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Ugla soars higher TAC13 Sakura桜 & Romulan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 1 of 156 01 January 2013 at 7:18am | IP Logged |
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Hi!
I’m Brun Ugle (Norwegian for Brown Owl), or as my brother says “Brown Ugly.” He calls me a lot of other things too – Fleas, Granny, etc. My real name, should anyone be interested, is Janice, and I’m fast approaching 40. It’s hard to believe a whole year has gone by and TAC 2012 is over. It was a fantastic year; I made amazing progress in my Japanese and had loads of fun with my teammates. But now it’s time to start a new year and a new TAC, and what would a new TAC be without a new language? Here are my plans for the year, and I only hope I will survive: I will be on these teams with these languages: Team Sakura 桜 : Japanese Team Romulan: Spanish Since these are both large teams and I accidently ended up being leader for both, just keeping up with my teammates is sure to prove challenging. These are my plans/hopes/dreams for 2013 (subject to change without notice): Japanese I’ve gotten to the point where I can sit back and read a simple crime novel with fairly little use of a dictionary, but all my other skill areas are weaker than weak. My plans are: - finish iKnow to increase my vocabulary. I have about 1.5 “cores” left. After that I will try Anki or flashcards to drill new words I come across in books or dramas - finish RTK to increase my knowledge of kanji. After that, use Anki to drill new kanji I find in books. - write at least one maybe two entries on lang-8 each week. This will be very hard. It takes me hours to write a tiny paragraph, but I really need to work on this. - watch loads of dramas and listen to audiobooks and podcasts (assuming my internet connection can handle it) - read more mystery novels about crime-solving cats, and when I run out of those, read something else. (Crime-solving parakeets?) - talk to imaginary friends :-) until I get up the courage (and internet connection) to find and talk to real ones. Japanese will hopefully become my “relax” language during the course of the year. Who would’ve ever thought that?! However, since I can (sort of) relax with a trashy novel in Japanese, it will give me an easy and fairly effortless way to learn when I’m too tired or too lazy to do anything else. (That’s one of the great things about learning new languages. It gives you an excuse to read trashy novels that would be a waste of time in your own language.) I’ll also force myself to learn to relax with silly dramas. I do enjoy watching them sometimes even if I don’t understand anything. The reason I haven’t done more of it is that my internet connection is so bad. Spanish This is my “new” language. It is a very useful language especially in the US (my home country), so I really should know it. I studied a bit in high school, so I’m really a “false-beginner.” I don’t remember anything, but I think once I start, I will begin to remember and will pick it up quickly. I don’t remember it being particularly hard, so I hope it will go easily and smoothly and that I won’t have to work too much. Perhaps by the end of the year, this can be a “relax” language too. My experience in high school was only with reading and grammar and a little bit of writing. Back then listening to and speaking a language you were learning was unheard of. And reading is always the first skill I pick up and the easiest thing for me in any language, so I expect I will be reading before I manage much of anything else. I plan to use FSI and GLOSS which are available online for free and some old high school textbooks I bought once at a used book sale. I may try to find some other materials, but right now I’d prefer not to spend money on them if I can avoid it, so I will probably stick to these. Most of my studies to begin with will most likely be textbook/course-based. However, I’m hoping that my background from high school, the transparency of the language, and the fact that I’m now slightly more skilled at learning languages than I was back then will help me to learn quickly enough that I will at least be able to read fairly easy materials by the end of the year. If I can enjoy trashy novels about mystery-solving cats in Spanish by that time, that would be fantastic. Norwegian My Norwegian is suffering these days. Although I live here, I don’t use it very much. Most of my communication is through this forum, and we use mostly English here. I rarely speak any language since I rarely speak at all. Usually I converse for about an hour a week on average, but if I find a job that will probably increase again. I also haven’t been reading anything of substance, so I need to try reading a real book now and then. Comic books don’t count. I don’t have a TV and never listen to the radio, so listening is also rare. When I think about it, it’s a wonder I know this language at all. English Thanks to this forum, I use this language fairly regularly, however I rarely speak it. I hear it on the rare occasions that I am near a TV, since most things here seem to be in English, but other than that I don’t hear it very often. I used to devour books, but I don’t read much these days. I’ve also noticed from what I write here that my writing has suffered tremendously. I used to have a large vocabulary and write (almost) eloquently, but now my writing has become awkward and I use the same tired words over and over. So for both Norwegian and English, my goals are to read more and write more. I am also considering finding someone to practicing talking to in Norwegian. You’ve probably noticed that my conversational skills are fairly weak in any language, but considering that I used to bark at the other children when I was a child, you could say that I’ve made great strides in the past 30 years. Other I was thinking of starting another language (Russian?) as well, but have decided against it. 2013 is likely to be another very stressful year for me since I currently have no job, so I think I probably shouldn’t make my hobby stressful too by adding another difficult language. Instead, I will dabble. I’ve been having a bit of trouble deciding which language to learn next. Like most people here, my natural answer is, “all of them,” but I do have to narrow it down of practical reasons. So, I will simply try as many as I feel like over the course of the year and hopefully I will figure out which I like the best. I need to be careful though, otherwise dabbling might take over and squeeze out real study, which given my fickle nature is a real danger. If you notice that happening, give me a virtual slap upside the head. Again, I will be taking the freebie route in studying. Edited by Brun Ugle on 01 January 2013 at 7:22am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 156 01 January 2013 at 7:18am | IP Logged |
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
GOALS January result February result March Feb-Mar 6WC GRAMMAR が vs けれど -&- から vs ので が vs を MISC my lang-8 method Edited by Brun Ugle on 01 March 2013 at 9:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 3 of 156 01 January 2013 at 7:18am | IP Logged |
