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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 49 of 392 22 January 2011 at 10:41am | IP Logged | |||||
Quarter 1: Swedish, Persian, Dutch   
Week 3: January 15 – January 21 Total Study Time This Week: 23.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 54.75 hours Average Study Time This Week: 3.32 hours/day Average Study Time in 2011: 2.61 hours/day 
What a great week! Like I said last Friday, I had the benefit of having no school on Monday which contributed to my markedly higher amount of study hours (almost twice last week’s amount), but really I was able to get very motivated and making that schedule earlier this week also helped, although because of when I made it and when the “week” ends I missed out on Japanese and Swahili this week. I finally got around to Romanian and Russian though! I’ve stayed up a bit late before even starting to write this update so that I could squeeze in some last minute German, French, and Dutch (I was going to do some more Swedish and Greek too, but I didn’t have time and I’m too tired now), so I’ll just be writing in English tonight so that I can finish quickly, but maybe I’ll edit the post tomorrow to add some foreign language writing practice too. I do have a special audio surprise for Dutch though!  SVENSKA
Total Study Time This Week: 3.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 11.5 hours - Assimil Lessons 30-35 The Assimil Swedish lessons are picking up the pace a lot now and this week it took me over three hours to complete just six lessons (plus some review). Some of the recent ones have been rather challenging because they were on topics I don’t know much about, and consulting the French translation was not much help because I didn’t know the words in French either…and when I would look them up in English, I found out that I didn’t even know them in English! This could be problematic when I get here in the active wave… On a happier note, I found a very funny expression in one of the lessons: Din lyckans ost! This literally translates to “Your happiness’s cheese!” and would mean something like “You lucky duck!” in English. As I’m studying this with a French base, I also learned the French equivalent: Sacré veinard! (lit: Sacred lucky!)  فارسى
Total Study Time This Week: 5.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 13 hours - Studied Colloquial Persian Lesson 4 vocabulary in BYKI - Assimil Lessons 1-24 - Listened to the Bible in Persian for background while I studied This week I did quite a lot of Persian, and I’ve really enjoyed studying it this year so far. At the beginning of the week I finished off lesson four from Colloquial Persian by studying the vocabulary in BYKI. Then I finally made a start on Assimil Le Persans Sans Peine. It’s interesting comparing the format and speed of the Assimil courses for European and/or Indo-European languages like Swedish, Dutch, or Romanian versus more foreign ones like Japanese and Persian. With the former category it also starts off slowly, but accelerates much more quickly, and it even starts with a higher level. With the Persian and Japanese courses that I’ve used, the first lessons are incredibly simple and they remain very short and simplistic for a long time. Only now that I’m up through lesson 24 are they finally starting to get more complicated (although still not very), and I noticed the same trend for the Japanese Assimil as well. Part of this is of course that Persian and Japanese use different writing systems, and the beginning lessons focus heavily on getting you acquainted with them as quickly as possible. Since I already knew the writing systems before using those courses though, I could just skip those bits. Some cool facts about the Persian course in particular are that since the Arabic alphabet is written right to left, the Persian text is on the right page and the French is on the left, the opposite of the other courses. Also, since the past tense in Persian is formed completely regularly from the infinitive while the present tense requires you to memorize a new verb stem, the Assimil Persian course features expressions exclusively in the past tense for a long time, beginning to introduce the present later on. Here’s a sample of how simple some of the lessons are (lessons 1, 5, 16, 24): مرد آمد. مرد آب داد The man came. The man gave water. در دکان يک زن بود. زن به پسر شش تا سيب داد. پسر سيب دارد. پسر سيب دوست دارد There was a woman in the store. The woman gave six apples to the boy. The boy has apples. The boy likes apples. - پرى خانم سلام. حال شما چطور است؟ - امروز خيلى خوب نيستم. تب دارم. ديروز هوا سرد بود. بيمار شدم - Hello Mrs. Pari. How are you? - Today I’m not very well. I have a fever. Yesterday the weather was cold and I got sick. مادر و پدر با پسر و دختر سر ميز هستند. غذا روى ميز آماده است. بوى چلو کباب خيلى خوب است. همه بوى چلى کباب را دوست دارند. The mother and the father are at the table with the son and the daughter. The food is ready on the table. The smell of the chelu kebâb is very good. Everyone likes the smell of the chelu kebâb.  NEDERLANDS
