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Evita’s Mix of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 121 of 236 09 June 2014 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
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The reading of the German book is going slower than I had planned, I'm only on page 19 now (out of 168). It's not that the book is too difficult, I'm just finding more interesting things to do. But I will make more of an effort.
This weekend was all about Korean. I added more than 30 new cards to my Anki sentence deck (which I had been neglecting lately) and finished watching City Hall. I don't know whether to call this drama good or not but it held my attention enough for me to finish it. This week I will focus on German and French. Next Wednesday I leave for London and Paris. It will be a short trip, just one week, but it's been so long since I went somewhere nice as a tourist, I'm looking forward to it very much. Except the flying part. I hate flying because I'm always afraid that I will die. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 122 of 236 28 June 2014 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm back from my trip. It was pretty exhausting as I was traveling with two 9 year old boys but it was also pretty fun. I'm very much behind on my Anki reviews though. I tried to do them during the trip but I managed only about 100 or so. I think I'll be spending the next week slowly getting back into my routine.
I ended up not using almost any French, except to say "thank you" and similar things. Fortunately all the hotel staff spoke some English. But here's the best part. We took the bus from Stansted Airport to London and the woman sitting next to me was Korean. I couldn't pass up this chance to speak with a real Korean so I gathered my courage and started a conversation. It was fun. Her English wasn't much better than my Korean but we managed to communicate and she was very impressed with my Korean even though my speaking skills are abysmal. At one point I wanted to say something and started the sentence with 근데 and she started laughing a lot because apparently I sounded like a real Korean. But then we arrived in London and went our separate ways. A few days later I was on the Eurostar train to Paris. The boys were sitting next to each other again so I was sitting next to a stranger again. And guess who it was this time? Another Korean girl! I simply couldn't believe my luck. She was younger and not as outgoing as the first girl but she spoke English better and we had a very nice time on the train. I tried to think of things to say in Korean and even managed to ask her something using the correct honorifics. Since I had already been to London and Paris before, these two encounters were one of the highlights of my trip. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 123 of 236 29 June 2014 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Sentence starters are awesome like that. Plus you've watched so many dramas, you probably got the intonation for that word dead on just from hearing it used so often. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 124 of 236 01 July 2014 at 11:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been thinking about my Anki vocabulary deck the past couple of days. My backlog is almost 500 cards and I don't really want to do them. The deck is pretty big now, about 3400 notes, so I always have to review many words even if I don't add anything new. I believe I'm at the stage where I would benefit more from reading and seeing the words in context rather than studying them in isolation but I'm afraid to let my deck go because if I do that's it, I can't come back to it. It would have over 1000 due cards in a few weeks and that's just way too much. But I'm not ready to make this major decision yet so I'll continue to try to do the reviews for now and see how it goes.
Aside from that, my plan for Korean hasn't changed much. My focus will be on grammar. I am still listening to Yoo Inna's podcasts a lot but I don't know how long I'll keep doing that, I'll probably get sick of them at some point. As for reading, that will be from my grammar books and Iyagi lessons. I missed three German classes while I was on vacation and my mind completely forgot about German but yesterday I was yanked back into it. There's this new law in Germany (Gesetz gegen unseriöse Geschäftspraktiken) and we have to modify our software to comply with it and I had to read a very difficult text in German about how this law impacts our system. It was really difficult. I hope my brain will start adjusting back to German after today's class. The class is clearly below my level but it's good hearing the teacher speak German all the time. Besides, I've made it a habit to talk with her for 5-10 minutes after the class while we walk to the tram stop. It's how I force myself to speak some German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 125 of 236 05 July 2014 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was reading Iyagi 62 Studying Foreign Languages in free moments at work and finished it yesterday. I'm also in chapter 3 of the Russian Korean book, and my Anki backlog is down to 400.
I listened to lots of Yoo Inna's podcasts this week, at least an hour every day I think. I figured out a while ago that the different segments in the second part of the show repeat every week on the same day. I don't understand enough yet to clearly identify the purpose of each segment but I think I'm getting there (very slowly). One is some kind of 선물 가게 and another one is something about children (judging by the intro), but the one I like the best is on Tuesdays. I think it's called "당신의 이유" but I can't figure out what it means and what it's about. "Your Reason"? Anyway, I like the intro where they do the role play because sometimes I can actually understand what it's about, and I also like the guest guys. I think they are the same guys every week but I'm not sure. Mostly I don't listen to the podcast very attentively because I'm doing something else at the same time but when I do I try to catch the last digits of the listeners' phone numbers that Yoo Inna says out loud. It's difficult, I have to pay close attention to do that but it will surely get easier with more practice. I'm watching dramas as well. I finished Golden Cross (it was crazy and intense but the ending could have been better), still watching Wonderful Season and You're All Surrounded. Dropped A New Leaf already before my trip. WS is a quality drama, I've even gone back to rewatch some parts. I especially love the twin kids, they are very cute and so is their accent. I recently also picked up Glorious Day. It's nothing special but cute enough when I feel like watching something. But I have to confess that I've started using the fast forward button a bit for parts that don't interest me. It took me two years and some 35-40 dramas to arrive at this point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 126 of 236 07 July 2014 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I was reading kuji's log and I found this article about mistakes and bad habits. I was a bit stunned when I read it because it describes exactly how I have been approaching and learning Korean. Since I have no one to correct my mistakes, I simply don't make them and get lots of input instead. I like it. I even go so far as to not read Tarko's and druckfehler's log posts if they are in Korean because they could contain mistakes which I wouldn't be aware of.
