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TAC 2011 (Team ÇÜ): The Continuing Saga | ||
Tags: Esperanto | Dutch | Translation | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Mandarin | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 25 of 135 04 February 2011 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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*ENTRY 20* (20 January 2011)
DUTCH 65 minutes: listened to & transcribed MT CD 3 (tracks 1-12). Dutch total: 65 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 65 minutes (1h05) --- *ENTRY 21* (21 January 2011) DUTCH 27 minutes: listened to & transcribed MT CD 4, tracks 1-4. Dutch total: 27 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 27 minutes (0h27) --- *ENTRY 22* (22 January 2011) DUTCH 24 minutes: listened to Dutch music. Dutch total: 24 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 24 minutes (0h24) --- *ENTRY 23* (23 January 2011) GERMAN 60 minutes: listened to "Ein Sommernachtstraum" (A Midsummer Night's Dream in German). 60 minutes: read more of "Die Wand" (22 pages). German total: 120 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 120 minutes (2h00) --- *ENTRY 24* (24 January 2011) GERMAN 120 minutes: finished "Die Wand" (read about 50-60 pp.). German total: 120 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 120 minutes (2h00) --- *ENTRY 25* (25 January 2011) GERMAN 80 minutes: German class. German total: 80 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 80 minutes (1h20) --- *ENTRY 26* (26 January 2011) GERMAN 30 minutes: read part of "Die Zauberflöte" (libretto). German total: 30 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 30 minutes (0h30) --- *ENTRY 27* (27 January) GERMAN 80 minutes: German class. German total: 80 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 80 minutes (1h20) --- *ENTRY 28* (28 January 2010) GERMAN 70 minutes: watched a 140-minute movie, about half in German. German total: 70 minutes DUTCH 70 minutes: watched a 140-minute movie, about half in Dutch. Dutch total: 70 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 140 minutes (2h20) --- *ENTRY 29* (29 January 2011) DUTCH 8 minutes: listened to all Colloquial dialogues so far. 36 minutes: listened to MT CD 4 tracks 1-5, transcribed track 5. Dutch total: 44 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 44 minutes (0h44) --- *ENTRY 30* (30 January 2011) DUTCH 15 minutes: listened to & transcribed MT CD 4 tracks 6-7. Dutch total: 15 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 15 minutes (0h15) --- *ENTRY 31* (31 January 2011) GERMAN 30 minutes: read part of a play in German ("Nathan der Weise" by Lessing). German total: 30 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 30 minutes (0h30) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 26 of 135 05 February 2011 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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*ENTRY 32* (1 February 2011)
GERMAN 80 minutes: German class. German total: 80 minutes DUTCH 23 minutes: listened to and transcribed MT CD 4 tracks 8-10. Dutch total: 23 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 103 minutes (1h43) --- *ENTRY 33* (2 February 2011) GERMAN 12 minutes: watched episodes 1-4 of the mini-soap "Jojo sucht das Glück" from DW. 40 minutes: watched random clips of German TV. (Discovered the hilarious comedian Hape Kerkeling.) German total: 52 minutes DUTCH 4 minutes: watched an interview in Dutch. 30 minutes: worked on Colloquial lesson 3. Dutch total: 34 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 86 minutes (1h26) --- *ENTRY 34* (3 February 2011) GERMAN 65 minutes: watched videos in German (Hape Kerkeling, my new obsession). German total: 65 minutes DUTCH 75 minutes: finished Colloquial lesson 3, started lesson 4. Dutch total: 75 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 140 minutes (2h20) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 27 of 135 05 February 2011 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hallo Jinx,
Wie geht es deinen Sprachen? In den kommenden Tagen fange ich an, Niederländisch zu lernen, da meine Freundin und ich in die Niederlande und nach Flandern fahren wollen. Ich stelle mir vor, die Grammatik ist ziemlich leicht, aber wie ist es mit anderen Aspekten der Sprache? Hören, Rechtschreibung und so weiter? Denkst du, dass Niederländisch sehr ähnlich zum Deutschen ist? Viel Erfolg bei deinen Sprachen. Hast du Skype installiert? Ich glaube, es wäre gut, wenn wir ein Gespräch organisieren könnten. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 28 of 135 06 February 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged | ||