Total Study Time This Week: 7 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 12 hours - Watched De Kleine Zeemeermin (as predicted) - Assimil 20-33 - Pronunciation Practice I’m getting addicted to Dutch—it’s just so fun to learn! This week as I was doing the Assimil lessons I was doing some extra things which I wasn’t doing before, such as shadowing the lesson before and after I studied it, listening to the dialogue sentence by sentence and transcribing it (I think this is called scriptorium, right?), and doing a log of pronunciation practice. Dutch has a very distinctive sound to it which I find quite difficult to correctly replicate. I can really only describe its sounds and intonation as funny or cute, because it’s just so cute that it always makes me want to laugh when I hear it. The intonation has been especially tricky for me, but I think I’ve managed to improve a bit this week with that. I’ve also focused somewhat on some of the more difficult sounds, and while I still haven’t mastered those either, I have noticed some improvement. So, attention all Dutch speakers! I have made a recording of myself reading the translation exercises for lesson 33 from Assimil Dutch With Ease. I first have the audio read the sentence, then I pause it, and then I read it, trying to pronounce it correctly and with correct intonation. Here is the link: Assimil Dutch: Lesson 33 Translation Exercises (you might have to download it, or it might allow you to listen to it there directly; I’m not sure) And here is what I am reading. I’ve bolded parts that, after listening to my recording, I can hear a significant error in my pronunciation compared to the native pronunciation. Lectuur: Ik moet sparen. - Het is nu bijna vakantie, Wim; waar ga je dit jaar naartoe? [question intonation] - Ik denk dat ik dit jaar thuis blijf. - Ik verlang al weken naar 1 juli: ik voel me bijzonder moe. - Denk je soms dat ik ook niet moe ben? Maar...vakantie is duur! - Je verdient goed je brood, Wim. - Misschien; maar nu moet ik sparen: ik heb een nieuwe wagen nodig. - Voor een wagen kan je geld van de bank lenen. - Ik vind dat een slechte oplossing: je betaalt dan nog veel meer. - Meer...maar elke maand een beetje. - Ik betaal contant of ik koop geen wagen. - Ja, jongen, je betaalt contant en je blijft in ons landje: het weer is er zo mooi! - Het spijt me, maar ik kan niets anders doen. How is my pronunciation? Is it as horrible as I think it is, or is it alright except for the things I noted above? The annoying thing is that when I hear the error I make when pronouncing the Dutch words compared with the audio, I can usually say it correctly right afterwards…but unfortunately this is not on the recording!  Français
Total Study Time This Week: 1.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 2 hours - Met with French teacher about study group - Vocabulary - French Radio I finally went with my friend (marrubizko on this forum) to talk with our French teacher from last year about this proposed study group. She was very helpful and gave us two books (one grammar book and one AP exam review book) and gave us an overview of what the exam is like and what they have studied in class so far this year. She has offered to help us with anything we need for our studying (explaining grammar, listening or speaking practice, correcting our essays, etc.) and is even trying to get us class credit for doing this because of the amount of work it represents. This evening I was planning on writing a practice essay, but I didn’t have time, so I’ll do one sometime this next week. I then spent some time adding some vocabulary to Anki while I listened to a French radio station, and was pleased that I could consistently understand almost everything I heard without much effort. Yay.  Deutsch
Total Study Time This Week: 1 hour Total Study Time in 2011: 4 hours - Weekly Tagebuch - Vocabulary for German Class - Reading in German + noting vocabulary This week in my German class we were studying the German subjunctive, but it was the kind that I understood well already (wäre, hätte, würde, etc.). Hopefully we’ll get to the other one soon. Anyways, our Tagebuch topic was such that we would be forced to use the subjunctive constructions throughout it. The topic was if you could meet a famous person how would you spend your day with him/her. I didn’t know who to do, so I just chose Professor Arguelles (only later realizing that outside of our little language community he isn’t all that famous…right?). Then I added a bunch of vocabulary to Anki, and did some (easy) reading in German, noting any new words I came across.  Română
