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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 49 of 69 22 March 2014 at 8:19pm | IP Logged |
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Thai: SBS sometimes has interviews with Thais in Australia on mundane topics. I often like those podcasts because they give me the opportunity to listen to a more vernacular register. Today I sat down to transcribe a few filler (and other) phrases from such an interview, entitled ‘Brewing a cup of success as a barista’. I know that there are only a few people on HTLAL who know Thai, and even fewer who would read my log, but if you are one of them, don’t hesitate to chime in.
The interviewer started out with the phrase ก็ได้ข่าวทราบมาว่า … (I’ve heard that …). I guess instead of ทราบ one could also use รู็ to make it sound more colloquial. The interviewer preceded a few questions with ถามนิดหนึ่ง(คับ)ว่า, for instance ‘ถามนิดหนึ่งว่า barista เนี่ยคับ รายได้เนี่ย ดีไหมเอ่ย’. The ‘นิดหนึ่ง’ sounds a bit deferential to my ears, but I might be mistaken - it’s certainly polite and friendly. On the other hand, I find the choice of เอ่ย as a question particle to be very colloquial. I almost never hear this word between adults and associate it with adults speaking to kids, like สีอะไรเอ่ย or สัตว์อะไรเอ่ย in riddles or kindergarten play. Maybe it makes the question (about the earnings potential of a barista) more friendly? Very often I would hear แบบว่า as a filler word, for instance ‘barista ส่วนใหญ่จะต้องแบบว่า ทำหน้าที่อื่นด้วย อย่างเช่น …’ or ‘เราเป็นคนแบบว่า ขยัน …’ . I don’t use แบบว่า but I think I should, it sounds very natural and Thai. ‘I would like to ask’, ผมอยากถามว่า, is a useful and polite phrase before asking a question. When asked for a recommendation, the interviewee used the phrase ถ้าแนะนำจริงๆ เลยนะคับ ก็คือ (gender-adapted), which seems like a super-useful phrase to lead over to the content of the recommendation. Very often the interviewee used นี่คือว่า (‘that means’) as a filler, or to add some details; this is yet another phrase I should try to incorporate into my repertoire. To summarize, the interviewer used ‘อ๊ะ สรุปว่า ควรจะ …’, and to ask his last question ‘ถามนิดหนึ่ง ปิดท้ายว่า …’. To wrap up the interview and thank the interviewee, he used ‘โอเคคับ ขอบคุณคุณหลินมาก นะคับ สำหรับการให้สัมภาษณ์ เราในวันนี้นะคับ’. EDIT: Those spaces the HTLAL software inserts suck, as always. And I forgot to write about loosing FLTR to an OS update on my Mac, but now it's too late. Polish rocks. I’m still reading like crazy and having a great time. It’s such a pleasure to read in a foreign language which is as fresh as Polish is to me after a decade of neglect. I’m slowly but surely expanding my vocabulary and am now pretty sure that I will graduate to adult books this year. I’m particularly looking forward to reading the five books I bought in Warsaw recently, briefly described here. One thing I’ve noticed is that as I recognize more and more words, getting used to that nice feeling of having near-full comprehension, I sometimes encounter clusters of unfamiliar ones bringing me back to down earth. There are whole semantic fields I know almost no members of, like tools or materials. Only when words of those fields come in isolation and play a certain role in the story am I able to pick them up; if there are too many of them at once, I’m lost and often choose not to bother. Edited by Bakunin on 22 March 2014 at 8:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 50 of 69 03 April 2014 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
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Just a quick update on Polish... I’m in the middle of the ‘Three Investigators’ series, a cool detective series for kids and teenagers. The books are pretty fast-paced and often keep me reading to see what will happen next. I like action and suspense, and the Three Investigators have a lot of it.
