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Magdalene’s TAC ’11: Team Ł | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 1 of 44 12 February 2011 at 9:27am | IP Logged |
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Hello all! This is Magdalene, formerly thephantomgoat. I can't remember or find my old
password for the life of me, which is why I've been absent of late (that, and school's been taking up a lot of my time). This, my new log, is dedicated to relating my journey through 2011's Total Annihilation Challenge as a member of Team Ł with my teammate ruskivyetr. I'll be writing up a storm on Lang-8; memorizing poems in my target languages; learning copious amounts of Mandopop songs for karaoke purposes; and talking to myself like nobody's business. I'll explore a new language family (Altaic/Turkic...and by the end of the year I hope to have an informed opinion about which classification I agree with); delve into a member (hellooo, Polish!) of a comparatively conservative branch of those good ole Indo-European tongues; and learn characters and vocabulary that'll be of great aid should I choose to further explore members of the East Asian sprachbund. I'll be working on Spanish, German, Mandarin, Polish, and Turkish this year. There's much more to say--my reasons for choosing these languages, my proficiency (or lack thereof) in each of them, my specific goals, what I love about each--but that'll have to wait. For now, there's a Lang-8 post to be written, and I'm just the one to do it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 2 of 44 12 February 2011 at 10:38am | IP Logged |
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DEUTSCH
Heute Abend schrieb ich einen Eintrag auf der Webseite Lang-8. Es handelte von dem Tod meiner Katze, die heute Morgen von Komplikationen ihrer Diabetes entschlief. Ein deprimierendes Thema...aber ich fühle mich ein bisschen besser, weil ich durch meine Gedanken dank dem Schreiben dieses Eintrags arbeitete. Ich betrauere sie noch, aber ich weiß, dass ihrer Schmerz vorbei ist. Ruhe sanft, Kianne. 中文 昨天我写一个 oh forget it. Not gonna try to write what I did in Chinese...suffice to say that I wrote my first Lang-8 journal entry yesterday. I discussed the languages I've studied and want to study, got some great corrections, and am looking forward to posting another entry in Chinese tomorrow. As soon as I'm able to embed hyperlinks (probably as soon as I've passed newbie status), I'll add links to my Lang-8 posts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 44 12 February 2011 at 5:52pm | IP Logged |
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Well now I have to call you Magdalene :).
I'm SO happy you've returned! I was contemplating switching teams because no one from our TAC team had a log except me! D: But now all is well :). You probably want to send a message to Ellasevia so he can change the name on the list and stuff. Welcome back :)! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5567 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 4 of 44 12 February 2011 at 11:59pm | IP Logged |
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Yes welcome back indeed. The more people studying Polish the better! Looking very much forward to reading your
experiences, findings and prgress etc. ¡Que tengas un gran año de lenguas! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 44 13 February 2011 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
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A big welcome back from me too! I love Polish, and would like to return to it whenever I get to a descent level in Russian (whichever century that might be...). I'll keep an eye on your log, and look forward to reading your postings.
