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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 41 of 162 27 February 2012 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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February 27, 2012: Log No. 6 for Weeks 6, 7, and 8
It's good to be back! Things have been very busy the past few weeks, and even though I got up early to do language study, I was always for some reason unable to get around to updating my log. I guess it's because my posts tend to fall on the wordy side, so I might have to chunk it down in order to get the job done regularly. I don't know, I'll have to see about that. Hopefully, I'll try to keep on schedule in the future. I'll post my hours in total for the past three weeks, and then discuss what I've been doing with both Japanese and Russian. Total Hours Spent Language Learning: 156 h Russian: 20 hours Kanji Reviews: 10h Japanese Study: 126h I've been waking up early everyday the past 3 weeks (I'm an early riser normally) and studying for 4-6 hours daily, which comprise the main bulk of my active language learning. Then, throughout the day, I would do my daily reviews on Anki, and huge amounts of both active and passive listening to Japanese, through watching anime, drama, movies, and listening to songs. It helped a lot being in the 6 Week Challenge, really, it's been a huge source of motivation! Seeing all my fellow team mates doing their best is really inspiring :) So, I have mentioned before in my posts my plans for tackling both Japanese and Russian. Things changed again for Japanese almost immediately after that, but have been stable and progressive since, and Russian is still the same. Russian I've been doing one lesson a day with Assimil, the 1951 version, and it's been very enjoyable. I really adore that language :) The book is great, too! I know it's old and I'm probably learning some arcane words here and there, but at this point, I'm not concerned. I'm not taking anything seriously, just enjoying a good, progressive introduction to the language, letting it all sink in, and hopefully after I'm done with the book and move on to other sources, especially native material, I'll be able to pinpoint exactly where I have to fast forward to the 21st century :) One thing to note about Russian. I was amazed at how many Russian words are pronounced like their equivalents in the Egyptian Arabic dialect. I don't know about other Arabic dialects, but I was so surprised to see a fair share of words that sound and mean exactly the same as you would pronounce them in Arabic! For instance, words like pineapple and passport, and a large number of other words follow the same pattern. Hmmm...Are they Arabic loanwords or Russian loanwords? They sound exactly the same, down to the stress levels! It's interesting to know the etymology of words and how historical events have really affected language evolution. I'll have to look into that, because this similarity is surprising! When I was studying German back in the day, I always really felt that it was somehow English with a different pronunciation, until I discovered that English was actually originally a Germanic language, but with a huge influx of Latin words. No wonder I like English :) I really do love Germanic languages, a tiny little bit more than Romance ones, although the I'm a big fan of the latter. I'm sure Russian and Arabic aren't related in that way, but it'll be interesting to see why a fair number of them ended up having the same meaning and pronunciation :) Russian has a little heavier stress, but still..... Okay, onto Japanese :) Japanese Things have been really interesting with Japanese. I had originally started out at approaching Harry Potter for L-R, but decided to move on with easier material, since my Japanese skills were so rudimentary. That was the book, Breaking Into Japanese Literature, until I decided again, almost immediately, to change my approach. I'm glad I did so. My biggest hurdle in L-Ring Japanese was the word order. I was able to get the kanji readings with repetition of the audio, or slowing it down, and generally follow the script, after some time, but I had trouble understanding where I was exactly in the text and what exactly meant what in English. I though about reading a grammar book first to get a general idea of how a Japanese sentence works, but I felt it was somewhat unnatural, so I decided not to. Plus all these technical terms were so annoying, and not immediately clear unless you've worked your way through some examples. I don't know, to me, grammar comes after the fact, and I like to figure out things on my own first, then read a grammar guide, which by then makes much more sense. Then it hit me. I needed a word-for-word translation, not just the general one. What made me realize this was when I was going through the Russian Assimil book. So I went back and rechecked the Japanese version from the school library (I was amazed it was there!) and decided to read through it again, in a more focused manner this time, while still continuing to L-R. Even though I was getting clueless with L-R most of the time, repetitively hearing tracks was helping me