fluency in Swedish! Not much work on Swedish this week. I intended to complete another two hours of study last night but didn’t have time. However, this week I’m announcing the accomplishment of the first of my goals for the year: basic fluency in Swedish! It was a bit of a random decision, and it could have very well happened anytime in the past few months or in a few months from now. However, I made the conscious realization this week that my Swedish studies were getting to the point of me using perfectionism as an argument for why I am not at basic fluency. By this I mean that whenever the thought of switching it would enter my head, it would be struck down immediately by a chorus of “no, you don’t know [X word] in Swedish, therefore you aren’t at basic fluency” and “oh no, you don’t speak the language well at all” and such. Over time my standards for these levels seem to get higher and higher, and I sometimes have to remind myself that basic fluency is called basic fluency for a reason, and not advanced or native fluency. Even reviewing the “official guidelines” on this site and B2 level for the CEFR, I have to remind myself that 80% means 80%, and not 100%, and that “the main idea” means just that and not every little detail (something which will prove difficult in gauging my level in Dutch later on, since I could already easily understand most things because of German even before starting to study the language). In any case, I very tentatively made the adjustment this week, so after about 1.5 years of studying the language I can now say I “speak” it. This is of course not to say that I don’t have a ton to learn still. I plan to keep studying Swedish throughout this year to further better my knowledge of this amazing language. In addition to Swedish, I would like to at some point learn more about the differences between it and Norwegian, and even Danish, and expose myself to those a little bit. In fact, I have had a strange growing interest recently in Danish, a language which I previously found repulsive. Perhaps because it just sounds better when sung than when spoken?  فارسى
Total Study Time This Week: 4.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 37.5 hours - Assimil Lessons 51-56 (passive wave) Still moving along steadily with Persian. The Assimil lessons still seem fairly structurally uncomplicated yet I’m getting lots of good vocabulary from them. I’m really enjoying Le Persan Sans Peine, despite the sometimes messy layout of the PDF that I’m having to use. It also gives some cool Persian sayings and I found this one at the end of lesson 53 this week: بهار آمد و شد جهان چون بهشت (Bahâr âmad o shod jahân chun behesht) Spring arrived and the world became like paradise. Also, for people unfamiliar with Persian, here’s an interesting part of the language. There is a huge number of compound verbs composed of a noun and one of a few common verbs, so you can make hundreds of meanings with them. Here are just a few examples with the verb کردن (kardan), ‘to do:’ زندگى کردن (zendegi kardan) – to live; ‘life to do’ انتخاب کردن (entexâb kardan) – to choose; ‘choice to do’ فکر کردن (fekr kardan) – to think; ‘thought to do’ صبر کردن (sabr kardan) – to wait; ‘patience to do’ تکميل کردن (takmil kardan) – to complete; ‘completion to do’ پرواز کردن (parvâz kardan) – to fly; ‘flight to do’ دعوت کردن (da’vat kardan) – to invite; ‘invitation to do’ سفر کردن (safar kardan) – to travel; ‘trip to do’ سوال کردن (sowâl kardan) – to ask; ‘question to do’ خواهش کردن (xâhesh kardan) – to beg, pray; ‘prayer to do’ ترجمه کردن (tarjome kardan) – to translate; ‘translation to do’  NEDERLANDS
Total Study Time This Week: 4.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 42.5 hours - Dutch With Ease Lessons 37-39 (active wave) - La Pratique du Néerlandais Lessons 2-4 (passive wave) - Learned the names of lots of countries and languages in Dutch Wow! These new Assimil lessons really take forever to get through. The format is that there is first one long factual text, followed by two exercises. The first is yet another longish text and the second is an additional dialogue. So to finish one of the lessons is more like doing three of them! I don’t think I have any more comments to share about Dutch for the moment so I shall just leave it at that.  Français
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 7.25 hours - Read the first three chapters of Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu Early this week I realized that if I wanted to actually do some valuable French study, I could just read some sort of book in it. I already had the fourth Harry Potter book in French, which I had bought last year, so I decided to start with that. It’s really easy to read but it’s good practice still. I haven’t read a book for pleasure in English in a really long time (school killed the enjoyment in that a couple years ago for me; before that I was a very avid reader), so I don’t really remember what my reading speed is in English for something I like, but I imagine that the speed that I was reading in French isn’t too far behind. In the reading one thing that is annoying me a little bit is the passé simple used in narration, which I never studied, so whenever it’s used it jolts me a little bit because I’m not used to it yet. I’m also coming across plenty of words which I don’t know, but the majority of which I either know from cognate words in other languages or can understand without effort from the context. I’m still undecided about what I should do about these. Some of these words seem like they would be either very useful or just cool to know, but I don’t want to have to note them on a list as I read (which would be almost as disruptive as looking them all up in a dictionary). A friend of mine is reading the book in parallel with me and she is just underlining words she wants to revisit later. However, I have some weird issue with writing in books, because all of my books have to be in as pristine condition as possible. Another possibility is that I will just learn some of the important ones from context and repetition as I continue to read. Has this worked for people?  Deutsch
