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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 5991 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 161 of 265 11 February 2010 at 7:01am | IP Logged |
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Wow, ahead of schedule, behind schedule, on schedule, ahead, and behind again. That's what I'm feeling like lately, both for school and language studies. Somehow I keep getting home fairly early (due to my last class of the day, PE, which allows me to leave fairly early), but don't end up doing anything at all until about 7:00. It's really quite sad, but thank goodness that I haven't really had as much homework this semester as I did last.
Well, I'm finally back on schedule with kanji, after not having done it since Monday... That made for a bunch of work today--that's why I'm posting so late (and then I was chatting with a friend for a while). Anyways, I'm now up to #710. 丈, 史, 吏, 更, 硬, 又, 双, 桑, 隻, 護, 獲, 奴, 怒, 友, 抜, 投, 没, 設, 撃, 殻 It's a really silly milestone, but on my binder for World History, I have the words "World History" in several relevant languages, including Japanese. In Japanese, it was written all in kanji, like this: 世界史. At the beginning of the school year, I could only understand the first character (世 = generation, frame 28). Now, with this last batch of characters, I can finally understand all of them (界 = world, frame 251; 史 = history, frame 692). Yesterday was French, and on Monday night I started reading through my Teach Yourself Improve Your French book, which I've had forever. The first lesson is a bit lengthy, with lots of words I feel inclined to write down (even though I can understand the texts almost perfectly without having to learn any words; it's the active words I'm worried about). I was a bit lazy yesterday morning (it's so cold in the morning, plus I get up early and it all makes me just want to cuddle up under an extra blanket on top of the one I'm wearing and my two coats), so I just settled with typing up French vocabulary from Ultimate French into Anki. Then, in French on Monday, we were having a vocabulary test on words from a story we were reading (Mateo Falcone, in case anyone cares), and then my teacher randomly decided to test us on her ramblings from last week on the Mona Lisa (which had literally NOTHING to do with what we were studying). No one was prepared AT ALL because she didn't tell us we would have to know any of this stuff, and she made it worth almost as much as the test. I don't think anyone got higher than a 50% on the Mona Lisa part, which is what I got, along with several other people (one of my friends only got a 7%). In any case, it destroyed peoples' grades and made us mad. Today I tried to be good and be productive, but it was to little avail in the end. I did read through and write out one lesson from Ultimate Italian last night and I typed it up and learned it this morning. Then I did the next whole lesson during the course of my school day in little free moments. It was a monstrosity of a lesson vocabulary-wise, so it took a long time to write it all out, and then I was scared to have to learn all of the stuff when I got home, but I did put it all into BYKI and Anki. Well, now it's late, and I was hoping to preview my German lesson for tomorrow, but that may or may not happen, depending on how long the lesson is. I'm also now behind on my Anki repetitions. I simply waste too much time. Sigh. ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 468 FRENCH: 1040 GERMAN: 364 GREEK: 641 ITALIAN: 718 JAPANESE: 219 PORTUGUESE: 467 SPANISH: 566 SWEDISH: 868 TOTAL: 5341 I studied 196 cards in 18 minutes today. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5991 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 162 of 265 15 February 2010 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, I really haven't posted in a while! At least, it feels that way because I have so much that I have to write about. Hm... It looks like the last time I posted was last Wednesday, so I shall start off with what happened right after that post.