Hi Jack! Jetzt geht es mir wieder besser in Bezug auf die Sprachen, obwohl ich schon lange nicht mehr mein Französisch geübt habe. Im Moment konzentriere ich mich ausschließlich auf Deutsch und Niederländisch, aber am Ende der 6-Week-Challenge werde ich wahrscheinlich mit dem Niederländisch aufhören, oder mindestens werde ich es ein bisschen weniger studieren. Dann werde ich hoffentlich wieder Zeit für Französisch haben. Ich finde es ganz toll, dass du auch bald beginnst, Niederländisch zu lernen! Bisher finde ich es eine echt nette Sprache, und auch ziemlich nah an Deutsch. Es gibt ja wichtigen Unterschieden, besonders bei der Wortstellung in Nebensätzen, aber diese Unterschiede sind nicht ganz fremd. Da du schon so gut Deutsch (und natürlich Englisch!) kannst, wird es bestimmt kein Problem für dich sein. Die Aussprache is ja ein bisschen fremdartig am Anfang, aber man gewöhnt sich schnell daran. Ich wünsche dir da ganz viel Erfolg! P.S. Ja, ich habe endlich Skype! Hab es jedoch noch nicht benutzt – wir müssen bestimmt ein Gespräch organisieren. Das wär echt toll! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 29 of 135 06 February 2011 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Reflections at this juncture (6 Feb. 2011)
My Dutch is definitely progressing faster than any other language I've ever tried to learn. This is far more due to its similarity with German (and, to an extent, English) than due to any impressive dedication on my part – I'm only up to 38 hours of study so far, out of the 60 I was aiming for by February 14. Although, considering that I still have eight days in which to do 22 hours of study to meet my goal… well, okay, that's still pretty bad. I'd have to do 2h45m of study every day, starting today, to meet my goal. I just downloaded and listened to a ten-lesson sample of a language course for French, taught in Dutch. It was cool to stretch my brain in a new way, doing translation exercises on the fly… I hear "twaalf" and say "douze," hear "negentien" and say "dix-neuf." There's no time for English! Overall, I'm still really enjoying Dutch, though, even if I don't end up meeting my goal for the 6WC. Although I'm going to have to put it on the back burner for a while, due to personal and team commitments for TAC 2011 (e.g. my French has been languishing terribly), I can already tell that I'm going to be returning to Dutch in the future. It's such a fun language, and I'll admit that the easiness is part of the attraction for me too. On to German… I've been surprised at the constant improvement of my German lately. I was on a plateau for the longest time (HATE that feeling – plateaus are the pits, if that makes any sense), but with the beginning of this semester it seems to be swinging right back into action. The other day I read two articles on race differences, written by Herder and Kant, and despite the fact that they were in old-fashioned German and on a topic that's not very enjoyable to me (both texts were extremely racist from a modern point of view), I had much less trouble reading them than I'd expected. I was even able to do some of the "academic skimming" that I'm accustomed to doing in English, and which causes most of the discrepencies in my reading speed between various languages. I'm expecting my German to only keep improving – I have a lot of work to do on/in it this semester: 1. My German lit class meets twice a week, for 80 minutes each time, and we only speak in German during that class. 2. I'm going to be attending a tutorial too, one hour a week, where we only speak German. 3. I may be tutoring two other students in German (we'll see how that develops). 4. I'm still working on translating "Die Wand" by Marlen Haushofer. 5. I also need to research the impact "Die Wand" had at the time it came out, and many of my primary sources will be in German. As for French, I've been paying hardly any attention to it recently, due to this six-week Dutch thing. I'm hoping, though, that when the six weeks is up I'll be able to return that portion of my attention solely to French, and just focus on that for the rest of the semester. I really need to get my speaking and listening skills up in time for my trip this summer. Okay, I'm off to do some translation and then write two short papers in German… after that maybe I'll do some more Dutch! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 30 of 135 06 February 2011 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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*ENTRY 35* (4 February 2011)
