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Kerrie’s TAC ’12 Team Žá / Romantics Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tennisace Newbie United States Joined 5612 days ago 39 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Croatian, French | Message 73 of 236 13 March 2012 at 11:33pm | IP Logged |
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You're doing an awesome job Kerrie. Sadly my studies have fallen by the wayside, but I'm still following your log in particular. Keep up the fantastic work.
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 74 of 236 14 March 2012 at 6:44pm | IP Logged |
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@ tennisace: Thanks. =) You can jump back on the train when you find the time and inclination to. God only knows I've fallen by the wayside a dozen times or more over the past few years!
@ kanewai: I think some people just have an easier time keeping languages separate. I mean, of those like us who want to learn more than one or two. =) I actually like to use the similarities and differences between the Romance languages to focus on, and I think it makes it easier (for me) to learn that way. I try to do an Assimil lesson for each of my main languages every day. I've found it beyond boring for Spanish, but I know I will see the fruits of my labor once I get further towards the end of the course. I'm around lesson 35 right now, and I'm utterly bored to death with it. With all the other languages, I listen to the dialog a few times, then I copy/write it out. This makes me pay a lot more attention to the nuances, the spelling, accents, diacritics and the like. Instead of doing that with Spanish, though, I listen to the dialog once or twice, then I try to write down what I hear. Which is not so hard, really, but it makes me focus on all the little stuff that I have a tendency to gloss over. (BlackDahlia, are you the one who added a dictation wave for Assimil for your French? I borrowed your idea. Don't get mad - imitation is the best form of flattery! =) ) It really helps me focus on the language, and I find that I'm learning a lot of the little things along the way. I have been thoroughly amused with Assimil German. I'm only around lesson 10-12, but some of the dialogs have me cracking up the whole time I'm working on them. I've decided to work on Pimsleur and my french Assimil book for Brazilian Portuguese. I think the Pimsleur will help me a lot with the pronunciation. And because I feel unsure of my French (as far as learning from it), I am writing the Portuguese, French, and then an English translation in my BrPt notebook. It's rather tedious, but I think in the long run, it will be beneficial for both my French and Portuguese. Croatian is killing me. (Kanewai - I have an inkling of how you feel with your Arabic. I know my frustration is probably nowhere near what yours is, though.) I just felt like pulling my hair out, or crying, or screaming, or all three, this weekend. I was working on the Livemocha lesson on numbers, and Croatian numbers are . . . um, I guess the polite word would be . . . complicated. I know that their lessons are set up with learning English in mind, and they are not even close to being tailored for other languages. I have a basic understanding of their grammar, and I know about numbers. The noun they modify is declined for gender and number. (And masculine nouns are declined by if they are animate or inanimate, too.) The number one works like an adjective. Numbers two through four get the genitive singular endings, and numbers from five up get the genitive plural ending. And maybe over ten or something they just go back to normal, I don't remember. But what happens when the number+noun has a different role in the sentence, where it would normally take locative or dative or something? (Okay, if you know the answer to that, don't tell me. I really don't want to know right now!) And then you have spelling changes, moving vowels, dropping or adding syllables. It's logical, my friend tells me. Um, sure. I suppose! I should have just skipped that writing exercise and gone on to the next one. I know it's beyond my level at the moment. But instead, I just made up about ten sentences, all with multiple "questions" built in to them, so I could get some answers to my questions. Only a language nerd would do something like that. :-) Needless to say, it just confused me more. And then I got frustrated. I'm not used to language and grammar being difficult for me. I wrote my (Bosnian) friend an email last night, two hours after my bedtime. "I don't know how you guys can do this tongue-dancing thing with all your č-ć-d-ž-đ-lj-nj-s-š-z-ž sounds without tripping over your tongue all the time. I will never be able to walk and talk Croatian at the same time without falling flat on my face!" Now, really. You can't expect to play Mozart after three piano lessons. I jumped in WAAAAY over my head with this. Even knowing that, though, it is really frustrating. So I am going to take a break from it for a day or two. I love the language, and I'm not going to give up on it, but I think I'm going to go do something "easy" for a day or two and chase that "I can't do this" mentality away! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 75 of 236 14 March 2012 at 7:33pm | IP Logged |
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Russian numbers get the same endings as nouns, I think the Croatian ones do the same...