a lot, and I was picking more words and phrases each time, as well as having my reading ability really improve. But I was still not getting how the language works. So anyway, I mentioned before that the first half of the Assimil Japanese Volume 1 book was pretty straightforward when I had previously looked through it, and it still was. However, I decided to reread that again, focusing this time on the word-for-word translation, rather than the general meaning of the sentence. I sure am glad I did. It didn't only identify the nouns and verbs definitions, but it also translated the various functions of the particles. Comparing the order of the general translation with the literal one rather than guessing it, I was able to finally get how the grammar works. It was much better than reading a grammar book or going through random example sentences, simply because it was very light and non-technical on grammar, and just explained what you only needed to know at the moment, rather than overwhelm you with everything you needed to know about a particular construction all at once. And like I said, it was almost an L-R bootcamp where you train yourself how to approach L-Ring native material. Just what I needed. And from this, I was able to figure out how to approach L-R, which I'll get into more detail in the following post. So anyway, I spent 3 days going through the first 30 lessons of the first volume of Assimil. I followed the instructions about listening and reading the course, but what I didn't do was read aloud anything. I just wanted to get a feel for the word order, which was gradually building up with each lesson. After lesson 29 I felt that I finally got what the sentences were doing, so I decided to resume L-R, but this time with Miyazawa Kenji Stories, and then, later, Alice in Wonderland. The BIJL book was beautiful, but a bit depressing, so I decided to revisit it at a later date. While I L-Red, I decided to keep on revisiting Assimil, to enforce what I was getting through L-R. It was working for me. Since Assimil was basically a graded, structured version of L-R, with word-for- word translations and some grammar explanations, it was really working great to break down what I was getting from reading "Night on the Milky Way Train" and others. It also helped me figure out HOW to L-R, more importantly. It's easy to go through, but fun, so I decided to get the texts and keep them there as a reference to go back to and consolidate what I was getting through native material. When I revisited the L-R threads, I found out that for languages that are not closely related to your native language, it's best to have a word-for-word translations and some grammar notes to give you a sense of what you're going through, and I found that Assimil did just that for Japanese. I'm satisfied now :) I've been steadily progressing in Japanese and L-R, and reading through Assimil every few days to review and build up what I've been getting through both L-R and listening watching to anime, dramas, songs, movies, etc. I aso have been reading song lyrics and their translations, while listening to the song, and that is really improving my acquisition of the language. I finally feel, at this point, that getting used to the word order is a matter of exposure, and I'm trying to take care of that through lots of listening, both passive and active. My schedule in any give day is as follows: 1. Wake up early, around 5 am, and L-R until some time around 10 am, with breaks in between. I'm not torturing myself getting up early, I'm just an early riser. 2. Keep Japanese running in the background all day, through anime, dramas, podcasts, Keyhole TV, on my iPod while I'm at school, or running errands,etc. 3. Reviews on Anki for kanji, and reviewing Assimil, sporadically throughout the day (I just re-listen to the tracks and follow along the dialogues and exercises in the book, no writing or translation, and it doesn't take time as the lessons are short and funny.) 4. Listening to music and following along with lyrics, and reading translations. I do that for fun, not serious study, but it helps loads, and I'm recognizing a lot of phrases and constructions. My listening skill are really improving, and reading is getting a little easier; there's definitely progress there. 5. Doing a lesson in Russian in the afternoon or later, and reviewing the previous few ones. Takes about an hour. Covered Material: 1. Still L-ring Miyazawa Kenji, and afterwards I will move on to Alice in Wonderland (the recording are beautiful. I'm having so much fun learning Japanese! I hope I hit Russian L-R as soon as time opens up for it in July. I'm falling in love with that language :) ) 2. Finished Volume One of Assimil Japanese. Will soon get around to Volume 2. I'm also SRSing the sentences in the book on Anki, so it's additional review. As soon as that's over, I will spend the extra time exclusively on L-R and Anki. 3. First 20 lessons in Russian. 