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Vermillon’s TAC’13 鶴 & Lugus | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 41 of 73 07 May 2013 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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April 2013 Report
I'm a bit late for the report, but mieux vaut tard que jamais! Lately I have been more and more busy with work as well as the online courses I'm taking, and perhaps it's time for a pause as we've reached one third of the year, to compare where I stand against my initial goals, if they need to be updated and what corrective measures I need to take. Mandarin / 普通話: -Reading: the goal was to read every single day. That's a failure for now, but I haven't found any book that catches my interest for now. Perhaps I should just buy some more and see how I fare. -Listening: I have almost not listened to any Mandarin this year, apart from a very few movies in which I usually understood most of the dialogues, but I'm all too aware that as soon as there is some action and faster (/noisy/simultaneous) speech, I'm lost. I plan to watch more movies. -Speaking: I've spoken quite a lot, but mostly on everyday topics, and thus not in any challenging way. My vocabulary is degrading, and I think it's about time I get back at it more seriously (especially since my other Anki decks are getting more calm), especially if I want to pass the TOFCL early next year. -Writing: I'm writing a few lines daily, and I think my handwriting is improving, but unfortunately quite slowly. I'm aware of it, but I guess I'll just keep at it. I won't take calligraphy classes just for that :-) Success/Failure & Goals: Quite late on schedule. My recently more intensive contact with Classical Chinese makes me want to improve my Mandarin, to access more easily the resources I need to understand and research the texts I read. Minnanhua / Hokkien / Taiwanese(?) / 閩南話: I now have a decent command of the vocabulary equivalent to the three first levels of the HSK, which means every day vocabulary and expressing rather simple thoughts, with around 650 words. I'm rather satisfied with that, given that it was not just downloading a list, but that I had to get all the recordings, process them, find the possible characters in a dedicated dictionary, etc. I'm now two months and a half from my trip. I don't plan to learn any more vocabulary, at least not in a systematic fashion, and instead I want to reach a good fluency (as in "flowing") for that level of speech. For that, I'm planning to talk more, more likely prepare speaking routines to somehow memorize, and also spend more time listening to the radio. I've also found that the songs that seemed so difficult to me a few months ago are actually pretty easy now that I know the vocabulary (and that I don't need to learn every word of the song). Learning a few of those songs in preparation for Karaoke sessions is definitely something I must do in the time left. Success/Failure & Goals: On schedule, now I need to increase the pressure a bit to be ready for my trip! Classical Chinese / 文言: My goal is still to read 说苑 during the year, and given that it's around 560 pages, that should be an average of 1.5p/day, and I'm far behind schedule. This is probably fine, given that for the first three months, I have simply not read anything, and since some time during April I've started assigning myself a 20 minute slot every morning. That proved addictive, and I've now decided to take part in the 6WC with Classical Chinese, and so far I've read around 1h30 per day, now reaching p60. If I continue with that rhythm, I should be able to finish reading it some time around September. I can already feel that my reading is getting smoother, and because each chapter of the book is made of many short stories (retellings?) revolving around the same topic, one tends to read faster once the core vocabulary and the key ideas are assimilated. Who knows, with a bit of luck my reading spead may increase from the low 4p/h I'm at now! Success/Failure & Goals: Behind schedule, but now progressing much faster than I would have expected. :) Korean / 한국어 / 韓國語: After the initial stages of excitement while preparing for the TOPIK, my motivation fell after attempting a past paper and seeing that I was so far. Now that I've actually taken the real TOPIK, I can confidently say that I'm very far from the expected level, but somehow I've re-gained some motivation from the experience. My main problem is that I don't know how to tackle reading/speaking/writing. I mean, yes, I do know how, I just haven't found how to take the first step. I'm reading some manhwa and keeping my Anki under control, but that's surely not enough: I need to start using Korean. Success/Failure & Goals: Failure for now, but as my target is October's (November's?) TOPIK, I still have some time to get to work and improve. Japanese / 日本語: Though I'm still keeping my Anki deck alive, that's about all I'm doing in Japanese for now. It's a shame really, but I feel that Japanese may be the straw that would break the camel's back, so I consider it ok to leave it aside for now... even though I feel very attracted to