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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 193 of 265 16 March 2010 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||
It is definitely more of a help than a problem, especially in the beginning since they all share much of the same beginning grammar and most vocabulary. Going from Spanish to French was pretty easy (8 months of inconsistent study allowed me to skip the first two years of French and still get an easy A in French 3) and adding on Portuguese was even easier. The main thing with Portuguese was that I kept trying to pronounce it like Spanish, so it took a couple months before I stopped accidentally pronouncing words as though I was speaking Spanish. However, I was still fairly new to teaching myself and was studying very inconsistently, so it took much longer than would be expected, despite the help from Spanish and French. As Italian was the last Romance language that I have begun to study, I have actually found it to be the most difficult just because there are so many similarities to Spanish and French (and Portuguese too, but not as much) and I had the most interference. Like you said, learning another is really just finding the differences and getting exposure, but oftentimes just remembering the minute differences is more trouble than learning the language individually. I still want to learn at least Romanian from the Romance group, and possibly Catalan. I don't think that the former should pose too much of a problem in terms of getting confused with other Romance languages, but Catalan could be problematic in that I can already read and understand most of it with little problem, so interference is likely. What I think the best way of approaching them is in hindsight would be to view them each as their own completely separate language "bubble" which just happens to have many similarities with the others. These similarities may be drawn upon to make connections and expedite the learning process, but they should not be the entire basis for study and the actual Italian, for example, should still be learned as a unique individual. Does this make sense? An example of my overusing connections would be connecting the difference between essere and stare in Italian with that of ser and estar in Spanish. In the early months of my Italian studies, I simply assumed (for good reason--they are cognates and at first seemed to have the same usage) that they are used exactly the same way in both languages, which is not so. Thus, I was rather confused when I would hear or see sono contento instead of sto contento like I would have expected from Spanish. Instead what I should have done was recognize that they are similar principles and use that for understanding, but still read the section in the book about it and learn it individually and separate from Spanish. I hope this helps. -- Philip P.S. By the way, why do you ask? Are you thinking of adding another Romance language into your routine? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6632 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 194 of 265 16 March 2010 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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I want to add French, but not right now, maybe next year.
At the moment I'm learning my third Germanic language and it's a completely different experience from Italian, where I had to build a whole lot of new vocabulary. In Dutch I have this deceptive feeling of "knowing my way around", only that if you actually trust that you'll be making tons of mistakes. So in a way I suspect that you still have to go about learning the same way, perhaps at a quicker pace but still using the same learning materials. Just to set you straight about all those important details. Later on, with French, I expect to have something of the same experience. Much more transparency than I had with Italian, simply because I'll have the Italian as a resource. Now that I read the occasional thing in French I already understand more than before I started with Italian. 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 195 of 265 24 March 2010 at 1:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay, fine. I'll post again. I kept meaning to, but something always happened, and then I got lazy. And it's Spring Break, by the way. :)
