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A Linguistic Odyssey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5982 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 153 of 265 28 January 2010 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Just to add to what I said before, I think I'm going to be doing the intensive transcribing activity I mentioned before for the Advanced Italian MT course too.
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5982 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 154 of 265 02 February 2010 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Happy February! Not. February is one of, if not the, least favorite months for me. (Sorry about the awkwardness of that sentence, I couldn't figure out how to phrase it correctly.) It's just so cold and dismal here. It has officially been one month since the beginning of 2010. What have I accomplished, well, not as much as I would have liked, but enough. I do tend to overestimate my abilities in terms of what I can get done. But it's better to push myself than just sit around being lazy, right?
One of the highlights of this month was learning 310 kanji. That is an incredible feat for me, because it literally took me from June 2009 until January 2010 to learn just 300. And those are the really basic ones too. So now I have learned more than that in only a month. Crazy. Here are the last of those kanji for the end of January, bringing my total up to 610. 権, 観, 羽, 習, 翌, 曜, 濯, 曰, 困, 固, 国, 団, 因, 姻, 園, 回, 壇, 店, 庫, 庭, 庁, 床, 麻, 磨, 心, 忘, 忍, 認, 忌, 志, 誌, 忠, 串, 患, 思, 恩, 応, 意, 想, 息 Other languages got things done too. For Portuguese, I think I did between six or eight lessons from my Ultimate Portuguese book, and the same for my French with Ultimate French. I also did about eight lessons from my new Cortina Method Brazilian Portuguese book, and did some tutoring on Livemocha. I started new Ultimate series books for Italian and Japanese this past month, and both are working great. I like them both and have done six lessons of the Italian one and three from the Japanese one. For Italian, I also reviewed many Livemocha Italian 102 vocabulary lists, and gave away my extra copy of Easy Italian Reader to a friend. Back to Japanese, I also completed most of my Pimsleur Japanese lessons (I only had eight) and feel rather proficient in the material (I already knew most of it, though). I did four lessons of Ultimate German, which means I'm right on schedule with that. I also finished the Foundation MT German course and got through most of the Advanced course (my progress slowed significantly when I decided to start doing the transcriptions). As for Greek, I finally did my Νέα Ελληνικά vocabulary up through lesson fourteen and did one LM lesson for Greek. I also reviewed some of my previous LM Greek 102 vocabulary. Swedish is a bit like Greek in that there was a lot I didn't get done, but also some stuff that I did get done. I had hoped to finish LM Swedish 102, but I still have five more lessons to go (I did five of them this month). My progress with SEGR leaves something to be desired, having only completed one lesson, but those take a long time and I'm busy, so I forgive myself. I also started a new language, if you'll remember: Esperanto. I finished the Free Esperanto Course within a couple days and did four lessons of Teach Yourself Esperanto. I still have to type up some of that vocabulary, though. I feel that I will be at a point where I don't have to study anymore fairly soon. As for this next month, I don't expect as much because I am remembering what is realistic. In case I haven't mentioned this already, I have switched officially from my weekly goal plan to a monthly goal plan. I generally stick to my language-day-of-the-week schedule talked about so much previously in this log, but if I really want to do some German on a Sunday, I won't suppress my motivation. Anyways, I am going to set many of the same goals to be repeated (e.g., four lessons of Ultimate Italian), but some goals will be shortened or eliminated for sake of time, especially since February is a shortened month. For kanji, I plan to be up through #890 by the end of the month. That is frankly very startling--it's nearly 1000! Now, to some other business. I found this article recently explaining how many words you need to speak a language to a given level. I think it looks fairly accurate, and would probably place my idea of basic fluency probably between the "midi" level and the next level up. This actually means that I would not need to know as many words as I had imagined for this level. The 8,000 seems about right for a fairly advanced fluency. All this talk of vocabulary really made me want to know how many words I know in my respective languages accurately. I had heard about the program Anki before, but had never really tried it. I recently heard it mentioned a couple times, so I decided to check it out. After a while of tinkering around, I finally figured out how it worked and it looks like a great tool and supplement to my BYKI. I like how it is a long-term memorizing software, meaning that if continuously reviews the material over time. Now, how am I going to be using Anki? Well, I shall continue using BYKI in my normal, very organized fashion, but will use Anki as a rather differently-used supplement. BYKI will be used to organize the material and to learn it initially (unless the material consists of just