Great idea with Assimil&dictation! Gave me the idea to go through Assimil Portuguese during Tadoku - I've not read most of the text. I'll probably shadow the easier lessons and do passive wave+dictation (not on the same day) for the later ones. Or actually as it doesn't count I'll probably start with the dictation wave after Tadoku ends:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 76 of 236 19 March 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
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Studying in 20 minute blocks seems to be working well for me. I was consistent with my Assimil lessons for Spanish, French, Italian, and German almost all week. I took a break from Croatian for a day after getting rather discouraged, but managed to come back from that. I'm working on Livemocha lessons right now, but they are full of mistakes. My Bosnian friends are really great about answering my questions, though.
The Assimil German lessons have me entertained. In one lesson, the guy and his buddies are going to the movies, because all their wives/gfs are busy for the night, and they get there and they find the women there, too. =) I feel like I've broken through some barrier with Croatian. It seems like things are making more sense now, and I'm not having as hard of a time remembering things and making vocabulary connections. It's still a gazillion times harder than any of my other languages, but I feel like I might be getting somewhere now, rather than turning around in circles. I've also decided to review Assimil lessons as I go. Does anyone else do this? I just listen to the last 4-5 dialogs, which takes 4-5 minutes per language. I think the extra exposure will help it stick, especially for the non-Romance languages. I'm not sure what happened to Portuguese. The rest of the week was a success, though. At least in my book. =) Total for the week: Spanish: 2h 00m French: 2h 15m Italian: 2h 05m Croatian: 3h 15m Portuguese: 1h 20m German: 2h 05m Dutch: 40m Total: 13h 50m Total for 2012: Spanish: 13h 25m French: 14h 10m Italian: 21h 35m Croatian: 18h 45m Portuguese: 7h 30m German: 4h 50m Dutch: 40m Greek: 40m Total: 81h 50m Edit: Took out comments on Dutch. I don't want to overextend myself. =) Edited by Kerrie on 20 March 2012 at 3:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 77 of 236 20 March 2012 at 4:14am | IP Logged |
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I'm trying to do my Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Croatian every day, at least 20-30 minutes for each. I'm doing Assimil for the first four (and other stuff for Croatian), but I'm thinking I should back off on Portuguese for awhile until I get through at least the active phase of some of these. I think I'm going to do a dictation-type phase starting around lesson 35-40 for each of them, then start the true active wave (translating) around lesson 65-70. There will be a (triple) overlap towards the end, but I think this will be good for my writing skills. My French writing is utterly horrible - I can't even copy the book right half the time! But since I'm doing four Assimil courses at the same time with this process, it seems wise to give something up for the time being, and it seems that Portuguese has fallen into that by default. I will continue to do some work (probably Pimsleur) on occasion, but I am not going to push myself to do six languages daily. I happen to be at a good time right now where I /can/ focus on my languages, but I'd rather put an extra hour into one of the others than spread myself too thin. Serpent - I really ♥ love ♥ the idea of the consistency thread. I think it is going to be a great motivator for me. I wonder if I can keep it up for a few months and actually finish something for once! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 78 of 236 20 March 2012 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
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♥ Thanks for the nice words.
It was just awkward to realize that while I did 200+ mins of language study every day of the 6WC apart from two (and even then I did 140+), there's no single language that got attention every day. Well, I do read tweets in my Romance languages daily, I use various software in Finnish, Portuguese and Croatian and I obviously use English a lot... but I didn't count anything of this really. Forgot to reply there - I think tiredness is an acceptable reason to just revise :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 79 of 236 20 March 2012 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
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Until recently (the past week or two), I would just do whatever (language, material, etc) that I felt like. I always tried to make a schedule of doing language x on this day, and language y on that day. But even if I did that, I was wishy-washy on what I was doing with it.
I'm sure it's different once you get a language to the point where its at a maintenance level, of course. Nut I'm not there yet, not even for Spanish. But for me, I think the daily structure gives me a certain direction to go in, and a certain goal to get accomplished every day. And I think the daily exposure is making a huge difference for me, at least in my newer languages. French and Spanish, too, but in different ways for them, I think. I have noticed huge strides in Croatian. I felt like I was turning my wheels and going nowhere for so long, and then all of a sudden, in the last 2-3 days, things are just clicking, especially with structure. Not quite to the degree that Romance languages do (for me), but in a way where I'm understanding how stuff is put together without looking it up over and over again. ♥ Small victories. ♥ But I bet if I keep it up every day, I will keep seeing small victories, and they will get bigger over time. =) (Nevermind how pathetic it is that it took me so long to see that, when everyone says that over and over again! haha) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 80 of 236 20 March 2012 at 11:55pm | IP Logged |
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I've become a big believer in following some kind of structure, even if I do change the structure every couple days. And it's nice to hear that the Croatian is clicking for you; good job!
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