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mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5224 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese
| Message 137 of 156 26 February 2013 at 8:27pm | IP Logged |
I'm glad you recovered from your depression too and to see you back on track, but it sounds as if you don't know for sure how/why it happened. I'd be wary of that, for it increases the probability it may happen again and catch you off-guard.
Best,
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| 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 138 of 156 26 February 2013 at 10:00pm | IP Logged |
Thanks guys!
Actually, depression can have both internal and external causes, and I think mine are mostly internal and to do with brain chemistry. I have medicine, but I probably will never be entirely quit the depression. Also, medicines for bipolar disorder tend to work a little more on the mania than on the depression, so I guess now I'm more likely to go down than up. But the medicine should make the depression lighter and shorter in duration than before. My last major depression lasted over a year. That time I was really crazy and didn't even know who I was. So by comparison, this is just a minor annoyance.
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| 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 139 of 156 28 February 2013 at 9:35am | IP Logged |
I just found out yesterday that I have to write an appeal against a decision. (I just had to look that up. I didn't know how to say it in English.) I received it almost three weeks ago and didn't think I needed to appeal, but apparently it will affect other decisions made in the future, so if I don't appeal this one, those will turn out unfavorably. Anyway, the usual deadline for appeals is three weeks (which would mean tomorrow), so I went into total panic, completely ruining the new "gloriousness" that came into my life on Tuesday. Then I found out that this particular law has a deadline of six weeks for appeals. Whew!! So now I'm happy again and even having to write long, complicated, official letters seems like great fun. Isn't happiness great?! But now I have even more to work on these next few weeks with having to write the appeal and collect the necessary documentation.
Anyway, the point of this rambling is that I've found my very favorite Norwegian word -- 'refererer'.
I just love those -ere words because I always end up having to carefully check that I have the right number of r's and e's, but this one is extra special because it's almost nothing but r's and e's. If you're wondering what it means, it is the present tense of 'refer'.
Wow! It's really rainy and windy today. It sounds like the roof is about to blow off. I think I'll skip going to the gym today. I would be in serious danger of blowing off the bridge that I have to cross to get there. I'm so glad I bought milk on the way home yesterday rather than waiting to do it today.
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| Travis.H Triglot Groupie United States Joined 4454 days ago 59 posts - 91 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, Sign Language Studies: French
| Message 140 of 156 01 March 2013 at 3:55am | IP Logged |
I'm glad you're doing better, and glad you're back on the board.
Isn't that funny how as native English speakers we can still forget words? Particularly
when you're dealing with stuff in another language and you know what you're talking about
but just can't think of what the best English equivalent is. This happens to me all the
time.
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| 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 141 of 156 01 March 2013 at 7:57am | IP Logged |
Actually, a lot of these things I've never even dealt with in English. I studied economics here and that included a bit of law. So I know those words in Norwegian, but not in English. Also, I get the feeling that while definitions overlap, they aren't always exactly the same. I'm not even 100% sure that "appeal against a decision" is exactly what I mean, but that's what Google Translate told me and it sounds pretty good. It's just so much easier to say "klage på et vedtak." Then I know what I'm talking about.
I also have a problem where I forget a word in the same way that a monolingual will have that "it's on the tip of my tongue" feeling. Except my brain latches on to any reasonable equivalent in any language in which I might happen to know that word, and then it refuses to let go.
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| 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 142 of 156 01 March 2013 at 9:11am | IP Logged |
Time to review February’s goals
FEBRUARY GOALS
Because of the 6WC, I will be concentrating mostly on Japanese, but I will try to do a little in Spanish every day. Yeah. Right. I hardly touched Spanish, especially in the last half of February.
SPANISH
1) Do 15 units/reviews of FSI Programmatic/Basic As I said, there wasn’t much happening with Spanish this month. I did 6 units.
JAPANESE
1) Finish adding up to step 1 of the Core 6000 on iKnow. I’m nearly finished adding step 3, so I’m doing well on this one.
2) Add 300 new kanji from RTK and keep up reviews. I was doing really well in the beginning and it looked like I might be able to finish the entire RTK, but then I got depressed and didn’t add any for about a week. So, I had to rush to add a bunch in the last few days, but since I had done so well in the beginning, it turned out not to be so bad after all. I reached my goal with 5 kanji to spare.
3) Write 800 words for lang-8. Not even close. I didn’t post anything on lang-8. I did write some stuff, but then I put it aside for a day or so and when I looked at it again, I thought, “That’s not worth putting on lang-8.” So I probably wrote 200+ words, but I never rewrote them or “published” them.