Tienes una selección muy interesante de idiomas, cómo decidiste de estudiar precisamente estos? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 6 of 44 14 February 2011 at 8:46am | IP Logged |
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@ruskivyetr: Thank you! I'm glad you didn't change teams. :) I mentioned that I'm still
doing TAC and will be part of Team Ł in the big TAC thread, but I'll follow up with ellasevia. @Vos: ¡Muchas gracias! Estoy emocionada de volver a estudiar polaco. ¿Le interesa también el lenguaje? @Solfrid Cristin: ¡Muchas gracias! Contarle cómo llegué a estudiar precisamente estos idiomas podría tomar horas y páginas...pero trataré de ser breve. :) Escogí aprender español porque se lo ofrecía en la secundaria y porque es útil saber cuando uno se vive en California como yo. Empecé a estudiar alemán después de llegar a la universidad y por razones personales y académicas: es una lengua de mis antepasados. También lo necesitaría si decidiera estudiar la historia del arte occidental en una escuela de postgrado. El chino mandarín empecé a estudiar porque necesitaba algo que hacer durante un verano aburrido. Tomé unos cursos, me enamoré y mi vida nunca ha sido lo mismo. Tomé algunos desvíos a través de los mundos de vietnamita y yídish, pero decidí posponer mis estudios de estos idiomas hasta que mi alemán y mi mandarín se vuelvan mejor. Yídish y alemán son parientes y bastante similares; por eso me confunde estudiar ambos a la vez. Vietnamita y mandarín no son parientes, pero 60% del vocabulario vietnamita proviene de chino (se llama "Sino-Vietnamese") y, aunque la pronunciación de una palabra difiere dependiendo del lenguaje, todavía tienen algo en común. Por ejemplo, 决定 [juédìng] y quyết định, "to decide (to do something)". Relacionar el sonido de estas palabras con el mismo significativo no es intuitivo, pero todavía me ayuda. Siempre he querido aprender polaco porque es otra lengua de mis antepasados, y después de leer sobre la literatura y historia actual de Polonia este idioma hermoso me interesa aún más. Y el turco...pues quería aprender otro lenguaje que no sea de la familia indoeuropea. Consideraba suajili, el primer idioma que traté de autoestudiar. También pensaba en aprender árabe. Pero después de leer más sobre turco, mayormente en estos foros, tomé una decisión: turco, con su regularidad de gramática, cultura fascinante, comida deliciosa y música popular fenomenal sería perfecto para mí. Como hay una población grande de personas de Turquía en Alemania, sería útil tener buen dominio del lenguaje. Y es mi primer idioma aglutinante. Planeo volver a suajili y quizás árabe algún día, pero en este momento me contento con mejorar las lenguas que ya he empezado a aprender. ________________ Now for my update... DEUTSCH Ich habe einen zweiten (eigentlich mein vierter, aber mein zweiter auf Deutsch) Eintrag auf Lang-8 gepostet. Ich werde versuchen, einen Eintrag pro Tag zu schreiben, Deutsch und Chinesisch auf abwechselnden Tagen. Heute schrieb ich über die prachtvolle Sonnenuntergänge, die ich durch meinem Fenster sehen kann, und warum dieses prächtiges Bild so schmutzig und langweilig wird, wenn man es fotografiert. Während ich meine Gedanken verfasste, bemerkte ich, dass ich versuche, ganz poetisch auf Deutsch zu schreiben. Die lange Sätze fließen von mir sowie auf Deutsch als auf Englisch, und sie rollen aus, wie Fahnen in dem Wind gefangen. Ein Mitglied der Webseite korrigierte meinen ersten Aufsätz und gab mir einen ganz eigentümlichen Kommentar. Ich schrieb, "ich stellte so was vor, weil der Tod eines Familienmitglieds, wenn auch ein Pelzartiges, ergibt ein verletztes Herz, das die morbide Gänge der Vorstellung exploriert", und er sagte mir, "Das ist wunderschön gesagt, auch wenn ich es nicht ganz verstehe". Als ich es las, brach ich in lautes Gelächter aus: "Wunderschön gesagt, auch wenn er es nicht ganz versteht, he? Könnte ich das nächste Hegel oder Kant sein? Haha...überhaupt keine Chance". 中文 Looked over the revisions I got on my first two Lang-8 compositions. Wrote out the corrected versions and their attendant new words in my notebook. Sang off-key to some Jay Chou songs. TÜRKÇE Shot through the first lesson of "Teach Yourself Turkish" like a bullet from the mouth of a gun. Worked through the first two lessons of FSI Turkish. I'll take time in the next couple of days to review all of the above. Listened to Candan Erçetin's album Neden--which is incredible--a couple times. Ate a sucuk and cheese baked pie (yep, that counts as studying). Turkish is thus far fun and easy. The hardest part for me has been differentiating between i and ı while listening and speaking; they both sound like "ih" to me. i is a high front vowel while ı is a high back vowel, and I feel the difference in my tongue placement and airflow when I utter both sounds, but they still both sound the same. :/ In my next post, I'll detail what I do with my corrected Lang-8 posts. It's a lot more time-intensive than I suggested under my 中文 update, and as it'll form a major part of my studies, it'll be good to record it here. Edited by Magdalene on 14 February 2011 at 9:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| getreallanguage Diglot Senior Member Argentina youtube.com/getreall Joined 5472 days ago 240 posts - 371 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Dutch | Message 7 of 44 15 February 2011 at 4:12am | IP Logged |