it. Basically, I know that I would encounter the same difficulties as I have for Korean, and so as long as I won't have found how to approach "using" Korean, I will leave Japanese aside. Breton / Brezhoneg: I'm now at lesson 63, and progressing rather slowly, but I prefer to have an excellent command of what I've seen so far rather than finishing the book in a rush and burning out. My deck follows closely every lesson and that really helps me retaining everything I've learnt through repeated exposure. I hope to finish the book before going to China, and move onto other material and/or try to read some easy books. Success/Failure & Goals: Very happy about it, I went further that I'd have expected at first, and I hope to keep working at it. Wanderlust: My Norwegian Assimil deck is progressing, now covering up to lesson ~60 and having a good command of everything until ~45. I'd like to finish it before the end of the month, either to do more interesting things with Norwegian, or to liberate some time for other languages. Summary I think it was an OK month. I'm not working as hard as I could, but at least I'm not burning out, and I'm having good success with online courses, which actually help me in my job/career, so which tend to take priority, if need be. At least, I feel that I'll be able to sustain this rhythm until the end of the year, and by that time, the progress will be impressive, I'm sure! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 42 of 73 07 May 2013 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Vermillon, how do you like the Breton book so far? I have finished the thing, so I could
ask you this question in Breton, but I'm not sure if you'd understand (j'aurais également pu poser cette question-ci en français...) I have to say I don't find the dialogues very funny. That is probably its biggest drawback, along with some of the weird vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 43 of 73 07 May 2013 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
good to see your update! :) Sounds like you're doing great with Taiwanese and Classical Chinese! I was wondering what that "Multilingual" that is listed for you at the 6WC meant.
Personally, I really think writing many practice sentences for specific Korean grammar points (and getting them corrected if possible) is a great way to get more comfortable using the language. That's basically why I formulated the May challenge - totally disinterestedly of course :). I also thought chatting on shared talk (or wherever) was extremely helpful. You use the kind of language you would in a conversation but without the added pressure of speaking and thinking very quickly. Good luck with finding what suits you! I hope you find a way to become as addicted to Korean as you are to Classical Chinese ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 44 of 73 07 May 2013 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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vermillon, it's inspiring to read about Classical Chinese. Now you make me feel like learing it while I still haven't got to an intermediate level at Mandarin. I'll be sure to ask your for advice whenever I decide to try some. Maybe just dabbling at it isn't harmful at all and will help me understand a lot of things in Mandarin I keep wondering about.
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| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 45 of 73 07 May 2013 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Evit c'hoazh e plij din kalz ar yezh, hag aes kaer int ar kentelioù. Ha daoust ma ganit emañ ar gwir (eo hirvoudek-spontus al levr), me 'gred eo aes ha plijus deskiñ brezhoneg ganti. (Ah, ne c'hallez krediñ pegeit am eus ezhomm evit skrivañ ar pezh-se...) Gwelloc'h eo komz brezhoneg pe galleg eget saozneg... (hag ar wech gentañ e komzan brezhoneg eo!)
When I've read the challenge, my first thought (pessimist reflex ftw..) was something like "how can 50 words in a month be called 'cramming'?", but after a few days I think that's indeed about what I need: go through a grammar/vocabulary list, read examples, analyse, and come up with my example sentences. I also think it's important to build some routine dialogues, something that about every textbook does, but I've mostly skimmed textbooks instead of assimilating them. So, yes, thank you very much for this challenge idea. I think I'm going to start working on it this week-end, and I hope to see improvement :) (ideas from our "Dear Team Leader" are always great, aren't they?). Also another point that blocks me, is that when I start a month, my to-do list usually looks like this: -classical chinese: read 20mn/day -breton: do 20 lessons -korean: -listen to 10 iyagi, -remove all the leeches in anki, -go through the grammar of the TOPIK, -etc -etc and finally, having too many items on my Korean list has the result that I do none of these items, while the simplicity of the list for other languages (and the regularity that they allow) helps me completing them. Perhaps I should just give myself one item per month, and work diligently towards that goal. All right, I'll try that. Grammar focus this month, and only that.