GERMAN I mentioned that I would have liked to preview my German lesson for Thursday, but that it was rather late, right? Well, I tried to go through it, but I think I only got through like ten words in the vocabulary before having to put the book down and going to sleep. The next morning I was incredibly tired still and it felt like I hadn't slept at all. When I finally was able to rouse myself, I got out of bed and ended up collapsing into my bedroom door (I either fell asleep in the middle of opening it, or fainted, or something), which make a really loud noise. It surprisingly didn't wake anyone up, and then I came to a couple minutes later. Anyways, that was my little interlude into the fact that I couldn't do much on Thursday (or Friday) because of my extreme fatigue. I was able to finally do the German lesson, but it took more than just the morning, and then also the evening. The topic was on hair-styling, and then it also had a small reading (every ten lessons it has one) with even more vocabulary, so it was just bad timing that I had a big lesson when I was so tired. GREEK On Friday I was sure to sleep in later in order to not be falling asleep all day like Thursday. Because I slept later, I didn't have time to do much besides a bit of daily Anki and some kanji practice. After school I went to my grandparents' house and I did a lesson with my grandmother. She keeps telling me that she doesn't know why I think that I still need her for help, because according to her, it's I who am teacher her. Yeah right. But anyways, she is very useful for explaining usage of words and constructions and subtle nuances. Plus, I like her company. We ended up watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics until rather late (they started an hour and a half later than we had thought), so just spent the night there, which was fine since it's a three-day weekend (Presidents' Day in the US). Saturday was pretty much wasted for me; I really had no choice in the matter. I had no alarm clock to wake up at my grandparents' house, so I slept in embarrassingly late on Saturday, and my father didn't come to pick me up until after noon. Then he and my grandparents had to talk for half an hour, and then somehow he had to go help my grandfather fix the computer or something. In the meantime, I was able to do another Greek lesson out of the book, but still, it was annoying because I didn't get home, after leaving for school at 7:00 on Friday morning, until past 2:00 in the afternoon on Saturday. Anyways, that was a lot of chatter that had little to do directly with my language studies. To stay on topic, I put all of my vocabulary from the lessons into BYKI and Anki and studied them to 'mastery.' Hooray. Oh, I also wanted to point out a really long word I learned from the lesson: συμπεριλαμβάνομαι (simberilamvánome), which means "to be included." In the vocab list, though, I shortened it to its active voice, συμπεριλαμβάνω (simberilamváno). JAPANESE Of late, my kanji have become a chore, since I can really only study them efficiently in conjunction with the Reviewing the Kanji website, because in this final section of the book, the author has become exceedingly lazy and makes me do all the work. And because my stories are often very silly, far-fetched, or don't even make sense, that website is an invaluable resource. However, it requires that have a computer with me when I set out to study my kanji daily, which is not always possible... So, I keep finding myself falling behind on my goals, and having to do huge catch-up periods, like yesterday. (Today I have not yet done my kanji, I will once I finish my post.) Anyways, here are the kanji that I've managed to learn since my last post. This brings me up to #740, which is on schedule for yesterday. 支, 技, 枝, 肢, 茎, 怪, 軽, 叔, 督, 寂 淑, 反, 坂, 板, 返, 販, 爪, 妥, 乳, 浮 将, 奨, 採, 菜, 受, 授, 愛, 払, 広, 拡 In other Japanese-related news, I did one more Ultimate Japanese lesson, this time about movies, with some extra random vocabulary. It was a nice, easy lesson. I'm really liking this book, but that's not a surprise, because I love that entire Living Language Ultimate series. All the vocabulary was learned in BYKI and entered into Anki. SWEDISH A while back, I acquired a scanned version of Teach Yourself Swedish Conversation, which essentially consists of twenty short dialogues. On Friday, I figured I could start looking at it and printed it out and went through the first twelve dialogues or so. I wrote down the unfamiliar words, but haven't typed them up yet (I don't know if I've yet mentioned this, but when I "type up" the words, I not only do that, but also clear up any confusion and do some research on the words too, if needed). Yesterday (Sunday) was pretty much wasted too, because I got barely anything done, despite the fact that I had plenty of time. I spent a bunch of time reading around on this horribly distracting forum, and also watched some of the Olympics (the only sports that I ever watch). How this relates to Swedish is that while I'm just reading stuff on the Internet, I had decided to have Swedish radio playing in the background. I found this website this summer, which is really good for listening practice. My reasoning for having the Swedish radio going in the background is twofold. First, I hope that it will perhaps help me with my pronunciation by continued exposure to how it should sound (sort-of immersion-like). Secondly, I hope that it might improve my horrible listening comprehension in Swedish. After listening to it for a long