Total Study Time This Week: 1 hour Total Study Time in 2011: 1 hour - Reviewed and shadowed Assimil lessons 1-30 I finally did some Romanian thanks to my schedule! Because of a combination of being way too busy before Winter Break, being lazy over Break, and being preoccupied with my focus languages since the beginning of 2011, I hadn’t studied any Romanian since the beginning of December and was having some trouble remembering things. I decided that it would therefore be a very good idea to review over all of the lessons of Assimil I had done up through that point by shadowing them. The first fifteen or so lessons came very easily and I didn’t have to concentrate much to be able to shadow them, but after then it got more difficult and I had to look at the text in order to keep up. I could still understand it all, but I just couldn’t get my mouth to move quickly enough without seeing the words. After about lesson 25 I noticed that it was more difficult to actually understand the dialogues, and quite a bit of my comprehension of them was from remembering what they were about rather than actually understanding the language. I think I shall begin next week with reviewing and restudying the lessons from about lesson 25 onwards before studying any new ones.  Ελληνικά
Total Study Time This Week: 0.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 2.75 hours - Read one news article from Το Βήμα I went to my grandparents’ house like normal today, but I also brought along two friends, because my grandmother had offered to teach them how to make spanakopita after they asked for her recipe. It was very fun and we ate a lot of spanakopita because she had also premade one in advance for us to know what we were making, but the downside was that this took away from time that I could have been working on Greek. I only read one article from Το Βήμα, this time a rather difficult one about the man-made islands in Dubai that are sinking. It took a long time to get through because it had a lot of less common words like “to erode” and “uninhabitable” which I had to look up.  Polski
Total Study Time This Week: 2.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 7 hours - Michel Thomas Foundation Course - Assimil Lessons 1-8 - Verb Conjugation Practice - My Spoken World Polish book finally shipped (but has not yet arrived)! I listened to some more of the MT Foundation course for Polish at the beginning of this week, but then turned my focus towards Assimil later on. It’s funny to think that before September I had never used an Assimil course before and now I’m using them for Swedish, Dutch, Romanian, Polish, Persian, and Japanese…and possibly for Swahili.  Русский
Total Study Time This Week: 1 hour Total Study Time in 2011: 1 hour - Roots of the Russian Language - Russian frequency dictionary arrived The story of Russian of late is similar to the story of Romanian above in that I hadn’t really studied it much since the beginning of December besides learning a poem in it over Winter Break. This week I worked out of my new book of Russian roots, but didn’t actually get to any roots yet because the beginning section is just the suffixes (and prefixes, I’d assume) attached onto those roots to create further meaning. I learned a fair amount of those along with the example words. I’d list them here, but I don’t have the book near me right now and I don’t want to go get it. :P As for the book that arrived, I just saw it on some website for a very low price ($2 or something like that) so I snatched it up. I don’t know if I’ll need it, but it’s nice to be prepared.  Português
I had a strange episode earlier this week where I thought that I had forgotten a huge amount of Portuguese to the point where I thought it would be better to list it in my profile as basic fluency, which I did for a day before realizing how silly that was and moved it back up. To test myself I gave an impromptu “conversation” with myself lasting more than twenty minutes describing my day in huge detail. I found that although I could do with some brushing up on a couple grammatical points and a few vocab words, I had definitely not forgotten Portuguese because I was speaking it very fluently without having to search for expressions except for when I was simply searching for something to say. In addition to this I watched A Pequena Sereia (guess what that means) earlier in the week, in European Portuguese and was happy to understand a good deal of it, despite it being the dialect I’m not very familiar with. I should start acquainting myself more with European Portuguese, especially if I decide that I’d like to switch my Portuguese from Brazilian to European. Hm… OTHER I’ll respond to some of the messages I’ve received in here recently tomorrow. I’m extremely tired and even writing only in English this has taken far too long to write. I’m going to bed now. Good night! Edited by ellasevia on 01 March 2011 at 7:12pm 4 persons have 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 50 of 392 29 January 2011 at 11:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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Quarter 1: Swedish, Persian, Dutch