[long silence] Well, I don't even know where to begin. Let's see... Okay, I'll organize this by language again, I suppose. Alphabetical order. ESPERANTO Mi ne faris nenion de kiam mi skribis la pasintan fojon, sed mi revuas mian vortliston ĉiutage per Anki. Eble mi faros ion ĉi tiun nokton aŭ morgaŭ. FRANÇAIS Alors, j’ai fini de faire tout le vocabulaire comme je voulais le mardi passé. Et ce week-end, pendant que j’étais chez mes grands-parents (ça c’est une autre raison pourquoi je n’ai pas écrit—j’y étais tout le week-end), j’ai lu le troisième leçon de TY Improve Your French et j’ai écrit le vocabulaire, mais je ne l’ai pas encore appris. Je devrais mentionner que je n’ai fait aussitant que je devais parce que je voulais faire les choses que je n’avais pas faites la dernière semaine avant que je me passe aux choses de cette semaine, et j’étais aussi chez mes grands-parents avec de l’accès à l’ordinateur limité. DEUTSCH Ich habe letzter Donnerstag eine Lektion von meinem Deutsches Buch gelesen und habe ich die Vokabeln gelernt. Die Grammatik war ein bisschen schwierig, weil die Lektion den Konjunktiv eingeführt hat. Ich verstehe ihn nicht so gut, weil er eine Kombination des Konditionalis, Konjunktiv, und Präsens ist. Ich soll an meinem Deutsch mehr arbeiten, weil es lange um diesem Nachtricht zu schreiben dauert hat. ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ Την περασμένη εβδομάδα έμαθα το λεξιλόγιο του μαθήματος του ελληνικού μου βιβλίου και αυτή την εβδομάδα έχω κάνει το ίδιο. Θέλω να σταματήσω μερικές μου μελέτες ξενών γλωσσών για να έχω χρόνο να μελετήσω τις άλλες γλώσσες. Πρέπει να τελειώσω τα ισπανικά, τα πορτογαλλικά, τα γαλλικά, και το εσπεράντο. ITALIANO La settimana scorsa ho fatto due lezioni d’italiano dal mio libro, ma non ho fatto niente altro. Questa settimana farò quattro lezioni invece di due, perché voglio finire il libro presto. Aspetta, è una bugia ciò che ho detto. Ho ascoltato anche delle lezioni di LearnItalianPod. 日本語 先週私はレッスン二つを勉強しました。この 週末レッスン一つをしました。今沢山日本語 を分かりますけど，上手じゃありません。ロ ーマ字はとても難しいですね。漢字と平仮名 と片仮名は易しいです。沢山漢字も勉強しま した。この漢字を学びました (#1120)： 貨, 傾, 何, 荷, 俊, 傍, 久, 畝, 囚, 内, 丙, 柄, 肉, 腐, 座, 卒, 傘, 匁, 以, 似, 併, 瓦, 瓶, 宮, 営, 善, 年, 夜, 液, 塚, 幣, 弊, 喚, 換, 融, 施, 旋, 遊, 旅, 勿, 物, 易, 賜, 尿, 尼, 泥, 塀, 履, 屋, 握, 屈, 掘, 堀, 居, 据, 層, 局, 遅, 漏, 刷, 尺, 尽, 沢, 訳, 択, 昼, 戸, 肩, 房, 扇, 炉, 戻, 涙, 雇, 顧, 啓, 示, 礼, 祥, 祝, 福, 祉, 社, 視, 奈, 尉, 慰, 款, 禁, 襟, 宗, 崇, 祭, 察, 擦, 由, 抽, 油, 袖, 宙, 届, 笛, 軸, 甲, 押, 岬, 挿, 申, 伸, 神, 捜 PORTUGUÊS O meu japonês foi horrível, não é? Me demorou cerca de quinze minutos pra escrever essa mensagem (mas, estava lendo algumas coisas sobre como usar algum forma do verbo em japonês, mas não compreendi, então não o usei). Bom, agora tudo é muito mais fácil agora que estou escrevendo em português. Eu puxe muito vocabolário em Anki do meu dicionário de frequência (até #750) , mas quero pó-lo até o número 1000. Também comprei outro livro de português, mas não sei por que, porque quero acabar com os meus livros para que possa deixar de estudar o português de uma vez! ESPAÑOL No hice mucho con español, creo que puse un poco de vocabulario en Anki, pero además de esto no hay nada. Hay que hacer algo, entonces tal vez pondré más vocabulario en Anki anoche. KISWAHILI Hujambo! Mimi nilisoma vitu vyingi na... Okay, this isn’t going to work. I don’t know enough words or enough grammar to express myself well enough in Swahili yet, and I’m getting impatient. So, I was trying to say that I learned many things and words and am liking Swahili. I don’t know if I had already finished lesson 2 in Spoken World Swahili, but I have, and I also have finished the same in TY Swahili, except that I haven’t yet learned all of the vocabulary. SVENSKA Jag kunde inte göra min svensk lektion förra veckan, och då hade den mycket ordlistor, så jag gjorde den just igår. Lektionen var från min Beginner’s Swedish bok. Idag gjorde jag den andra lektionen. Jag är mycket glad att boken har audio och uttal, för lärde jag att ”de” uttalas ”dom!” Jag visste inte det! Min metod för audioen är: 1. Lyssna bara på svenskan för att se hur mycket kan jag förstå. 2. Lyssna på svenskan och läsa den svenska texten. 3. Lyssna på svenskan och läsa den engelska översättningen. 4. Lyssna på svenskan och läsa den svenska texten igen. 5. Lyssna bara på svenskan igen för att se om jag kan förstå allt. ANKI STATISTICS: ESPERANTO: 910 FRENCH: 2301 GERMAN: 1148 GREEK: 1748 ITALIAN: 1081 JAPANESE: 551 PORTUGUESE: 1751 SPANISH: 1861 SWAHILI: 243 SWEDISH: 1191 TOTAL: 12,785 (+1,559) Probably about about 11,000 reviews in the bast 11 days, since I average around 1,000 reviews per day. I also have a quick question for people about Anki. Do you think that it would be worth it for me just to do the Anki reviews for the language I'm studying that day? I feel like I have too much work for it each day and I dread having to do it, even though I know it helps me. I did decrease the number of new words per day by half for each language, which helps, but it's still daunting. Would doing just one language per day (and maybe doing just the new words for the others) be a good idea, or would I still have just as much work to do, in terms of it all piling up? Thanks! --Philip 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6632 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 196 of 265 24 March 2010 at 9:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Er.. I uhm.. I walk out on Anki all the time. It's too dull to be able to do everyday, I leave and keep coming back to it. I'm sure that wreaks havoc with the tidy theory of memory, but I can't help it, it just doesn't seem like fun enough.