time today and yesterday, I am able to pick up several words every few seconds. This is great progress, because before yesterday, I could barely hear when one word ends and another begins. I have heard some interesting things on there (not that I understood, they just sounded interesting), like this morning it sounded like it was some sort of soap opera radio program, with lots of people yelling at each other, children whispering, and a woman's voice giving a frightening prophecy with mystical music in the background. Okay, I have no idea if that's really what it was, but that's what it sounded like. I also did another SEGR lesson! That book gives me such good grammar practice and lots of vocabulary--I just wish it would give me useful words. This week's text was a very interesting account of a certain Prince Erik and his tragic attempts at love. It looks really advanced when I translated it into English, but it was surprisingly easy to translate both to and from Swedish. Here are my translations: Swedish to English Ett populärt utflyktsmål för stockholmarna är slottet Gripsholm, som ligger vid Mälaren. Detta slott är berömt för sina konstsamlingar, särskilt kungliga porträtt. En vårdag beslöt Erik och Kerstin att åka båt från Stockholm till den lilla staden Mariefred, som ligger i närheten av slottet. Slottet är nästan fem hundra år gammalt. Kung Gustav, grundaren av det moderna Sverige, hade många fiender. Därför lät han på 1500-talet bygga den här starka borgen nära Stockholm för sig och sin familj. Där kände de sig trygga. Gustav hade fyra söner, prins Erik och hertigarna Johan, Karl och Magnus. Prins Erik var mycket maktlysten. Eftersom han ville gifta sig men en av Europas prinsessor, friade han till drottning Elisabet av England. Den stackars prinsen uppvaktade henne i nästan fem år, och en gång skickade han sitt eget porträtt till henne. Drottningen tycket att han såg stilig ut, en låg och ståtlig prins med gyllene skägg och blåa drömmande ögon. Men hon ville ändå inte gifta sig med honom. —Jag kan inte gifta mig med någon som jag inte har sett, sade hon. Erik gav sig inte. Han beslöt att själv fara över till England och visa sig i all sin prakt för ätt vinna drottningens hjärta. Men för att göra Elisabet svartsjuk, friade han också till Skottlands vackra drottning, Maria Stuart. Detta var hans stora misstag. När detta nådde Elisabets öron, ville hon inte träffa honom. Erik fick inte aldrig sin prinsessa. Som kung blev han kär i Karin Månsdotter, en enkel flicka av folket, och gifte sig med henne. Erik blev en mycket olycklig kung, och hans bröder, hertigarna Johan och Karl, satte honom i fängelse på hans egen borg, Gripsholm. Samma porträtt som Erik skickade den engelska drottningen hänger numera på Gripsholm. Det var detta prakfulla porträtt som Erik och Kerstin nu ville titta på. A popular place for an excursion for Stockholmers is the Gripsholm Castle, which is by Lake Mälaren. This castle is famous for its art collections, especially royal portraits. One spring day, Erik and Kerstin decided to go by boat from Stockholm to the small town of Mariefred, which is in the vicinity of the castle. The castle is almost five hundred years old. King Gustav, the founder of modern Sweden, had many enemies. And so he had this strong fortress built near Stockholm in the sixteenth century for himself and his family. There they felt safe. Gustav had four sons, Prince Erik, and Dukes Johan, Karl, and Magnus. Prince Erik was very ambitious. Because he wanted to marry one of Europe’s princesses he proposed to Queen Elizabeth of England. The poor prince courted her for almost five years, and one time he sent his own portrait to her. The queen thought that he looked handsome, a tall and stately prince with a golden bear and blue, dreaming eyes. Nevertheless, she didn’t want to marry him. “I can’t marry someone whom I haven’t seen,” she said. Erik didn’t give in. He decided to travel himself over to England and show himself in all his splendor to win the queen’s heart. But to make Elizabeth jealous, he also proposed to Scotland’s beautiful queen, Mary Queen of Scots. This was his big mistake. When this reached Elizabeth’s ears, she didn’t want to meet him. Erik never got his princess. As king he fell in love with Karin Månsdotter, a simple, ordinary girl, and married her. Erik became a very unhappy king, and his brothers, Dukes Johan and Karl, put him in prison in his own fortress, Gripsholm. Nowadays, the same portrait that Erik sent the English queen hangs at Gripsholm. It was this magnificent portrait that Erik and Kerstin now wanted to look at. English to Swedish Four hundred years ago the famous Swedish king, Gustav Vasa, lived in a fortress near Stockholm with his wife and sons. In the sixteenth century Sweden had many enemies, and Erik, the ambitious son of the king, decided he would marry one of the famous queens of Europe. He courted beautiful princesses also, but he only won the heart of Karin Månsdotter. This Swedish girl was very beautiful and a story relates that Erik fell in love with her one day when he saw her in a square of the Old Town. But as a prince poor Erik was not allowed to marry her, and they had to wait many years. When Erik was twenty-six years old, he became king. He married Karin, and this girl of the people, who now had two children, became queen of Sweden. The king did not feel secure and he put his own brother, Duke Johan, into prison in the same fortress which his father had had built. He also put many leading men into prison, and that