Definitely. One that always comes to my mind is "反之亦然", vice versa. I could never really remember it before, as simply I couldn't understand why it meant that. With even the very basics of Classical Chinese, it's absolutely limpid, and I believe it really does help your reading skills. I don't want you to lose focus, but if you decide to try, I have tried several textbooks, and I could recommend some of them... perhaps you could have a look at my 2012's TAC log, at some point I've documented my early contact with the language. Edited by vermillon on 08 May 2013 at 11:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 46 of 73 08 May 2013 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I also started Classical Chinese while at a fairly low level in Mandarin, and it was one of the best things I ever did for
my Chinese. It helped my reading like I couldn't imagine. Fuller's An Introduction to Literary Chinese is my own recommendation for a beginner's textbook, but there are others out there too. Vermillon, I don't know if you've seen it yet, but the Taiwan Ministry of Education recently put out a Taiwanese dictionary, complete with example phrases and sentences, and even audio for the words. It isn't comprehensive by any means, but it may come in handy. I think I remember that you're studying a different dialect of Minnan, but every little bit helps. There's also a phrasebook called 台湾語会話フ レーズブック, which contains 2900 sentences in Japanese, Taiwanese, and Mandarin, complete with audio recordings in all three languages. I love shadowing sentences like this, it really helps with fluency in my experience. I got my copy from Kinokuniya, I don't know if there's one near you or not, but I'm sure they deliver. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 47 of 73 08 May 2013 at 8:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Je te prie de m'excuser s'il y a des fautes grammaticales, ici je n'ai pas recours à mes livres de texte et de grammaire, je suis dans le train. D'ailleurs - komzon, c'est une forme dialectale? S'il s'agit du futur, mieux vaut écrire "komzin". Et en cas du présent c'est "komzan" - la terminaison -on n'existe que pour les verbes gouzout et bezañ, les deux verbes les plus irreguliers (on pourrait dire presque les seuls). Emañ ar gwir ganit. Ur plijadur eo deskiñ brezhoneg, met plijout a rafe din kaout muioc'h levrioù... Ha ne gaven ket aes al levr c'hoazh, bechou am eus ganti... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 48 of 73 08 May 2013 at 11:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ah, komzon n'est pas une forme dialectale, ou alors du vermilloneg... simplement une erreur de ma part (que je vais de ce pas corriger...) Je voulais bien sûr dire komzan, et ouzon/on m'ont induit en erreur...
Diwar-benn levrioù brezhoneg, kavet em eus ur sit-web a gwerzhañ anezho (dezho? Penaos eo ret komz "qui en vend"?): http://klask.com/. Tri levrioù am eus prenet aze, met ne 'm eus ket kroget da lenn anezho. Er sit-web e c'hallez kavout levrioù aes, da skouer em eus prenet ar levr-se: Spont. Pa'z em bo lennet anezhañ, e lavarin dit penaos oa. (ahah, je n'ose pas imaginer le nombre de fautes dans ce petit texte rédigé à la va-vite... mais qu'importe, l'essentiel est sans doute de pratiquer!) PS: "al levr c'hoazh". Je ne suis pas sûr d'avoir compris, est-ce que par hasard c'était "ne 'm eus ket kavet levr aes ebet c'hoazh"? Aussi, j'ai cherché "bechou", mais je n'ai trouvé que "bec'h/-ioù" qui veut dire difficulté. Est-ce une particularité orthographique? Enfin, je crois que le dernier "ganti" devrait être gantañ (si l'on parle de "levr"... mais j'ai peut-être mal compris :D) Edited by vermillon on 08 May 2013 at 11:34am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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