Week 4: January 22 – January 28 Total Study Time This Week: 23.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 78.25 hours Average Study Time This Week: 3.36 hours/day Average Study Time in 2011: 2.79 hours/day 
Another very good week, although more stressful than last week as I also had a not insignificant amount of schoolwork to do. I managed to study all of my languages this week, so I was very pleased with that result. [EDIT: Now that I’ve finally finished writing the first draft of this post an hour or two (or three?) after I started writing it, I now realize that I’m not going to be able to go back to finish up the things I intended to do for Dutch, French, German, and Greek. It’s just too late. Maybe I should write parts of this post throughout the week instead of doing it all on Friday night… Anyways, this means that I’ve now lied and I didn’t do anything for German or Greek.] I’m thinking about taking next week to try to rid myself of my bad sleeping habits that I’ve developed since last April. Before then I used to get up very early in the morning and study languages before school (and by the time I’d get to school I’d actually be awake and alert—what a concept!) and then get to bed by a decent hour at night. Last April though, my workload for school suddenly increased dramatically and I found myself having to stay up into the wee hours of the morning to finish it all. This continued to get worse through the end of the school year and then I was never able to shake the habit over the summer except for the two weeks when I was in Tanzania. So I’ve been suffering from sleep deprivation pretty much continuously since August, when school started up again. For example, the most I have slept in the past school week was probably last night, which was for five hours only. I cannot continue to function like this, so I think that allowing myself not to achieve as much in the next week in the interest of ultimately being less tired, having better focus, and getting more done is worth it. What do you think? SVENSKA
Total Study Time This Week: 5.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 17.25 hours - Assimil Lessons 36-44 - Swedish Radio Den här veckan har jag studerat åtta lektioner från Assimilboken. Nu har jag studerat nästan halvan av boken, och jag tror att nästa vecka kommer jag att börja aktivvågen. Det ska vara intressant att se om jag kan producera alla fraser som jag har läst hittills. Ska jag kunna minnas alla orden? Jag märkte också att samtalen från den svenska Assimilboken är mer komplicerade än de från den nederländska kursen. Kanske är det eftersom nederländska har en ordföljd och rättskrivning som är svårare för engelsktalande? Eller kanske beslöt författaren att skapa en kurs som lär språket mer långsamt? Den svenska kursen säger att den ska lära språket tills en B1 nivå bara, men det finner jag svårt att tro, därefter att den lär så många ord, idiomatiska uttryck, och grammatik. (Den nederlänska boken säger ingenting.) Det enda som jag vet är att jag gillar den och att min svenska förbättras. Den här veckan lyssnade jag också mycket på svenska radion medan jag lärde mig, eftersom när jag hör svenska talas i bakgrunden, det hjälper mig att uttala orden och fraserna riktigt, särskilt med intonationen. Förstås hjälper radion min hörförståelse också. This week I studied eight lessons from the Assimil book. I’ve now studied almost half of the book, and I think that next week I’m going to start the active wave. It will be interesting to see if I can produce all of the sentences that I’ve read so far. Will I be able to remember all of the words? I also noticed that the dialogues from the Swedish Assimil book are more complicated than the ones from the Dutch course. Maybe that’s because Dutch has a word order and orthography that’s more difficult for English speakers? Or maybe the author decided to make a course that teaches the language more slowly? The Swedish course says that it only teaches the language to a B1 level, but I find that hard to believe because it teaches so many words, idiomatic expressions, and grammar. (The Dutch book doesn’t say anything.) The only thing I know is that I like it and that my Swedish is improving. This week I also listened to the radio a lot while I studied, because when I hear Swedish being spoken in the background, it helps me to pronounce the words and phrases correctly, especially with the intonation. Of course it also helps my listening comprehension. فارسى