was his great mistake. The same year the unhappy king married, his brothers put him into prison and they send his wife and the children to Åbo Castle in Finland. Karin never saw her poor husband again. Erik died in 1577 and Gustav Vasa’s second son, Johan III, became king. Fyra hundra år sedan bodde den berömda svenska kungen, Gustav Vasa, i en borg nära Stockholm med sin hustru och sina söner. På 1500-talet hade Sverige många fiender, och Erik, kungens maktlystena sonen, beslöt att han skulle gifta sig med en av Europas berömda drottnigarna. Han uppvaktade också vackra prinsessor, men han vann bara hjärtan av Karin Månsdotter. Den här svensk flicka var mycket vacker och en historia berättar att blev Erik kär i henne en dag när såg han henne på ett torg av Gamla Stan. Men som prins stackars Erik fick inte gifta sig med henne, och de fick vänta många år. När Erik var tjugosex år gammal, blev han kung. Han gifte sig med Karin, och den här flicka av folket, som hade nu två barn, blev Sveriges drottningen. Kungen kännde sig inte trygg och han satte sin egen bror, hertig Johan, i fängelse på samma borg som sin far hade låtit byggt. Han satte också många ledande män i fängelse, och dett var sin stora misstag. Sammar år som gifte sig den olyckliga kungen, sina bröder satte honom i fängelse och sände de sin hustru och barnen till Åbo Slott i Finland. Karin såg aldrig sin stackars man mer. Erik dog 1577 och Gustav Vasas andra son, Johan den tredje, blev kung. -- I also remembered that I have had a Swedish phrasebook since when I was probably eight years old, and that it likely has useful words and phrases in it. I think I will put these into Anki at some point. I mean, it's nice that I can read stuff like the above text, but I would probably rather read stuff that I'm more likely to need in Sweden. I also do have Teach Yourself Swedish, complete with the audio, and will go through that once I have finished my current coursebook. MISCELLAENOUS And I have some miscellaneous stuff to say too. Yesterday I signed up for the SAT for Spanish and French, which I'll be taking in the beginning of May. I wanted to take it for World History and Biology too, but that one would be in June, and my dad got mad at me for wanting to take a test then... I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but this July my family is going to Tanzania for two weeks. I, of course, was very happy since I like to travel, but slightly disappointed, because I would have liked to been studying some Swahili before the trip. My solution is that I will do a short study period of Swahili for about a month before the trip, just to gain some basic skills. I don't want to be an ignorant American who hasn't made any attempt to learn the language of the destination! I will probably be using the Assimil and/or Teach Yourself course. And of course there was the random language-gazing over this weekend. This time I was looking at and reading about Finnish (again, I might just have to move this up to high priority on my hit list because obviously my subconscious mind really likes it), Georgian, Irish, and Welsh. Oh, and ew, I'm listening to the Swedish radio right now, and I think they have someone speaking in Danish on there, because it sounds more like Danish to me, which I really don't like the sound of. Bleh. Maybe it's just one of the dialects of Swedish from southern Sweden that sounds like Danish? ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 468 FRENCH: 1042 GERMAN: 423 GREEK: 763 ITALIAN: 718 JAPANESE: 255 PORTUGUESE: 468 SPANISH: 566 SWEDISH: 943 TOTAL: 5636 Since the last time I posed, I have studied 2715 cards in 174.33 minutes. P.S. Wow, it's taken me about an hour to write this post... Edited by ellasevia on 16 February 2010 at 12:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6319 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 163 of 265 16 February 2010 at 12:28am | IP Logged |
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Way to go! :-)
I can recommend the Assimil Swahili course; I'm about a third of the way through and it is clear that the author spent a lot of thought on it, making sure that all important vocabulary appears and that it is reviewed frequently. Also, I find the grammar explanations quite easy to follow, but I did read a few sample Swahili lessons from other sources as well and that may influence my judgement. One note: as the book almost religiously introduces 15 new words every lesson (except for the review / grammar summary ones), and they are very far from Indo-European word stems I'm used to, I find it necessary to enter the words into Anki to ensure I learn them all. I really tried to do without and it's not possible for me. If you find you don't have as much time or money to spend on Swahili, you could also try the University of Georgia's free online course, which is very well-done, with video and all, albeit not as comprehensive as Assimil. Just google "Kiswahili kwa kompyuta". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5991 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 164 of 265 16 February 2010 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, Sprachprofi, I did read through parts of the introduction and a bit of the first lesson a while back and it looked pretty good. It might take some getting used to, just because I've never used Assimil before. The 15 words per lesson sound very manageable, and I don't think that being different from I-E roots should deter me too much; I've gotten used to it working with Japanese.
