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TAC 2012 - Team Ne Nur - Hrvatske Krave | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 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 17 of 76 19 February 2012 at 7:35am | IP Logged |
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Weeks 6-7: February 5 – February 18
Total Study Time This Period: 25.03 hours Total Study Time in 2012: 87.57 hours Well it has been another two weeks since I last wrote, and in that span of time I have completed about the same amount of language study as I did in the one week before it. (And that sentence structure made no sense, but I’m beyond caring.) Last week wasn’t a bad week – I managed to do over 15 solid hours of study – though I did get a bit burned out near the end of the week. This week, however… Let’s just say that it was one of the most unpleasant weeks in recent memory, and as such I only squeezed out a little over nine hours of study. Things are slowly getting better, but I was convinced for a couple days that I would need to seriously take up Georgian as a way to distract me from the misery that was plaguing me earlier in the week. More on that in the Georgian section below. 
 Hrvatski
This Period: 4.38 hours 2012 Total: 17.55 hours I didn’t get any Croatian study time in this week, but last week I completed the next three lessons from Teach Yourself Croatian, lessons 5-7. I’m appreciating TY Croatian a little more now, ironically for the very reason that I was ranting about it in my last entry. Its lessons are short enough that I could easily squeeze one of them in after finishing my homework and before going to bed, whereas the lessons in my other books take much longer to get through. In the absence of an Assimil Croatian (there’s a “Serbo-Croate”, but it’s focused on Serbian), that’s a quality that I can appreciate. :)  suomi
This Period: 5.00 hours 2012 Total: 5.87 hours Again, little or no Finnish happened this week, but I did a fair amount last week. I’m now up through lesson 43 in Assimil, and I’m still enjoying it. I am feeling like I might need to take a short break just to catch up on the masses of vocabulary it has been introducing, though. In the coming two weeks, I’m going to have to study Finnish more intensely than I had planned to make up for the lack of study of late so that I can reach 45 total hours by the end of the month.  Deutsch
This Period: 6.36 hours 2012 Total: 10.27 hours I’ve done a ton of German in the past two weeks, or at least that’s how it feels. German is currently my top-studied language in 6WC, but that’s also including my German class at school. Anyways, last week I spent quite a while doing German “homework”, which consisted of watching a German TV show on my computer. We recently started watching the show Türkisch für Anfänger in my class, and since I happened to be absent on the days that we had watched the first few episodes, I had to catch up on my own. The show tells the story of a German woman who remarries a Turkish man and is told from the point of view of her daughter, Lena, after their families move in together. The other thing keeping me busy lately has been a special translation project that my German teacher assigned me. Since the format of the AP German test changed after last year and she doesn’t have many proper practice materials for the speaking section, she has asked me to translate some of the practice materials for AP Spanish into German, since the Spanish exam has been of that format for several years. So basically she’s just having me translate short dialogue transcripts and outlines from Spanish into German for our class to practice with. In terms of counting study time, I’m awarding myself a quarter of the total time to Spanish, on top of the full study time which I count for German.  日本語
This Period: 2.32 hours 2012 Total: 7.32 hours I’ve been feeling pretty good about my Japanese as of late, though I’m not sure what the trigger was. Last week in my Japanese class we had to write a short skit of 4-6 lines per person in place of a formal exam for the unit. I, of course, got a bit carried away and ended up writing nearly two pages of Japanese text for my partner and me. My partner was, needless to say, horrified when I presented her with the massive dialogue that we were to memorize and then perform in front of the class. After lots and lots of time spent standing out in the hallway practicing – even singing the lines as a memory aid – we got them (mostly) down and had an excellent performance. Well, if you discount the fact that neither of us can act to save our lives.  ქართული
This Period: 0.90 hours 2012 Total: 0.90 hours Recently I’ve gotten into the habit of studying Georgian in case of mental breakdowns or panic attacks, because the language is so hard that it takes all of my concentration on it alone to be able to grasp it, so it's often an effective way of drowning out any unpleasant thoughts. With that in mind, I was convinced earlier this week that I would need to take up Georgian as an official study language because I would need it in order to block out what I thought would be near-constant misery from this point on. To summarize: it resulted from a Valentine’s Day “mishap” which left me rather (= extremely) devastated for a good while. I won’t trouble you with any more details, but I felt like I was either on the verge of a panic attack or was outright crying for three days straight. I even went as far as to design a phonetic keyboard layout for the Mkhedruli alphabet (not included in my study time) before coming to my senses and realizing that simply burying myself in yet another language that I don’t have time for wouldn’t solve my problems. I’m feeling somewhat better now and have attained a state of numbness regarding the situation, and I have managed not to cry since Thursday, so there’s some tangible progress going on. However, if I should start to feel horrible again, I’ll have my in-case-of-disaster book (ie, Beginner’s Georgian) at the ready to give me some temporary relief. OTHER @Kerrie: I use this website to create my graphs, and then thieve my flag images from Wikipedia. From there I use just the forum’s image coding to insert them. You can see the specific coding I use if you quote my post. @LazyLinguist: Thank you for stopping by! It’s always nice to know that someone appreciates my logs. Edited by ellasevia on 11 March 2012 at 10:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5351 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 18 of 76 19 February 2012 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Ellasevia
I think this is my first post on your 2012 log. I just wanted you to know that I still always look forward to your updates and they're always very interesting. Even though it's still several months away, I bet you can't wait for your ultimate language immersion experience in Croatia. Do you know anything else about where you'll be and about your family and the school etc? I hope you continue to feel better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 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 19 of 76 24 February 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged |
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@hribecek: I am very excited! And no, I probably won't hear anything about the specifics until May at the earliest...
