Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 73 of 78 16 September 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
15 Minutes a Day (remastered): Week 4, "ma la ma lama"
Hours of study this week: 5.8
Total hours of study: 30.3
I'm still not hitting all my targets, but I'm gradually getting there... I threw around a few phrases of Pidgin and discussed Anglo-Japanese bilingualism with a Hawaiian-born taxi driver, and also happened to scare some Russian speakers half to death in an elevator when I asked them (in Russian) to press the floor for my office. I also learnt several new words in Spanish whilst listening to my wife's Zumba DVD in the background this weekend, and set aside some time to make some Hawaiian parallel texts.
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Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 74 of 78 23 September 2013 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
15 Minutes a Day (remastered): Week 5, "ʻohana"
Hours of study this week: 5.8
Total hours of study: 30.3
I got up bright and early to indulge in a stroll around Magic Island this morning, where I let my mind ponder over the Furey Brother's Irish classic "It's a long, long way from Clare to here". And as I relaxed to the sound of the waves crashing around the peninsula, I took a moment to reflect with my wife on how my learning strategies had evolved over the last half a decade.
If you'd asked me how to put my best foot forward in learning a language back then, I'd have probably pulled out a big fat frequency dictionary and feverishly referred to some efficient flashcard system like Anki, solely focused on reaching "Grand Central Fluency Station" as soon as possible. I certainly wouldn't have dared suggest tackling a new language before reaching a pretty decent level in any former study languages, and the idea of doing just 15 minutes a day would have felt like an abject sacrilege to the gods of efficiency.
Thousands of posts and countless experiments later, and both my approach and attitude have radically changed. I find myself getting to know one big ʻohana (Ha: family) of languages better each day (or at least trying to, as and when time and tide permit), still keen to reach that same Grand Station above, but now with a much more relaxed demeanour, focused more on slowing down just enough to enjoy the vista and deepening friendships along the way, and savour some of those little epiphany moments on what I hope will be a lifelong journey.
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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 75 of 78 23 September 2013 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
Dear Teango,
Like always you have conjured up some exciting way of handling your language studies. And 10 a day! Plus a job!
You are my hero - and I loved your daily plan :-)
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Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 76 of 78 12 October 2013 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
15 Minutes a Day: Sabbatical
As the more perceptive amongst you may have already noticed, I haven't posted much over the last couple of weeks. October is proving to be much more hectic than I initially anticipated, fraught with impossible twists and turns. I'm also currently teaching twice as many classes at the moment, and have to complete two big projects for my PhD by the end of this month. So this means every spare minute will be set aside for finishing off academic work this month, and sadly there'll be no time left for learning languages during this period.
Edited by Teango on 17 December 2013 at 11:07pm
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Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 77 of 78 12 October 2013 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
@Cristina
Thanks for the words of encouragement! I feel really bad at the moment having to prioritise my studies and teaching over language learning. However I felt a little less disheartened to read that even Alexander Arguelles said he didn't have time to take on new languages whilst completing his PhD. Hopefully, once I've got these big projects out of the way, I'll be back on track again.
Edited by Teango on 17 December 2013 at 11:05pm
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Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 78 of 78 18 December 2013 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
I'll be continuing this adventure in my new log for the 2014 TAC challenge.
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