Three months have passed since I started to do some serious extensive reading in Polish. I’ve read a pretty stable 300k words per month and will reach my first million words later this month. My reading speed is hovering around 120 words per minute (wpm) if I just read, but since I like to sound out and re-read new or newly understood words or phrases, my effective reading speed is more like 100 wpm. That equates to about 100 minutes per day. There are days where I don’t read at all, or only ten minutes, and other days, where I sit down for many hours. The benefits have been enormous; my passive vocabulary has increased massively, and the spill-over to improved listening comprehension has been noticeable as well. My coverage ratio has recently been a stable 98%, worlds apart from the erratic ratios in the beginning. Gain (measured as improvement in coverage ratio after having finished the book) is at 0.7% overall and very stable over time. I obviously have still a long way to go, but reading serious Polish books is within reach this year, if I just keep going. Generally, I don’t look up unknown words. I just ignore words I don’t understand. Many words will become clear without me doing anything in particular - just through repeated exposure. And the others, well, they can wait. Edited by Bakunin on 03 April 2014 at 9:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6106 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 51 of 69 03 April 2014 at 11:35pm | IP Logged |
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Impressive stuff Bakunin!
Finding books at the right level seems to be very important. I've got lots of serious books, but not enough suitable ones. Keep it going! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 52 of 69 05 April 2014 at 8:35am | IP Logged |
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I’ll be going to Bangkok for a few days in May, and in preparation for this trip I’ve started to work on my active Thai skills. I had an italki session with my old tutor yesterday, and I’ve scheduled some more sessions with her and someone else. I’ve also written a longish entry on lang-8. Due to certain changes in my social network, I’ve had fewer opportunities to speak Thai in recent months compared to last year. I still chat on a pretty regular basis and write the occasional email, but my speaking skills have deteriorated quite a bit. I was searching for words during my tutoring session yesterday, and I didn’t feel I could express myself as easily as I used to.
The letter I’ve written on lang-8 was pretty red as well, but on closer inspection it didn’t look so bad anymore. I’ve made a few errors here and there, forgot to set a plural marker like 20 times, had a few typos, some word order problems etc. The one issue which stood out, however, was that I seem to consistently make mistakes when I tell stories, especially with regards to the use of certain function words. I’ve made a resolution today to put all other activities on hold and instead write as often as possible on lang-8 in the coming weeks to practice talking about events in the past. Over time it must be possible to weed out the most annoying errors and accumulate a few useful set phrases. One other thing I’ve realized about taking tutoring lessons on italki is that I don’t like full 60 minute lessons. There’s too much stuff I need to read or watch before the session (my tutor usually sends me media to have topics to discuss), and one hour is really long after an exhausting day of work. From now on, I will only do 30 minute sessions, but more of them. No staring at the screen anymore either, I’ll just use my phone and earplugs, hide the phone in my pocket and walk around while talking. Edited by Bakunin on 05 April 2014 at 1:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 53 of 69 10 April 2014 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
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A quick update on Thai: I’ve had three or so tutoring sessions in the meantime, all 30 minutes in length, - and I love the shorter format! I stopped using the screen at all, I’m now walking around with the phone in my pocket. No screen, no note-taking, it’s all about casual chit-chat this time. I’ve scheduled three or four more sessions during the next ten days, and will probably continue with tutoring sessions until I fly to Thailand in May. I’ve already noticed that my speaking is getting better (or rather coming back), a typical experience after a longer hiatus, I guess.
In parallel, I’ve started writing one entry per day on lang-8. I’ve reduced working with schoolbooks to almost zero and use the free time to write. So far I really like the change, it’s good to shake up my routine from time to time. I’ve written on a variety of topics like punk rock in Samarkand*, my parents’ cat, a suicide case at work, my job, to keep things interesting both for me and the kind people who correct my entries, and lure them into writing comments (more practice for me!). Lots of interest in cats, and little in punk rock, Samarkand or suicide which was to be expected. I also try to keep up with correcting other learners’ journals, lang-8 is a give and take. Writing is very useful: it "activates" vocabulary and alerts me to gaps and holes. I still make many mistakes, but I’m now at a point where I can sit down and write about "any" topic with some ease. *I had the incredible fortune of being able to attend a concert of Die Toten Hosen, a German punk band I loved as a teenager, in Samarkand. It was an amazing experience for me, but few people seem to be able to relate :) Edited by Bakunin on 10 April 2014 at 8:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 54 of 69 12 April 2014 at 10:48pm | IP Logged |
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I’ve just hit one million words read in Polish this year! In terms of statistics, I’ve got nothing to add to the summary in message 50, though.