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¡La mejor de las suertes en tus estudios!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5037 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 8 of 44 28 February 2011 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
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The following is an excerpt from my notebook containing transcribed Lang-8 entries. My notes are in colored pens and highlighters. To
distinguish between various features of the text here, I should note that underlining indicates new vocab words, the (number in parentheses) serves as a footnote, and bolding indicates a corrected phrase or sentence. The first paragraph is my (corrected) work; some comments by me and my gracious editor, as well as some offset vocab words--which I'll explain after the break- -follow. I've also included translations for the benefit of our forum members who don't read Chinese. Throughout most of this post, I refer to the language as Chinese; I am discussing the written language. As concerns speaking, I study Mandarin. These few sentences are excerpted from the first entry I posted on Lang-8, detailing (what else?) my language studies. _____ 我在大学学德文。因为我喜欢德文，喜欢学语 言，所以我学德文专业。我学德文已经二年半了，但是我的德语说得不太好。要想把语言说的流利，是件很耗时 (1)的事情(2). I study German at university. Because I like German and studying languages, I study German as my major. I've studied German for two and a half years. But my speaking isn't very good. Studying a language to fluency is a time-consuming thing. (1) hàoshí time-consuming (2) shìqíng affair, matter, thing, business (comment on what Yiddish is) 哦~~了解了解。谢谢妳，我知道了世界上还有 ��种语言。长见识(3)了。 Ah...I understand, I understand. Thank you! Now I know there are such types of languages in the world and have expanded my knowledge. (3) jiànshi knowledge and experience _____ I don't include English translations in my notebooks. Rereading my entries is usually sufficient to remind myself of what I meant; I have a strong bond with Writings Past, even those in another language. As stated above, my writings in my notebook are in different colors. This has proven especially helpful as regards pinyin; sometimes I remember a character's meaning but not its pronunciation (or vice versa), and it's easier to pick out the missing information when it's foregrounded in a different color. The phrase "(comment on what Yiddish is)" appears in English to remind myself what I replied to a correction (in this case, the correction of 意第绪语 [Yiddish] to 意大利语 [Italian], the latter of which I haven't studied a day in my life). My reply to my kind editor was written in Chinese, but as my words were not corrected, I hesitate to transcribe them for fear of solidifying the probable errors in that text. So I content myself with recording the vocab I had to look up in an inset box, designated above by its centering. My comment on this entry wasn't the first time--and it won't be the last--that I've had to explain what Yiddish is (in Mandarin or in other languages), so it's good to have the word for, say, "Jewish" at my disposal. Would I recommend transcribing (corrected) Lang-8 entries to language learners? Yes, when used in conjunction with other techniques and ways of getting exposure to the target language(s). Some benefits I've seen from nine days straight of posting on the site (followed by nine days straight of ignoring it, but hey, let's focus on the positive here): -Connection between body and mind. Handwriting words makes them more real for me than typing them ever will, despite my having been born and raised in the Information Age. -Improving my handwriting in Chinese. I'm becoming more mindful of character structure and balance. Already my handwriting has improved (which isn't saying much; it did and still does look like the scratch of an inebriated chicken). -Creation of new texts to study. While not native materials, my writings are nonetheless grammatically correct and understandable texts in Chinese. -Anchor in my life. These texts are much easier to commit to memory because they're my own words and about my own experiences, those that I enjoy and often discuss. -Record my progress. I can't wait to look back at some of my earlier work and find pleasure in its childishness. :) These journal entries are never the sole texts I am studying in Chinese. I supplement them with textbooks and authentic materials (or should I say, I supplement those with my corrected Lang-8 entries). My writing skills won't grow if I, shall we say, spend all my time gazing at myself in a mirror, reflecting only my current modest skills to myself. With that in mind, I incorporate new vocabulary and grammar structures in each entry, stretching myself with each writing. The mirror I peer into, then, reflects an English-speaking Magdalene less and less as Mandarin-speaking Magdalene grows into herself, greater in capability and confidence. Edited by Magdalene on 28 February 2011 at 10:19am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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