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LINKS
GENERAL My TAC 2012 Log This is my log from last year. Probably not so exciting to read through. But if you want to browse the table of contents, you might see something you want to look at. G.L.O.S.S.Free language lessons from DLI. Multiple languages and levels. FSIFree downloads of old FSI courses where the copyright has run out. JAPANESE Read the Kanji – great for practicing kanji readings. You can add material one JLPT level at a time as you wish. Works like an SRS. N5 is free. You have to pay for higher levels. iKnow - 6000 vocabulary words given in sentences. Has something like an SRS, but the way the words are tested varies. The words and sentences are spoken as well as written. I sometimes shadow them which I think is very helpful. You have to pay to use the site. Reviewing the Kanji – to be used together with the Heisig books. Works as an SRS and saves you from making your own deck. You can also read other people’s stories to get ideas. Rikaichan – add-on for Firefox. Instant dictionary! Just hold your mouse-cursor over any word you don’t know. Works offline too. Just save documents in html format. rikaisama Like Rikaichan, but with the addition of sound. Press F to hear the word pronounced. I think you need the dictionaries from Rikaichan. Sheetz' fab list of audiobooks with transcripts and parallel texts – the list hasn’t been updated for a while, and there are even more things available on some of the sites Sheetz has linked to, so just look around. Mysoju Movies and dramas. Many Asian languages, not just Japanese. GoodDrama More great dramas and movies. Sherlock Holmes audiobook-blog Professional quality readings of Sherlock Holmes stories in Japanese. The stories are done in installments and may be downloaded for free. His reading is excellent!! kikudora Radio plays with highly skilled voice actors and sound effects. The plays are based on classical literature. SPANISH Span¡shD!ct - You can look up words in English or Spanish. You can also find all the conjugations for verbs. It even has a video translation feature which shows someone saying the word first at normal speed, then one syllable at a time. Then she gives a definition/explanation of the word and gives an example in a sentence along with the translation, and finally repeats the word once more. CliffsNotes for both Spanish I & II and French I & II. It gives a basic outline of the grammar and things that would be covered in those classes in high school. OTHER Edited by Brun Ugle on 25 March 2013 at 6:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 4 of 156 01 January 2013 at 7:21am | IP Logged |
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Happy New Year!
Now it is finally time to get started. I’m a little worn out after organizing the TAC, but that should quiet down now and then I will be able to get some other things done. I’ve made my Hoppin’ John, a traditional New Year’s dish containing black eyed peas which are supposed to bring you luck for the whole year. I really need a lot of luck this year, so I intend to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner today. I didn’t eat it last year or the year before and look what happened: depression, psychosis, hospitalization, being on the receiving end of loads of hate and lies, and finally losing my job. Of course, as I wrote in last year’s log, it was all for the best and I’m glad it happened, but even so, a little extra luck never hurt anyone. I didn’t want to start on Spanish at all until the official start of 2013, so now I can finally get started on that. And hopefully I will find a way to balance both Japanese and Spanish, but it may take some trial and error to find out the best system for that. I won’t begin dabbling in other languages until I’ve worked out how to balance Japanese and Spanish. Edited by Brun Ugle on 01 January 2013 at 8:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 5 of 156 01 January 2013 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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I’ve now spent a bit of time with both Japanese and Spanish. For Japanese, I’ve mostly been continuing with iKnow because it’s fun and easy, plus I do learn quite a bit. Also, I want to finish before my subscription runs out. I’ve also been listening to Sherlock Holmes audiobooks. This guy is fabulous! He sounds like a professional and he records translations of Sherlock Holmes stories on his blog. And you can download them for free! I don’t understand so much, but I can tell he has a nice voice and reads well. I’m trying to improve my listening skills and to make up for my lack of work in this area last year. I still can’t watch dramas because the internet isn’t fixed yet, but I downloaded some of these audiobooks a while ago, so I’m listening to them instead.
For Spanish, I’m just doing textbook/course work. I’m using FSI Programmatic and FSI Basic as well as some high school textbooks. I like having textbooks because I like to have something to hold in my hand and I also like the structured presentation of grammar, but they have no audio. FSI Basic looks like it starts out with things like “Buenos días, señor.” Not terribly exciting, but it’s OK, and I’m sure they will get to more interesting dialogues before long. Today I used FSI Programmatic which starts with pronunciation exercises and looks like it will have a lot of them in the first few chapters. Also boring, but I think it’s probably a good idea. In the past, I’ve tended to ignore doing any pronunciation work and just hoped for the best, so it might be interesting to see how much it helps to actually learn it. So today I’ve been learning the all-important difference between “papa” (potato) and “papá” (father). It’s very important to remember that your “papá” is not a “papa.” Unless you are Mr. Potato-Head. Edited by Brun Ugle on 01 January 2013 at 9:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 156 01 January 2013 at 9:56pm | IP Logged |
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Mmm. Sherlock Holmes in Japanese sounds like a great start of the year! And I am sure you will love
Spanish! And you can always go for patata in European Spanish, then there is no danger for confusion :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 7 of 156 01 January 2013 at 10:41pm | IP Logged |
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Happy new year! And congrats on getting chosen team learder for BOTH teams ! :) I guess
taking care of that will be a consequent part of your life this year! And balancing Spanish and Japanese might be difficult too if you get too much into Spanish ;) But if (well, let's say "when") you find that balance, I'm sure you'll enjoy it a lot. Good luck Leader! And 明けまして おめでとう! Y Feliz año nuevo! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4874 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 8 of 156 01 January 2013 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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Godt nytt år, Brun!
Og lykke til med Japansk og Spansk, leitinga etter ny jobb og å holde styr på TAC- kabalen. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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