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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4362 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 1 of 21 17 February 2013 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
 Background I‘m half Chinese and half German, although I didn’t grow up speaking Chinese. To make up for that, I am currently enrolled in Chinese Studies at a German University(University of Würzburg) My reasons for studying Chinese are manifold and I will not bother you with all the details. I am mainly interested in China’s past, especially in the methods of 内功(Nèigōng, mostly Daoist systems from the internal martial arts) and meditation. My interest in Korean is not so otherworldly and came entirely unexpected during my first term at University. I still have no idea why I am so fond of the language but I take that as a good sign, for any conceptually justified interest in anything isn’t as long-lasting as simply liking something for no particular reason:) Current Level Chinese False beginner. I’ve introduced myself in Chinese for the January Challenge; passed my first semester at University and can read high beginner texts pretty fluently, even though my conversation skills are still at a rather basic level. Korean Absolute beginner. I had the oppertunity to overhear many conversations in Korean, Japanese and Chinese. One thing that struck me was that I can hear entire Korean phrases echoing in my head many hours after hearing them(even though I do not understand any of them yet) While I have all the conceptual reasons to study Chinese, I feel an actual „pull“ towards Korean. This is what allows me to study them both simultaneously. Language Learning Theory This section is a reminder for myself but it may be of some use for you. I‘ve put way too much time into researching how to learn new languages instead of actually learning them. After some trial and error and also looking at what worked for people here and elsewhere, I realised that there is nothing magical about learning a foreign language. It is basically as difficult as you make it for yourself.
Method Structured Study
Listening and Reading Comprehension
Speaking Practice
Writing Practice
Extra Fun
Edited by BloodyChinese on 22 February 2013 at 5:35pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4362 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 2 of 21 18 February 2013 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Korean In the last few days, I concentrated entirely on memorising 한글. This was surprisingly easy, especially after some months of drilling traditional Chinese characters into my head. I love the simplicity of this logical alphabet. It is true that you can learn it within a few hours. However, the romanisation sucks, as there are unique sounds in Korean that are difficult to represent in latin letters. To help with this, I created a deck with the most common consonant and vowel combinations in use(346 cards) and ripped the audio from KoreanClass101's Hangeul section. Through using Anki, I quickly went from knowing the correct sounds of each syllable but needing 1-2 seconds to "decipher" it to an acceptable reading speed, even though I obviously need much more reading practice to be able to read fluently. Regarding pronunciation, I am glad that I know German and some Chinese as a good amount of supposedly Korean sounds sound very familiar to me. ㅐ does sound different to me from ㅔ, as they are very close to how I would pronounce "äh" and "eh" in German. The video recordings on Click Korean were pretty useful in figuring out the correct way to pronounce vowels like ㅓ and ㅗ. All in all, I think I've got the most important things down except for some remaining pronunciation rules which will probably stick once I get used to them. I used this image of a Korean keyboard layout to help me figure out where to sellotape which letter to my keyboard today, as I am starting to create an audio deck in Anki. Vocab is mainly coming from Click Korean and KoreanClass101. Speaking of which, I went through KoreanClass101's Hana Hana Hangeul series a few hours ago and must say that their presentation of the alphabet and the pronunciation rules is pretty slick and useful. I've ordered the first four You Speak Korean! books last week and hope they arrive this week. It was a pretty costly investment, but this series looks much better than Integrated Korean and is supposed to contain much more detailed grammar explanations and more interesting dialogue. Can't wait to start working through it! Mandarin At the moment, I am mainly trying to assess where exactly I am at in terms of proficiency. I want to work through the Practical Audio Visual Chinese series(one of the most commonly used textbooks in Taiwan) and skim-reading through the first two volumes, I might be able to skip them, as I am already familiar with most of the content from my course at University(where we use an inferior textbook series called Hanyu Jiaocheng). Bought a premium subscription on Popup Chinese which I will start exploring tomorrow. I've heard that Popup Chinese is basically the more mature version of ChinesePod, which has often been criticised for its childish banter and giggling featured throughout their podcasts. But while Popup Chinese seems to be more on the quality side of things, ChinesePod has the numbers. Compared to Popup Chinese, they have like a bazillion episodes. So I might have to buy premium access to ChinesePod sooner or later anyway. (Popup Chinese Premium is priced at $99 a year, while last time I checked, ChinesePod's equivalent package costs around $249. 太贵了...) I've discovered the German equivalent to the Heisig method. I was about to stop learning from the Heisig books when I realised that I was not actually using his keywords and instead coming up with my own. But I wanted to have some structure and keywords close to the actual etymological meaning. Well, this nifty website does just that. The only downside to this is that you have to know German to make use of it. He only presents traditional characters(which I prefer when coming up with mnemonics, although the simplified versions are shown on the side) and the overall list covers around 2300 汉子. The order and thematic grouping of the characters, in addition to their explanation and keywords are, in my opinion, superior to Heisig's list. He also provides context in that he gives some words for each character presented in addition to a mass of details which may or may not be useful for you. You can download sets of 20 characters each as a ready-made Anki deck for review. I am glad to have found this website and plan to make full use of it from now on. Edited by BloodyChinese on 19 February 2013 