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Magdalene’s TAC ’11: Team Ł | ||
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| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 17 of 44 18 April 2011 at 8:28am | IP Logged | ||
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First, my apologies for the delay in replying to the both of you. I greatly appreciate your dropping by my log, and I'll
endeavor to respond more promptly. @strikingstar: I LOVE 菊花台!! It's one of my go-to karaoke songs. XD I adored 满城尽带黄金甲. So over-the-top. So good. @ellasevia: I'm glad to hear you've kept your wanderlust at bay (for now). Arabic's a great choice; I look forward to reading about your adventures with it next year, if you do indeed settle on learning it. Now for my (once-monthly? seems like it) update. My own wanderlust is firmly reined-in; after close to a month of diddling with Turkish, it occurred to me that I'd done virtually nothing with my TAC language, Polish, since the end of last year. Now, I got a lot done last December; as far as false starts go, it was a damn good one. I had a 700-card Anki deck that I reviewed every day, a dozen pages of verb conjugations, and almost as many pages of notes on noun and adjective declensions. But the cards in my Anki deck were, for the most part, single words, and every card was in Polish; I just had to supply the English. In a fit of frustration ("You useless piece of shiiiiiii--"), I deleted the whole deck sometime in February and turned to Turkish. But very recently, it hit home that, since I'm learning it primarily because it's a heritage language, Polish is never gonna leave me. My forays into all manner of new and exciting tongues is only putting off the inevitable: not learning a language I've wanted to learn since I was a babe in arms (well, since I was conscious of being Polish, anyway). That's why I picked Polish as my TAC language this year, choosing it over the more immediately useful and compelling Mandarin. And that's why, for the time being, Turkish is missing from my profile. I will return to Turkish...but I'm getting a running start in my mother's family's tongue first. My goals for Polish this year are simple: finish the first two volumes of the Hurra!!! po Polsku textbook series. It's the textbook currently in use in Polish language courses at my university, and I purchased them before I realized the course didn't fit my schedule. The silly things are made of glossy, smelly paper that you can't write on without smudging it, the title contains a veritable explosion of exclamation marks, and they're entirely in Polish, which is a good thing for my language skills but a bad thing for understanding how I'm supposed to fill in the blanks for some of the exercises. But both books come with CDs and there are answers to most of the exercises in the indices. The first volume claims to bring students to an A1 level; the second, to A2. If I can assimilate all the information in these books by the end of the year, I'll be a very happy camper. There's A LOT of information packed in these smelly books (really, they reek). Going off the pictures in the second volume, I can expect to learn how to say wheelchair, gambling, and hairdryer. That's just the tip of the iceberg, and I gotta say, I didn't know how to say any of that stuff when I was A2 in any of my other languages. Actually, since I'm not sure I do know how to say that in my others, here's a brief vocabulary interlude: la silla de ruedas; el juego (de azar); el secador (de pelo) der Rollstuhl (Rollstühle); das Glücksspiel (Glücksspiele); der Föhn oder der Haartrockner 轮椅(lúnyǐ); 赌博 (dǔbó); 吹风机 (chuīfēngjī) That was fun (and useful; my Spanish guesses were right on the money, the German words had slipped right out of my memory, and the Mandarin ones had never been there in the first place). I should do vocab interludes more often. On to my actual update... JĘZYK POLSKI Part of the reason for my renewed interest in Polish? I wrote a Lang-8 entry last night, just went for it on the spur of the moment. I only knew how to say a brief introduction (name, age, nationality); the rest of the entry I cobbled together with copious help from a dictionary and little (and by that I mean no) regard for cases. Overnight that entry got fourteen (!!!) views, more than any entry I've written in any language, and multiple comments, most with corrections but a few just stopping by with praise, encouragement, and expressions of anticipation for the next entry. I'm not going to let the praise go to my head (the page views, on the other hand...) since I don't deserve it, but I'm really gratified by the responses. I didn't expect to get *any* corrections on that cruddy piece of Polish I posted (the alliteration, it