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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 81 of 265 11 November 2009 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow... I haven't posted in a long time. Laziness + no time = not good. Sorry about that (to myself and to certain pesky friends who bothered me about it every day at school...no names mentioned...). Anyways, I shall attempt to remember what has been done and such.
10/29 to 11/1 Well, re-reading my last two posts, it was a bit before Halloween, so about two weeks ago. On the topic of the snow-days, the 29th (the day after my last post) had no school either. :) So, I finished up that week without doing much language stuff, as I promised myself. I promptly regretted it last week, because once I lose my momentum, it's hard to regain it [sigh]. But I did go to a Greek lesson (I didn't do my vocabulary, though...yet) with my grandmother and we sped through the first few lessons in our new textbook, which is insanely easy. I also reviewed most of my Swedish vocabulary lists. 11/2 to 11/8 Hm... Last week I started up reviewing and continuing with my studies. I didn't get very much accomplished. This was on account of a sharp increase in the amount of schoolwork + laziness + hard-time-getting-back-into-momentum syndrome. Plus I set my goals too high. So, I did manage to do the following: -Review 10 lessons of Ultimate Portuguese vocabulary + 1 new lesson -Review 10 lessons of Ultimate French vocabulary + 1 new lesson -Do some French class vocabulary (and got a 101% on the test on it) -Finish reviewing all Swedish vocabulary -Greek lesson! -A few new kanji -Learned most of the Arabic alphabet (all except ṣād, ḍād, ṭāʾ, and ẓāʾ and some of the diacritics) So far this week, I have achieved all of my goals. I did a Portuguese lesson yesterday and did a French lessons and another list of French class vocabulary this morning. Yay! I hope to keep up my momentum. I am also going to keep practicing the Arabic script, because when I finally decide to start officially studying (it's marked as "high priority," along with Russian), I want to have completely mastered it. Right now I'm just having difficulties understanding the sound made by the pharyngealized consonants (ṣād, ḍād, ṭāʾ, and ẓāʾ), and that's why I haven't yet learned them. I need to also figure out HOW I was able to learn to read Arabic so quickly... I have been trying to learn katakana for months (not really focusing on it much, though) and not having any success. I already know hiragana, and was able to learn that in a matter of days two years ago, but katakana...I don't know. I think lack of motivation (I really don't like katakana; I think it's ugly) might be part of it. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we don't have school because of Veterans' Day. Hooray. So I shall be working on lots of homework/school projects and languages. I hope. TTFN (that's 'ta-ta for now'!) -Philip 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 82 of 265 14 November 2009 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||
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On Wednesday I did my Spanish project almost all day... Very little time for anything else. It's sad. I overachieve WAAAYY too much. I need a break, though. School is killing me. Today at school, I quite nearly almost had a complete mental breakdown at some points because of being so overwhelmed. I'm so glad that after this next school week it's Thanksgiving Break. 9 days off... Yay.
This morning I was able to get myself up by 5:00 and reviewed seven full German vocabulary lists of about 40-50 words each. It was depressing to see how much I've forgotten. Review is the key, apparently, and I haven't been doing enough of that. I've been considering upgrading my old BYKI to the new 4.0 version...it automatically tells you which lists you SHOULD work on based on your scores and last time reviewing and stuff. But I'm a bit attached to my version (3.6)... I also wanted to mention that about a week ago is the approximate one year anniversary of me beginning to study German. I remember that it was in late October or early November (I'm guessing about November 7th), because I had already been studying for a few weeks when I borrowed my friend's German school textbook over Thanksgiving Break last year... I have updated my status to intermediate (a very LOOOOOW intermediate), and am wondering if I am justified or not... Oh, and as of Wednesday (November 11), I have only one month to meet my Italian goal of basic fluency within a year. The problem is, I don't know whether I will have met it or not. When I set that goal, I had significantly lower standards than I do now; if I were still using those, I would have updated to basic fluency ages ago. However, my standards are higher, and I doubt I'll make my deadline. I think I'll consider it a success because I met my original goals/standards. I probably intend to be at a real basic fluency sometime in early 2010. And Swedish. I think I will need to postpone my goal for basic fluency in that language. I'll move it to a year (September 29th, 2010 (I think)) and see what I have then. If I make it great, if not, I'll keep working. In any case, the important thing is actually reaching that level, not just saying I did just to meet a goal or doing it in a specific amount of time. The date is just a motivation for me, to see if I can do it. Oh, I had a Greek session with my grandmother today. And then we went out to dinner at a loud restaurant and my grandmother bluntly demanded why the music was so loud and why couldn't they turn it down. It was amusing. And then, when we were waiting for my grandfather to come out of the bathroom, my grandmother and I were talking (in English, with the occasional Greek word or phrase thrown in) and a waitress lady walked up to us and asked where we were from, because we had interesting accents. Apparently I had an accent too, because we asked if she meant me and she said yes. My grandmother's native language is Greek and she does have a bit of an accent, but my native language is English, but I wonder if I have a bit of a Greek accent from being around Greeks speaking English to me since I was little. Funny. Or maybe it's just one of those things where when I'm around my grandmother and I've been speaking Greek, I get a temporary foreign accent. I know that I do use some phrases that are a bit unnatural in English but correct in Greek, and people look at me strangely (and wonder whether English is my native language, probably) when I say them. Like "close/open the light" instead of "turn off/on the light." In any case it's cool. :) --Philip EDIT: I finished my project early in my world history class today so I also learned six new kanji using my review website (we were working in the computer lab), www.kanji.koohii.com. Edited by ellasevia on 14 November 2009 at 7:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7378 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 83 of 265 14 November 2009 at 8:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Philip, it's no big deal if you need to scale down a bit your short term linguistic goals. Better learn a couple languages until you are reasonably fluent than try to squeeze too many in and end up not finishing any. You can still go back later to those languages you pause.