Total Study Time This Week: 1.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 8.5 hours - German class homework/studying - German radio So this week I didn’t have much time for German again, but I spent some time on it preparing for a test on our current unit, which entailed reading about several artists from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. I was also listening to a German radio broadcast at the same time, which was approximately when the earthquake (is it ironic that I had literally just learned the word Erdbeben a few minutes earlier and 地震 the next day?) and ensuing tsunami in Japan were announced, so I got all of my initial information on that unfortunate event through German.  Română
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 8.25 hours - Teach Yourself Romanian Lesson 10 BYKI - TY Romanian Lesson 11 I finished studying the second half of the vocabulary from lesson ten of TY Romanian this week, as well as reading through most of lesson eleven. I don’t think there’s anything else to comment on. Either that or my tiredness is making me forgetful.  Ελληνικά
Total Study Time This Week: 0.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 7.75 hours - Harry Potter reading I didn’t go to my grandparents’ house yesterday, so instead I decided to read a bit from my Harry Potter book, which I hadn’t read out of since the beginning of December. I started over with the beginning of the chapter I was on (they’re not numbered and I couldn’t be bothered to count) so that I could remember what was happening, but started falling asleep after only about fifteen minutes.  Polski
Total Study Time This Week: 1.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 17.5 hours - Spoken World Polish Lesson 2 BYKI - TY Polish Lesson 3 - Mała Syrenka - Wrote a short letter in Polish Polish is still soooo fun – apparently the novelty factor still hasn’t worn off for it. I studied the vocabulary for lesson two of Spoken World and then completed the entire third lesson of TY. I have the 1992 edition of the latter (the book is two years older than me), so the lessons are very short and easy to get through. Earlier in the week I also watched the movie Mała Syrenka (does this even need a translation? :P). I wasn’t paying full attention the whole time, but I was pleased to see how many words and phrases I could recognize already. Granted, I do practically have the entire film memorized by now, but it was still motivating. Then yesterday I attempted to write a short PM to someone in Polish, which seemed to get my intended message across although it was probably full of mistakes. I need to respond now. Actually, I have like five or six people to whom I need to write a response PM soon (sorry about the delay if you are one of them!)...  Русский
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 9.75 hours - Linguaphone Russian Lesson 4 I did the fourth lesson of Linguaphone Russian this week and it’s still extremely boring. If it doesn’t get more interesting and/or worthwhile by lesson six or seven I’m going to abandon it. If that’s the case, I’ll likely just return to Teach Yourself, New Penguin, or any of the other 20,000* Russian books that I have at my disposal (my great-uncle is a retired Russian professor, so he gave me a lot of old materials). * slight exaggeration  Kiswahili
Total Study Time This Week: 1 hour Total Study Time in 2011: 7 hours Yesterday the only studying I had time to do was Swahili (besides the fifteen minutes of Greek reading). I wanted to try to read a real newspaper article and wanted to read about the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, so I chose a short article from the BBC Swahili website and read it and translated it into English. I understood a good portion of it without having to look anything up (~70%?), but then had to look up some words for my very rough translation.  日本語
Total Study Time This Week: 1 hour Total Study Time in 2011: 12.75 hours - Smart.fm vocabulary (not quite sure how many) I tried to finish going through the next section of the Smart.fm vocabulary, but couldn’t even finish the second half of it (presumably 100 words or fewer) because I got bored and didn’t have time. At school I am increasingly losing faith in my Japanese class. However, when my teacher saw me reading Harry Potter in French in class one day he asked if I had read it in Japanese. I told him that I have the book but when I’ve taken a look at it it’s way above my level. He said that after next year’s class I should be able to read most of it though, which is really surprising. Considering the current level of knowledge of most of the students (about A2 if we’re being generous—and this is in the third year class) and the slower-than-frozen-molasses pace that we move at, I wouldn’t have thought that we’d get anywhere near that level within a year. This to me indicates that next year the class is going to be much more intensive, which is also what I’ve heard from people who’ve taken it. Yay!  漢字
