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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 257 of 407 02 January 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
It’s been a relatively productive New Year long weekend – a good start for 2012.
First of all, I started Swahili, as is required of team ne nur members. I
finished the first lesson of Teach Yourself Swahili (and the preceding pronunciation
notes) in a little over 1 h 30 min. I wish it went into more details as you are often
left wondering what all the affixes mean when they are first introduced. I’ve completed
1 h 45 min (out of required 5 hours) thus far.
I was able to complete a few TY Esperanto lessons, namely 7, 8 and 9. On to 10,
now. The only areas of confusion at this point are the prepositions and all the
correlatives (are they called like that?): cxiu, kiu, kiam, tiel, etc. It’s slowly
sinking in, though.
I watched a few hours of Japanese TV. Now that we have TV Japan, there’s tons of
fascinating stuff to watch, such as a show where Tamori walked through Tokyo looking at
how the canals built around the Imperial Palace have changed over time. As close as you
can get to being there. I watched a few episodes of Hikaru no Go, as per a friend’s
recommendation.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 258 of 407 08 January 2012 at 8:39pm | IP Logged |
I finally tried out the self-talk exercise you set out earlier in your log and just wanted to report back that it was a great success. I prepared on the basis of some of the stuff I've been extensive reading in Japanese recently. I must admit I felt a bit strange just talking to myself to start with but I found I could do it while doing other mindless things like sorting out housework, which is pretty convenient.
The proof of success came when I presented my story to my practice partner today and found that I kept in conversation in Japanese for close to an hour, which was previously unheard of for me. It was well worth the effort and I shall be continuing with this approach.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 259 of 407 09 January 2012 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
g-bod wrote:
I finally tried out the self-talk exercise you set out earlier in your log and just wanted to report back that it was a great success. I prepared on the basis of some of the stuff I've been extensive reading in Japanese recently. I must admit I felt a bit strange just talking to myself to start with but I found I could do it while doing other mindless things like sorting out housework, which is pretty convenient.
The proof of success came when I presented my story to my practice partner today and
found that I kept in conversation in Japanese for close to an hour, which was previously unheard of for me. It was well worth the effort and I shall be continuing with this approach. |
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I'm delighted to hear that! Ganbatte!
If anyone is interested in finding the exercise, it's here.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 260 of 407 09 January 2012 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
Esperanto: slow but steady progress -- now finished lesson 11 of TY, another 4 left.
Japanese: I haven't done anything formal in Japanese, but I have been exchanging emails with my friend, and first Japanese teacher, who now lives in Japan. I've also been watching Japanese TV, including the current Honbasho, the yearly Sumo Tournament held in Tokyo. My language partner came by and we watched a TV show together where they stroll through Kyoto, from Gion to Kiyomizudera. God, I miss the place.
I've also been working on a self-teaching method for Québec French for intermediate+ French students. Hopefully, there will be some interest when it's done.
Edited by Arekkusu on 09 January 2012 at 5:57pm
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 261 of 407 09 January 2012 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
The course sounds interesting; I'd gladly take a look when it's done. I've tried your talk exercise too; it's quite useful. Thank you.
I miss Tokyo.
Your progress in Esperanto has been anything but slow; good work.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 262 of 407 13 January 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged |
As a first step towards developing a methodology to help people learn or study Japanese
pitch, I added the following paragraph to my
page on Japanese pitch.
In our opinion, learning pitch consists of three important steps:
a) understanding the pitch system: students need to understand how Japanese
pitch works, so that when presented with words and their pitch, they can independently
and correctly predict and pronounce an entire sentence;
b) learning the effect of suffixes: students need to study how morphemes affect
the pronunciation of preceding verbs and adjectives; this process is perhaps tricky,
but it is extremely effective since virtually all sentences contain at least a few
suffix morphemes;
c) learning the pitch of each word: though this is a simple task, it is by far
the most time-consuming -- and discouraging! -- task; the pitch of each word needs to
be learned individually, although certain tendencies may help students make educated
guesses. For this step, students might want to create a structured study plan for
themselves.
EDIT: An edited version is presented in post 267.
Edited by Arekkusu on 27 January 2012 at 4:22am
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 263 of 407 16 January 2012 at 9:12pm | IP Logged |
Japanese: the last few days have been awesome and I had plenty of practice. At the conversation group yesterday, I was just smoking! I didn't hesitate and I didn't feel weak in any area -- vocab, grammar, etc. Of course, I'm not deluded and watching TV later that evening, I was quickly reminded how much work is still left to do... but there is progress.
Lately, I've been particularly interested in the Kansai/Osaka dialect. Any of you spent time deliberately studying it? I was able to find some interesting resources online. In terms of pitch, it adds certain complications, but as far as I understand, it's often possible to predict standard pitch from Kansai pitch (not the other way around), at least in 2-mora words. In other words, it would seem practical to study Kansaiben first, as far as pitch is concerned. Of course, there is very little info on that dialect's pitch online, although some contrasting info is sometimes provided.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 264 of 407 16 January 2012 at 10:13pm | IP Logged |
Now that I think of it, it would be cool to participate in the speech contest and present a speech in Oosakaben...
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