One reason I very much don't want to form bad habits in a foreign language is that I get to listen to them almost daily at work. We have some Russians who speak adequate Latvian but they still make mistakes sometimes and no one corrects them. I don't correct them either partly because I don't feel it would be appropriate and partly because I don't think they care that they make these mistakes. They just speak how they can but I notice those mistakes and I don't like it. And then, of course, there's the way everyone speaks English at some of our meetings. It bothers me when I hear a mistake but I can't do anything about it, I can't be the language police. So I never say anything. It's just a fact of life that most people don't care about speaking any language correctly, even their native one. As I said, I don't want to form bad habits but I may be already doing it in German since I'm forced to write bug descriptions in German and no one checks them. I'll probably show some of them later to my German teacher although I'm not sure even she would know all the software-related Begriffe that I've been using. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 127 of 236 14 July 2014 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I spent a lot of time on languages last week. I had my German lessons on Tuesday and Thursday like always, and I prepared a short text for each of them even though it was not homework. I also listened to three Warum Nicht level 4 lessons. Somehow they seem more boring to me than level 1 was but I will finish it all anyway. I listen to those lessons (and read the notes) at work, not at home. I also listened to a couple of SiM podcasts last week at work. Truth be told, it's very difficult to motivate myself to study German at home. But I guess it's fine as long as I can do something about it at work.
And this is not related to language studying but I'm super happy that Germany won the FIFA World Cup last night. Since Latvia never qualifies for the main tournament, I always root for Germany. It goes back to the time I lived there. As for Korean, my Anki backlog is down to about 250 and I worked through chapter 4 and part of chapter 5 of the Russian Korean textbook. It has a short text or dialogue at the beginning of each lesson, then several grammar points with example sentences and then exercises. There are many exercises and I do them orally in an attempt to improve my spoken skills a bit. On the weekend, I worked on my sentence deck. I added about 40 sentences so that's a lot. I was also looking at my Korean materials and suddenly I realized that I wanted a real textbook, not just electronic textbooks. I would make much faster progress then, I think. I read some good reviews about the Ewha books, I think Tarko also studied from them and liked them. I almost ordered the second level right away but then I thought I should order a book for reading as well while I'm at it but that one wasn't so easy to choose so I didn't order anything yet. (I already know a lot of the grammar points from the second level but the third level is all in Korean so I didn't want to start with that.) Then I started reading blog posts where people described their stay in Korea and it reminded me that I want to go to Korea as well. I definitely should do it next year. Fall sounds like the best time weather-wise and otherwise but it's more than a year away, I don't know if I can wait that long. On the other hand, the longer I wait, the better my Korean will be and the better I can prepare, read up on everything. I'd like to stay there for three weeks, maybe see something outside of Seoul as well... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 128 of 236 16 July 2014 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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You might already know this or maybe not, but there's such a thing called "World Choir Games". It's like the Olympic Games for choirs and it takes place every two years gathering hundreds of choirs from all over the world. This year it takes place here in Riga, right now in fact. I used to sing in a choir myself when I was young so I can certainly appreciate this kind of music. There are some concerts that you have to buy tickets for but some concerts are on stages outside where anyone can come and listen. I found out that a choir from Korea would be performing on one such stage today so I went there to listen to them.
It was the Yonsei University Concert Choir. They sang really well, I must say, and I really enjoyed their 4 or 5 songs. Afterwards I went to them to exchange some words and it turns out they had been touring Austria and the Czech Republic during the first part of July so they even had a booklet printed with information about themselves and the songs they're singing. And they gave one to me! That was so nice of them. In fact, I didn't talk with them a lot but I complimented their singing and they were very gracious and very nice. And the booklet is in two languages - German and Korean - so I may someday attempt to read all of it. It was really great listening to them sing and talking to them afterwards. Their looks of surprise when they heard me say 안녕하새요 (Hello) were a bit comical but I loved them. I can just imagine the fun I'll have in Korea surprising random people with my Korean skills, hehe. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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