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| 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 197 of 265 25 March 2010 at 4:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Since last night, I have done some more stuff. I have accomplished the following...
PORTUGUESE I put all of the vocabulary from Livemocha Portuguese (Brazil) 101, 102, and 201 into Anki. I also finished the frequency list up through #1000. Finally, I also entered all of the rest of the vocabulary from Ultimate Portuguese into Anki. This means that I have completed all of my goals for Portuguese for break. Look at the jump in numbers of entries in Anki for Portuguese from my last post from last night to this one. FRENCH I entered a few vocabulary lists from Ultimate French into Anki, but I got bored and tired (understandably, because I had just entered all of the above stuff for Portuguese) so I stopped. I should do that TYIYF lesson at some point... ITALIAN I read over two of my Ultimate Italian lessons and have learned the material for them. I still have to do two more in order to have finished off my Ultimate Italian goals for Spring Break. GERMAN I wrote a sentence in German and added like two words to Anki. Oh, and I was watching German TV as I ate lunch, but I got almost none of it, partly due to bad reception. GREEK Τίποτα. (Nothing.) JAPANESE Um, I put a couple words into Anki, I think. And then I did my kanji (#1130): 果, 菓, 課, 裸, 斤, 析, 所, 祈, 近, 折 SWEDISH Ingenting. (Nothing.) SPANISH A bit of vocabulary from the book. But that's it. ESPERANTO Two lessons from TY Esperanto. I really do like that book and I think it's a great resource. I have now finished up through lesson eight. Here are the affixes that lessons seven and eight introduced (some of them I already knew): -foje, -obl-, -on-, -op-, -aĵ-, -ad-, -ar-, -ebl-, -ind-, -id- Oh, and to Esperanto speakers who might be reading this (Sprachprofi?), how many words (base words) do you think I would need to know to be at a fairly sturdy level, around basic fluency? Just assume that I'll understand all of the grammar. Dankon! SWAHILI How do you say 'nothing' in Swahili? ANKI STATISTICS: ESPERANTO: 1157 FRENCH: 2555 GERMAN: 1150 GREEK: 1748 ITALIAN: 1163 JAPANESE: 557 PORTUGUESE: 2487 SPANISH: 2082 SWAHILI: 243 SWEDISH: 1191 TOTAL: 14,333 (+1,548 in one day!!!) 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 198 of 265 25 March 2010 at 9:05am | IP Logged | |||||
Go you!
Around 600. Have a look at my Esperanto101 Anki deck, it contains all the vocabulary that the magazine Kontakto uses for its articles in easy Esperanto. You will also find that learning more advanced vocabulary is easier because it's mostly based on international words, e. g. situacio, politiko, historio... just make sure you really master the affixes and word endings, so that you can understand and use words like historia, vidindaĵo etc. Here's an exercise for that.
It's "kitu" in negative sentences. E. g. Sinataka kula kitu. = I don't want to eat anything. Edited by Sprachprofi on 25 March 2010 at 9:39am 3 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 199 of 265 28 March 2010 at 8:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been meaning to post, but I haven't. I'll try to make this quick, because I want to go to bed.