burns!); at most, a well-deserved upbraiding for ripping a gorgeous language a new one. I kid, I kid... In any case (is that a pun? in an entry about Polish, it could be), I'm in high spirits and planning to write more soon. The haphazard approach is working pretty well, too; not worrying about getting everything perfect a) takes less time; and b) takes the pressure off so I can (gasp!) learn the frackin' language instead of thinking about learning it. Both obvious, I know, but it's something difficult for a lifelong perfectionist--who uses her perfectionism as yet another excuse to procrastinate--to fully internalize. I'll end this entry with a delicious musical tidbit, one of my favorite songs in any language 王力宏, "花田错" (Leehom Wang, "Mistake in the Flower Fields"). 请原谅 我多情的打扰。。。 Edited by Magdalene on 18 April 2011 at 8:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 18 of 44 20 April 2011 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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@strikingstar: More apologies! I completely forgot to answer your question about why I'm interested in Mandarin. It started on a whim; I was
bored one summer, wanted to start another language, and, if possible, wanted to complete two semesters' worth of coursework during that time. The only languages that fit the criteria (and were offered at community colleges near my home) were Chinese and French, and I chose the former out of a disdain for French and the vague thought that Chinese would be good for job prospects one day. So I sort of fell into the language, and then I fell in love with it. After English and Spanish, it's the language I hear spoken and see written the most, just by walking around my city. I love the pop music (Jay Chou, Leehom Wang, and Khalil Fong: my Holy Trinity of Mandopop crushes), and I look forward to exploring literature and history written in the language soon. Plus, whenever someone (*cough*me*coughcough*) makes a rule during a drinking game that you can't speak English, I have the privilege of being able to understand both sides of the table, one speaking in Spanish, the other in Mandarin. It's not exactly oratory, but the command "喝酒!!" and the response "(gulp) 好喝!" will, I'm sure, serve me well in my future studies. JĘZYK POLSKI Wrote another Lang-8 entry last night. Practiced using mianownik (nominative) and narzędnik (instrumental) cases. Again, an abundance of comments, including a link to this page, "Deklinacja rzeczowników" ("declension of nouns"), which has a series of declension tables. Almost had a coronary just looking at it. I'll return to the page once I'm a bit more advanced. I'm thrilled by the outpouring of help I've received thus far from the Polish-speaking community on Lang-8. Their comments are mind-blowing, both for their incredible helpfulness and for the fact that almost all of them are entirely in Polish and I understand hardly a whit at first glance. Their help and my love for writing (in any language) are stoking my passion. And since I've returned to active study, Polish grows more and more fascinating by the minute, to the point where my wanderlust has sort of curbed itself. I plan to write an entry every other day or so, alternating between actual journal entries (first-person accounts of my life) and sentences practicing various grammatical concepts. I listened to half an hour of Polish radio at polskieradio.pl last night, the Trójka station. My brains practically ran out my ears. At first I thought I was listening to French (the nasal vowels), then Spanish (the slightly trilled r, the prosody), and then, as my mind short-circuited, German couched in Mandarin. But! I understood four words: "jeden" (one) and "dzień dobry panu" (good day to you). This was not quite as thrilling as the time I listened to a half hour of radio on BBC 中文网 and I understood a whole sentence (something like "China's a big country; its problems are very complicated") and my jubilation could've raised the skies. In any case, more Polish listening is in the cards; hopefully next time I'll be able to, ya know, recognize the language I'm studying. XP Part of the reason studying Polish comes so easily at this point is that I'm basically studying chapters 0 through 3 of the first volume of Hurra!!! at the same time, and most of it's information I had half-learned during my first stab at the language. I plan to get through chapter five by the end of the month, and to finish chapter fifteen and everything in between during May's Six Week Challenge. A grammar tidbit before I move on: to state someone's age, all you need to do is conjugate mieć (to have) for the subject and add a number and the correct noun for "year." This changes depending on the number. For instance: Mam jeden