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Brun_Ugle flies again (TAC 2012 team い) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 1 of 276 11 December 2011 at 9:07pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome to Brun Ugle’s language log.
I’ve decided to start a language log to help motivate myself and to keep myself on track with my language learning. I love languages, but have had a tendency to let other things get in the way, or to switch languages mid-stream. This has left me with several half-learned languages. I am a native speaker of English and have learned Norwegian to an advanced level. I have at various times learned and forgotten Japanese, Spanish and Mandarin. Now I want to learn them to a level where I can maintain them without great effort, but simply by watching movies, reading books and otherwise engaging in enjoyable activities in these languages. I’ve decided to take on the languages one at a time because otherwise I tend to get side-tracked and lose focus. Also I never know when some difficulty will appear in my life forcing me to cut down on study time. Therefore, I think it will be most effective to concentrate on one language at a time until I reach the maintenance level mentioned above. I will start with Japanese since it is the one I am currently most enamored of and is the one I have put the most effort into over the years. Hopefully I can reach maintenance level by the end of 2012, but if not, then I will keep going until I do. At that time, I will start Spanish. I think Spanish will be relatively easy, so it will give me a breather, plus serve as a buffer between Japanese and Chinese, hopefully reducing the chances of mixing up kanji and hanzi. It is maybe 20 years since I studied Spanish, but even so, I’ve found that I can read and sort of understand relatively simple texts. It feels like Spanish is sitting dormant somewhere in my brain, waiting for me to find it and wake it up. After that is Chinese. I never studied it as much as Japanese and Spanish, but still I don’t want to throw away all that effort I put in. Also, it often seemed fairly easy to me and I still find words and phrases jumping out at me when I watch a Chinese movie. Still, it will probably take me some years to reach my desired level. After that, I can search for new languages perhaps, but that is a long time from now. TAC For 2012, I will participate in TAC, studying Japanese. I will describe my level, goals and methods in another post as this is getting quite long. Edited by Brun Ugle on 19 December 2011 at 11:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 276 11 December 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
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This is to be my index/table of contents so I (and others) can easily find things. I’ll edit and update it as I go along.
pg# topic Techniques 2 In praise of LR (message 14) 5 How I use Anki for Japanese (message 40) Reviews Books 28 妖怪のアパー トの幽雅な日常 （Daily life in the secluded elegance of the haunted apartment.）(message 217) 34 三毛猫ホームズの推理（The Deductions of Holmes, the Tortoiseshell Cat） (message 271) Manga 25 ドラえもん (Doraemon) (message 195) 25 What’s Michael? (message 196) 25 動物のお医者さん (Doubutsu no Oishasan) "Animal Doctor" (message 197) Dorama 25 未来講師めぐる (Mirai Kousi Meguru) «Future Teacher, Meguru» (message 198) Movies 16 となりのトトロ (Tonari no Totoro) «My Neighbor Totoro» (message 123) 17 魔女の宅急便 (Majo no Takkyūbin, Kiki’s Delivery Service) (message 135) 18 歩いても歩いても (Still Walking) (message 137) 19 雨月物語 (Tales of Moonlight and Rain) (message 145) 20 Tokyo Sonata (message 153) Milestones 3 Finished RTK 1 (message 18) Other 4 Start of TAC - more specific goals (message 27) Edited by Brun Ugle on 31 December 2012 at 1:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 3 of 276 11 December 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
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These are Japanese resources that I’ve found on the net, found useful, and intend to use. It’s not meant to be complete. It’s mostly just stuff I personally like to use. I will add to it as I feel like it.