at 8:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4362 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 3 of 21 19 February 2013 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Korean Started out with Talk To Me In Korean. Went through Level 1, Lessons 1-5. I like their teaching style and am surprised that they offer this for free. Everything new is added to an audio deck as I've discovered that I learn much faster this way. Started to listen to SeoulFM. This radio station is focused on K-Pop, which is alright to listen to, but I am wondering whether or not there is something similar on the Internet that is focused on Korean Indie Music? While I am waiting for my books to arrive, I compared some beginner courses and textbooks(Integrated Korean, Click Korean, Lehrbuch der modernen koreanischen Sprache, My Korean) and My Korean has stood out for me as the one I feel I should study alongside You Speak Korean!. Studying several textbooks at the same time can't hurt:) Mandarin Took a look at the Absolute Beginner podcasts featured on Popup Chinese and it turns out they're way below my level now, even though I am still carefully skimming through them to fish out anything useful. Memorised and added the first 100 汉字 from TCL to Anki. Thoughts Druckfehler has mentioned before that traditionally, people who have attempted to study Korean and another language have in almost all cases ended up focusing solely on Korean here on HTLAL. Korean is like a siren, apparently. The thing here is that there is a good chance I'll end up like that as well, even though I am trying to prevent myself from succumbing to this temptation as I am studying Chinese at University and am forced to get very good grades as I depend on scholarships and grants. But similar to many others around here, I find Korean to be very charming and it will likely dominate my free time very soon. For some reason, even though I am aware of the difficulty of Korean, I still feel very comfortable studying both languages simultaneously. It's a madman's task, that's for sure. But I am certain it will become a source of many memorable experiences! Edited by BloodyChinese on 04 March 2013 at 8:06am 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 4 of 21 19 February 2013 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great to read that Korean is going well! I'm looking forward to reading about your journey. Korean really does have a way of commanding all the attention... Maybe it's because of the TOPIK in April, but I just can't seem to manage to take time off Korean and focus on my other two languages.
And of course, long live the audio deck method! :) I'm still surprised sometimes how many words I learned relatively painlessly that way. Have you got the hang of the tensed consonants? That seems one of the biggest difficulties for German/English speakers and as far as I'm aware there's nothing like it in Chinese either. I hardly heard a difference between ㄱ and ㄲ, ㅅ and ㅆ, ㅂ and ㅃ in the beginning, but with time they have started to sound quite different (although I still mix them up when speaking). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5647 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 5 of 21 20 February 2013 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
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A good source for Korean Indie music is Korean Indie. Like I said in the PM, I'll get back to you on Friday on which indie acts I like.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6550 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 21 20 February 2013 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck with your studies. Would you mind explaining how you extracted the audio from the Click Korean lessons? They're all in the Flash technology and right-clicking doesn't work for me.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4963 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 7 of 21 20 February 2013 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
Do you happen to be interested in Falun Gong, by any chance? Sadly, I hear that the Chinese government is selling internal organs of Falun Gong practitioners after removing them from live people, nowadays. Same goes for protesters from Uighur and Tibet. Unfortunately, the government of my country seems to secretly aid China in this abhorrent prosecution. They're deporting Falun Gong practitioners back to China, and the mayor of Seoul, for instance, cancelled a meeting with an important foreign figure, David Kilgour, who is working against this internal organ selling practice. He met a pro-Chinese-government film director, instead... Shameful behavior:( If you're intersted, this is a past article on the matter, when David Kilgour visted South Korea last year: http://www.epochtimes.co.kr/news/view.html?section=1&categor y=103&no=127159 It's in Korean, but you could use on-line translators such as Google Translate. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4362 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 8 of 21 20 February 2013 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Korean Sigh, I am spending all my time on Korean and I don't even really feel guilty about it. If this is a sign for things to come, I am f**ked. How do you explain to your University professor that you couldn't study your Hànyǔ because you were too absorbed in your Hányǔ studies? :P This will be an exercise in creative time management. Anyway, this has been an intense day for me. + Went through the next 10 TTMIK lessons(at 1-15 now) + Started with KoreanClass101's Pronunciation and Basic Bootcamp Series. + Completed Unit 1 of My Korean *Read the entire Korean in Kuwait log. Goldfibre is a goldmine of language learning information. I will certainly borrow quite a few of his ideas. I admire that he was never really married to one method only. Mandarin + 200/2275 漢字(I guess it is more appropriate to use traditional characters from now on) + Finished Practical Audio Visual Chinese 1(content was nothing new, just had to get used to some traditional characters) Thoughts TTMIK is really good. Rarely have I listened to such entertaining and informative podcasts(not that I listen to podcasts everyday :D) I noticed that what little I know of Chinese already helps tremendously with remembering Korean words. There are far more similarities in pronunciation than I had expected. 차->车/車? 씻다->洗澡? 모자->帽子? 소주->燒酒! ;) So my Chinese Studies actually do help me with remembering Sino-Korean loanwords even before learning any actual 한자. Edited by BloodyChinese on 04 March 2013 at 8:06am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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