rok. (I am one year old.) Mam dwa lata. (I am two years old.) Mam trzy lata. (I am three years old.) Mam cztery lata. (I am four years old.) Mam pięć lat. (I am five years old.) Mam sześć lat. (I am six years old [and quite pedantic].) Why do two, three, and four go with lata and five and six with lat? I have no idea, though I'm sure someday I'll find out. Anyhow, it's important to remember that, when describing someone's age, years ending in 2, 3, or 4 need to be followed by lata, and years ending in any other digit (apart from one by itself) are followed by lat. To sum up: X5-X1 lat; X2, X3, X4 lata. DEUTSCH Went to an hour-long Kabarett performance tonight and understood about 80% of the words (my comprehension of everything in context was higher). I also took the Aspekte B1+ bis C1 Einstufungstest at this site and got 87%, which apparently makes me suited to enter a C1-level language course to continue my studies. That's a relief; I'm majoring in German, and anything less would be quite embarrassing. And I know I'm suited for participation in C1-level classes; that's basically what I'm enrolled in right now, since they're taught entirely in German. But I know that, while my passive skills are likely B2, my active skills are pretty solidly B1, and I have a long way to go with the language, especially because I confined my first two years of study solely to material in my language classes, and even my study of that was half-arsed; I learned enough to pass the tests, and no more. I'm graduating this semester, and frankly, I'm just trying to hang on till the term ends; I've been dealing with a lot of personal issues lately. I plan on amping up my German studies once the semester's over (ironic, isn't it, that I'll graduate with a degree in a language that I'll be improving and perfecting after the fact). So it goes. 中文 Picked up Advanced Reader of Modern Chinese: China's Own Critics at the bookstore. It's two volumes, the first of texts and the second of vocab and grammar structures. The books contain essays on topics ranging from women's liberation to simplification of the writing system. The texts are all authentic, published anytime between 1920 and 1980. I look forward to diving into them soon. But in the meantime, I have more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, my karaoke literacy. I have "花田错" (link in previous entry) down pat, but I must needs diversify. In the next couple weeks, I plan on learning the lyrics of the following seven songs well enough to belt 'em out during my next trip to the neighborhood karaoke box. 1. 方大同, 爱爱爱 (Khalil Fong, "Love Love Love") 2. 方大同, 歌手与模特儿 (Khalil Fong, "Musician and Model") 3. 王力宏, Forever Love (Leehom Wang) 4. 王力宏, 心中的日月 (Leehom Wang, "The Heart's Sun and Moon") 5. 周杰伦, 给我一首歌的时间 (Jay Chou, "Give Me the Time of a Song") 6. 周杰伦, 发如雪 (Jay Chou, "Hair Like Snow") 7. 周杰伦, 最后的战役 (Jay Chou, "The Last Battle") It shouldn't be too hard; the only ones I currently can't keep up with while singing along are 歌手与模特儿 and 最后的战役. But singing what I think these artists are saying and what's playing on a KTV screen are very different animals, especially with Jay Chou's songs. He slurs a bit; I've heard him say "fangji" instead of "fangqi," for instance. Not knocking how he speaks; he is a native speaker, after all. But for the time being I'd like to get my pronunciation as close to standard as possible, 'cause Zeus knows my grammar takes as many liberties with the rules as possible. I feel I'm striking a nice balance in actively studying three languages at once, especially since they're at very different levels (German: B1/B2, Mandarin: A2-, Polish: beginner). Any fewer and I'd get bored; any more, I'd be spread too thin. But three...three's just fine. ^^ Edited by Magdalene on 20 April 2011 at 1:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 19 of 44 20 April 2011 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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JĘZYK POLSKI
Clarification of the grammar point (stating one's age) described above: I've just learned that lata is the plural of rok, and that in accusative constructions with the numerals 2, 3, or 4 (or ending in those numerals), the declension used is the nominative plural. For all other numerals, the genitive plural is used. Cliffs Notes version: -rok (pl. lata) -[accusative const.] X2, X3, X4 + nom. pl. -[accusative const.] X5-X1 + gen. pl. 中文 Just discovered another song to add to the karaoke list and have listened to it thirty times in the last two hours. I wish I was kidding. 8. 王力宏, 大城小爱 (Leehom Wang, "Big City, Small Love") 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 20 of 44 25 April 2011 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