RESOURCES Read the Kanji – great for practicing kanji readings. You can add material one JLPT level at a time as you wish. Works like an SRS. Reviewing the Kanji – to be used together with the Heisig books. Works as an SRS and saves you from making your own deck. You can also read other people’s stories to get ideas. Rikaichan – add-on for Firefox. Instant dictionary! Just hold your mouse-cursor over any word you don’t know. Works offline too. Just save documents in html format. rikaisama Like Rikaichan, but with the addition of sound. Press F to hear the word pronounced. Sheetz' fab list of audiobooks with transcripts and parallel texts – the list hasn’t been updated for a while, and there are even more things available on some of the sites Sheetz has linked to, so just look around. Erin's Challenge – very odd. It’s about a high school girl doing a six-month stay in Japan. Every lesson has several short videos, quizzes and grammar points. What’s weird is the disparity in levels. The language in some of the videos and in the culture quiz is often such that you should probably have studied Japanese for a while before attempting them, however the grammar points are often unbelievably elementary. I mostly just use it to hear a bit of spoken Japanese. The advantage is that you can turn on and off multiple subtitles on the videos (Japanese, kana only, romaji, English) and can go through the script one line at a time. Star Trek stuff (Yes, I’m not just a language nerd. I’m a regular nerd too) USS Kyushu homepage Scripts for episodes (Voyager has only summaries. For the others, there are scripts, but not for all the episodes) I use these for reading practice, because it’s fun. Maybe I will by some dvd’s eventually so I can hear them too, but not yet. It is also possible to find some episodes on Youtube by searching for スター・トレック, but they often get removed because of copyrights. : TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT Anime Scripts This site has scripts for some Anime films by Hayao Miyazaki and others. I happen to have quite a few Hayao Miyazaki DVD's. I buy DVD's by checking the language on the back and if it is in Japanese, I buy it. Miyazaki is fairly popular here, so mostly that is what I've found. Fortunately, I like most of these films well enough to watch them again and again. Using the scripts helps me to figure out what they're saying when listening alone isn't enough. (And once I've read it, I think, "Of course that's what they said. Why couldn't I hear that?") TV/Movies Mysoju Movies and dramas. Many Asian languages, not just Japanese. GoodDrama More great dramas and movies. Edited by Brun Ugle on 24 September 2012 at 4:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 4 of 276 11 December 2011 at 9:10pm | IP Logged |
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TAC 2012
I've learned Japanese up to about B1 level and then forgotten it again so many times. Hopefully, this time I will keep going to C1, at which point I think I will be satisfied and find it easy to maintain. Starting Level It’s hard to determine current level, so this is a very rough estimate. I have no opportunity for speaking, but I’m sure I could manage at least A2. My writing is very slow and requires me to look up a lot of words, partly because I look up anything I’m even moderately unsure of. So, maybe A2 without a dictionary, and B1 with dictionary. I’m better at reading, and actually was surprised that my listening has improved as well. So reading is probably B1. Listening varies from A2 to B1 depending how familiar I am with the topic. Goals My goals for the year are to get to a level of being able to watch movies and understand enough to enjoy them without needing subtitles, and to be able to read books for pleasure without having to look up any words. (That is I don’t expect to understand every word, but to understand enough of them to understand and enjoy the story without needing a dictionary.) I’m not sure how realistic this goal is, but I see that others seem to have been able to make that kind of progress in a year, so as long as nothing gets in the way, I think it may be possible. Methods I originally used the textbook “Japanese for Everyone” which I thought was good, though many people don’t like it. (There is very little audio material and it has a rather fast-paced grammar-based approach.) However, at this point I’m sick of it, so I have no intention of reviewing it. But it still makes a good reference. I’m looking around for some good references or textbooks for more advanced grammar, but I’m still undecided. I’m getting to the point where I can use some native materials, at least with “crutches” like rikaichan. So, I might choose to simply do “fun stuff” like reading things I’m personally interested in reading, listening to audiobooks, watching movies, etc., and try to absorb any unfamiliar grammar from that. Maybe I will try to get some good reference books to look up unfamiliar grammar and constructions as I come across them. Anyway, my methods will probably vary throughout the year as my interests change, but I will probably use many of the resources listed on my resources page. I recently felt an incredible urge to read Harry Potter, (for the bazillionth time), so I told myself, I could only read it if I did so in Japanese. So, that is what I’m doing at the moment. I’m still working out what is the most effective method for me, but I’m both reading it and listening to the audiobook. It’s great fun because I actually find it reasonably easy to follow along. That’s mostly a result of knowing the story by heart, but it is still nice. Although, I don’t understand every word, I still understand enough to follow the story and I find that with every rereading and every relistening, I am catching more and more. In addition, I have other materials to read and listen to, should I want a change. I’m nearly finished “Remembering the Kanji I.” I had gone through it before, but it was too long ago, and all the “due” kanji waiting for me at Reviewing the Kanji, were just too daunting, so I started again. I intend to be finished before the official start of TAC for 2012. Then, I might take a little break from learning new kanji, and just keep up the reviews for a while before starting on RTK3. But I’d like to finish RTK3 in the first half of 2012. I’m also using the Read the Kanji site. I quite enjoy it. I had reset all my stats there not so long ago, to sort of start over. I was just getting all my vocabulary words from the old JLPT levels 3 and 4 up to “strong”, when they changed the whole site and set everything down to “weak” again. Anyway, I’m gradually getting them back up, and now they’ve changed over to the new JLPT as well, so I’m currently working on the decks for nJLPT levels 