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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 25 of 265 28 September 2009 at 5:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Saturday: 日本語
Goals: 1) 14 new kanji (to #204), 2) TY Japanese vocabulary for lesson 5 Achieved: 1) yep!, 2) nope :( Sunday: Italiano Goals: 1) 1 lesson of STG: Italian, 2) 1 Livemocha Italian lesson Achieved: 1) yep!, 2) yep! Wow, what a weekend. I had very little time to do languages yesterday because of the funeral and then attempting to do homework with what time there was remaining, so that's why I didn't get my Japanese vocabulary done. I got my kanji done because I do that throughout the week. And I write my goals for the week on Sunday evening, and last Sunday my great-aunt hadn't died yet, so I didn't know that that goal for Saturday would be unreasonable. So, today was a semi-productive day. I read an entire chapter for biology (just one more left before the test on Friday, plus reviewing the first chapter in the unit) and studied for a microscope test that's tomorrow. I also wrote a DBQ essay (document based question) on the view of technology in Rome and Han China for my AP World History class. I could have done more, but I really am too distractable, and also pretty tired from this weekend. When is my break??? On a whim, I decided to bake a batch of chocolate cupcakes. Yummy. Not a great use of my time, but my stomach thanked me. It was also a nice relaxing activity. I finally was able to squeeze some Italian in last minute. I memorized the vocabulary for the fifth lesson in that silly STG: Italian coursebook. I also am trying to once again actually finish something I started and finish up my Livemocha courses. I finished up a lesson I had done sometime during the summer (I stopped doing Livemocha, Italian especially, around my "Italian depression period") and I reviewed the vocabulary. I was actually considering taking an entire week off from languages pretty seriously today. Just so that I can catch up fully on some of my reading for school, because these past two weekends have put me behind. But the thought of getting behind on my languages was scary enough for me to decided to just make reasonable goals and NOT WASTE TIME. So, here are my goals for the week: - Memorize 1000-2000 Spanish frequency list vocabulary - Do Spanish frequency list up to #2200 - Ultimate French, 1 lesson - Ultimate Portuguese, 1-2 lesson(s)* - Listen to 1 episode of BrazilianPodClass - Ultimate German, 1 lesson - Odysseas Unit 5 Vocabulary - LGWT, 1 lesson - Νέα Ελληνικά (my new Greek textbook), lesson 1 vocabulary - TY Japanese vocabulary for lesson 5 - 14 new kanji, to #225 (I did 7 more than were necessary this week) - STG: Italian, 1 lesson - 1 Livemocha Italian lesson *I say 1-2 because I had already read through one of the lessons earlier this week. Well, that's all for tonight! Buona notte, e spero che dormite bene! 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 26 of 265 29 September 2009 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Monday: Español
Goals: 1) Memorize 1000-2000 Spanish frequency list vocabulary, 2) Do Spanish frequency list up to #2200 Achieved: 1) yes, 2) no, not yet, hopefully later I didn't have time to post last night so I'll post now. I typed up my Spanish frequency list vocab and then did it at like 9:30 at night. I have to say, I'm not feeling that confident about these word lists (or at least this particular source) because it's putting some pretty uncommon words in those lists. For example, because "puedo" shows up a lot, the lemma form could either correspond to the verb "poder" (to be able to, can) or "podar" (to prune). If it's in a general frequency list within the top 2000 words, I HIGHLY doubt that "to prune" would be included. But, I feel required to do it anyways. Just a bit annoying. Oh, "to shingle" also came up in that list. When I was doing my Italian exercise on Livemocha, somehow I was able to find access to the "enroll in a new course page." I, just thinking that it would be harmless as usual (sometimes I temporarily enroll in one of their courses just to look at it a bit), signed up for Swedish, and then Dutch. Except, I feel that I am actually going to study them now. Well, we'll see how long that lasts. But I did update my profile on this page to include them, but only put them as "just flirting" (mostly true, I hope) so that they wouldn't show up on my language list for my posts. I can't really believe that I broke my promise to myself only five days after I made it. At least with Liz, she went like 5 months before she broke it. [sigh] Well, I'm thinking that I might just delete Spanish out of my schedule and either have a day off or insert Dutch/Swedish in its place. I'm doing Spanish every day at school and I think there is plenty of vocabulary and grammar going on there. In terms of my ability, I would LOVE to be able to speak in many of my other languages as well as I can speak Spanish. So, that's what I think. I will decide by next Monday whether I want to keep Spanish or not. I'm secretly hoping to finally get rid of it. Time to go to school! Bye! --Philip (Stupid school starting at 7:30 every morning...) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5749 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 27 of 265 29 September 2009 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oy. All I said was that if I'm going to dabble in other things every once in a while anyway, I might as well stick with just one. I'm not breaking any promise now that I wasn't already breaking before. Ha! There, you see - promises mean nothing (or, alternatively, I have no principles whatsoever). But none of the other languages take priority over Italian - that point still stands :-)
Spanish is the unstoppable train for you if you're doing it in school and actually learning - I say ditch it and do something else... Liz 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 28 of 265 30 September 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, I see. Sorry about the confusion. And also sorry about how I keep using that misunderstanding against you.