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中文: The Karaoke Chronicles
Decided to go for broke and list the rest of the songs I have on the fore. In this batch, 稻香 and Goodbye Melody Rose pose the biggest challenge; I haven't played them to death like I have the others. :P 9. 周杰伦, 菊花台 (Jay Chou, "Chrysanthemum Terrace") 10. 周杰伦, 稻香 (Jay Chou, "Rice Fragrance") 11. 周杰伦 feat. 费玉清, 千里之外 (Jay Chou feat. Fei Yu-Ching, "Faraway") 12. 方大同 feat. 薛凯琪, 四人游 (Khalil Fong feat. Fiona Sit, "Traveling Quartet") 13. 方大同, Love Song (Khalil Fong) 14. 方大同, Goodbye Melody Rose (Khalil Fong) 15. 王力宏 feat. 任家萱, 你是我心内的一首歌 (Leehom Wang feat. Selina Ren, "You Are the Song in My Heart") 16. 王力宏, 改变自己 (Leehom Wang, "Change Me") 17. 王力宏, 落叶归根 (Leehom Wang, "Falling Leaves Return to Roots") As you can see, I'm really into the 中国风 (Zhōngguó fēng, lit. Chinese-style) sounding stuff. There are other songs I like a lot and would like to be able to follow, but most of the ones I haven't listed here involve rapping. I'd die happy if I could rap successfully in Mandarin (I'm only being mildly facetious), but I have enough trouble keeping up with lyrics performed at a moderate pace. My karaoke bootcamp involves looking up the lyrics, listing the words I don't know in a notebook, finding a KTV version of the song online, and singing along a few times. Sometimes I have a great run-through and can hit most of the words (most of the notes, on the other hand...); other times, I'm lucky if I can keep up with the chorus. Even when I know all the characters in a line, there's no guarantee I'll be able to keep up with them. To compound my difficulties, the lyrics used in karaoke vids are traditional ones; I'm accustomed to simplified. And since my mouth's not used to making these kinds of contortions, I end some practice sessions quite literally foaming at the mouth. Attractive...I'm on my way to becoming a superstar for sure. In other news, I watched Disney's Mulan (1998) dubbed in Mandarin last night. The movie's title in Mandarin is 花木兰 (Huā Mùlán). Virtually every Disney film is problematic in subject matter (the treatment of race, gender, sexuality, etc.), but the movies provide great language-learning material since they're available in so many of the world's major languages. I understood quite a bit when I watched the film, but only because I've seen Mulan so many times. The song "Reflection" (倒影, dàoyǐng) was performed well; Mushu's voice actor was brilliant, absolutely hilarious; and how could you not love Jackie Chan performing "I'll Make a Man out of You" (男子汉, nánzǐhàn)? You can take a listen here. Like always, I cried like a baby when the emperor commends Mulan: "I've heard a great deal about you, Fa Mulan. You stole your father's armor, ran away from home, impersonated a soldier, deceived your commanding officer, dishonored the Chinese Army, destroyed my palace, and...you have saved us all." (Open lacrimal floodgates!) I'll try to transcribe this bit in Chinese the next time I watch. JĘZYK POLSKI I watched Król Lew (1994) and Dzwonnik z Notre Dame (1996) today. That's The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for you layfolk. ;) Król Lew was a piece of cake to understand, but that's not saying much; I've only seen it a hundred times or so. I understood quite a few lines in retrospect (that is, I recognized what the line originally was in English and realized that I knew every word of its translation in Polish). Scar's name was changed to Skaza (which means flaw, defect, or blemish), and his name and others were declined according to Polish convention. I heard, for instance, Simbą (instr. sing.) a few times, and Simbę (acc. sing.) at least once. The interpretations of the songs were crappy, unfortunately; the German dubbings are much better. ^^ Dzwonnik z Notre Dame was much harder to get anything out of. I've only seen it twice. I nonetheless understood some phrases and words (including, strangely, czarownica, witch; I don't know why that, of all words, is already part of my active vocabulary). My most recent breakthrough is finally learning how to pronounce 'c.' It's said 'ts' before all vowels except 'i.' 