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Magdalene’s TAC ’11: Team Ł | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 25 of 44 10 May 2011 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
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Magdalene! I'm so glad to see you posting in your log :).
Unfortunately I've not had much time nor energy to do any language study for a week or two, and I've not updated my log in FOREVER. Just dropping by to let you know I'm still here and studying Polish :). School has been killer and I've been getting sick almost perpetually, so I've just been out of it, but I'll get back in the swing soon enough :). Happy Studying! Ruskivyetr 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5566 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 26 of 44 10 May 2011 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
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Come on Magdalene!! I know starting on another language (especially one as difficult as Polish) when you already
have 3 at decent and enjoyable levels must be a draining and off-putting thing, especially when you just want to improve and enjoy the others who's levels you've worked very hard at getting to. But as you've mentioned (and if I remember correctly), it is part of your heritage and and I'm sure it would be a great thing for you to be able to speak freely with your family in your own historical language, not to mention simply being able to converse and understand the wonderful language which is Polish. I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here, it's true, as I'm kind of in a very similar situation as yourself, and I'm sure that I'm going to run into similar hurdles with regards to motivation and whatnot in the future also, but hopefully by trying to give you a little more encouragement and motivation, by the time I begin you'll already be enjoying all the things that the Polish culture and people have to offer through your elegant knowledge and use of the language, and thus you'll be able to remind me of all the reasons why I've wanted to learn it for for quite some time now also. So lead the way Magdalene! Even if it's only 30 minutes a day or so, enough to make you feel as though you're moving forward yet not taking a detrimental amount of time away from your other allied and much loved languages. Anyway I'll stop the rant now, it is your decision of course and only you know how you feel. But here's a Polish musician who I think is amazing, despite the fact that I have no idea what he's saying, nor am I a big fan of hip hop, but there's something about this guy (and producer = Emade) which I find to be very encompassing, alluring, and simply really good music. Hopefully it might give you a little burst of inspiration as it has me. Fisz - Nie Bo Nie Hasta luego 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 28 of 44 13 May 2011 at 1:25am | IP Logged |
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@ruskivyetr: Great to hear from you! So glad you stopped by my log. I hope the
rest of your semester goes well (you're almost done, hang on!) and that you feel better soon. I look forward to reading your log update when you get around to it. I'm particularly interested in seeing how your Icelandic studies are going. It's a language that has recently and unexpectedly piqued my interest; I think the epilogue to Neil Gaiman's American Gods did it, haha... @Vos: Thank you for your support and encouragement. I wrote that post overcome with...well, a lot of things (sing it with me! "Feelings...nothing more than feelings...whoaoowhoa feeeeeeelings!" Gad, now that piece of schlock is stuck in my head...end parenthesis). Come to find that all I needed was a break from Polish. After a day of a whopping zero minutes of study--did horrible things to my 6WC score--I returned with a vengeance and logged two and a half hours the next day. :) I'm excited about your forthcoming Polish study; I can't wait to follow your adventures when you decide you're ready to begin. And thank you so much for the link to the song! I absolutely love it; it's strikingly similar to the kind of hip hop I listen to in English. @szastprast: Thank you, szastprast! The grammar bits and whatnot I throw in my log are primarily for my own review; a nice side effect of posting them in a public forum is that others can use them for their own edification and/or amusement as well. :) I wouldn't say 'sześć' is easy for me to pronounce, per se; it got a lot easier when I read a post on this forum equating the Polish 'sz' to the pinyin 'sh,' 'ś' to pinyin 'x,' and 'ć' and 'ci' to pinyin 'q' (as well as 'cz' to 'ch'). I'm sure the sounds aren't identical, and I'm equally sure I don't pronounce any of them perfectly, but the rough equivalency contents me for now. A longer, more comprehensive update is forthcoming, but it'll have to wait until I finish my final papers. Expect to read about my linguistic romps with dinosaurs, aliens, gods, and general intrigue sometime soon. Edited by Magdalene on 13 May 2011 at 1:28am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 29 of 44 16 May 2011 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
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Feeling stabby today. Heater broke and it's stuck on high. The heat's giving me a
massive headache. JĘZYK POLSKI: DINOZAURY [1011/4500] I've set a short-term goal of 75 hours (4500 minutes) of Polish study, which I'd like to complete by the end of the 6WC. During that time I'd like to complete the first volume of Hurra!!! po Polsku and the A1 level of my Polish Busuu course (more on that in a minute). A lofty goal, certainly, but if I aim high and fail, I'm still better off than before I began. Some highlights of my recent forays into Polish-dubbed media: -Toy Story 2. -Dawno temu w trawie, literally "long ago in the grass," the Polish title for A Bug's Life. -Ballada o Wielkim Alu, known as The Ballad of Big Al in the British market and Allosaurus: A Walking with Dinosaurs Special in the American one. -Zanim przywędrowały dinozaury: Wędrówki z potworami, or Before the Dinosaurs: Walking with Monsters. I watched all of the above without subtitles, so I didn't understand much. I did grasp size comparisons in Walking with Monsters, though, and reacted accordingly: "The spider is as big as a cat." "Oh sh*t!" "The millipede is the size of a small car." "What the fff--" I also encountered a number of great resources lately. Among them: -First Polish Reader with