Total Study Time This Week: 5.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 18.5 hours - Spoken World Farsi Lessons 6 and 7 (+ BYKI) - Assimil Lessons 24-30 - Listened to the Bible in Persian for background while I studied اين هفته فارسى را پنج و نيم تا ساعت درس خواندم. درسهاى ششم و هفتم از کتاب سپوکن ورلد را درس خوندم، و درسهاى بيست و چهارم تا سى ام از کتاب اسيميل درس خواندم. فکر مى کنم، که فارسى يک زبان خيلى آسان است، اما الفباى عربى يک کمى سخت است. الآن مى توانم الفباى عربى را بهتر و تندتر بخواندم. فردا دوباره خواهم فارسى را درس خواند براى اين که فردا شنبه است This week I studied Persian for five and a half hours. I studied the sixth and seventh lessons from the Spoken World book, and I studied the twenty-fourth lesson until the thirtieth lesson from the Assimil book. I think that Persian is a very easy language, but the Arabic alphabet is a bit difficult. Now I can read the Arabic alphabet better and faster. Tomorrow I will study Persian again because it is Saturday. In the course of my studies this week I learned another wonderful little Persian expression: خسته نباشيد (xaste nabâshid). This is used to greet someone who is working, such as a shop employee or the like. Literally though, it means “may you not be tired!” I, who am chronically sleep-deprived and nearly constantly feel like I’m in a strange trance due to this, especially appreciate such an expression. If only we used the same thing here… In fact, who says we can’t use it here? Maybe the next time I go into a store I’ll greet any employees I see with “May you not be tired.” They’ll probably stare in confusion, but I get this kind of reaction so often that it won’t be anything out of the ordinary. NEDERLANDS
Total Study Time This Week: 3 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 15 hours - Assimil 34-41 - Reviewed Teach Yourself Dutch 9-11 Deze week heb ik niet even veel Nederlands geleerd als vorige week. Ik heb acht lessen van Assimil gedaan, en drie lessen van TY Dutch herzien. Eerder wilde ik twee uren meer Nederlands leren, maar nu is het veel te laat, dus in plaats van dat ga ik net een beetje in het Nederlands schrijven. Ik heb meer aan mijn accent gewerkt, maar niet zoveel als vorige week. Ach, nu kan ik helemaal niet denken. Dit is de laatste tekst die ik moet schrijven, en ik vind het moeilijk, maar ik weet dat als ik niet zo moe was, dan kon ik die heel gemakkelijker maken. Tot ziens! This week I didn’t study as much Dutch as last week. I did eight lessons from Assimil, and three lessons from TY Dutch. Before I wanted to study two more hours of Dutch, but it’s far too late, so instead of that I’m only going to write a little bit in Dutch. I worked more on my accent, but not as much as last week. Ach, I can’t think at all now. This is the last text that I have to write, and I’m finding it difficult, but I know that if I weren’t so tired I’d be able to do it much more easily. Bye! Français
Total Study Time This Week: 0.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 2.5 hours - Met with French teacher - Some random exercises Cette semaine je me suis recontré avec ma prof de français le mercredi après l’école. Elle m’avait donné une feuille de pratique pour un point de grammaire (je crois qu’il était le subjonctif) et je suis venu la voir pour avoir les réponses. Elle m’a aussi donné d’autres papiers qui expliquaient des points de grammaire, une petite interrogation, et un formulaire à remplir pour avoir des crédits pour le travail que je ferai pour me préparer pour l’examen d’AP. Je n’en ai pas besoin, mais elle a insisté qu’il serait une bonne idée de l’avoir. Le seul problème est qu’il faut que j’étudie le français pendant 72 heures avant le 10 mai, quand l’examen sera, et jusqu’à maintenant je n’en ai fait que 2,5 ! Ça c’est vraiment beaucoup avec toutes mes autres études, mais nous ne savons pas encore s’il faut absolument que je fasse tellement d’heures. This week I met with my French teacher on Wednesday after school. She had given me a practice sheet for a grammar point (I think it was the subjunctive) and I came to see her to get the answers. She also gave me some other papers that explained some grammar points, a small test, and a form to fill out in order to get credit for the prep work I’m for the AP exam. I don’t need any credit, but she insisted that it would be a good idea to get it. The only problem is that I have to study French for 72 hours before May 10th, when the exam is, and up to now I’ve only done 2.5 of them! That’s really a lot with all of my other studies, but we don’t know yet if I actually have to do so many hours. Română