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I was feeling motivated by Arekkusu's and Sprachprofi's attempts at writing something in Finnish, so I decided to try my hand at it too. My cousin is going to spend a few weeks in Finland this summer for a short-term exchange, so I decided to write a pretend note to him in Finnish about it. I'd greatly appreciate it if someone could read over and correct it for me. Here it is: Hei Andoni! Mitä kuuluu? Kuulin, että sinä menet Suomeen tänä kesänä! Tietenkin sinun täytyy oppia vähän suomea matkaasi ennen! Haluaisin, että kerrot minulle kaikki matkastasi kun palaat kotiin Amerikkaan. Odota nyt... Silloin olen jo Kroatiassa. Siinä tapauksessa, sinun pitää kirjoittaa minulle sähköpostin. Nyt opiskelen minäkin suomen kieli, ja se ei ole helppo, mutta jos käytät hyvää kirjaa, se voi auttaa sinua paljon. Asutko talossa suomen perheen kanssa? Tiedätkö missä kaupungissa asut? Milloin lähdet? Ajattelen, että tulet rakastunut maahan ja kieliin, koska ovat hyvin kauniit ja kiinnostavat. Näkemiin! Serkkusi Philip Edited by ellasevia on 24 February 2012 at 6:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5466 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 20 of 76 24 February 2012 at 6:45am | IP Logged |
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Hi Philip. My first post on your new log too. I don't know whether to be pleased or sad that Georgian has
become your go-to language for psychological relief, but it's nice to know you're still keeping a hand in even if only during your more difficult days. I would never wish any more emotional pain on you, especially the kind that rears its ugly head on Valentine's Day, but I hope you keep ploughing on with Georgian from time to time. I'm really looking forward to reading about the amazing year you're going to have in 2012! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 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 21 of 76 11 March 2012 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
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Weeks 8-10: February 19 – March 10
Total Study Time This Period: 59.1 hours Total Study Time in 2012: 146.67 hours Another three weeks have passed and it’s time for an update. The past three weeks have been wonderful for my studies – I broke 100 total hours in 2012 (and have almost reached 150), studied about 20 hours each week, and brought my daily average for the year above two hours per day. Over the past three weeks I focused mainly on Finnish, Croatian, and Japanese. I continued my intense Finnish study up until the end of February, at which time my knowledge of Finnish was put to the test. Once the Finnish challenge was over, I returned to concentrating my efforts on Croatian and Japanese, which are my highest priorities at the moment. Once again I’ve made some changes to my profile to reflect which languages I’m actually studying. It has become increasingly obvious that I can’t handle nine different languages in the “studies” section at once, so I’ve temporarily discontinued the study of four of those (Esperanto, Swedish, Swahili, and Persian) until I have more time. Besides, I really hadn’t been doing much for those languages lately anyway, so I was really only studying them in theory. I do intend to return to them as soon as possible; for example, I plan on studying Persian as my target language for the 6WC in May. 