4) Listen/watch 50 hours. For some reason, I thought this was 56, not 50, but since I reached nearly 80 hours of listening, it doesn’t really matter. I went well over this goal :)
5) Finish my book and at least half of a new one. I finished the last half of my book and tried to start some others, but none of them seemed easy enough to just read. I ended up doing a bit of intensive reading on them, but at 1/2 hour per page, I haven’t gotten very far. So instead of half of a new book, I read two manga and started a third. That seemed like a reasonably good substitute to me.
In terms of time, I’ve done 194:30 for February.
Spanish is a pitiful 5:51 and is all course work.
Japanese is at 188:39 and breaks down like this:
Kanji: 20:53 --- 11%
Listening: 79:56 ---42%
Reading: 35:37 --- 19%
Writing: 1:14 --- 1%
Vocab: 39:49 --- 21%
Grammar/textbook: 11:10 --- 6%
Edited by Brun Ugle on 01 March 2013 at 9:07pm
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| 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 143 of 156 01 March 2013 at 9:27am | IP Logged |
MARCH GOALS
The 6WC finishes in mid-March, but I think I need to get my Spanish back on track before that, so I will try to start working on Spanish regularly even though it will mean reducing my Japanese.
SPANISH
1) Do 10 units/reviews of FSI or DLI. I haven’t tried DLI yet, so I don’t know if I will like it, but I plan to try it soon. I’ve reduced the number of units I plan to do in one month because as I get further into the course (FSI Programmatic), I find that they start having exercises after the lessons and that there is also a workbook, so it takes more time. I don’t know how DLI will be as far as how much time each lesson will take, so I might end up adjusting this goal again next time.
JAPANESE
1) Finish adding up to and including step 5 of the Core 6000 on iKnow.
2) Add the rest of the kanji from RTK and keep up reviews.
3) Write 800 words for lang-8.
4) Listen/watch 50 hours.
5) Read 3 manga.
6) Read 30 entries in the grammar dictionary
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| 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 144 of 156 08 March 2013 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
I am still here if anyone's wondering. I've just been doing a lot of other stuff that is unfortunately not language related, so at this point my study time has reduced itself to the point where I'm studying about as much in a week as I was doing in a day before.
I mentioned that I am trying to write an appeal. It is regarding a kind of disability that they say I'm not eligible for and they made a bunch of mistakes in the decision, so I have to get them corrected or it might haunt me in the future. Actually, I never even applied for disability. The unemployment/welfare office decided to write this thing anyway because I had applied for special benefits regarding a kind of unemployment/worker's training program thing. (That's not exactly what it is, but that's the closest I can come up with in English). Anyway, it is for people who don't have work due to having some kind of disability or illness and I'd checked the box that said I'd had these diseases from before I was 26. And that's apparently what set this whole thing off. And it wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't made mistakes that could affect other things in the future.
Anyway, trying to figure out this appeal is driving me nuts. I've been trying to read laws and directives that look like they were written by infinite monkeys. Then I find one that says that says you can only get this kind of disability if you apply before you're 36. I'm 39, so naturally, I think I'm over 36. But apparently in my kind of case, it is actually 42 even though it says 36. How am I supposed to know that when the law says 36?! Apparently in the world of social welfare 36=42 at least sometimes. That's a bit different than what I learned in school.
Language-wise, I've gotten tired of walking around in a daze and I'm not sure how much it actually helps. So now I'm listening at home which cuts down on the time I can spend on studying. Fortunately, I've learned to sit and listen (as opposed to walking and listening) without getting eyestrain. The weather has often not been of the sort that is pleasant to go out in, so I kind of had to learn to do it or give up listening. I find now that I catch large portions of the story, but there are still places where I get totally lost, most likely due to problems with vocabulary. When I'm reading and I come to things I don't understand, I usually continue reading a bit to see if it works itself out. If it doesn't, I go back and reread that passage. If I still don't understand, I start looking up every unknown word. I can't do that with an audiobook, so when I get lost, I stay lost to a greater extent. I also find that it always takes me a little while to get into the flow of the story. So I was thinking that maybe I should try reading or LRing the first part of the story so that when I finally get into the flow of listening, I will know what's going on in the story. It would be a kind of combination of regular reading or LR and bloodhound method. I haven't had time to work on it yet though, so I'm not sure how it will go. I think it might help because I know the first part of an audiobook, even in English, is the hardest for me.
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