random words, discussed later), while the vocabulary will then be entered into Anki and be reviewed and retained over time. For Anki, I will have only ONE list of words per language. In my case, I have nine lists right now: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Greek, and Japanese. In relation to Japanese, I am putting ALL the words into Anki with the correct writing, even if I don't yet know the kanji used there (as opposed to BYKI where I only use the kanji in the lists if I have learned all of them used in the word--I shall go back later after I know all of the kanji and convert the lists). So, I have been working hard on entering lots and lots of words into Anki since Saturday. Since then, I have entered 1,818 'facts' into the program for all the languages combined. I shall make a note of these figures at the end of each main post. It seems a good way to track vocabulary (although not all of it is known). Today I did a lesson from Ultimate Portuguese, which means there is only one left before I finish the book. I also entered some of the thematic vocabulary lists from my frequency dictionary into BYKI and Anki. Today I also reviewed my kanji and during my French class, I wrote a page and a half of random French vocabulary that I found in my dictionary (as is my custom while I'm bored in that class). I have now entered all of this random vocabulary into Anki, because before then I wasn't sure how to organize it in BYKI. In cases like this (also for the words of the day I receive by email), I will just put the words into Anki, but not BYKI. Well, I can't think of much more to say. If I do think of some more I'll just write a new post; this one is long enough. I will just take a note of my Anki statistics and then go learn my ten kanji for the day. Oh, and in case I didn't already say this, when I make a note of the Anki statistics, it is by 'facts' (L1-->L2 and L2-->L1 cards counted as one unit as opposed to two), not by 'cards.' ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 170 FRENCH: 463 GERMAN: 0 GREEK: 172 ITALIAN: 308 JAPANESE: 142 PORTUGUESE: 239 SPANISH: 134 SWEDISH: 190 TOTAL: 1818 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6543 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 155 of 265 02 February 2010 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have used the 'dictionary method' to count my passive words, see this page.
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5982 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 156 of 265 03 February 2010 at 6:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I am back. I am thinking that February might turn out to be a good month after all. I seem to be getting lots done, but I might be deceiving myself.
Here are the kanji I have learned since I last posted. These bring my total up to 630: 憩, 恵, 恐, 惑, 感, 憂, 寡, 忙, 悦, 恒, 悼, 悟, 怖, 慌, 悔, 憎, 慣, 愉, 惰, 慎 I also did some more Pimsleur Japanese today, which is the most exciting thing ever, and you might know from experience. If I weren't incredibly bored just walking up to the bowling center or waiting at the bus stop, I would not particularly want to do it... It's just so dry, it takes so long, and you learn very little per lesson. Oh well. I'm on the last lesson that I have. It is official--between some effort last night and today I have now finished both Ultimate French and Ultimate Portuguese! This calls for a celebration, especially since lesson 40 in each of the books was lengthy and had a bunch of material. The French one had some nice excerpts of French poetry and a very brief explanation of the literary passé simple tense, which I can recognize and can partially construct myself. It had lots of nice poetic vocabulary, as well as a bunch of vocabulary that was strangely reminiscent of the French Revolution...être guillotiné, anybody? The lesson 40 for Portuguese was also nice and had a cool "Fun With Portuguese" section with some funny short stories in that language. It had a big vocabulary list, though, with something like 84 words! The French vocabulary list also had a lot, but only like 61... I have still been working on my Anki, although I haven't had time to enter much new vocabulary other than for French, Portuguese, and Spanish (and a tiny bit of Italian). German is still empty. Sadness. That should be fixed by Thursday at the latest. Here are my statistics: ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 170 FRENCH: 678 GERMAN: 0 GREEK: 172 ITALIAN: 330 JAPANESE: 142 PORTUGUESE: 381 SPANISH: 183 SWEDISH: 190 TOTAL: 2246 Today I studied 383 cards in 23 minutes... In a bit, I shall go upstairs to my room and read through my Italian lesson(s) and make the vocabulary list(s) for tomorrow. Good night! P.S. Iversen, I like your vocabulary counting method, but I don't have the time for it at the moment. I might be able to do something like that in my French class while I'm writing down that random vocabulary, but it would require more concentration, so I might have to wait until Spring Break or this summer to really do a thorough job with it. Until then, I will continue with Anki, which I really like. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5982 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 157 of 265 08 February 2010 at 6:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, I'm back. I have either been to lazy or too busy to post in the past few days--they've gone very quickly!