'Ci' makes a 'ch' sound. I found this out from the first lesson of the Michel Thomas Polish Advanced course, which I'll be working through as I putter along in my textbooks. I'm still writing Lang-8 entries, but I need to take some time to study the corrected versions, let the vocabulary sink in and the grammar coalesce. I realized Polish is the first language I'm learning from scratch without language classes (well, there was Swahili, but I was ten and I didn't get far). Polish will be a training ground of sorts, for my self-study habits, my language learning abilities, all that. I'm looking forward to the challenge. WANDERLUST Had the inexplicable urge to learn Shona today. Checked out the FSI course, Wikipedia, and some other websites for information on learning the language. Got scared by the whistled sibilants. This desire isn't inexplicable for the choice of language so much as for the timing of the urge. I've been interested in Shona since reading Nancy Farmer's The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (1994) and A Girl Named Disaster (1996). Both books have Shona protagonists and Shona glossaries; the language appears throughout the works. Incidentally, I read both of these books soon after seeing The Lion King for the first time. I'm not ashamed to say that's the movie that piqued my interest in Swahili. So when the time comes to learn a Bantu language, I'll be choosing between two languages I've long found fascinating. Edited by Magdalene on 25 April 2011 at 8:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4965 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 21 of 44 25 April 2011 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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As a fellow student of Polish myself, good luck with it! It might be difficult, but it paves the road to all Slavic languages.
As you said, 'c' is /ts/, and 'ci' actually stands for another letter, 'ć', with a completely different sound. It's a bit like that /ch/, but very "soft". If 'cz' is as in "church", 'ć' is as in "cheese" and even "softer". Somehow Polish doesn't always write 'ć', but prefers to write 'ci' before vowels. By the way, exactly the same happens with 's' and 'z', with 'si' and 'zi' being the ś and ź sounds (not to be confused with sz and ż). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 22 of 44 02 May 2011 at 10:40am | IP Logged | ||
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The forum's been a lot quieter since the 6WC started. ;) Mad props to everyone; y'all
have made some great strides already! @Haukilahti Exactly! Thank you for writing that out so clearly; I couldn't have said it better myself. If you don't mind my asking, dlaczego uczysz się polskiego? MEDIA AND BOOKS (Yeah, books count as media too, but I'm separating reading and watching/listening for my own purposes.) In an effort to kick my older languages into gear, I'm setting myself a goal of watching 100 hours of media in Mandarin and German and reading five books in German and Spanish. For the duration of the 6WC, I'll adjust these hours in my tweets (decreasing them by 50% to account for silences, wandering attention, etc.), but the 100 hours noted in this log include the length of entire TV episodes. I'd like to fulfill these (admittedly arbitrary) times quotas by the end of the year. So when I update this log from now on, you'll see a __/100--or some other type of indicator--next to my Mandarin, German, and Spanish headers. And no, watching KTV vids doesn't count. THEMED VOCAB LISTS I'm such a sucker for themed vocab lists. I got the idea in my head the other day to make a vocab list themed "(Non-Human) Animals." And wow, I went nuts with it. I looked up the names of dozens of animals in German, Mandarin, Polish, and Vietnamese, and the resultant list covered so much (read: too much) ground: butterfly cat chicken cow dog goose duck elephant hyena lizard mammal bird amphibian frog goat donkey eagle deer crocodile camel snake mouse rat horse lion leopard shark swan squirrel rabbit bear dolphin ape monkey sheep termite hippopotamus fox seal whale wolf crab lobster bee wasp fly tiger cheetah hedgehog antelope buffalo toad raccoon ostrich tortoise weasel ant falcon hawk parrot squid octopus seagull sparrow llama porcupine owl moth mosquito beetle koala cockroach beaver jackal lynx crane hare pony gazelle insect cricket grasshopper salamander scorpion kangaroo rhinoceros dove pigeon panda skunk armadillo otter rodent And typing all this has made me realize I forgot marsupial, snail, and slug. Silly me. The animal-themed list had me captivated. It was when I started a list on the names of herbs that I realized how much of a fool I was being; I don't give a hoot about herbs. Most of these words are only useful to me in German or Spanish, the languages in which I have a good sense of the grammar and need mostly to develop my lexicon. But in my others? Not so useful (although I did get quite a few new characters out of the whole thing). I'm going to limit myself to one themed vocab list per week. The theme will be mostly dictated by what I'm studying in Polish. Professions, I think, is coming up next, and then food. 6WC I'm loving the challenge, and I've made some great progress already. I'm even--gasp!-- glad I signed up for Twitter. The bot's fabulous! Many thanks to Sprachprofi for setting it up. :) I'm studying Polish for the challenge. Edited by Magdalene on 27 December 2014 at 8:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4965 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 23 of 44 02 May 2011 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | ||
