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Mick’s 2012 log Teams *jäŋe / *ledús & Žá | ||
Tags: Scriptorium | Afrikaans | Wanderlust | Thai | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Teach Yourself | Hindi | Intermediate | Finnish | Polish | Swedish | Verbs/Conjugation | Multilingual | Beginner | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Grammar | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 1 of 108 01 January 2012 at 12:34am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to my new TAC log. The languages I plan to learn are Afrikaans, Finnish, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish and Thai. That is the plan but, as anyone who has read my previous logs knows, I tend to give in to language wanderlust often and dabble briefly with various languages and I may learn French and Russian this year but who knows.
I never really know what will happen during a year, but my unofficial plans for the upcoming 6 Week Challenges is: February: Thai and/or Finnish. May: Polish August: Maybe French but more likely I'll attempt to bring Swedish to a higher level. November: I named a few possible languages in the thread I linked to above, but as of now I am undecided. I also give a special welcome to my teammates in the *jäŋe/*ledús and Žá teams and hope everyone will have a really great year learning languages. I have to get ready to go out later this evening. I may give more details about my study plans, suggested schedule etc., on Sunday or Monday. Ciao Mick Edited by mick33 on 26 January 2012 at 11:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 2 of 108 02 January 2012 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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Wow! My log has already been buried at the bottom of page 2. Great work everyone!
I like the idea of organizing the languages I will be learning into categories as others have done. My list of intended languages this year is admittedly very ambitious (if not totally crazy, I really do have a social life) and if I am to accomplish much I must try to be better organized. With that introduction I present Group A-Languages to learn to a high intermediate level or better this year: Afrikaans, Spanish, and Swedish. Group B-Languages to bring to low-intermediate level: Italian and Finnish. Group C-Languages I have flirted with before but now want to seriously learn to a beginner level: Thai and Polish. Possible dabbling/6WC languages: French and Russian. (NB. This category is the one that is most likely to change) Tentative study plans for each group of languages Group A- 1. Scriptorium for between 15-30 minutes. If I recall, this is the best amount of time for me to do scriptorium exercise because less than 15 minutes is so little time that it is totally useless to me, while doing it for more than 30 minutes causes boredom or mental exhaustion. My intended Scriptorium texts will be the Bible, other books (these are yet to determined) and various online newspaper articles. 2. Use the wordlists I've already made for Afrikaans and Spanish and maybe make more if I need to but I may already have too many wordlists for these languages. I will also need to make many more worldists for Swedish; Right now I have only 5 wordlists for Swedish and I believe that when I can count the wordlists I have for a language then I do not have enough of them. 3. Listen to the spoken languages. I will start by staggering the amount of time I listen to online radio broadcasts first maybe listen for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, then increase the time gradually by no more than 5 minutes. I will, as always, also listen to songs since they are usually no longer than 5 minutes. 4. Translation- I can't recall the link but I remember reading somewhere that Luca (who occasionally posts here under the name Poliglotta80) suggests translating from target language to base language (for me this will most likely always be English) and then translating from base language to target language. I don't know how long to plan for this one, but I expect it will take a long time at first because I am not used to translating anything twice. 5. Write a paragraph or more in each language at least twice a week. Hopefully I will post in these languages twice a week as well but I make no promises. Group B- 1 learn more vocabulary and grammar. My Finnish is especially bad. I can't find my last attempt to type something in Finnish on this forum, so you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that it was very, very bad. For Italian my brief grammar overview has been useful I simply need to start reading and learning more vocabulary. Maybe I should find good bilingual divtionaries for both languages. 2. Pronunciation practice- My Italian sounds too much like Spanish, and I even though I know better I pronounce Finnish consonants way too harshly. Note to self: Finnish vowels are pronounced softly. This means with no aspiration. 3. Listen to more of the spoken language: same as for Group A 4. Write messages here by middle of summer, or at least I hope to do so. Group C languages No definte plans just work through the materials I have (and will be buying) for these languages at this point. For the languages in Group A I plan also to make these languages into what I will call maintenance languages. What I mean by this is that hopefully after this year I will become comfortable enough with using them that I won't need to really study them; rather I hope to just use them in my life frequently by 2013. This post is getting to a bit too long, and I'm getting too sleepy so I will continue it another time. I did start scriptorium for Swedish for about 20 minutes before I started typing this post and that is a good start for TAC 2012! God natt Mick Edited by mick33 on 26 January 2012 at 11:38pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 3 of 108 04 January 2012 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
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Since my last post I have been thinking more about a daily study schedule, but as of now all I know is that I have to alternate languages on different days as I mentioned doing in the first post of my previous TAC logs. I can't decide which language to study on which day yet, so my study schedule is yet to be determined.