Back to Swedish now, I'm in the middle of doing a Livemocha lesson, and I somehow realized that I hadn't entered in some of my SEGR vocabulary into Anki for some reason from last week... Anyways, that's why the number of words will be over 1000 for Swedish the next time I put in the stats. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5991 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 165 of 265 16 February 2010 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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So, I've done a couple more things that I would like to write about before another week goes by and I have to write another monster post like before.
I learned my 10 new kanji of the day up to number 750. Just 1,290 to go. 129 days. 鉱, 弁, 雄, 台, 怠, 治, 始, 胎, 窓, 去 I also did another Livemocha Swedish lesson. It wasn't very much material that I didn't know, just some vocab words. All went into BYKI and Anki. Also into Anki went my vocabulary from last week's Swedish lesson, which I mentioned before. Still not sure how I forgot to put it in... I'm a bit tired from working all day on language stuff (it's tiring to be productive), so I think I'll go watch the Olympics or something for a while. Then, I think I might to a bit of biology reading. I might do some more Anki repetitions later, but my eyes are tired now and I can't focus, so I'll just put my statistics down now, just in case. ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 468 FRENCH: 1042 GERMAN: 423 GREEK: 763 ITALIAN: 718 JAPANESE: 255 PORTUGUESE: 468 SPANISH: 566 SWEDISH: 1003 TOTAL: 5696 I studied 435 cards in 27.15 minutes today. EDIT: Big math error... Edited by ellasevia on 16 February 2010 at 1:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5991 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 166 of 265 18 February 2010 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
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Wow. I have done so much, yet done so little. What a surprise.
Yesterday I really didn't get any French study in. I did work on entering in more of the vocabulary from the first lesson of TY Improve Your French, but that lesson is huge--like 25 pages, so it's taking me a long time. I have also been fairly busy on top of that, so... However, I did read a story for my Spanish class that I was supposed to have read over the weekend but didn't because I didn't know about it, so I entered the useful vocabulary from that into Anki, plus some other words. Today was Italian day, and I unintentionally got up rather late (comparatively), so I was delighted to remember that I had done two Italian lessons last week but hadn't learned the vocabulary for the second one. So I did that today, which was nice because I didn't have to go through and find it all and type it up. It was a bunch of vocabulary too, about 80 words, so it was the equivalent of two average lessons' worth of vocabulary anyways. The past couple days have been very crazy for me and my peers because yesterday was "course selection information" day, when we had assemblies about which classes are available for the next school year. I had already been planning ahead, of course, but my plans were completely discombobulated about five thousand times by all of the different opinions floating around. It was especially difficult for my class (sophomore) because we have to plan the next two years which are very important, but we have the shortest amount of time to do so! My selections are due by tomorrow morning, so I was quite obviously panicking and vacillating a lot, especially on the topic of my language classes. I had originally thought that I could take AP French, Japanese, and German. However, because I also would like to take some other classes too (botany, etc.) besides languages, I had to decide on only two of those. I definitely wanted Japanese, and was swaying back and forth between French and German, but mostly favoring German. I finally had a little discussion with myself today where I explained to myself the reasons why taking AP French would be pointless (I am still going to take the AP exam next spring) and that made up my mind. So, I cleverly brought some Japanese and German materials to school, to show to the German and Japanese teachers for placement. The Japanese teacher was pretty easy to please; I showed him my kanji book and my Ultimate Japanese book, and mentioned a few other resources and my study plans, and he immediately signed my registration sheet for level 3 Japanese. The German teacher