A long time ago I had a half-Polish girlfriend, whose efforts to teach me weren't very succesful. But I became fascinated by the country and not being able to study bugged me. Some years later I studied some Russian and suddenly... Polish started make sense. Nowadays Poland has become more important in my real life, so I dedicate all my language learning time to Polish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 24 of 44 09 May 2011 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
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MUSINGS
Been thinking a lot about what I want to accomplish with my language learning. It seems that the 6WC has not only pushed me to study Polish more and harder; it's also prompted me to meta-level contemplation (most of it, unfortunately, in English). I'm proud of my progress, which thus far consists of over 17 hours of language study in a week; over half of it's Polish. I'm seeing for the first time the value of recording one's study hours. Almost all of what I've recorded for my study languages is stuff I'd be doing anyway, vocab word look-up included; sometimes that part's the most fun for me ("you know you're a language nerd when..." reason #34539). Which is encouraging; recognizing that language learning is a big part of my life and something I work on every day just for the thrill of it pushes me to do more, even if I'm just taking baby steps. But the languages I'm working on just for the thrill of it are ones I've established a foundation in. Spanish: close to a decade of formal and informal study. German: about three years; my major at university. Mandarin: recently passed my two-year anniversary. Each of these languages is very much a part of me; I would not be today's Magdalene without knowing them. These languages are ones I definitely want to learn to a high level. I find it difficult to commit to Polish, to build up the momentum I need. That's one benefit I've received from language instruction in the classroom, a plus I'm grateful for. I checked out how my university awards credits for courses and the number of hours of instruction required. The awarding of one unit for a course requires 15 hours of in-class instruction and assumes two hours of study outside of class for every hour spend in the classroom. Thus, a one unit class presumes 45 hours of course effort. Almost all elementary language courses at my uni are five units, meaning that a semester of language instruction, in an ideal world, equates to 225 hours of study. I was shocked when I found this out; I'd consider myself exceptional to have put in 225 hours after two semesters of classroom language learning. If I actually put this much time into my studies, there's no doubt that one semester of Polish would put me at A2. Classroom learning has been profoundly inefficient for me; nonetheless, I've put in enough time to get a foothold in the language(s) and, more importantly for my motivation, to find solid reasons for learning them. It's hard to go back once I've put enough of my time in, which is why Vietnamese keeps calling me to return. So to get past this slump (leaving aside the question of whether a slump this soon in is a sign of impending doom), I need to put in the time, get those 75 hours the Deutsche Welle says are sufficient for learning a language to A1 (for the purposes of this argument I'll assume that Polish and German are of equal difficulty for a native English speaker). I need to reach the point where there's no going back. I'm having trouble integrating that with the studies of my other languages. My passive skills outstrip my active ones in German; I'm on the cusp of being able to express myself well. My character recognition climbs ever higher as I drill myself with a shared HSK 1-4 deck I downloaded from Anki, and I'm the cusp of being able to understand spoken Mandarin. Also, my Spanish has gone to pot, and I need to repair it. With all these exciting developments, and my ability to engage in native materials in these tongues, it's hard to muster as much enthusiasm for another language; even the novelty's not much of a draw. Knowing that Polish is both my TAC and 6WC language, and that it's a matter of getting started (by that I mean laying a good foundation; five minutes of study is hardly an inspiring start) keeps me afloat, but not happily buoyant. Edited by Magdalene on 27 December 2014 at 8:21am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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