I don't remember much of what I did on Thursday, but I know I did a German lesson. It was pretty difficult for me, but that might have had something to do with the fact that my brother and his friend were playing blaring "music" practically right next to me, so I couldn't concentrate well. It also had continuations of some difficult grammatical constructions and vocabulary. Here are some of the words that I wrote down for this post: die Wiedervereinigung (reunification) die Kommunalwahl (local election) die Steurererhöhung (tax increase) die Arbeitslosigkeit (unemployment) die Vollbeschäftigung (full employment) das Blaue vom Himmel versprechen (to promise the moon) Yesterday was nightmarish because my parents decided that I was being too obsessive and wouldn't let me use the computer for my languages. Luckily, I was able to get on last night and do some Anki review. I also reviewed a bit of Greek grammar and read through an Ultimate Japanese lesson. I also went to my grandparents' house and we did two Greek lessons, because I won't be going next Friday because it's a holiday. Ooh, and I when we were watching Jeopardy, I got a question (well I probably would have gotten it right anyways) asking about in which African language the word bwana means "sir"--Swahili! Okay, hooray for randomness. Today was much better, up until the early afternoon, when my brain decided to quit. I learned the vocabulary for one of the Greek lessons I did on Friday, learned the Ultimate Japanese lesson material/vocabulary, two Livemocha Swedish lessons, one Livemocha Greek lesson, reviewed kanji, learned new kanji, reduced number of failed kanji by 65, typed up the rest of the Ultimate French vocabulary lists, typed up a few Italian vocabulary lists, and I think that's it. I had a few other things on my list, but oh well. That's pretty good anyways. I did not, however, do my Anki, except for Japanese. Last night I had very limited time and was able to do a bunch of Anki in a short period of time (I did all of my reviews, some 700 or 800 in under 40 minutes), so I thought I'd try to put it off until tonight, but then I was too tired. I'll do it tomorrow. Here are the kanji that I've learned since the last time I posted. I have learned up through #1160: 哲, 逝, 誓, 暫, 漸, 断, 質, 斥, 訴, 昨, 詐, 作, 雪, 録, 尋, 急, 穏, 侵, 浸, 寝, 婦, 掃, 当, 争, 浄, 事, 唐, 糖, 康, 逮 I would now like to make myself a quick reference guide for the five verbs expressing "to give" and the two verbs expressing "to receive" in Japanese: TO GIVE 1. 上げます (agemasu) - This is used when you are talking about other non-related people, OR when you (the speaker) are the person who is giving something. This is fairly neutral. 2. やります (yarimasu) - This is like 上げます except that it humbles the recipient of the giving. 3. 差し上げます (sashiagemasu) - This is the honorific form of 上げます, which is the opposite of やります. This humbles the giver and elevates the recipient. 4. くれます (kuremasu) - This is used when you (the speaker) are the recipient of the giving, OR if you are in the recipient's "in-group," meaning a close family member, I think. 5. くださいます (kudasaimasu) - This is the honorific form of くれます, which elevates the giver and humbles the recipient. TO RECEIVE 1. もらいます (moraimasu) - This is receive's equivalent of 上げます, which just acts neutrally. (For some reason this verb reminds me of strawberries, probably because the beginning of it sounds like morango, the word for 'strawberry' in Portuguese.) 2. いただきます (itadakimasu) - This is the honorific of もらいます, which means that it humbles the recipient and elevates the giver. This verb is also used before one begins to eat, and takes on the meaning of "Thank you for the food." -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. -.-.-.-.-.-. Finally, I'd like to conclude with a note about future languages, which I always like to fantasize about. My future languages are often what motivate me to continue to work on and finish off my current ones, in order to make room in my schedule for new ones. RUSSIAN - I have been very motivated lately to resume my study of Russian (and Slavic languages in general), which I dropped in late August, thinking that I wouldn't have enough time with school (then, of course I started Swedish instead). I surprisingly still remember a lot of it, and have been reading about Slavic languages and have been very interested. This is actually a very good thing, because for a while I had a slump in motivation about it, and that's why I ended up adding Swedish instead of starting Russian again. Well, as long as I can keep my motivation going, I will expect to be studying Russian by year's end. HUNGARIAN - This language continues to get more and more appealing to me. The name 'Hungarian' just sounds so majestic and proud for some reason. Like someone banging on a big drum. (Okay, maybe that's just my crazy mind at work because I'm really tired and now it's past midnight because this was definitely not the short post I wanted it to be.) Anyways, this language looks so cool and I have been coming to understand that its culture and history are in fact richer than that of Finland/Finnish, so I might pursue this before it... That added to the fact that it's supposedly more regular, and it has an Assimil course, which I'd like to try out. My dilemma is that I like both the Hungarian and Finnish languages, but like Finnish better aesthetically (although this is subject to change), while Hungarian is more culturally appealing and has many more speakers. What am I to do? I think that when I feel that I am ready to begin one or the other (not for a LOOOOOOOOOONG time), I shall begin both at once (like I did with Dutch and Swedish) and see which one I like better. I shall then continue with that one. Okay, done now! お休みなさい！ --Philip Edited by ellasevia on 28 March 2010 at 3:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5293 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 200 of 265 28 March 2010 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Philip, you're an inspiration. Keep up the great work.
- Brian, 18 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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