PDFs and mp3s. -DLI Polish courses. -Busuu. The site has a number of basic language courses with vocab, exercises, audio, and opportunities to have one's writing corrected by native speakers. I'd recommend the site to false beginners, a phrase I use here to describe someone who knows about the particular features of hir target language, knows a hundred or so words, and/or has experience teaching hirself languages (I understand others may define "false beginner" differently). I can't wholeheartedly recommend Busuu to complete beginners because, for the free account, at least, grammar explanations are virtually nonexistent, and the learner's supposed to pick up on, say, conjugations via pictures, Rosetta Stone-style. And the quizzes are ridiculously easy. BUT. The site provides a place to review what you've studied elsewhere, and it's a little addicting. The only reason I didn't zoom through the A1 level in a day is that I'm loading most of the sentences into Anki, which slows me down. I'll be done with it well before the end of the 6WC, though. DEUTSCH: AUßERIRDISCHEN [172/6000] Found dubbed episodes of Invader Zim at MySpass. Absolutely addicting. And hilarious; I can't believe I didn't appreciate this show when I was younger, as it's wickedly funny social satire. But seeing as how I'm the same person who hated Pride and Prejudice the first time 'round because I didn't recognize it as satire, it's perhaps not too surprising that it takes me a while to get these things...The minutes listed in brackets, by the way, refer to the amount of minutes I've spent watching TV in the language. ENGLISH: GODS [Insert recommendation of American Gods by Neil Gaiman here.] 中文: 戏说剧 [465/6000] I'm about a third of the way through the period drama 锁清秋 (Four Women Conflict, which isn't a direct translation of the title). I'm watching it with subs in simplified characters...no English! It was quite a daring move if I do say so myself; I stopped watching another drama last summer because halfway through the series the English subs were no more. But removing that crutch has improved my comprehension a lot more quickly, although I'd barely understand anything were it not for the Mandarin subtitles. I'll return sans subs to my other drama (一起来看流星雨, Let's Go Watch Meteor Showers) once I'm done with this one. FUTURE PLANS Assuming I reach my goals for Polish this year, I'll resume Turkish in 2012. Yeee! Can't wait. :D Edited by Magdalene on 26 July 2011 at 11:22pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 30 of 44 26 July 2011 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
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I'm back! A couple months and a lot of stress later, I've returned and am ready to
resume language learning in a big way...which for me consists of less pressure on myself than before. And that means one less language. I have a full plate with two languages that I'm actively studying--German and Mandarin--and I'm sad to say that I'm dropping Polish for the year. I'm in awe of those who can keep more than two new languages going at once. Starting a new language (rather, resuming one of my false- begun tongues) will have to wait until I reach proficiency in at least one of my others. As concerns Polish specifically, I agree with the user Mooby, who's posted on a couple occasions (most recently on page 10 of Vos's log) that getting started in Polish requires multiple hours of study a day at the beginning, and I tend to agree with him. I don't have that kind of time at the moment, so język polski will have to wait. Though I hope to remain on Team Ł, if that's possible. In other news...joining August's 6WC for Mandarin and hoping to make great strides. I'll post some goals soon. My German goals (of 6000 minutes of media and five books) still apply, as do my Mandarin media-watching ones. Back to the books! Edited by Magdalene on 27 December 2014 at 8:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 31 of 44 02 August 2011 at 11:51am | IP Logged |
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中文: 6WC Goals
1. Log at least an hour of study time per day. 2. Complete one pass-through of Beyond the Basics: Communicative Chinese for Intermediate and Advanced Learners (2nd ed.). 3. Watch at least 3000 minutes of TV. 4. Learn unknown characters from 1-1200 of this list. 5. Read one book (Harry Potter if I'm feeling ambitious, though I'll settle for a picture book). By "pass-through," I mean a run through the book without stopping to fret over things I can't understand or don't stick in my memory. The book's a bit beyond my level, but I hope to pick up at least eighty percent of the content the first time through. DEUTSCH Während der nächsten sechs Wochen hoffe ich, fünf Bücher zu lesen. Ich las schon die erste Hälfte des Buches Das Weibernest (1997) von Hera Lind, und ich finde es ein lustiger, leichter Roman. Ich muss vielen Wörter im Wörterbuch nachschlagen, aber ihren Bedeutungen erinnere ich viel besser, als anderen Wörter, die ich aus irgendeinem Kontext auf einer Vokabelliste geschrieben habe. Best wishes to all 6WC participants, and Ramadan Mubarak to the Muslim readers of this log! Edited by Magdalene on 02 August 2011 at 11:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 32 of 44 21 August 2011 at 6:08am | IP Logged |
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The bracketed numbers below are my total minutes watching media this year. My 6WC stats
are as follows: GERMAN: 5 min. speaking + 422 min. reading + 153 min. vocabulary = 580 min. MANDARIN: 180 min. media + 258 min. reading + 212min. vocabulary = 650 min. DEUTSCH [172/6000] Zuletzt habe ich nichts auf Deutsch angesehen; anstatt mein Hörverstehen zu verbessern, beschäftige ich mich mit meinem Leseverstehen. Ich las Das Weibernest zu Ende, deshalb kann ich den Titel auf eine (hoffentlich immer länger werdende!) Liste setzen. Gelesene Bücher -Hera Lind, Das Weibernest (1997). 360 S. 中文 [645/6000] Still watching 锁清秋. Beginning the third chapter of Beyond the Basics. Reading the second chapter of 哈利•波特与混血王子. Behind in all of my goals and hoping to least reach an average of an hour of study a day by the end of the challenge, ‘cause Maude knows I haven’t actually been studying an hour a day. Feeling good about my progress nonetheless; I’m making great strides in vocabulary review and acquisition. Back to the books... Edited by Magdalene on 21 August 2011 at 6:41am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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