I'll start off with kanji and get it over with. I am still on schedule for my ten kanji per day plan. Today's ten brought me up to #680. Here are the ones that I have learned since I last posted: 憾, 憶, 慕, 添, 必, 泌, 手, 看, 摩, 我 義, 議, 犠, 抹, 抱, 搭, 抄, 抗, 批, 招 拓, 拍, 打, 拘, 捨, 拐, 摘, 挑, 指, 持 括, 揮, 推, 揚, 提, 損, 拾, 担, 拠, 描 操, 接, 掲, 掛, 研, 戒, 械, 鼻, 刑, 型 On Wednesday I did a bunch of Italian. Not a huge amount, but enough to be fairly satisfying. I planned out my vocabulary list the night before and learned it the next morning. My mother made me get up later that morning because I was a bit sick, so I didn't quite finish. I ended up taking my Italian book to school and doing my second lesson during my French class. It was really amusing because I am quite literally front and center in the classroom and she stand right in front of my desk--yet she didn't notice. And the book is lime green. She's fairly oblivious, if you haven't gathered that. She thought I was paying attention the whole time (I was sort-of half listening). In addition to this, I also have been continuing to skim through my mini dictionary during that class while half listening (it seems to help me be more attentive, actually) to her random lectures (she is so easily distracted...on Thursday, I believe, we covered everything from opera, to sensuality vs. sexuality, to Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa, and such, and did about five minutes of what we were supposed to have been working on. In Spanish, I collected a bit of vocabulary also, but not nearly as much as in French. On Thursday I did my German lesson. It was on dentistry vocabulary, so now I know how to say everything from 'gums' (das Zahnfleisch) to root canal (die Wurzelbehandlung). It's very exciting, and I am very happy to have found Anki so that I don't forget it all! I also typed up some more (I believe seven) Ultimate German lists into Anki, and did one Pimsleur lesson (excruciatingly boring) while on the bus. I spent my morning time on Friday typing up lists of Greek into Anki. I typed in a bunch of them and it's very exciting. After school I went and did one Greek lesson from the Νέα Ελληνικά book. After dinner, I felt right asleep for the rest of the evening until my grandfather took me home. That's how hard I was working all week. On Saturday I entered some more vocabulary lists into BYKI/Anki and learned the Νέα Ελληνικά vocabulary. I also finally did another Odysseas lesson for the first time since probably September, and luckily there was no such time reference, at least in the way I had feared. I did one more Ultimate Japanese that had the theme of sumo wrestling. A bit odd, if you ask me, especially for the fourth lesson, but that's fine. I learned words like つよい ("tsuyoi," strong), りきし ("rikishi," wrestler), and からだ ("karada," body). Fun. I also got a chance to speak with my grandfather's Japanese friend while we were at an Indian restaurant. She was very impressed, and scolded my grandfather (a different one, he is a retired linguistics professor), who is also beginning to learn Japanese, for not studying as much as I do. Earlier this week I also finished Japanese Pimsleur, thank goodness. That program is literally one of the most boring things ever, but I suppose it's better than just sitting on the bus doing nothing. I am very happy with how much Swedish I got done this weekend. I was able to type up ALL of my Swedish vocabulary lists into Anki, which raised my total words in Anki a lot. I also managed to do another SEGR. Those always seem really easy and straightforward at first, but they're really cumbersome and take forever. I was excited because the vocabulary list for this lesson looked rather small, so I thought it wouldn't take long (it was only 55 words in the "vocabulary" section), but it ended up being 79 words because of tons of example words and such. Sigh. As is custom, I shall now post my translations, which are likely ridden with errors. I thought this was a pretty clever way for the texts to work in this lesson; the beginning text