Hrvatski
This Period: 12.11 hours 2012 Total: 17.55 hours Besides reviewing vocabulary, I didn’t actually do any Croatian study up until the past week. At that point I decided to do an intensive review of everything I had learned so far before continuing onward with my studies. I then completed lesson 5 of Spoken World Croatian and lessons 8-9 of Teach Yourself Croatian. In addition to that, I began reading Mali Princ (Le Petit Prince) last night. It was fairly slow-going and I had to make extensive use a dictionary and my copy of the book in French, but I managed to finish the first chapter nonetheless. I’ll call that a success for now. :) suomi
This Period: 13.5 hours 2012 Total: 23.9 hours I ended the Finnish challenge with a strong finish, and completed the 45-hour goal when the time from last summer was included. I finished up through lesson 63 of Assimil and intend to continue working through it, but I think I need a short break from Finnish for the time being. The written test that we were given was both easier and harder than I expected; there were some parts which were surprisingly simple and others which were quite challenging. Still, I received the top score out of the participants. However, I fully believe that if the others had been able to spend the same amount of time (they modified the goal to 35 hours a few days before the end of the challenge), they would have performed equally well. The oral test is still forthcoming and I need to do a bit of review before doing it, since I haven’t studied any Finnish since the end of the challenge.  Italiano
This Period: 2.05 hours 2012 Total: 4.97 hours Sadly, since I last wrote about my Italian aspirations, I’ve learned that it won’t be possible for me to take the AP Italian exam. My school doesn’t offer it, and the nearest testing location would be over and hour away, which is too inconvenient for something that isn’t actually necessary. However, I still have a burst of motivation for reviving my Italian and will continue to do so. Lately I’ve been enjoying the lovely resources that are ItalianPod101’s advanced audio blog series, which consist of short snippets about Italian history and culture, all in Italian. It’s the perfect combination of convenience, interesting topics, and language study! 日本語
This Period: 18.65 hours 2012 Total: 11.34 hours I’ve been doing a lot more active work on my Japanese in the past couple weeks. In addition to the kanji practice packets which my teacher has been giving us and which are surprisingly helpful, I’ve also started doing a lot more listening practice with (semi-)native materials. In class, we were doing some practice listening exercises for the AP Japanese exam and their level of difficulty was insane – most of the sections you hear only once, you get to see the questions only after you’ve listened, and they inevitably ask about the miniscule details that you either don’t understand or deem unimportant to remember. In an effort to improve my listening comprehension skills and Japanese in general, I’ve started a regimen of doing at least a little listening practice with the advanced level of JapanesePod101 every day. Whereas with the Italian I can listen and understand almost everything and only need to look up a couple words, for Japanese I listen once or twice without the text, then listen and read along with the transcript. I then dissect each sentence individually and look up any unknown words (of which there are plenty), and finally listen to the entire thing once more without the transcript to make sure that I understand it all. It seems to be working – I’m slowly getting better at understanding rapid native speech! OTHER Two weeks from today, I’m leaving for about a week in Hawaii, so it will be a few weeks until I update this log again. Since my family would kill me if I’m studying the whole time we’re there, I instead plan to spend my time reading in foreign languages, which is something which I don’t usually make enough time for at home. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some progress in the 2-3 (or more?) foreign books that I have which are currently half-read. @TixhiiDon: You should be pleased that I use Georgian to comfort myself! Other people drown their sorrows in alcohol or drugs, but me? Nah, I just smother them in ejective consonants and agglutinative grammar. So much cooler. Edited by ellasevia on 11 March 2012 at 10:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 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 22 of 76 20 March 2012 at 4:13am | IP Logged |
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On a whim, I decided to write a short text in Croatian. I'd be grateful for any corrections! (For context, I just learned how to form the future tense.) Moja obitelj je grčkog podrijetla -- nismo Hrvati. Međutim, govorim malo hrvatski zato što živjet ću u Hrvatskoj sljedeće godine. Mislim da ću biti u Zagrebu, koji je prestonica Hrvatske, ali je isto moguće da ću biti u gradiću u okolini Zagreba, ili na jadranskoj obali. Još ne znam. Najviše mojih prijatelja će ići na faks, no ja idem u novu državu i naučit ću novi jezik! Imam dva prijatelja (blizanci su), koji također će ići u inozemnu državu. Jedan ide u Argentinu a drugi ide u Tajvan. Odlazimo u kolovozu -- kakva pustolovina! Edited by ellasevia on 20 March 2012 at 4:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4904 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French | Message 23 of 76 22 March 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged |
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Great idea about the podcasts. I've never even thought to look for free ones just to
listen to for extra exposure. Have you found any in Croatian? I'm also trying to get to a working level of Croatian before the end of June before I visit for two weeks. Also using TY, the edition with the figs on the cover with Rudolf, Jasna, Mark, and Sandra. Keep up the good work - it's good to see someone being motivated in Croatian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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