5 and 4, which I know fairly well, and have added nJLPT3, which is coming along. I find my vocabulary is rather random. There are words at the lower levels that I don’t know well, but there are also words at the upper levels that I do know. One nice thing about the Reading the Kanji site is that it never tells you that you have a million cards due like many sites. It just keeps giving you sentences to review and you can do as much or as little as you like each day. I’ve also been putting sentences in Anki (from my various reading materials), and I try to review them each day to avoid the “million cards due” horror. I tried at one point just putting vocabulary words in, but there are too many words with similar meanings, so it didn’t work. Now I’m back to sentences. For listening, I use Erin’s Challenge (which is quickly getting too easy) and GLOSS in addition to audiobooks and dvd’s. I’m still looking for some more things I like to listen to and will list these on the resources page as I find them. As far as prioritizing goes: I will try to make keeping up reviews in RTK and Anki a top priority to avoid having too many cards due. The other things will depend on what is convenient and whether the internet is cooperating that day. If the internet is cooperating, I will try to do some of the things that require net access as quickly as possible before it goes down again. If there isn’t any internet, or it’s too slow, I will use offline tools like webpages I’ve saved, Harry Potter in print and audiobook, dvd’s and any other books or things I happen to be interested in at the time. Challenges/difficulties + solutions I have suffered from bipolar disorder and Asperger syndrome most of my life, and it has been very bad at times. These past two years have been terrible, but I now have a good psychiatrist and the correct diagnosis (they said I was schizophrenic before), so I think this will get much better. Maybe I will find some medicine that works too. In any case, having the right diagnosis helps me to figure out what’s happening and maybe how to prevent or at least lessen it. I also have the sort of job that gets very busy sometimes. In some periods, I’ve had to work 12-14 hours every day. I think this year though, I shall have to cut down on that a little for health reasons. As mentioned, my internet connection is very fickle, but I shall simply have to make sure I always have off-line tools to use and that I quickly use the internet whenever it is working, before it disappears again. Edited by Brun Ugle on 11 December 2011 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 5 of 276 11 December 2011 at 9:55pm | IP Logged |
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Previously my studies have been somewhat disorganized and haphazard, but I've decided to keep better track of things now. Usually it goes fine in the beginning, when I'm simply making my way through a textbook. It's when I start getting past that stage and have to do things on my own that I get in trouble. I tend to try different things and go from thing to thing feeling that nothing is working. I also waste a lot of time.
This time is going to be different. Since the 6th of November this year, I've been keeping track of everything I do in an excel spreadsheet. And from now on, I will also keep track here. I doubt that I will update every day, but I'll try for once a week anyway. Total since 6.Nov: 111 hrs 14 min Today: total 5 hr 16 min 47 min RTK (reviewing and learning new kanji) 42 min using read the kanji website 45 min Erin 15.5 min ANKI 1.5 hr reading and highlighting Harry Potter 1 hr listening to Harry Potter audiobook 16 min writing in my journal I really feel that I'm making progress, especially in listening. I usually listen to Harry Potter before I get around to reading, and I understand most of it even before I've read it and look up words. Part of that is because I know the story almost by heart, but even so, I feel it is good progress. I've only been doing it a few days, and already I feel a great improvement. It's like something got unlocked inside of me and I suddenly understand things. I've even tried listening to other non-Harry Potter things, and it seems like I understand more than before. It's not always enough to really understand the story though if I don't already have a good idea about what is happening. That's why Harry Potter is so great. Even if I only really understand 70% of the words, that's enough for me to know what's going on in the story since it's so familiar. If the story wasn't familiar, it wouldn't be enough. And since I am able to follow the story, my mind doesn't wander, so I learn so much more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6083 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 276 12 December 2011 at 12:45am | IP Logged |
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hi Brun ugle,
Which Harry Potter is it? I have ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 the first one. I only read about 1/3 of my copy. I don't have the audio. How is the rate of speech? I look forward to reading about your progress! --sunja edit: typos again Edited by Sunja on 12 December 2011 at 12:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 7 of 276 12 December 2011 at 9:02am | IP Logged |
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Hi Sunja!
I always begin at the beginning of course (at least with Harry Potter). I definitely recommend the audiobook. The guy who reads it is terrific. I think it's just as good as the English one with Stephen Fry. The rate of speech varies according to who is speaking and the situation. The scene in the beginning where Dumbledore and McGonagall are talking outside of Nr 4 Privet Drive while waiting for Hagrid is a good example. Dumbledore speaks slowly and softly, sounding like a slightly dotty, but wise old man. McGonagall speaks very quickly and sharply, sounding like a very strict, old spinster teacher. He's really very good at doing the voices. And I think with all the different rates and styles of speech, plus the non-standard speech (like Hagrid in particular), it gives good listening practice. It's a nice step between the very standard even speech of language courses, and real unscripted speech in the real world. As I've mentioned, I've felt a great improvement already and I've only read one chapter and listened to five. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6083 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 276 12 December 2011 at 3:31pm | IP Logged |
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The audio version sounds pretty good! I think I'll put in on my X-mas wish-list!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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