Well, I know the language almost as well as English. I can say pretty much anything I want with ease and fluency, it's just that my vocabulary could be improved, but that will come with the class and through reading. Thanks for your support of my move. In that case, I will have to decide whether I want Swedish or Dutch to take priority. I'm thinking Swedish, since I like it better and it won't interfere as much with my German. So, my new priority list would be as follows: 1 - Italian 2 - Greek 3 - Japanese 4 - German 5 - Portuguese 6 - French 7 - Swedish 8 - Dutch Yes, I actually did reconfigure the entire thing. I think the only ones that remained in the same ranking were Italian, Japanese, and French. About French, I feel like it should be both moved up on the list, but also lower... Hm... Well, this may or may not be my last year of French anyways. If I work on some harder grammatical stuff and increase my vocabulary a bit, I think it would be safe to claim advanced fluency, and perhaps even take the AP test for French this year instead of next year (SHH! Don't tell Madame Wojno!). Actually, I think I could take the test now, but I don't know how well I'd do... I think I'm going to promote Swedish and Dutch to the rank of studying actively so that they show up on my profile. However, I do feel bad that I didn't choose Russian or Arabic, which are the ones that were listed as high priorities on my hit list. Perhaps they weren't really... Oh, and I think I'm going to switch around the days of the week a bit, effective as of next Monday. The rest of this week will be normal. Here is the new version: Monday - Japanese Tuesday - French Wednesday - Swedish and Dutch (perhaps both, or maybe alternate Wednesdays?) Thursday - German Friday - Greek Saturday - Portuguese Sunday - Italian Well, I will post about today's studies later on tonight, but in case I forget, my copies of the Tao Te Ching and that Portuguese Frequency Dictionary both arrived today. They look nice, much bigger (not thicker, the other way) than I expected, but that's nice, I guess. --Philip Edited by ellasevia on 30 September 2009 at 12:42am 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 29 of 265 30 September 2009 at 5:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Tuesday: Français
Goal: 1 lesson of Ultimate French Achieved oui, bien sûr Well, I did my French. Pretty easy words, some were weird though. I don't like it when I have to learn an English phrase or word to learn a foreign word, though. It's annoying. For example, I would understand what "to settle the bill" means, but I would never have used it myself. It just sounds weird to me. Maybe it's just British English. I'm still going back and forth about my Spanish dilemma. I do think that I should still keep working on my vocabulary throughout the course of the year, but I really want to get rid of it and put Dutch and/or Swedish onto my learning schedule. I do get lots of practice in my class and doing homework (reading stories, grammar workbook) for it, but we really don't do much vocabulary, and don't seem to ever be tested on it. I think I may try to get a better frequency list, like the one I got for Portuguese, and go through that (I might get one for French too, the only problem is that they're expensive) instead of this Wiktionary one. When it finds haya within the first 2000 most common words, I seriously doubt that it is in the context of a "beech tree". How common can that come up?? It highly probable that it is being used in the context of the present subjunctive of haber, "to have/exist/be." Or when you see cosa within the first hundred or so words, yes, it's possible that it's referring to the present subjunctive form of coser, "to sew," but it's much more likely referring to just plain cosa, "thing." Sorry about that, it's just that I was a little annoyed going through a frequency list and having to learn rather useless words like "to prune," "lieutenant," and "beech tree." Also, I have various friends taking various levels of Spanish at my school. I can try to look through their textbooks' vocabulary lists and find words that I may not know. I including myself, I have connections to levels 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (and Spanish Literature). I can also find more useful lists of words on the Internet. I do get daily words of the daily in Spanish from two different sources (Transparent Language and About.Spanish.com) sent to me by email. I also get proverbs and sayings. Fun to read, those proverbs. :) Anyways, the Spanish.About.com looks like it might have some good stuff. Please give any feedback you may have on this whole catastrophic decision-making process. I'm terrible at making decisions on my own. Thanks for reading! Bonne nuit! -Philip 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 30 of 265 01 October 2009 at 6:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wednesday: Português (for now)
