|
 |
Lianne’s TAC 2011 Fun Times - Team Ŭ | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 9 of 49 08 February 2011 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
|
I'm a little behind with my posting, and a lot behind with my studying. Here are my study times for the last two weeks:
January 22 - 28: Toki Pona: 00:19 Esperanto: 00:10 German: 00:00 January 29 - February 4: A big 0! :( Between job searching, planning my sister's wedding social, and trying to get my blog going again after months of not having time, I find myself with no time for languages. Which is ridiculous, because I'm unemployed. I should have nothing but time. I think part of the problem is that all my studying is done on the computer. I just graduated from computer science. As a result of that, my computer is seen as the enemy. I associate it with homework and mental breakdowns and bad feelings in general. So this is something I really need to get over. Also, this is the first time in years that I've had any free time at all, so I find myself just hanging out a lot, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and editing Wikipedia (which seems to be immune to the computer-as-evil-thing connection). Anyway, I'm on my computer now, so I think I'll get some studying done! After all, it does seem to go fine once I'm actually doing it. I'm just having motivational difficulties. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 10 of 49 02 May 2011 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
|
So, I've been knocked out of the Team TAC, it appears. My teammate has gone to another team. This was all kind of depressing to discover, as I just logged on for the first time in months after finally accomplishing something over the weekend. On the bright side, at least now my usual guilt for not having accomplished anything will no longer be supplemented by guilt for having been a crappy teammate. :P In any case, I will continue this log, and we'll see where it takes me for the rest of the year. Next year, I'll sign up for the Team TAC again and hopefully do better. At least there are no more big life changes in the foreseeable future, so I should be able to find time. Wish me luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 11 of 49 07 May 2011 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
|
I'm back in Team TAC! And I feel more enthusiastic and determined than ever. I have, however, narrowed my focus to Esperanto, for now. I still want to learn toki pona and German, but I was finding myself overwhelmed, and so for at least a few months I won't be touching anything but Esperanto.
So, I'm happy to report, I finally have study time to document again! April 30 - May 6: Esperanto: 06:20! Yay! Basically, what I've done this week is caught up my several hundred flashcards due on Anki, and started a course on Lernu that I've never tried before. I'm working on one of the basic courses called Mi estas komencanto (I am a beginner). I did 8 out of 11 lessons last week, so I should be done this week and on to another course. This course basically goes through a scenario where you're arriving at an Esperanto conference, and you meet various people with whom you exchange pleasantries, ask for directions, and talk about meal times and whatnot. It's been easy enough to be encouraging, but still challenging once I got past the first few lessons. As for my flashcards, there were some that were new cards, or that I'd only reviewed once or twice before, and I didn't remember most of those, but of the older cards that came up, I found I remembered a good chunk of them. I was worried about that, since before I got back into my studying I felt like I didn't remember any Esperanto. I guess I just needed to jog my memory a little. Edited by Lianne on 07 May 2011 at 11:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 12 of 49 15 May 2011 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
|
May 7 - May 13:
Esperanto: 05:47 I didn't end up quite finishing Mi estas komencanto yet, because I ended up doing other things. First, I found this book on Project Gutenberg: The Esperanto Teacher: A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians. I read a fair bit of that, but part way through the week I decided to take a break from lessons. The reason for this is that while doing Mi estas komencanto and reading The Esperanto Teacher, I was writing down words I didn't know, with their translations. Suddenly, I found myself with 7 pages of words (1 per line) that I had come across, but never taken the time to really learn. So for the last few days, I've started doing word lists with these words, and gradually entering them into Anki. One thing that's been taking me awhile is that I've been looking up a lot of these words in several places before really learning them. I realised that some words have quite a few different subtleties of meaning, and a lot of courses and vocabulary lists were overly simplifying them. One of the big things I've been starting to learn about lately is sentence ordering. Word order is very flexible in Esperanto, to the point where you can put any word pretty much anywhere. However, there are ways things are typically done, and I want to make sure I learn them so I don't end up sounding like an awkward poet all the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 13 of 49 25 May 2011 at 4:25am | IP Logged |
|
May 14 - May 20:
Esperanto: 1:32 That was one crazy week. I studied on the weekend, and then not all week! My sister had her bridal shower, I had a few social events... so not that great of a week Esperanto-wise. As for this week I'm in now, I didn't study at all on the long weekend, since I was at the Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering (so awesome!). But, I should be able to study almost every day for the rest of the week, so it'll be better than last week. I still haven't gone back to Mi estas komencanto. I've mostly been doing word lists with all the vocabulary I had written down while doing that course and reading The Esperanto Teacher. I'll try to finish it this week, but I also just got a book from the library which I'm currently working through (Teach Yourself Esperanto - it's just a book, no CDs or anything). Soon I'd like to try again at reading a page of a book, and writing down all the words I don't know and learning them. It seems like I'm at the point where I should be able to understand a lot I think. I downloaded La Eto Princo, so I'll probably try that soon. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 14 of 49 29 May 2011 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