Outlook: There are seven more Three Investigator books waiting for me, then three Harry Potters and three other fantasy books for young readers; there’s also another box of Polish books mostly for young readers somewhere waiting to be opened, but I might skip many of those in case I find that I’ve grown up. I’m looking forward to reading the books I’ve just mentioned but I’m particularly looking forward to reading the five or so adult books I bought not long ago in Warsaw, mostly travel literature and essays. The Three Investigators are fine for the moment, but essays about travels through Moldova, Polska B or around the Black Sea is what I really want to read. But I can wait (i.e., read something else) another six months or even a year if that’s what it takes to make those books mentioned a pleasurable experience and not a slog or struggle. I won’t be able to sustain the current pace over the remaining 8 months: I’ve taken on a third focus language, Turkish, and, more importantly, it’s again warm outside and I want to go biking and traveling. Getting in another million words is a reasonable goal, but not two or more as my current pace suggests. I’ve been thinking about doing what I’m currently doing with Thai (daily writing on lang-8, frequent speaking practice) with Polish for a few weeks later this year, but let’s see. I also will need to organize another trip to Poland to stack up on books lest I run out of stuff to read. I’d like to read certain books by Stasiuk and Tokarczuk, and I would like to find a good series of romans policiers, maybe in translation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5567 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 55 of 69 13 April 2014 at 9:55am | IP Logged |
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I'm very impressed with your progress and the incredible feat you've achieved after only 3 and a bit months..
1000000 words of Polish! You did learn some Polish grammar/do some course books at the beginning of your studies yes? Like you I love my books and reading, which is a big reason why I can't wait to start again with my Polish sometime later this year. Are you familiar with the works of Ryszard Kapuściński? I've read a few of his books in English and they are wonderfully engaging works, a lot of them to do with journalistic travel, reporting on and making sense other cultures etc., I think you'd rather enjoy them by the sounds of things. I highly recommend Podróże z Herodotem (Travels with Herodotus) and Ten Inny (The Other). A lot of his works are actually only available in Polish, which is all the more motivation to get one's Polish up to scratch, and he actually had a very interesting life himself, as you would expect being a journalist and from what I can remember was one of Poland's first/only journalists travelling and reporting on stories/events outside of Poland during the Russian occupation. Hope all is well in Switzerland and all the best with your studies! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 56 of 69 13 April 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged |
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Ah, sure :) For about three years, I took Polish courses at university, getting to a point some would call basic fluency, somewhere in the B’s. It was the quintessential grammar-translation approach with some intensive reading of Polish literature thrown in for good measure. This was a bit more than a decade ago. Then I neglected Polish until around last spring. When I took it up again, I mainly focused on extensive listening and reading. I started my current reading sprint in late December last year. Not exactly sure what inspired me to embark on it, but I bought a stack of level-appropriate children’s books and started reading like crazy; most of that should be documented in this log. Progress has been amazing and my Polish reading and listening feels now quite solid. I would have to work on production if I truly wanted to use the language, and I’m planning to do so later. So, yes, I did study Polish grammar and course books at the beginning of my studies 13 years ago, and some of that knowledge has stayed with me over the years. However, since you’re asking, I have successfully learned Thai without recourse to any grammar, translation or textbooks, and I’ve just started Turkish with a similar approach. You can follow that adventure and judge for yourself :)
Thanks for your recommendation, I appreciate that! I must have read every book by Kapuściński translated into German in my student years. He’s an incredibly sharp observer, and also a fairly adventurous, open-minded person. I really enjoyed his books. I wasn’t aware that most of his work didn’t get translated, so I will for sure pick up a few books I haven’t read on my next visit to Poland. Thanks! I’ve had a look at your log, but you don’t seem to actively study Polish these days, or at least you’re not writing about it. But you seem to be going strong with Dutch and Spanish :) Thanks for stopping by and all the best with your studies, too! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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