Total Study Time This Week: 1.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 2.5 hours - Restudied Assimil lessons 22-30 - Studied Assimil lesson 31 În săptămână această am studiat limba română pentru 1.5 ore. Pentru că n-am folosit limba mult din noiembrie, am uitat multe cuvinte simple şi nu-i mai uşor să vorbesc sau să înţeleg lecţiile mai avansate din cartea mea. În săptămână viitoare am de gând să revizuiesc şi lecţiile care am deja făcut din “Teach Yourself Romanian,” şi vreau să scriu o scrisoare pe româneşte spre prietena mea din România. Trebuie să studiez limba această mai mult aşa că nu uit-o complet! Sunt mulţumit că în aprilie limba română o să fie una din limbilor care studiez aproape în fiecare zi. This week I studied Romanian for 1.5 hours. Because I haven’t used Romanian much since November, I’ve forgotten many simple words and it’s no longer easy to speak or to understand the more advanced lessons from my book. Next week I intend to review the lessons that I’ve already done from “Teach Yourself Romanian” too, and I want to write a letter to my friend from Romania in Romanian. I need to study this language more so that I don’t forget it completely! I’m glad that in April Romanian is going to be one of the languages that I study almost every day [focus languages]. (You have no idea how painful it was to compose that simple paragraph in Romanian…) Polski
Total Study Time This Week: 1.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 8.75 hours - Teach Yourself Polish Lessons 0-1 - Studying irregular plural and consonant shifts - Spoken World Polish finally arrived!!! Przepraszam! So this will be the only language that I’m going to write about in English. My Polish is simply not advanced enough yet to say anything with any depth of meaning whatsoever. Not that my writing is normally deep though… Anyways, this week I read through the introduction (which I’m calling lesson zero because I actually acquired vocabulary from it and made a list for it in BYKI) and first lesson of Teach Yourself Polish. It looks quite good: a grammar-translation method! I love that kind of method—it’s what I used to learn a lot of my Swedish and Esperanto and I found it very effective. Since I feel bad about not including any Polish text of my own, I’ll just show you my first translation into Polish from lesson one. It is the first lesson though, so understandably it’s very simplistic: Te dwa pióra są dobre. To pole jest duże. Mam małe dzieci. Mam jedno dziecko. Mam czworo dzieci. Morze jest głębokie. To jest moje okno. Moje dobre dzieci! These two pens are good. This field is big. I have small children. I have a child. I have four children. The sea is deep. This is my window. My good children! In other Polish news I read about some of the “softening” consonant shifts that occur in some cases like the locative singular or the nominative plural. Some examples are: d --> dź t --> ć z --> ź s --> ś ł --> l r --> rz g --> dz k --> c h --> ż ch --> sz The majority of these are pretty straightforward and intuitive so they aren’t a problem. But I’m glad to get myself familiarized with them as soon as possible to avoid frustration later on. Plus, I like complexities (once I understand them)! Very inconveniently, my Spoken World Polish book arrived about three weeks after I ordered it, on the day after my Polish day. Darn! I might take a look at it this weekend though. Русский
Total Study Time This Week: 1.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 2.5 hours - Cortina Russian Lesson 7 - Cortina Russian Lesson 2 Translation Exercises На этой неделе, я изучал русский язык моей русской книгой, которую зовут “Cortina Russian in 20 Lessons.” Мне нравится эта книга, потому что у неё много грамматики и упражнения перевода. По-моему она немного скучная, но очень хорошая. На этот раз, я изучил седьмой урок книги и сделал упражнения перевода третьего урока. С ноября я не изучал очень, потому что в декабре я был очень занятый школьной работой, и потом я был ленивый и ничего не сделал, потому что я был очень усталый. Я думаю, что я многое забыл. This week, I studied Russian with my Russian book which is called “Cortina Russian in 20 Lessons.” I like this book because it has lots of grammar and translation exercises. In my opinion it’s a bit boring, but very good. This time, I studied the seventh lesson of the book and I did the translation exercises from the third lesson. Since November I haven’t studied very much because in December I was very busy with schoolwork, and then I was lazy and didn’t do anything because I was very tired. I think that I’ve forgotten a lot. And then something I had no idea how to say in Russian: My method for the Cortina book is to study one lesson, and then go back to four lessons previously and type out all of the translations from English into Russian. Just the beginning sentences though, because I don’t like how the later ones (the actual exercises) are laid out. If I don’t get a sentence correct, I investigate the reason and then try again. So since I did the seventh lesson this week, I did the translations for the second lesson. It’s like the passive and active waves with Assimil, but I’m doing an interval of four lessons instead of fifty.  Kiswahili