4. Reviews for kanji are finally leveling out, so I will drop the daily reviews and do them every other day. That's it, basically. I've fallen into a routine I'm comfortable with. And it helps. I'll write a separate post about L-R sometime today, because I wanted to explain better how I do it in detail, but it'll be too long for this post. The Spring Cherry Blossom Festival- The Icing on The Cake Starting late March through to Mid-April is the Spring Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. This year it's special, because the US will be commemorating 100 years of friendship with Japan. I din't know about this event until recently. Japan supplied the United States in 1912 with an incredible gift of 3,000 Sakura (Cherry Blossom) trees. Here's the link: National Cherry Blossom Festival I'm so excited, I can hardly sit down while typing this :) Made plans with my friends to go, since we live a few hours away from DC. It means I get to see real, native Japanese Sakura. It means I get to see lots of Japanese events and maybe meet Japanese people. It means - that's the best part - that I can now buy a kimono set, complete with obi belt and sandals :) Sure, they do cost money, but now I have a reason to do so, because I've been absolutely dying to have one ever since I watched that "Gou- Himetachi No Sengoku" drama and saw all these princesses walking around in beautiful kimonos. I think though, that the Meiji era styles were even more beautiful :) But I won't get one in which I'd look like a Halloween costume, just a traditional one people wear today. I'm so excited! It's the closest thing to being in Japan without actually being in Japan :) And the kimono will be my latest addition to origami and "o-cha"- Japanese green tea. I wonder what's next? :) I'll probably be penniless for some time, but, it's ok :) Okay. I will definitely write up about L-R. Being in the 6 WC was a great decision, since it really got my competitive side out and made me attack the books like mad. I was also able to work out a stable routine which I'm really enjoying now. As of two posts ago, I've become a senior member on the forum :) Great to be back on here. またね! Edited by Woodsei on 27 February 2012 at 1:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kappa Groupie Japan Joined 5518 days ago 99 posts - 172 votes | Message 42 of 162 27 February 2012 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Howdy and welcome back!
I enjoy reading your log. It's engaging and makes me kind of want to study. And I must say 6 hours a day on average is impressive. I can't imagine doing that myself. I guess it is doable but I'd have to be very motivated. Don't know about Russian but you can't go a single day without Arabic! You wake up in the morning and drink your coffee. You lay on your sofa and drink some soda, watching TV. You play the guitar for a change from your algebra homework. You try to decipher some sort of algorithm. You make lemon syrup and put it into a jar. Then an assassin comes to you, but you take him down with your racquet. You go to the safari and zero in on a giraffe and gazelle. You go out on the streets and get some hashish then smoke some. You go to the bar then get some alcohol along with a tuna sandwich and some candies. Poor examples but you get what I'm saying. :) Congrats on your "promotion"! and have fun at the festival! Best, Kappa Edited by Kappa on 27 February 2012 at 3:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 43 of 162 27 February 2012 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great job Woodsei! I am putting in every hour I have got, and you are still almost doubling my scores. Great inspiration!!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 44 of 162 29 February 2012 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Takato: Wow, thanks for the recommendations! I had no idea there was an anime made for
the singers of Bleach! I'll have to look into that! @Kappa: Thank you, Kappa, legendary Japanese mythological water creature! :))) I'm glad you find the log useful. Although, I admit your example was somewhat lost on me. I didn't get what you were trying to say up there. Could it be you're pointing out common words between English and Arabic? I also just found out from reading Brun_Ugle's log that you're Japanese :) You're heaven-sent :) It would be great seeing you here, and it'll always be interesting to see your own perspective on Japanese and us Japanese learners as a native speaker. Not to mention being good friends, which is more important and worthwhile, in my humble opinion. Mind if you post some of your gold links here too? I think it would be great for anyone reading this log. I'm also somewhat greedy :) And I could spar with Brun_Ugle, my team mate, anytime too :) What do you say, Brun? :) @SolfridChristin: Christina, I'm honored. You're my inspiration! I always wonder how you do it with such a busy schedule, but you do, obviously. Kudos! I always remember you and your hilarious posts, and that alone motivates me to continue. Great to see you doing so well in the 6WC. We're totally annhilating it! :)))) Edited by Woodsei on 29 February 2012 at 4:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kappa Groupie Japan Joined 5518 days ago 99 posts - 172 votes | Message 45 of 162 01 March 2012 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Howdy, Woodie (Do you mind if I call you that?)