was busy entering last-minute grades and told me to come back in an hour. She also said she wanted to give me a placement test. This could have meant anything, so I spent the next hour (well, partially, my friends distracted me a lot) skimming through my German book and reviewing things. When I finally went up to the German teacher's office, she said to sit down and then went through parts of a written test with me and asked me for the right answers. Then she had me talk with her in German for a while--about myself, about things I like to do, and so on. In fact, the discussion from the moment I stepped inside her office until I left was all in German. Even when I said I didn't understand something, she continued to speak German, just more simply. I hear that she does this in class, and while it annoys many people, I look forward to it. I think it will really help my German (it did with my French last year). Anyways, she told me that based on what I know and the fact that I am going to continue studying over the summer, I could go into at least German 3, or even German 4 if I wanted. I said that German 3 was fine for now and she offered to retest me at the beginning of the school year to see if level 3 is still appropriate. (Wow this section was long.) So, I am taking for my languages German 3 and Japanese 3 next year. This made my French teacher really mad when I told her I wasn't sure if I was going to take French next year or not in class today, so we'll see how she reacts when she hears that I have already signed up by the time I get to her class tomorrow. Okay, what else..? Oh, I am terribly behind on my kanji. The current lesson (I'm almost done, thankfully) was really difficult for me and was very long, so I am having a lot of "failed kanji" on the Reviewing the Kanji website. I am also a day behind in my ten per day plan, because I didn't do the kanji for yesterday and I got too tired just a bit ago when I only learned ten. I shall try to catch up tomorrow. In any case, I'm now up to 760 (I should be at 770). Here are the ones I learned: 法, 会, 至, 室, 到, 致, 互, 棄, 育, 撤 Oh, and because I haven't had time for anything today or yesterday (today because woke up late and because that German interview after school ate up almost an hour of my free time), I'm really behind on Anki as well. Yesterday I only studied about 300 cards and today only about 80! And now I'm up really late, comparatively. (It seems that history does repeat itself--I recall that last Wednesday I was up late too, and then Thursday was a horrible day.) Well. That's all for now. Good night. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5991 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 167 of 265 22 February 2010 at 6:17am | IP Logged |
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Hm, there seems to be a pattern here. I post on a Wednesday and then don't post again until the following Sunday or Monday. Oh dear, here I go again...
Shall we start off with what I did on Thursday? Gut. So Thursday, as we all know, is my German day (it's funny--ever since I assigned languages to days of the week this summer, I immediately think of the language when I hear/see the day of the week) and I did yet one more Ultimate German lesson, this time on pharmacies and related subjects. On Friday I was really tired and canceled my Greek lesson with my grandmother for this week, since we did two lessons last week anyways. I got admittedly little language study done on Friday. I meant to catch up on Anki and my kanji, for both of which I was several days behind. Oh, a random comment: I noted an interesting connection between Greek and Portuguese when doing my Anki--cricket is γρύλλος (ghrillos) in Greek and grilo in Portuguese. Yesterday (Saturday) was interesting. One of the first things I did in the morning was I typed up some more of my random Spanish and French class vocabulary into Anki. I did all of my Anki repetitions and reviewed my kanji. I also learned 30 new kanji in order to catch up a few days. It was tiring, but worth it. On a walk out in the frigid, wintry landscape that currently surround my house, I started the Michel Thomas Italian course over again (before I only had done one lesson or so) and listened to the first eight lessons, which was a bit more than half an hour. It was good review, and I have finally diagnosed the reason why my Italian was suffering for most of 2009--I never worked on learning grammar and vocabulary together, rather I would go for long periods learning only grammar or only