Total Kanji Reviews This Week: 430 reviews Total Restudied Kanji This Week: 217 characters Total Restudied Kanji in 2011: 560 characters I was getting impatient with my slow progress through my restudy of the kanji, so I studied a big chunk of them all at once. I still know the vast majority of them. OTHER - Last night I started reading Kató Lomb’s book, which I’d heard recommended several times (all of its references to Hungarian are making me want to learn Hungarian again!) - Speaking of wanderlust, I have recently felt a reemergence of it regarding what I will study next year (I like to plan ahead). I was planning on taking on two new languages if all or most of my goals for this year are met, and was thinking of Arabic and one other language. Currently the top choices are Hungarian, Turkish, Hebrew, Icelandic, and Finnish. Georgian is also tempting. - I discovered that it’s possible to attend university in a foreign country and have become enthralled by the idea of studying somewhere in northern Europe (Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands…). My father doesn’t seem at all pleased with the idea though, and has assured me that it won’t be happening. Finally when I find somewhere that I think I’d actually like, of course my father objects. Urgh… Edited by ellasevia on 29 March 2011 at 7:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5479 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 170 of 392 13 March 2011 at 8:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Actually both the University of Amsterdam and the University of Uppsala (sp?), both in Sweden and the Netherlands respectively, are highly reputable universities. The University of Heidelberg in Germany is also very good. Perhaps a nice FRENCH university :). There are multiple choices, however some of them require proficiency exams, so before you start applying next year, you should get some testing done this summer. Don't let your parents tell you where you should go to university. They may claim that they are paying for it, but remember that universities in Europe are exponentially cheaper than in America (more state funding ;). My mother had a similar reaction when I expressed my desire to go to University in Germany, despite the fact I have much family there. I think that distance is a factor, and he's just concerned about your wellbeing, however discuss it a bit more, and express how it will make you happy. I explained to my mother that I wanted to be happy when I go away to a university, and going to Europe would be a contributing factor. I then told her that I wasn't happy with living where we live, and by using that, I psychologically manipulated her into feeling bad about trying to control my future, therefore changing her attitude to more supportive :). But aside from the fact that I'm a beast of a problem to deal with as a son, you really should explore European universities, and the fact that you haven't thought of this before is frankly quite surprising. Edited by ruskivyetr on 13 March 2011 at 8:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5462 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 171 of 392 13 March 2011 at 8:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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The words for "think" and "translate" in Persian are very similar to their Georgian
counterparts ფიკრობს and გადათარგმნის. I had heard before that "think" has its roots in Persian, but I didn't know about "translate". Interesting. If you do ever take up Georgian you might find your Persian helps you a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5333 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 172 of 392 13 March 2011 at 9:28am | IP Logged | |||||
I can vouch for the UvA, though the administration is a bit rickety sometimes. ;) And congratulations on your reaching basic fluency in Swedish, Philip! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mirab3lla Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom lang-8.com/220477Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5441 days ago 161 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Spanish, FrenchB1, Mandarin | Message 173 of 392 13 March 2011 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, Philip, vei vizita Scoția! Dintotdeauna mi-am dorit să ajung acolo, mai ales la Universitatea din Edinburgh, unde sper că voi ajunge să studiez. Problema este că tatăl meu, la fel ca și al tău, se opune categoric acestei idei. El spune că sunt singurul lui copil și că nu s-ar descurca fără mine atât de mult timp. Eu, ca și cetățean al EU, pot studia însă acolo (și in multe alte universități europene) fără a plăti taxele de studiu. Asta e o șansă pe care nu o pot lăsa să scape!
Ahora tienes que escribirme un mensaje en rumano, así que tienes algo para compensar tu falta del estudio del rumano para esta semana. Disculpame que te escribo esto en español, pero no practiqué esta lengua desde mucho tiempo. Estudié, pero no escribí nada. Para mi sorpresa, no es tan difícil para mi escribir en español. Ahora que apprendí unas reglas gramaticales, todo me parece muy simplo, pero aún tengo que apprender a escribir correctamente. He apprendido esta lengua desde la tele, con más ”input” que ”output”. Creo que mi nivel de comprensión auditivo y escrito es un B1+, B2, por que entiendo casi todo, pero no puede escribir correctamente... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6140 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 174 of 392 13 March 2011 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@ReneeMona: Thanks for the explanations and corrections and such. The UvA is actually the one I was looking at first, because I had heard you talk about it already. It looks really nice!