Total Study Time This Week: 2.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 2.5 hours - Reading and Writing in Multilingual Lounge - Grammar Review Wiki hii nilifanya mwisho kitu kwa Kiswahili! Bado sijasoma masomo yangu kutoka kitabu changu cha Kiswahili tangu Septemba kwa sababu sikipendi sana – ni cha kuchosha mno. Badala ya hivyo, wiki hii nimeandika jumbe mbili katika Ukumbi Wenye Lugha Nyingi nizungumze na strikingstar na Makedha, watu wawili wanaosema Kiswahili vizuri sana. Ningependa kuwashukuru kwa msaada wao waliniokupa kwa lugha hii, kwa sababu nadhania kwamba sasa jinsi ya pekee niboreshe Kiswahili changu ni kutumia lugha mara nyingi. Pia nitamaliza masomo ya sarufi ya tovuti ya “Mwana Simba” kwa vile bado kuna kanuni ya sarufi siyojui na chache nimeyosahau, na masomo yana msamiati mwema pia. Kusoma na kuandika kwa Kiswahili si kugumu hata kidogo, lakini kusikia na hasa kusema ni kugumu zaidi. Kwa vile kuna BBC Kiswahili, hapo ninakusudia kusikia na kusoma habari kwa Kiswahili. Kwa kweli, ninasikia kitu sasa hivi na ninashangazwa kwamba ninaweza kufahamu sana, ingawa wanasema upesiupesi sana. Nilipoanza kujifunza Kiswahili miezi kumi na mimoja iliyopita, sikufikiri kwamba nitaweza kutumia lugha hii mapema hivyo! Pia sikujua kwamba ni rahisi sana, lakini... This week I finally did something for Swahili! I still haven’t studied from my Swahili book since September because I don’t like it very much – it’s too boring. Instead of that, this week I’ve written two messages in the Multilingual Lounge to talk with strikingstar and Makedha, two people who speak Swahili very well. I’d like to thank them for the help that they’ve given me in this language, because I think that the only way for me to improve my Swahili now is to use the language often. I will also finish the grammar lessons from the website “Mwana Simba” since there are still some grammar rules that I don’t know and a few that I’ve forgotten, and the lessons have good vocabulary as well. Reading and writing in Swahili isn’t difficult at all, but listening and especially speaking is more difficult. Since there is a BBC Swahili, I intend to listen to and read the news in Swahili there. Actually, I’m listening to something right now and I’m surprised that I can understand a lot, although they’re speaking very quickly. When I started to learn Swahili eleven months ago, I didn’t think that I would be able to use the language this soon! I also didn’t know that the language is very easy, but...  日本語
Total Study Time This Week: 1.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 2 hours - Reviewed Ultimate Japanese 1-10 - Reviewed Assimil 1-17 - Pitch Accent/Pronunciation Practice 今週日本語を勉強しましたよ！それでも沢山 を忘れましたから、たった復習しまた。 「Ultimate Japanese」 という本が大好きですが、 この本と10月頃から何もしません でしたけど。何も覚えていなかったら、未だ 次のレッスンをするつもりじゃないですから 、復習したかったですよ。 「Assimil」は同じです。 そして日本語のクラスの中にだ れもいい発音はありませんから、生憎毎日悪 い発音を聞きますよ。私の発音はもっと悪く なりたくないから、練習したかったけど。日 本語でデートと年を言うことはちょっと難し いんだと思います。例えば、 平成6年7月27日に生まれました。 This week I studied Japanese! However, because I had forgotten a lot, I only reviewed. I very much like my Ultimate Japanese book, but I hadn’t done anything with it since October. If I don’t remember anything, I don’t intend to do the next lesson yet, therefore I wanted to review. It’s the same with Assimil. Also, in my Japanese class nobody has good a good accent, so unfortunately I listen to bad pronunciation every day. I don’t want my pronunciatio to become even worse, so I wanted to practice it. I think it’s a bit difficult to say dates and years in Japanese. For example, I was born on July 27th, 1994 [Seihei sixth year, seventh month, 27th day]. OTHER - I’m absolutely drowning in a vicious sea of unrelenting Anki reviews. Currently the program says I have 1747 due and I just want to smash my head through a wall thinking about that. We’ll see about catching those up tomorrow. Maybe. I’ve already done over 7000 this week. - And the study numbers keep on climbing! Unfortunately, they are also climbing for my kanji reviews, which I have neglected for several weeks now. Right now I have 865 reviews rotting there, and have reviewed exactly one kanji in the past more-than-two-week-period. Oh dear… - I randomly decided this week that I couldn't deal with the format for displaying languages marked as "secondary native" any longer and just switched Spanish and Greek to "second language." I've always rather disliked how it looked, but I've put up with it for months now, so I have no idea what triggered me to decide to change it. I still consider Spanish and Greek secondary native languages, I just don't want that weird formatting anymore. I’ll respond to some of the messages I’ve received in here recently tomorrow. I know I said this last week, but I (probably) mean it this time… And now, I'm off to bed. Because it is now almost 3:00 in the morning, which means I started writing this a whopping four hours (maybe more?) ago. Why does it take me so long? I don't know, but I'm not off to a very good start to my more-sleeping-program, am I? Edited by ellasevia on 01 March 2011 at 7:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5169 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 51 of 392 29 January 2011 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can see why that post took you 4 hours to write! I think you should definitely straighten out your sleeping habits. You can't possibly learn much if you are completely exhausted. My mother is always telling me to get more sleep, but it sounds like you get even less than I do. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 52 of 392 29 January 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Interesting comments about sleeping. I can relate, many times I will stay awake until 2 or 3 am to practice reading comprehension or writing. When I have done this it's usually Swedish, or more recently Dutch, that keeps me up. Maybe Germanic languages have an energizing effect. :)LOL. I do have to admit that when I stay up late studying a language I always take a nap around 4 pm the next day. Edited by mick33 on 29 January 2011 at 11:03pm 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 53 of 392 29 January 2011 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I definitely recommend going the route of the lark. For the last few years I've been
going to bed around 10 and getting up around 5 or 6 and I love it. Plenty of quiet time in the morning to study or read or exercise, and as you said, I feel really alert for work. Here's your Japanese paragraph tidied up a bit. 今週は日本語を勉強しました！それでも沢山 忘れましたから、復習だけでした。 「Ultimate Japanese」 という本が大好きですが、 この本は10月頃から全然使っていません。何 覚えてい ないのなら、次のレッスンに進まないという ことにしていますので、復習したかったです ね。 「Assimil」は同じです。 そして日本語のクラスでは良い発音をしてい る人一人もいませんか ら、残念ながら、毎日悪い発音を聞いていま す。自分の発音はもっと悪くなったら嫌です から、 練習したかったです。日本語で日付（デート only means "date" in the sense of "going out on a date")と年を言うのはちょっと難しいと思いま す。例えば、「私は平成6年7月27日に生まれ ました」。 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Whitefish Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5250 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 54 of 392 30 January 2011 at 12:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Mmm, I try to do the same thing as your sleeping schedule as well, ellasevia. I wake up around 5:30 to practice
characters, which isn't a problem because I've always been an early riser. The thing is, isntead of going to bed in the early morning, I'm nearly always in bed by 11 at the latest! Maybe that's a result of only studying one language ;). Like always, an interesting read - glad you're keeping on track with your studies. 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 55 of 392 30 January 2011 at 1:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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I apologise in advance for the lengthy post.
Have you seriously been functioning on less than five hours of sleep per night for a week? Wow. I usually don’t last that long. After five or six nights of three hours of sleep I normally crash and sleep for fifteen hours. If I were you I would cut back a little on the languages to make sure you get enough sleep.
That was really good! What’s strange is that the more I listened to it, the more you reminded me of many Moroccan-Dutch teenagers who speak Dutch natively but still have something of a foreign accent. The way you pronounced the a in contant and the second a in vakantie, the oe, the r and words like landje, het and elke really reminded me of the way they speak. Lectuur: Ik moet sparen. - Het is nu bijna vakantie, Wim; waar ga je dit jaar naartoe? [question intonation] - Ik denk dat ik dit jaar thuis blijf. - Ik verlang al weken naar 1 juli: ik voel me bijzonder moe. - Denk je soms dat ik ook niet moe ben? Maar...vakantie is duur! - Je verdient goed je brood, Wim. - Misschien; maar nu moet ik sparen: ik heb een nieuwe wagen nodig. - Voor een wagen kan je geld van de bank lenen. - Ik vind dat een slechte oplossing: je betaalt dan nog veel meer. - Meer...maar elke maand een beetje. - Ik betaal contant of ik koop geen wagen. - Ja, jongen, je betaalt contant en je blijft in ons landje: het weer is er zo mooi! - Het spijt me, maar ik kan niets anders doen. Your oo and aa sound a little too short and your u tends towards an oe sometimes. Your z in bijzonder and ss in oplossing both sounded fine to me. By the way, is this Assimil Dutch for aspiring farmers? Or do they give wagen as a translation for car? For me it has a very strong horse-and-cart association. That and the en je blijft in ons landje made the conversation sound a bit strange to me. ;-)
Edited by ReneeMona on 30 January 2011 at 4:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hobbema Senior Member United States Joined 5739 days ago 541 posts - 575 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch | Message 56 of 392 30 January 2011 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm up by 5 as well, weekends and weekdays. I like to think that the quiet early morning hours are the hours that noone else wants. And that's okay, because I'm happy to take them! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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