Ah, I should've clarified. The words in bold font, they are all of Arabic origin or they came through Arabic. I was trying to make a point, without knowing what it is or not actually trying to make one. Sorry about that. I don't see many Japanese people here but there's always Lang-8 and wordreference.com for native input anyway, and people there are a whole lot more knowledgeable and helpful, so please lower your expectations for me. It'll do no good to any of us. ;) I wish I did, but I think I don't know any websites that you don't already know. They've all been posted somewhere. You might want to check these out and see if you missed any, that is if you didn't see them anywhere before: Japanese Resources - WordReference.com A list of some resources for learners of Japanese - JapanesePod101.com NIHONGO eな Best, Kappa 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 46 of 162 01 March 2012 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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No problem, Kappa. No expectations whatsoever:) But you're welcome to pop in anytime
here on the log. It'll be great hearing from you. And thanks for pointing out the above paragraph's idea! I was sort of guessing that, too :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 47 of 162 05 March 2012 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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March 5, 2012: Log #7, Week 9
Another week goes by! It's been a productive week, although I took a couple of days off active study to spend with family. I kept up with listening to lots of Japanese though. I finally got around to watching Death Note, and I couldn't believe I didn't watch it sooner, even though I knew about it! It's such a brilliant anime! The mangaka sure was a genius to come up with such an engaging story, and I watched it all in a couple of days, haha. I'll definitely re-watch it, it's that good :) I also watched a movie, "Orochi," and it was pretty good too, although kinda creepy. It reminded me a lot of an old American film called "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane," which was about two sisters and the rift and tragedy jealousy created between them. "Orochi" had a nice twist at the end, too, and overall was a very good film. Liked it lots. Total Hours Spent Language-learning: 80h Russian: 6h Japanese (LR and Assimil): 34h Japanese media: 30h Kanji Reviews: 10h So basically kept to the same schedule and routine as the past few weeks in terms of allocating hours of main study early in the morning and doing Anki reviews and watching/listening to Japanese throughout the day or in the evenings since I had to do things at school. Spring break officially started, though, so now hopefully I can focus more on languages as well as get more rest. I'm amazed at how many hours I'm able to put into this, because I seldom spend so much time on any specific endeavor for a long time unless it interests me. I guess I really do love languages. Japanese I'm really happy so far with the progress I'm making in this beautiful language. As I was doing before, I kept to LRing 宮沢 賢治 Miyazawa Kenji's short stories and Assimil. I'm currently 7 lessons through Volume 2 of the text. I am SO glad I decided to go back to it and go through it. It's relatively painless, enjoyable, and I'm learning tons. Seriously. I'm picking phrases and words constantly now whenever I listen to a song or watch a drama or anime. It still takes me a few seconds to process what I heard if they were long sentences, but I'm processing them correctly, and the word order/grammatical pattern of the language isn't so confusing anymore. For the shorter sentences, expressions, and collocations, my recognition of the spoken language is almost instant. And my reading ability and kanji pronunciations is improving in leaps and bounds. I'm also able to get so much out of LR, and enjoy the process. I'm surprised I was able to learn so much only with that little first textbook, and the second book so far is great, although the sentences of course are getting more difficult. But it's been great. As for L-Ring, I read "Night on the Milky Way Train," among others, for Miyazawa, and these are delightful little stories. The narrator's voice is really engaging, and helps a lot with comprehending the text. "Night on the Milk Way Train" is so moving! I almost cried at the end. That's me:) Books, movies, and anime make me cry. Either for joy or sorrow, take your pick :) Lol. Not ALL the time though :) I'm having a blast LRing these little gold nuggets :) I love Japanese. Sigh :) One of the issues I had when I was L-Ring, as well as reading Assimil, was with "koto" and "no" and function they played to establish the preceding clause as a noun phrase, thus subject, for the sentence, among other things. I was able to figure it out, but referred to the grammar book all the same, and I think I was finally able to grasp their functions. It helps to read lot of example