@ruskivyetr: Yes, it is a little surprising that I hadn’t seriously considered it up until now. I think I had thought of it previously, but assumed that it wasn’t possible for whatever reason. My parents are very well aware that I don’t enjoy living here because I make no attempts to hide it and make a point of openly expressing my displeasure. They would have to be deaf and/or stupid to not have noticed that after all these years. I think it is that they simply don’t want me to be so far away from “home,” although they don’t seem to have any hang-ups about me doing an exchange program the year after next… I think my dad also thinks that everything in the US is naturally better than the equivalents elsewhere, so by his logic a bad American school is still better than a good European school. Thanks for the recommendation for the University of Uppsala, and France is an alternative too. I’ve already researched the University of Amsterdam so I know about their language testing requirements are, but I should probably find out about the policies in Germany, Sweden, and France. @TixhiiDon: ძალიან საინტერესოა. I didn’t know that Georgian had borrowed words from Persian, but it makes sense because of the proximity of Georgia and Iran. Do you know, does Georgian also have loanwords from Turkish, Russian, and/or Arabic? I think we’ve already mentioned that is has some from Greek.
Pues como ayer no tenía nada de tiempo para estudiar, te voy a escribir en español para que acabe más rapidamente la respuesta. ¿A qué falta de estudio te refieres? Estudié durante más de una hora, y como el rumano todavía no es uno de mis idiomas principales, eso basta (mi meta es una hora por semana). Pero en unas dos semanas será abril, así que voy a concentrarme en el rumano y en el griego (o alemán, todavía no he decidido). ¡Qué bueno que quieres estudiar a la Universidad de Edimburgo! Seguro que tu inglés se va mejorar muchísimo. Mi prima que estudia allá habla inglés perfectamente ahora, y creo que tiene un acento escocés. Estoy celoso que puedes estudiar en Europa sin pagar, pero es posible que obtenga ciudadanía griega entonces yo también no tendría que pagar. Sin embargo, si me quedo sin ciudadanía europea, las universidades en Europa son mucho más baratas que las en los Estados Unidos. Espero que nuestros padres nos dejen salir del país para estudiar. Me alegro de que el español ya no te parezca tan difícil como creías. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5479 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 175 of 392 13 March 2011 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Imma respond to the Georgian thing first: Georgian has a fair amount of Russian loanwords (for obvious reasons). It also has a few loanwords from Greek (Ancient). My Georgian friend takes Ancient Greek as well, and she says she sees plenty of words that she recognizes. She said also when she was reading "The Kite Runner", she recognized a lot of words that she knew (there are a fair amount of Persian words sprinkled around in Kite Runner). I don't know about borrowings from Modern Greek, Turkish, or Arabic, but I wouldn't be surprised at all for the two former. Arabic seems a little far fetched in that respect. Now on to the Universities comment: In Germany, you can take an exam called the TestDaF (Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache). If you get a minimum of a 4 (on a 1-5 scale) you have fulfilled the testing requirement for most German universities, and it rates you at about a C1 I'd imagine. You can also take other exams such as the Goethe Zertifikat C1. In Sweden you have to take an exam. I forget what it's specifically called, but I'm sure you can take it abroad. I'm planning on taking the TestDaF sometime next year (possibly this summer), but I'm also thinking about the Goethe Zertifikat. Edited by ruskivyetr on 13 March 2011 at 10:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6140 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 176 of 392 15 March 2011 at 3:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm currently feeling sick again, and exhausted from my strenuous day on Saturday. Yesterday I was so tired that I ended up doing zero homework and only one hour of Romanian. Right now, that is the only study I have done so far. Today is a Russian day so I think I'll just start relistening to the Michel Thomas Russian Vocabulary course because I'm not feeling up to working from Linguaphone or anything else. I'm still mostly keeping up with Anki and kanji though. However, I predict that this week will be my record low for language achievement this year, as usually by this point in the week I already have about 10 hours clocked.
EDIT: I just noticed that today is exactly 20% through 2011. It's scary how time flies. Edited by ellasevia on 15 March 2011 at 3:58am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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