Goals: 1) 1 lesson of Ultimate Portuguese, 2) Listen to 1 episode of BrazilianPodClass Achieved: 1) yes, 2) I'll do it in a few minutes Today was a pretty successful day language-wise. I woke up at 4:45 (yes, very early) and got ready. I finished some biology homework which I had just remembered and then did my entire Portuguese lesson (they're so short and easy in this book). I was not actually disappointed this this lesson. It was mostly on sports, a topic that does not generally interest me, but I found it to be unusually well laid-out and organized. Hooray. I also was doing a bit of Dutch and Swedish before school. I'll get back to that a bit later though. At school, I determined that my French literature textbook has about 5300 vocabulary words at the back of it and I intend to learn them all eventually. I also calculated that my Spanish literature textbook has about 1000 (I think, I don't quite remember) vocabulary words at the back, plus a lot of extra stuff like problematic words, idiomatic constructions, etc. Yay. What wasn't "yay" was my obscene amount of Spanish homework for tonight: approximately 13 pages of boring grammar workbook. Bleh. And most of it takes forever because you either have to be being creative, rewriting entire sentences, or following along through a paragraph to conjugate the verb for the correct subject. All in Spanish, a language that is particularly boring for me. It took forever, despite its easiness. My French homework went by very quickly in comparison, though. I did a couple lessons of Dutch today and am feeling pretty good so far with the language. It's so much easier than German! However, the pronunciation is a bit harder for me to grasp for some reason. I have trouble saying correctly the "w" and "ui" sounds, and I always forget that "g" is that cool "ch" guttural sound and that "ei" is not as in German. But, it's pretty fun. I was pretty proud of the two compositions I write for my Livemocha exercise. I hope I get a good grade. I learned about demonstrative pronouns/adjectives today and was getting a little confused at first. According the the source I found, the usage in Livemocha was incorrect, which says to me that it's not that important to get it right if even native Dutch speakers are getting this wrong. Dutch speakers, is this true? I also did a small bit of Swedish. Dutch is a little addicting because it's so easy because of the synergy of my knowledge of English and German, plus the fact that it's very simple. Swedish is a little different, but I particularly like the pronunciation. I do like Norwegian too, and I actually prefer the the way written Norwegian looks (I tend to like languages with lots of cool accent marks or doubled letters--like in Dutch), but since the spelling is a bit misleading, I chose Swedish. The letters "ä" and "ö" aren't anything special for me, but I particularly like the look of "å" (plånbok, lång!). The 'differentness' of the Swedish articles compared to other languages isn't confusing me too much (yet?), but when I was dabbling in Romanian for about a month, it was one of the things I found most difficult. But Swedish seems fairly regular. Anyways, I did a bit of Swedish on Livemocha today. Another reason I am doing more Dutch, I think, is because there are writing/speaking exercises for Dutch but not for Swedish. Well, hopefully those come out soon. I can't think of much else to say and I should probably go up to bed now. Boa noite! -Philip 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5705 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 31 of 265 01 October 2009 at 9:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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 32 of 265 01 October 2009 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I suppose that's good. Just out of curiosity, where did you come across podar, in a gardening magazine or something (just kidding)? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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