vocabulary and in the meantime forgetting the other. It is only when they are combined that I learn and retain them. Another problem was the only passive practice and lack of review, but I think the unorganized approach was a major problem. Another thing I did yesterday was I typed up the vocabulary from the first 20 lessons of Ultimate Portuguese into Anki, as well as all of the vocabulary I have had up until now from Learn Greek Without a Teacher. Finally, last night I went through a huge Japanese lesson with a weather theme and put all the vocabulary into Anki and BYKI. It was about 80 words, and I didn't want to do it last night because I was too tired. Today was rather busy, finishing up homework I didn't do yesterday and trying to maximize my study time as well. I caught up on my kanji after being behind for about a week. The problem was this one lesson which was extremely difficult to get through for some reason, combined with the fact that the past week was crazy. I am now up to #810. Here are the kanji I've learned since I last posted. 充, 銃, 硫, 流, 允, 唆, 出, 山, 拙, 岩, 炭, 岐, 峠, 崩, 密, 蜜, 嵐, 崎, 入, 込, 分, 貧, 頒, 公, 松, 翁, 訟, 谷, 浴, 容, 溶, 欲, 裕, 鉛, 沿, 賞, 党, 堂, 常, 裳, 掌, 皮, 波, 婆, 披, 破, 被, 残, 殉, 殊 I also learned my Ultimate Japanese vocabulary today, which was surprisingly easier than I had imagined. Learning Japanese vocabulary seems to be getting much easier as I learn more kanji. Somehow I am able to connect an approximate English meaning to the kanji and a Japanese pronunciation to the kanji. I am also able to figure out longer words written in kanji, which is exciting. I figured the following two out, and it made me really pleased: 生物学 = life + thing + study = biology 植物園 = plant + thing + park = botanic gardens I don't know how to pronounce the former (the latter was in my most recent UJ vocabulary list), but it is still very motivational. I also typed up the vocabulary from the first twenty lessons of Ultimate German into Anki, which took rather longer than expected. Next, I found (again) this website, which has thematic vocabulary lists for many languages. It looks very useful and I will check it out in more detail later. Finally, I must mention Swahili. I have found several books for Swahili that look very good, and am very tempted to buy them now and begin to work through them. The first one is by Living Language (I adore their books), and is called Spoken World: Swahili. It has glowing reviews on Amazon and I looked through the preview and it appears to be excellent. The other is Teach Yourself Swahili. I found several other books and internet resources too, but I don't feel like mentioning them now. Anyways, I have been flirting a bit with some elementary Swahili and have listed it as "just flirting" in my profile... I really want to start working through some material earlier than June in order to be at a higher level for when I get to Tanzania in July, but I want to finish all my materials for Portuguese first. I will consider it a reward for finishing Portuguese. In order to finish Portuguese, I still have to finish the following: - Type up all vocabulary into Anki - Complete Livemocha Portuguese (Brazil) 202 - Finish Cortina Method Brazilian Portuguese - Go through the frequency dictionary - (Maybe) Skim through TY Brazilian Portuguese (I doubt there will be anything new to learn, but you never know) - Work more on irregular verbs (probably using my 501 Portuguese Verbs) - Some more random stuff that is not yet specified Okay, that's all for tonight. I would have liked to get some Swedish done this week, but I didn't have time. I did a bunch last week, though, so I guess it's okay. Plus I'm reviewing every day for Anki, and that counts too. ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 468 FRENCH: 1107 GERMAN: 1000 GREEK: 1182 ITALIAN: 718 JAPANESE: 352 PORTUGUESE: 1013 SPANISH: 756 SWEDISH: 1003 TOTAL: 7599 A couple thousand cards in a few hours. EDIT: Formatting error, adding links Edited by ellasevia on 22 February 2010 at 11:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5991 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 168 of 265 01 March 2010 at 5:56am | IP Logged |
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Oh my. Why do I do this to myself? I always postpone writing my posts until the last minute. And then I try to be concise, but as is apparent from all of my posts, that does not quite work out. Maybe I shall start posting only on Sunday evenings to sum up what happened during the week. I'll organize this post by language instead of by day.