sentences to cement the point, and I'm confident with lots of reading and exposure, the patterns will eventually become ingrained in my mind. That's grammar to me. It comes after the fact. When I've either figured it out and wanted to confirm what I know, or when it keeps confusing me after lots of misses. I decided to modify my schedule a little. I was doing LR and 3 lessons a day in Assimil previously, but I decided to put LR aside until I finish Assimil first, as I want to get it out of the way and focus solely on native material afterwards. The lessons are getting more difficult, and I wanted to review them periodically until I'm comfortable with what has been, and is being, presented, and that would take more time than I'm currently allotting for the book. I'll resume LR as soon as I'm done with the lessons. I also wanted to post a note on LR, but I'll leave that for when I resume it and give it my all :) A note on studying. Earlier on, I found it very helpful to chunk the long sentences into mini-sentences to help me internalize the meaning better, because I found myself getting confused. I don't do that now as frequently, and I guess that's a good sign that I'm internalizing the language, but it helped immensely with getting used to and understanding the language. It still does. If I create an Anki card, I would do two things. Either enter the whole sentence in the question field with the clause or "chunk" field left blank, so that I can try to recall it, and insert the clause in the answer field. Or I put the clause in the question field simply for passive recognition, and the meaning, kanji reading, and the whole sentence in the answer field. I find doing a mix of both helps in both understanding input passively as well as outputting it. My pattern is like, a huge bunch of passive input cards, followed by a handful (or less) of what I guess is called cloze deletion/MCD cards (fancy names, ね? I like them :) ) I don't focus on output, but it helps every once in a while to try and recognize a missing pattern. I don't make up any sentences, I just get them from the Miyazawa stories and Assimil. Actually, what brought on this idea was the Assimil book, since it gives you the dialogue, more example sentences to read, and then 4 or 5 sentences with missing parts to fill. I found it useful to answer a few ones after reading many sentences with similar patterns beforehand, because by then, the patterns are familiar, and producing them makes them stick. So I decided to design my Anki deck in a similar manner, with a mix of passive and cloze, with somewhat more passive than clozed :) I hope that made sense. I'm still experimenting. Anyway, onto Russian. Russian I'm still plodding along through Assimil at 30-60 minutes a day with Russian. I'm up to lesson 25 in the book, but this week has been reviews, mostly. I'm taking my time with Russian, since I'm focusing now on Japanese, and also because unlike Japanese, I'm not used to it. So slow and steady is my motto until July, when hopefully I'll be done with the book and can dive right into native materials, LR, and lots of fun. Not that I'm not having fun right now :) I'm enjoying languages immensely. But native sources have their charm, ね? :) Goals for the Upcoming Week Japanese: 2-3 new lessons a day, review old material, and Anki for both the lessons and kanji. And of course,reward myself with tons and tons and tons of exposure through songs, anime, drama, etc. Russian: Finish reviews, and resume newer lessons. At least make it to lesson 30 by the end of the week. Rakugo I found it here on Youtube. It's great listening practice at native speed, funny, and a great insight on Japanese culture, mannerisms, beliefs, and speech that you don't find in books! Of course, I'm clueless most of the time listening to it, but at least can follow along the speed, and gradually understanding more and more. I'll also be looking for Manzai, which is similar, but has more than one person, so more engaging. I'm still looking for shows with female speakers, though. I really want to get used to female speech, since I'm female, but I'm not overly concerned. I feel that I can intuitively tell when something sounds guyish, and another girlish. I don't think I'll be defaulting to male speech at all, but I still want to spend time listening to girls like me! Anime Japanese Subs Here you go! Perfect for reading/kanji, sentences, LR, and everything Japanese! Stumbled on it the other day and decided it would be worthy to share. Enjoy! And see you next week! また! Edited by Woodsei on 05 March 2012 at 5:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5046 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 48 of 162 14 March 2012 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's good that you're experimenting. I think I should do the same...
And congratulations on your progress! I can hardly believe it. :O
O_O 1 person has voted this message useful |
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