was a detailed account of a writer's experience with a bull on this Swedish island, and the one I translated into Swedish was a shorter text of the same story from the perspective of the farmer that the writer and his family was staying with. :) SWEDISH TO English Nu för tiden är det lätt att komma ut till Kymmendö från Stockholm, men för hundra år sedan tog det en hel dag. Det var ganska besvärligt att resa ut till den ensliga ön i skärgården. Författaren August Strindberg och hans familj var ofta sommargäster hos bönderna och fiskarna på Kymmendö. Där var han långt ifrån civilisationen och hade den fridfulla naturen omkring sig. Karin, ett av deras barn, har berättat en spännande historia om sina föräldrars äventyr med en tjur på ön. — En vacker sommardag tog våra föräldrar en promenad. Min far hade sitt valthorn hängande över axeln. När de gick över en äng, kom plötsligt en arg tjur störtande mot dem. Strinberg tänkte snabbt: ‘Vi måste rädda livet’, och han uppmanade Siri, mon mor, att springa mot en gärdsgård. Själv klättrade han snabbt upp i ett träd. Tjuren sprang efter hans hustru och för att kalla honom tillbaka blåste August häftigt i sitt horn. Det lät som en bölande ko. Siri såg hur hennes man svängde av och an i den tunga trädkronan, August bölande uppifrån och tjuren nerifrån. På så sätt räddade Strindberg sin hustru från den arga tjuren. Nowadays it is easy to come out to Kymmendö from Stockholm, but a hundred years ago it took a whole day. It was rather troublesome to travel out to the secluded island in the archipelago. The writer August Strindberg and his family were often summer guests at the houses of farmers and fishermen on Kymmendö. There he was far from civilization and had peaceful nature around him. Karin, one of their children, talked about an exciting story of her parents’ adventure with a bull on the island. “A beautiful summer’s day my parents went for a walk. My father had his French horn hanging over his shoulder. When they were walking through a meadow, suddenly an angry bull came rushing towards them. Strindberg thought quickly: ‘We must save our lives’, and he told Siri, my mother, to run towards a fence. He himself quickly climbed up a tree. The bull ran after his wife and in order to call him back, August blew fiercely on his horn. It sounded like a bellowing cow. Siri saw how her husband swinging back and forth in the heavy treetops, August bellowing from above and the bull from below. In this way, Strindberg saved his wife from the angry bull. ENGLISH TO SWEDISH A farmer and his wife lived with their four small children, two daughters and two sons, in a little cottage on a lonely island in the skerries. It was so peaceful there that people who lived in big towns liked to live there in the summer. The farm had five geese, three cows and a big bull. One of his summer guests once had an exciting adventure with the bull. One fine day when the farmer and his wife were walking across the meadow they suddenly saw their bull come rushing towards a tree. A man was climbing up the tree blowing his horn. The man’s wife and his children were jumping over the fence. The farmer called his bull back and in this way he saved his guests from the angry animal. En bonde och sin hustru bodde med deras fyra små barn, två döttrar och två söner, i en liten strumpa på en enslig ö på skärgården. Det var så fridfullt att folk som bodde i stora städer bodde där gärna på sommaren. Gården hade gäss, tre kor och en stor tjur. En av hans sommargäster hade ett spännande äventyr med tjuren. En fin dag när bonden och sin hustru promenerade på ängen såg de plötsligt sin tjur störtande mot ett träd. En man klättrade upp i trädet blåsende sin horn. Mans hustru och sina barn hoppade över gärdsgården. Bonden kallade sin tjur tillbaka och på så sätt räddade han sina gäster från det arga djuret. -- Also, I typed up several more Esperanto vocabulary lists into Anki. Not actual study, though. I might get some in tomorrow, though. And finally, my Anki totals. ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 468 FRENCH: 765 GERMAN: 364 GREEK: 641 ITALIAN: 575 JAPANESE: 218 PORTUGUESE: 382 SPANISH: 208 SWEDISH: 868 TOTAL: 4489 EDIT: Noticed a typo in my Swedish. Edited by ellasevia on 08 February 2010 at 2:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5982 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 158 of 265 09 February 2010 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Today was not quite as productive as I would have liked. Those Anki and kanji repetitions are really starting to rack up and take more and more of my time in the morning. Fortunately today was Portuguese/Esperanto/Spanish/whatever day, so it wasn't a really important loss.
I learned the following kanji during my French class. I'm proud to say that I was successfully able to create my own stories for most of them. :) 才, 財, 材, 存, 在, 乃, 携, 及, 吸, 扱 I typed up all of my Cortina Method Brazilian Portuguese (CMBP) lists so far into Anki. That and my normal Anki repetitions were the extent of my Portuguese today. I didn't even speak any Portuguese with my friend at school, because he was too busy panicking and copying out Chinese text during math for our AP World History class. (It wasn't even that hard, BTW, Nick.) That reminds me that I forgot to mention that this weekend for my APWH project, I did the Korean alphabet (despite my up-until-now dislike of Korean) and ended up copying out 10 cantos from the Yongbieocheonga (one of the first literary texts to show a reliance more on hangul instead of on hanja) by hand. Then I sprinkled water on the paper, rubbed it with cinnamon and coffee (it smells really good now) and then crumpled it up to make it look old. It was really easy but it looks like it took a lot of effort. Of course, I'm practiced by now at writing out East Asian characters and I knew a bunch of the hanja used in the text already from my kanji studies. This project somehow had a weird psychological affect on me, that I suddenly don't dislike Korean anymore. I don't particularly like it, but would consider it a language I might want to learn at some time (see me revised hit list). Yep, that and Hungarian (after reading Katie's Hungarian Log). Hm... What was I saying? Oh yes. Stuff I did today. I did some Spanish homework... Oh! I also put in a bunch of 'new' words into Anki (I knew 99.9% of the words, I just want to have all of the words I know in it--that will take a while). Something like 300 words... Oh, and last night I was analyzing a quote from Macbeth for my language arts class and the word "prate" came up. I knew what it meant originally from my very brief Dutch studies (praten = to speak in Dutch) in late September, and then because I have now learned (since then) that prata meants to chat or to talk in Swedish. And then today my language arts teacher handed out our vocabulary sheets (in English) that we get every other week, and guess what word was on it? Prate! It was so cool! I love things like that. Well, I am in fact off to do my vocabulary homework now and to study for a geometry test. Good night! ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 468 FRENCH: 765 GERMAN: 364 GREEK: 641 ITALIAN: 575 JAPANESE: 219 PORTUGUESE: 467 SPANISH: 544 SWEDISH: 868 TOTAL: 4911 I studied 885 cards in 1 hour today. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5308 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 159 of 265 09 February 2010 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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You might also recognize Prate from it's modern English equivalent prattle.
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5982 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 160 of 265 09 February 2010 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I suppose... Even so, I prefer to think that I learned the English word from knowing the Dutch and Swedish equivalents. Edited by ellasevia on 11 March 2010 at 6:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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