One of the fringe benefits of learning languages is the chance to read about places I would like to travel to. I was reading about Sassi di Matera the historic center of Matera. Matera is a town in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata. Unfortunately, I must admit that I was reading about Basilicata in English. Shame on me! What was I thinking? Reading in English will never help me learn Italian. After I came to my senses and remembered that I am indeed learning Italian, I went to Google Italia and was directed to what I think is the official tourism website for Sassi di Matera and watched a video about it. The video is nearly 10 minutes in length, and was interesting enough to keep me watching and listening for the entire time. This is a very good thing for me, it means that having spent two 6WCs on Italian is slowly paying off. I will watch the video again in the morning as I want to listen more carefully to learn vocabulary words. I have also decided that I will eventually travel to Italy and when I do I will definitely visit Sassi di Matera. Ci vediamo dopo Mick Edited by mick33 on 04 January 2012 at 10:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6124 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 4 of 108 04 January 2012 at 11:44am | IP Logged |
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Hey, Mick33, you have an interesting set of languages to work on. Yeah I know too about how difficult Finnish is to write correctly. I've just found myself just giggling at the absurd difficulty of trying to form sentences without errors. It is just stunning, really.
I feel if I could get Finnish to low-intermediate level it'll be a huge victory, really. I'm considering maybe 2012 is my year to hit intermediate for reading Finnish. And then 2013 will be my year to hit intermediate for writing and speaking. I'm not sure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5348 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 5 of 108 04 January 2012 at 8:20pm | IP Logged |
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You have one hell of a list there! How much time do you get for languages each day/week? I can't imagine learning so many, I find three languages a massive stretch of my time so seven plus wanderlust would be way too many.
Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 6 of 108 05 January 2012 at 10:26am | IP Logged |
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@cathrynm Finnish is weird for me, as there are things that make it an easy language and then there things that take a while to learn. The lack of noun genders or definite and indefinite articles as well as the almost perfectly phonetic spelling make Finnish seem easy, the grammar however is taking a while to figure out, although I always remember the inessiivi case.
I also hope that I will reach an intermediate level in Finnish by the end of 2012. @hribecek I would say that I plan for about 3 hours a day total for languages and I must make it clear that I don't study every language every day. I still haven't fully worked out my study schedule yet. I do, however, already know a fair amount of basic vocabulary and grammar in Afrikaans and Spanish (also Swedish, but to a lesser extent); so these languages won't require the same kind of attention as the other languages where I am still learning basic vocabulary and grammar. One reason I decided on a long list of languages this year was to attempt to curb my linguistic wanderlust by having Polish and Thai to work on. Edited by mick33 on 07 January 2012 at 10:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 7 of 108 07 January 2012 at 10:44am | IP Logged |
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Once again, I go two days without typing anything here and all the other logs push mine to the bottom of page 2. This looks like the beginning of a really wonderful TAC year. Keep it up everyone!
Great news! 7 languages is the perfect number of languages for me. No more wanderlust dabblings in languages I'm not actually interested in, now I just learn some Polish or Thai instead. I gave Polish pronunciation another go Friday afternoon and I think I'm beginning to get more comfortable pronouncing some of the sounds that had bothered me in the past. For example, the digraph "cz" is starting become a distinct sound, instead just sounding like I'm swallowing my tongue while making some strange buzzing noise. I know I don't sound like a Pole, and sometimes I wonder why the Poles use the Roman alphabet when it looks like the Cyrillic alphabet would be better suited to Polish orthography, though this is a not a big deal. As for Thai, I'm still working on hearing and copying tones and learning the sounds of the letters. This is taking a while, but Thai is the first language I'm learning that doesn't use the Roman alphabet so I am also learning how to mentally adjust to a new alphabet. I plan to have my study schedule finalized by Monday and then I will post it here. Dobranoc Mick Edited by mick33 on 26 January 2012 at 11:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 8 of 108 10 January 2012 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
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As promised, my first study schedule of the year:
9 January through March 14 or whenever the February 6W Challenge officially ends Main focus language for January is Italian. Tentatively planned main focus languages for February 6WC are Finnish and Thai. Polish will be the designated dabbling language for all six days Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Italian 1 hour 15 minutes, Swedish 30minutes., Thai 45 minutes, Polish 30 minutes. In February Italian and Thai will switch places. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: Spanish 30min, Afrikaans 30min, Finnish 1hr 15 min., Polish 45 min in . Explanatory Notes: *I call this my first 2012 study schedule because I have learned that I do best when I modify my schedule as my interests and circumstances change and this happens frequently. I will have a new one in mid-March. * Focus languages and an official dabbling language are something new this year so that I make an effort to keep wanderlust at bay. Language wanderlust is indeed fun, but I will never learn any language well unless I am more disciplined and consistent. * I did not forget Sunday, rather I intentionally left it out. I attend church every Sunday and afterwards I usually spend the rest of the day socializing with family or friends thus I have rarely done any language learning on Sunday. * Planning my schedule to accomodate the 6WCs is another new thing I am trying again in an effort to minmize wanderlust and be better organized. Before I forget last week ended up being a warm-up week for the year-long challenge as sickness and the need to plan my study schedule prevented me from studying as much as I wanted to. Arrivederci Mick Edited by mick33 on 17 March 2012 at 7:49am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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