|
May 21 - May 27:
Esperanto: 2:50 I've been reading Teach Yourself Esperanto this week, and loving it! I find the examples really helpful for cementing the grammar rules in my mind, which I knew in theory, but needed to apply. I've completed units 1-4 of 16. At this point, I feel like I just need a lot of vocabulary to progress. I tried listening to Radio Verda, and I was able to catch a few words, but not usually enough to know what they were talking about. That's pretty discouraging. So other than finishing Teach Yourself Esperanto, my priority is now acquiring as much vocabulary as I can, which will come from pages of books, as well as the list of the most common root words. I should probably also find someone who speaks Esperanto in Winnipeg, because I think the lack of conversation is hindering me. I'm a bit webcam-shy, so I think finding someone locally would be best, if that's possible. I was thinking of starting an Esperanto club, so if that worked out it would probably help a lot. Now, big news! I'm adding another language. This is a big deal for me, and a dangerous one, because I am extremely prone to wanderlust, and have a tendency to regularly abandon languages in favour of the newest cool one I've discovered, hence my lack of fluency (heck, even conversational ability) in anything but English. But I've gotten further in Esperanto than in any other language I've tried, so I am determined to keep this pace up. Thus, each day I will not let myself study this new language until I've done at least half an hour of Esperanto. That way, the Esperanto is always top priority. So, the new language is... French! That's right, the one that had all the life sucked out of it for me in junior high is back. After spending the weekend wearing a headset to get a translation for half the speeches, I am sick of being non-bilingual (in the official languages). The next Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering is in 3 years, so that's how long I have to be able to listen to passionate speeches about patriarchy in French. We'll see how this goes! The learning material I'm trying out first is BBC's The French Experience 1. At some point I might try out some Pimsleur, and the library has the French translations of Harry Potter, and the audio versions! So that will be useful for pronunciation practice I think. Wish me luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 15 of 49 05 June 2011 at 3:21am | IP Logged |
|
May 28 - June 3:
Esperanto: 6:11 French: 3:00 My Esperanto wasn't particularly interesting this week, but I did get a lot done. Mostly I went through my notebook where I had a tonne of lists I'd written of words I came across, which I'd never done anything with, so I hadn't actually learned. So I did word lists with most of them and put them into Anki. Soon I should be able to get back to Teach Yourself. So I started French this week! The first thing I tried was a BBC course called The French Experience 1. I only did lesson 1. It wasn't really my thing, and I found it kind of hard. I might go back to it and try it again, since I still have it out from the library. We'll see. Then I went to my old pal Pimsleur. I've done lessons 1-5 so far. It's going well. The first 4 lessons were really easy, drawing mostly on my bit of junior high French. 5 was a bit harder but still totally doable on the first try. On Thursday, I also picked up Assimil New French With Ease from the library. I've only done lesson 1 so far, and I really enjoyed it. It seems promising. I plan to go through that method to the end and see where it takes me. I'd also like to try out French in Action at some point. So, all in all, not a bad week! French is crazy hard for me. The accent doesn't come naturally to me like with German, and trying to say even the most basic phrases exhausts me mentally and physically (in the mouth muscles I didn't know I had). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5108 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 16 of 49 07 June 2011 at 8:02pm | IP Logged |
|
It's time for a Mid-Week Update!
I just need to rant about French a little I think. This language is getting on my nerves. Though, on the bright side, I'm sometimes amazed by the similarities with English. What's interesting is that the things that are similar or different are the opposite of what's similar and different between English and German. It's like the whole French influence on the development of the previously German-like English is all coming together! So that's neat. But anyway, I just found out that in all the phrases in Pimsleur that use "want" or "would like", it's all the same verb! What the heck! So really when you say "Est-ce que vous voudriez manger?" it's like you're saying "Would you want to eat?", though it's translated as "Would you like to eat?" That blew my mind. So I've been reading about vouloir. Unfortunately, conjugation tables are kind of going over my head right now, since I can't seem to figure out future, subjunctive, etc. I've never leared those things even in English, so it's kind of a weakness of mine. Thanks a lot, junior high. Then there's pronunciation. On the bright side, it's starting to *almost* make sense which letters are not pronounced. Almost. In general, however, I know I don't sound the least bit French when I speak. I need to get together with my Franco cousins for some giggling/tutoring. Here's a question I'll put out to the world: How on earth do you know when there's "liason" between words? For example, why is it that when you say "pas ici", you hear the s blend with ici, but when you say "pas à trois hueres", you don't hear the s? And don't even get me started on the mess of vowel sounds that is "pas à une heure". Can someone enlighten me? Are there rules here? 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