PORTUGUÊS - Started going through the Portuguese frequency dictionary, entering every word into Anki; I got up through a few hundred - Read through 5 lessons of Teach Yourself Brazilian Portuguese; have not listed any vocabulary yet, just reading for now - Moved Portuguese up to advanced fluency FRANÇAIS - Continued (I think--I honestly don't remember) with going through the first lesson of TY Improve Your French...actually maybe I didn't, I don't really remember doing that - Typed up random vocabulary list from class into Anki - Made scans of the vocabulary section at the back of one of my school textbooks; I will type that into Anki sometime soon hopefully - Typed Ultimate French vocabulary into Anki up through lesson 20 - Listened to a bunch of French radio this morning and thence learned about the big storm and flooding in France - Moved French up to advanced fluency ITALIANO - 2 Ultimate Italian lessons - Finished listening to Michel Thomas Advanced Italian - Helped a friend who is beginning in Italian; she is going to use the same book as me (Ultimate Italian) - Moved Italian up to basic fluency DEUTSCH - 1 lesson from Ultimate German; "lost and found" (Fundbüro) vocabulary; learned about the passive voice ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ - 1 huge lesson from Νέα Ελληνικά book; food and market vocabulary; learned more (already knew a bit) about the passive voice - Conversed with my grandmother - Typed up Livemocha Greek 101 vocab into Anki 日本語 - 1 Ultimate Japanese lesson - Kanji up to #850, but I should be at #880; I was five days behind earlier today and didn't feel up to learning 50 new kanji at once, so I made a plan to be caught up by this Wednesday - Kanji I learned since the last time I posted: 殖, 列, 裂, 烈, 死, 葬, 瞬, 耳, 取, 趣, 最, 撮, 恥, 職, 聖, 敢, 聴, 懐, 慢, 漫, 買, 置, 罰, 寧, 濁, 環, 還, 夫, 扶, 渓, 規, 替, 賛, 潜, 失, 鉄, 迭, 臣, 姫, 蔵 SVENSKA - Started going through a SEGR lesson, but didn't finish (I was at a dinner party) - Listened to a bit of Swedish radio this morning - Looked at a website called "LingQ" for the third time or so (I always ended up canceling my account for some reason), this time for Swedish, and did a couple lessons - Realized that my listening comprehension was worse than I thought, so I found a little practice activity thing and did about 6 exercises - Might still do something more tonight if I have time after writing this post (somewhat likely) ESPAÑOL - Typed up my random vocabulary list from class - Typed up a bunch of vocabulary from Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Vocabulary (I'm slowly typing up all the words in the book) - Wrote an essay (really horrible, I wrote it while in the middle of a car full of people) in Spanish about the importance of computers (for class) ESPERANTO - Nothing, but I want to catch up on typing my vocabulary up into Anki and continue with the TY course KISWAHILI For this I'm not going to make a list... Well, I couldn't resist, I was looking at the books I wanted to buy...and I bought them. They haven't arrived yet, but thanks to the previews of them on Amazon, I was able to more or less complete the first lesson of Spoken World Swahili and TY Swahili. I put most of the vocabulary into Anki and am familiarizing myself with it. I have mastered most of the greetings (there are so many!) and the simple verb conjugation for the present, past, and future, along with some other words and phrases. I shall attempt to compose a sentence below: Habari za jioni? Jina langu ni Philip. Jina lako ni nani? Je wewe ni Mtanzania? Mimi si Mtanzania, mimi ni Mmarekani. Mimi ninasema Kiingereza, Kihispania, Kifaransa, Kireno, Kiitaliano, na Kigiriki. Mimi ninasoma Kijerumani, Kisweden, Kijapani, Kiesperanto, na Kiswahili. Lakini, mimi ninasema Kiswahili kidogo tu. Well, I believe that is all for tonight. :) ANKI STATISTICS ESPERANTO: 468 FRENCH: 1680 GERMAN: 1035 GREEK: 1369 ITALIAN: 803 JAPANESE: 408 PORTUGUESE: 1087 SPANISH: 1096 SWAHILI: 180 SWEDISH: 1004 TOTAL: 9130 EDIT: Forgot Anki stats and formatting error (again!) Edited by ellasevia on 22 March 2010 at 9:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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