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LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5308 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
| Message 17 of 203 12 January 2013 at 12:56am | IP Logged |
Hello fellow Team 鶴 member! Japanese, Korean and Chinese? That's fairly impressive! Especially with the success you've already had. Norwegian seems a slightly out-of-the-blue choice alongside those, though!
A very small English point from one of your posts - I believe I've only ever seen French natives use the expression "a small year", I don't think you can translate it literally, into British English at any rate. It is such a good expression though! Unfortunately, I can't think of a substitute idiom, only the boring "just under a year" or similar.
Best of luck for 2013!
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| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4630 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin
| Message 18 of 203 20 January 2013 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
@Emme: I will try my best not to make you feel that going from one side of the world to
the other in languages is not impossible! :)
@mrwraper @Brun : I have realised now that even though I can have pretty much any kind
of discution in Japanese and may not always get corrected, Each sentences I say or hear
is pretty much analysed automatically in my head (like checking out new words, grammar
points regularity and else). It happens way less with Korean and Mandarin being at a
lower level and thus focusing first on being sure to understand the sentence well, but
in any case as long as I talk or hear the language I will consider it as "study"
(passive or active).
@Gosiak: Thanks! Unfortunately though, Norsk still feels like the hardest of all.
Especially pronounciation wise and with those long words like in German! I guess it's
just a matter of habit though. It should get better soon enough!
@LittleBoy: It was exactly one of the reasons fof choosing Norwegian ! It had been a
while since last time I got that feeling of "wtf is wrong with me? I don't understand
sh*t! How come this language is so weird?!" and it feels nice being lost again :)
Oh.. Yeah I don't even know how I ended up writing "a small year". I don't even use the
similar expression in French.. I usually say "Un peu moins d'un an" which would be
"just under a year" indeed. Anyway, thanks for making me realise I should still work a
bit on my English from time to time! :)
Edited by yuhakko on 20 January 2013 at 3:59pm
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| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4630 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin
| Message 19 of 203 20 January 2013 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
Alright, Now is time for my very first update of the year. I'll try to go around it in
the same order everytime:
Japanese: I am officially now living with a Japanese friend and as a result
speaking Japanese every single day again. As a result, thanks to that, I have felt my
ease at speaking come back and although still under my ability from when I was in
Japan. I know it is only a matter of time before being back where I was but with a
bigger vocabulary size. My flatmate still being at a low level, we usually just speak
in Japanese or English and just messages are made in French for now.
Unfortunately, apart from that I haven't properly studied. I have read a few articles
from yomiuri online, a few ones from 新聞で学ぶ日本語. The latter seems well done and
uses a lot of vocabulary actually used in real newspaper articles, so I will go on with
it. I have restarted listenning a bit to NHK radio about once a day this week.
However the biggest downside of my beginning of this year is that I am having trouble
continuing my book in Japanese. I guess it is because I haven't totally yet accustomed
to my life here and am not yet fully installed here.
Korean: The good news of this year I'd say. At least for me, because I've
finally succeeded in starting again (a bit) more seriously. I have read a few easy
articles, listened to some old TTMIK lessons that I still remembered but knew I could
not use myself, And thanks to Shawna on her website (hangukdrama.com) I found some good
children books that could be nice to help finally start reading books in Korean.
Mandarin: I have been slacking off too much and especially at the very beginning
of this year. Luckily, this week, I have succeeded in gaining back some motivation and
gone over some lessons from my Assimil. I should finish it one day... I stopped at
lesson 102 out of 105 ^^ I will try to write something in Mandarin on Lang-8 later
because it has been too long and I am not even talking to anybody in Chinese nowadays.
Norwegian: After slacking off for too long, I am now back into studying
Norwegian! I just started again a few days back but have been lurking around the
internet on website or logs in Norwegian to keep seeing some before. I have also put my
phone in Norwegian as one of the Challenges advised in our Team Viking thread. It has
been about a week, and I am getting the grasp of it. I particularly like the "Liker
ikke" when I go on Facebook from my phone :p Anyway, I am also planning on looking my
very first full (I already watched half of one a few months back) Norwegian movie and
we'll see how it'll go!
And NO, it is not over, there one to add :
Thai: As said in the Asian Team thread, I was planning on starting it pretty
much halfway into the year, but it just happened that in my school, my club organize
what we call a "buddy" system, which is supposed to make us French help exchange
students get used to france. And my buddy ended up being Thai! So I thought It'd be too
bad to skip this opportunity and thus started now! Obviously, I'm going slowly and
taking care of the (awfully difficult) alphabet for now, but it looks quite nice! I
started 2days ago and for now just know 3 consonnants and 3 vowels, plus about 5words
using those. I also downloaded some youtube videos in Japanese to learn the Alphabet
and the basics of the language. Why waste time and learn one language when you can use
one you're already learning to learn another one heh? Why go easy when you can go
hard?!
Anyway, that will be it for this time! Having now caught up on everybody on each of my
teams, I can have a fresh start, update more often, and participate a bit more !
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| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 20 of 203 20 January 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
Having read a couple of Korean children's books I can recommend 김치를 좋아하는 마녀 for its easy language and 신나는 열두 달 명절 이야기 because it's quite interesting culturally and not too difficult to read.
Great to see that you're starting to learn Thai! I think it's a very good idea to learn it through Japanese. I'll probably use some Korean resources for Mandarin, because it means I'm practicing two languages and it might be easier to find vocabulary parallels this way.
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| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5423 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese
| Message 21 of 203 21 January 2013 at 7:14pm | IP Logged |
Hi Fellow Team 鶴 member!
I'm jealous of your progress in Japanese- I need to step it up!
I'm sure things will start going a lot smoother one you get settled in and encounter a
good rythm.
1 person has voted this message useful
| billyshears66 Groupie United States Joined 4512 days ago 69 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin
| Message 22 of 203 23 January 2013 at 11:10pm | IP Logged |
Hi teammate! Excited to follow your progress this year in Mandarin. All your language
goals are impressive, and motivating! Good luck!
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese
| Message 23 of 203 24 January 2013 at 1:14am | IP Logged |
Hi teammate! (Because everybody else is saying it.)
I live with a Japanese wife and I can't get her to speak Japanese to me. So you are lucky.
LESSON: Japanese roommate > Japanese wife (for Japanese practice, that is)
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| iawia Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Taiwan Joined 4587 days ago 35 posts - 55 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Mandarin*, Taiwanese*, Cantonese, Spanish Studies: Thai, Japanese
| Message 24 of 203 28 January 2013 at 8:09am | IP Logged |
Hello fellow teammate
Wow, I'm quite jealous by your accomplishments in language learning, and the resources
and environment you have now! And now you're also learning Thai!
Yes, having a Chinese foundation, or indeed Korean/Japanese might be useful in
vocabulary, but I think that the similarities between these languages are too subtle
for a ordinary learner to notice. We also have that "buddy" system in my school, and my
buddy is from Nicaragua, which is perfect for me to practice my Spanish. There are also
2 Thai students here, but since that these graduate students are too busy, mostly I go
to the Mandarin Training Center in downtown Taipei to find Thai speakers.
Do you know this website:
http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/modules/index.html
It's designed by the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and they have complete
modules for many languages, including the languages of Southeast Asia.
I look forward to follow this blog and read your progress. Good luck!
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