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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 41 of 56 17 November 2012 at 12:13pm | IP Logged |
About your limited Russian studies: I have had a long period where I have done almost no actual studying,
but I try to put a Russian CD on when I go to the bathroom in the morning - which at least makes me not
forget everything I have learned. Everyone has to go to the bathroom, right :-) Now as a guy you probably
spend less time putting on make up, but I find that when I put on the CD as soon as I get up, and have it on
all through my morning routine and breakfast, that gives me a good 45 minutes of Russian practice, which is
a lot better than nothing. Just an idea, it is one of the few things that work for me even when I am in a
vegetative mode.
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| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6357 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 42 of 56 25 November 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2012 - Team Sputnik - Log #8
Hi Woodsei and Solfrid. Thank you SO much for waking me up every now and then. I've just lost my habit of checking this forum - but now I want to get back in the race again! :)
@Woodsei: Thanks for the encouraging words. Unfortunately, the great recording of "I am a cat" turned out to be a computer-generated voice. The voice is almost flawless at the word-level, but completely soul-less on the sentence level. I noticed it as soon as I started to LR it, so I can't recommend it anymore - unfortunately. :/
@Solfrid: Your advice renewed my inspiration. Thank you. :)
Japanese September/October update
I did have some GREAT Japanese learning weeks after my last post. I had at least 3 weeks were I progressed at a wonderful pace. I was listening to podcasts on the bus and looked up words as I heard them. I leveled up to a listening level where I really could get what they were speaking about (with the aid of the dictionary look-ups): I was understanding discussions like "my feelings when I got to see the perfect hamster at a pet shop", or "what would you like to be if you were to be reborn (sports legend, celebrity etc)", and basically everything that can be said about make-up and "getting the perfect smile", because this podcast is sponsored by a company that makes anti-acne products. lol. ^^ If you ever need to give a speech in Japanese about teenage acne problems I can help you with the vocabulary!
Now I've moved to a new place that is closer to my job. That's problematic beacuse I lost my daily 1.5 hr bus ride, and that killed my study habits. I simply have to come up with something new. I was inspired by your suggestion Solfrid, I need to make my languages a bit more 'intrusive' in my home. :)
Russia enters the scene
Team Sputnik! I am proud to announce that I have started to LR Russian again this week!
It feels SO great to re-enter the Russian realm and feel how the language comes to life - I've finally found the perfect inspiration and I hope it will last. Now I want to add some scriptorium and song-scriptorium to the mix and perhaps even revive my grammar project. Maybe I'll even get a private tutor next year - I'll see.
One thing that I've missed with Russian is all the amazing voice actors!! Russian is truly the audiobook-heaven. Now I'm LRing a book by Oscar Wilde read by Вячеслав Герасимов - I think this voice-actor is fantastic - He makes the story and the characters come alive in a magical way, (I also LRed his version of Crime and Punishment before).
Czech Project?
In my job, we will work closely with programmers from the Czech Republic (and we will also go there and visit them soon as well). So now I have some inspiration to start a little Czech Project! I don't think I will aim for any kind of fluency, but it would be nice to get to a beginner's level. I've already started to look for Czech audiobooks. It wasn't too easy to find parallel texts though.
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Team Sputnik - M. Medialis
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 43 of 56 25 November 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
Awesome, Medialis, it is so good to have you back with us! It is nice to have someone more advanced on
the team too. Perhaps you could join in our next Skype session?
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 44 of 56 08 December 2012 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
I hope the job's working out really well, especially now that you've found a place nearer the office, and that you've managed to pick up a few handy phrases in Czech as a bonus too. :)
I was out shopping in a Japanese market just yesterday, and I spied some cool-looking yukata and tea sets and immediately thought of you. It sounds like your Japanese has risen to impressive new heights over the last year, and I'm happy to hear you're back on the Russian trail again too (I'll keep a lookout for Вячеслав Герасимов, as finding a good narrator in a second language is always an immense joy for me.)