FRENCH 10 minutes: listened to French news report about Egypt while reading the transcript. French total: 10 minutes GERMAN 20 minutes: read some forums in German. German total: 20 minutes DUTCH 60 minutes: continued Colloquial lesson 4. 65 minutes: listened to & transcribed MT CD 5 (tracks 1-11). 15 minutes: practiced writing in Dutch. 15 minutes: started Linguaphone Cursus Nederlands. Dutch total: 155 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 185 minutes (3h05) --- *ENTRY 36* (5 February 2011) GERMAN 60 minutes: read letters and poems about slavery by Herder. 50 minutes: looked up and made notes of new words from Herder. 15 minutes: practiced writing in German. 45 minutes: read an essay by Kant on racial divisions. German total: 170 minutes DUTCH 30 minutes: listened to & transcribed MT CD 6 tracks 1-5. 30 minutes: worked on Colloquial lesson 4. Dutch total: 60 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 230 minutes (3h50) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 31 of 135 17 February 2011 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||
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*ENTRY 37* (6 February 2011)
FRENCH 8 minutes: listened to French audio. French total: 8 minutes GERMAN 90 minutes: watched an episode of Tatort Münster. German total: 90 minutes DUTCH 30 minutes: listened to Dutch audio. 30 minutes: finished Colloquial lesson 4, started lesson 5. Dutch total: 60 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 158 minutes (2h38) --- *ENTRY 38* (7 February 2011) GERMAN 40 minutes: watched videos in German. 60 minutes: wrote a short essay in German. German total: 100 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 100 minutes (1h40) --- *ENTRY 39* (8 February 2011) GERMAN 80 minutes: German class. German total: 80 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 80 minutes (1h20) --- *ENTRY 40* (9 February 2011) GERMAN 40 minutes: read German poetry. German total: 40 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 40 minutes (0h40) --- *ENTRY 41* (10 February 2011) GERMAN 80 minutes: German class. German total: 80 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 80 minutes (1h20) --- *ENTRY 42* (11 February 2011) GERMAN 90 minutes: watched a German movie ("Knockin' on Heaven's Door," one of my favorites). German total: 90 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 90 minutes (1h30) --- *ENTRY 43* (12 February 2011) GERMAN 150 minutes: watched an opera in German w/ German subtitles ("Die Entführung aus dem Serail" by Mozart). German total: 150 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 150 minutes (2h30) --- *ENTRY 44* (13 February 2011) GERMAN 25 minutes: watched German videos. 10 minutes: read German websites. German total: 35 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 35 minutes (0h35) --- *ENTRY 45* (14 February 2011) GERMAN 60 minutes: listened to music in German. German total: 60 minutes DUTCH 48 minutes: read aloud MT transcriptions for CDs 1-6. 32 minutes: listened to & transcribed MT CD 6, tracks 07-11. 20 minutes: listened to a bunch of audio from Colloquial. Dutch total: 100 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 160 minutes (2h40) --- *ENTRY 46* (15 February 2011) GERMAN 80 minutes: German class. 22 minutes: listened to German music. German total: 102 minutes DUTCH 38 minutes: worked on Colloquial lesson 5. Dutch total: 38 minutes TOTAL STUDY TODAY: 140 minutes (2h20) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 32 of 135 17 February 2011 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
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6WC for Dutch: Conclusion
Nu ben ik eindelijk klaar met de 6-Week-Challenge. Ik heb 31 dagen Nederlands geleerd. (Er waren helaas veele dagen tijdens de zes weken waar ik niets heb geleerd.) Ik heb ontdekt dat ik Nederlands heel leuk vind, en ik wil op een dag verder gaan met leren. Ik weet dat mijn Nederlands nog erg slecht is. Ik heb ook niet zo veel geleerd als ik wilde. Mijn grammatica is niet goed en mijn woordenschat is nog heel klein. Maar ik weet nu dat ik van het Nederlands hou, en dat ik later naar deze taal wil terugkeren. Nu kan ik niet veel meer in het Nederlands schrijven, maar ik wil een beetje over de 6WC in het Engels schrijven. EDIT: I've recorded an audio file of me speaking the above paragraph so that I can hopefully get some feedback on my accent and what I need to work on. I'm apparently unable to upload it as a "sound" to my profile, but if any native Dutch speakers have the time and inclination to help me out with some constructive criticism, I would love it. The file is downloadable here. Translation of the previous paragraph: "Now I'm finally done with the 6-Week-Challenge. I studied Dutch for 31 days. (Unfortunately there were many days during the six weeks where I didn't study anything.) I've discovered that I think Dutch is totally cool, and I want to learn more someday. I know that my Dutch is still really bad. I also didn't study as much as I wanted to. My grammar is not good and my vocabulary is still very small. But I know now that I love Dutch, and that I want to return to this language later. Now I can't write anymore in Dutch, but I want to write a bit about the 6WC in English." Before I do that, though: any Dutch-speakers