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| 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 84 of 265 17 November 2009 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't get really any language stuff done this weekend on account of working on a French project and other homework. But that's over now, so I have one fewer project to worry about.
Instead of making a strict schedule of what to do on what day, I have made a list of linguistic activities that I expect to have completed by November 29th (a two-week window). This gives me the option of doing whichever language I please on whichever day, so long as the activities get done. I think that also having a two-week calender that is slightly more intensive than sets of one-week calendars will work better, since I won't get overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of me and thus I will accomplish more. I'm hoping this makes some sense. So, today, I was up at 3:40 AM and began work on math homework. This is not usual, but found it convenient. I'll probably be dead by Wednesday, though, if I keep that up. We'll see. I did get a Portuguese vocabulary list completed and reviewed several (about ten?) lists of Italian vocabulary from my days of going through Italian 101 on Livemocha. For Portuguese, I had written that I wanted to do two Portuguese lessons from my book. I finished one of those, so if I finish the second one in the next two weeks at some point, I'm on schedule. Yay. Boa noite. --Philip 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 85 of 265 18 November 2009 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't yet done my French vocabulary for today (I have typed it up, though), but when I do, I will post again.
However, I wanted to mention a new smaller-scale vocabulary acquisition technique that I'm beginning now to take advantage of. For a long time now, I have been receiving words of the day in various languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Japanese, Russian, Latin). For Italian and Spanish, I get two words per day because I am subscribed to the Italian.about.com and Spanish.about.com words of the day and also to the ones on Transparent Language. I also get a proverb/saying/quote in Spanish every day from Spanish.about.com, which is translated into English the next day. Anyways, up until quite recently, I had just been sorting out the emails of these words of the day mindlessly, without looking at them at all, just putting them in their respective folders in Outlook Express. What has now changed is that I am now recognizing that if I really focus on just a few words, I can learn them very well and not forget them. I had this realization partially when I concentrated really hard when this Venezuelan guy was teaching me a common word in the Venezuelan dialect of Spanish. It means something like "awesome" and (this is the first time I will have ever written it and seen it written out) is arrecho. I concentrated on just that one word and I still remember it a long time later (well, about two months). So, I now read through my words of the day for the languages that I study and judge to see if I know the word, or if I know it well enough. If not, it stays in my inbox to bother me until I learn it. Usually, I'm keeping words in there for about a day or two before I can really know it, but part of this is just trying to remember what words there were... So, these are some of the words I have learned/reviewed from doing this recently: ITALIAN: scivolare - to slip la rabbia - anger l'augurio - wish lieto - happy l'ispirazione - inspiration GERMAN: durstig - thirsty die Briefmarke - stamp SPANISH: ahuyentar - to scare away resbalar - to slip resbaloso - slippery FRENCH: le sapin - fir tricoter - to knit la cheminée - fireplace PORTUGUESE: o imóvel - property o prédio - building I knew some of these words before, but they were [partially] forgotten, or I may have determined that they just needed a refresher. In any case, it's nice! I have just found a website for Greek words of the day (Greektionary.com), which I hope will be helpful. I also have just signed up on Travlang's word of the day for several languages. It's exciting. The only problem is that for Japanese, it's written in kanji most of the time, so I can't read the word and benefit from it... Oh, and about kanji, I'm back in my momentum with that, learning and reviewing all of my kanji. I'm at number 265 in Heisig's book. It's exciting. --Philip (Hopefully I'll post later about my French, but maybe not.) 2 persons have 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 86 of 265 18 November 2009 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, and I also wanted to mention how stupid I have been lately with Swedish. I've been procrastinating on doing my Swedish lessons (and for that reason I set the goal of four of them for the next two weeks) partially because I couldn't figure out what something in the text (which isn't translated, a good thing usually) meant. I was apparently way too lazy to look it up online or anything...the phrase was ett av (one of) in the context of this sentence: Djurgården är en stor ö och ett av grönområdena i Stockholm. (Djurgården is a big island and one of the green belts in Stockholm.) I kept thinking that ett only meant "a" (it also means "one"), so it was really confusing. It wasn't until I actually tried to read the rest of the paragraph that I understood, in the next usage: Han växte upp på Södermalm, och ett av husen, där han diktade, står fortfarande kvar. (He grew up in Södermalm, and one of the houses, where he wrote poetry, is still left [rough translation]). Anyways, I'm sorta glad I found out this way, because now it'll stick, but I also feel really stupid. :)
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| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 87 of 265 18 November 2009 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I like your email idea. I might start doing that myself, I thought about it a while ago but then it never happened... So thanks for the reminder.
FYI, and you might already know this, grönområdena can be taken apart into grön and områdena (område in sg), and område basically means area, the meaning is not belt-related at all. Just so you don't subtly teach yourself that it's actually saying green belts. Also, Djurgården has a meaning of its own. You'll want to look it up, to my Norwegian eyes it says "the animal farm" but it's possible gård might mean something different in Swedish. Keep up the good work :-) Liz 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 88 of 265 18 November 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, in the previous lesson they had introduced the word område and I already knew that grön meant "green" from elsewhere. However, they listed "greenbelt" as the translation for grönområde, so that's what I used here. But thanks! Oh, and for Djurgården, it simply said "a part of Stockholm" in the previous lesson's vocabulary list, but in that lesson I was also introduced to djur (animal), and I just assumed (too lazy to actually look it up) that it [gården, I didn't even realize that it was definite] meant "garden," because that's what it looked like. I just now looked it up, and you are right, it is "farm," so thanks! Edited by ellasevia on 18 November 2009 at 1:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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