What are your plans for next year by the way? Whatever they are, I wish you every success and enlightening language discovery along the way braddah! :)
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| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6357 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 45 of 56 08 December 2012 at 11:06pm | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2012 - Team Sputnik - Log #9
@Solfrid: It would be cool to join the Skype-sessions. I don't know how advanced I am though. I'm maybe higher intermediate when I'm at my best. :)
Czech Update
I visited the Czech Republic in the beginning of this week and really liked it - both got to meet some cool people and got the chance to eat some nice traditional food. And I can't help thinking that their written language looks totally cool with all their accents: "Těší mě, že Tě poznávám". -It has the magical Russian feel, but with a completely different flavour!
Russian Update
I have just spent some time preparing a parallel text of Oscar Wilde's play "The importance of being earnest" for doing LR and scriptorium. I've never read a play before, but just realized that it should be the ideal source to learn dialogue from. Let's see how it is.
Japanese Update
I may just have found The Next Big Thing! -Learning Japanese through Visual Novels. I've just spent 1.5 fun hours reading a visual novel and I hope it can become my new little (positive) addiction. :)
The format of Visual Novels is pretty ideal. It's like a computer game without any gameplay (just a story). The nice thing is that you only see one sentence at a time on the screen so you have plenty of time to figure out what it means without any distractions. (Compare this to the frightening feeling when you open a real Japanese novel and see 500+ unknown words at the same time - yipes. -I can also get the same feelings from manga).
So I just read on and look up every word I'm curious about. Here's an example of what it looks like (and it's also an example of the Japanese sense of humour, lol).
A little word of warning though. I quickly realized that most visual novels are......well you know.....for 18+ adults.. I don't want that, so I had to do some research before I found one that's 'safe'.
EDIT: Now I just realized that many visual novels actually come with Full Voice Acting!! Sometimes it's even synchronized with the text. :O This is beyond awesome! :D
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Team Sputnik - M. Medialis
Edited by M. Medialis on 10 December 2012 at 5:55pm
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 46 of 56 08 December 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged |
Level isn't important. It's about encouragement; I don't think any of us speak Russian
like a king.
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| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6357 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 47 of 56 08 December 2012 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
@tarvos: Thanks for reminding me. :) I almost never actually use the languages I know actively, I really gotta step out in the active zone soon!
Hey Teango! I got to see your post shortly after I posted my last update. :)
Dressing up in my Yukata to learn Japanese is still one of my favourite things! And of course I always take the opportunity to say some catchy samurai-like Japanese phrases to the mirror before the ceremony starts. X) Hope you're doing well at your new place - I'm a big fan of your new 'Arguellesque' project where you juggle so many languages at the same time! For me who have witnessed The Power of the Teango before, there's not a doubt in my mind that you can pull it off! :)
My plans for the next year are few (except that I will be working at my job, and will have plenty of free time on evenings and weekends - which is ideal for language studies if I just can keep the steam going).
So I plan to study Japanese and Russian actively next year - and maybe throw in Czech (accents accents), German (time to go European?) or Mandarin (kanji overload!) as a third language if I find the right materials. I've been such a terrible terrible team member this year.. :/ :/ I've barely updated my own log and almost missed the fantastic progress of my team member - sorry to all of you!
So I guess I'm still deciding on the details for next year. Do you have any clear plans yet?
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 48 of 56 09 December 2012 at 3:45am | IP Logged |
Learning Japanese through Visual Novels - sugoiii ne! :D At first I thought it was just an online repository of manga, but then I looked a bit more into it, and realised it was more of a mixture of narrative-style games I've seen played on the DS like "Ace Attorney", and those "Choose your Own Adventure" books with open endings that I absolutely adored as a young kid. As always M, you open up my eyes to both old and new bright language learning treasures on the Internet!
I've logged into The Visual Novel Database (first large one I found) and am trying to download a game right now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there are both finely polished commercial products AND free "fanfiction" type stories authored by web-savvy enthusiasts out there too. Unfortunately, both my basic Neaderthal Japanese skills and really slow internet connection (it's dropped from 2.5 to 0.5 Mbps in the last week) are getting in the way...maybe you could PM me a few hints on how to get started and can recommend a cool game for beginners (and don't worry, I like adult themes lol)? ^u^
Edited by Teango on 09 December 2012 at 3:49am
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