who are better than me, please please please correct my mistakes! I know I must have made tons of them, because I am still such a beginner. I love nothing more than when people correct my mistakes, so if you have the time I would really appreciate it. Now, for some reflections and observations about my very first 6-Week-Challenge ever. First the statistics: I studied during a period of 47 days. As I mentioned in my Dutch paragraph above, there were sixteen days (!) on which I didn't study any Dutch at all. That's terribly embarrassing, I will openly admit. I clearly wasn't giving this 6WC the effort it deserved. There are a few reasons for that: 1. One is that Dutch is so enjoyably easy (mostly due to my familiarity with German) that I got lazy, knowing I'd be able to reach an acceptable solid-beginner level (that's my estimation of my writing in Dutch above) without putting in any more than the minimum effort. There's so much wrong with this attitude that I won't even bother getting into it. 2. The second reason is that I don't need Dutch in my life right now, and probably never will. I'm not planning on traveling in Dutch-speaking areas, and anyway all the Dutch and Belgian people I know can communicate very well in English, French, or German, all of which I can speak better than Dutch. 3. The third is that I had a crapload of personal stuff going on during the end of January and beginning of February, which severely cut into my time and motivation. I think I mentioned on this log already that the C-word (cancer) hit me hard from a few different angles during winter break, which was kind of a setback on the linguistic front (in that it made me think, Gosh, what I am doing wasting my time with language-study when so many other things are so much more important to me?! and other mental drama like that). Then at the end of January the semester started up again, and I've been using every available moment to work on the novel I'm translating for my senior project, do the readings for my classes, and tutor the students I'm working with. Obviously that also didn't leave much time for studying Dutch. All the same, I'm not displeased with my progress in Dutch over the past six weeks. As much as I know it could have been better, I'm quite interested to see the extent to which a strong familiarity with other languages in the same family benefits the learning process for a brand new one. I've grown to really enjoy the pronunciation and appearance of Dutch, and as I mentioned earlier, I have enough interest in it now that I know I want to return to it later. I just re-took the self-evaluation test that I took before at the two-week and four-week mark of the six-week challenge. The first time, I got 32/50 questions right; second time, 35/50; and this time, I got 38/50 right. A slow but steady progression… perfectly satisfying to me. I also just took two more tests: one from dutchlanguageschool.co.uk, where I got a score of 75% (98/130 questions right), which the results call a "good elementary level"; and one from directdutch.com, where I got a score of 88/100 right, which they call "very good." Something else that was new to me in this 6WC was the practice of tracking the total number of hours spent on a language. I started German, French, Italian, and Esperanto before I had ever even considered this option, and I chose not to do it for Mandarin because I knew what a huge and stretched-out undertaking that would be, but for this short period I thought I would try it. I still find it a bit unnatural… for example, if I'm listening to my iPod and a couple of Dutch songs come on in a row and I'm singing along to the words I know without paying 100% attention, I have to later sit down, calculate the total time of the songs I listened to, and then maybe delete a few minutes if I really wasn't paying attention. It's all rather slippery… and yet it pretty much worked for me, in this case. It feels good to be able to say I have now studied Dutch for (almost) exactly 41 hours, and then I can know exactly what level that amount of study got me to. As for moving forward, I doubt I'll be able to keep my hands entirely off my Colloquial book for the rest of the semester, so Dutch probably won't fall completely by the wayside. I'll leave it on my daily schedule for now, and see what ends up happening. However, I plan to take almost all the time I've been spending on Dutch recently and turn that time and energy to French, ideally for the entire rest of the semester, and follow that up with a self-created "independent intensive" course in French in June. Because after all, it's to Franceland and not to Dutchland that I'll be going this summer, and I plan to be PREPARED. Edited by Jinx on 18 February 2011 at 3:07am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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