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Expug’s All at On(c)e Log - TAC14 | ||
Tags: Papiamento | Estonian | Georgian | Native Materials | Norwegian | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Mandarin | Russian | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 209 of 415 08 May 2014 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
PArtial stats for my challenge:
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| 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 210 of 415 09 May 2014 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wish I could say it has become easy to read in Georgian, but it isn't. I still have a lot of trouble reading a Georgian text from scratch, and if it weren't from the translation, I'd be completely lost. I have a better time with the TED Talk subtitles - I both understand more from them and learn more from them. I'm aware, though, that the same unknown words are being read everyday and one day they will 'click'. I'm still cutting the edges on syntax, and the final sections on Kurze Grammatik der Georgischen Sprache shows me there's still much room for improvement. I only think now this improvement will come from native materials and translations, not from textbook studies anymore. As soon as I finish the remaining grammar books I will work on intensifying my parallel reading. Got good results with Norwegian at my current book, even after starting intensive reading, and I hope Georgian will reach a more comfortable level. The way it is now, I still can't let go of a translation.
Yesterday I forgot to keep watching extr@ German. Will do it today. I am finishing my schedule earlier and earlier, and that's a sign that I'm making progress at those languages that were in a B1 limbo : Georgian, Chinese, Russian. I'm actually mostly impressed with my Russian, and I think 2014 will either be the year of Russian or the year of German. As much as my German is progressing, though, I believe if my Russian were at my current German level I'd see it mostly as a progress, so I think it's more rewarding if I do consolidate Russian at a B1 level. I started it after all of these languages (was a false beginner in German this year, I was already at a comfortable A2) and now it seems to be sinking in in a consistent way that is quite likely due to working on different methods and not expecting instant results. I'm learning a lot from the podcasts and I'm leaving the intensive work for the tiny words of Russe 90; I'm happy with the fact that I'm managing to associate translation and meaning while watching the Russian novela with Portuguese subtitles. It's a stage that actually took longer to achieve in Norwegian and I even have problem up to this moment. It's almost the same as if I was reading; that is, the fact the Russian is only audio and not text isn't preventing me from learning from it the way it usually does with Georgian and Mandarin. Point is, I don't need double subtitles for Russian as much as I do for Chinese and Georgian, I'm happy with just the audio and the L1 subtitle. 2 persons have 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 211 of 415 12 May 2014 at 1:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Better write about the weekend while it's still weekend, when possible.
All that discussion on ranking at the SC thread turned out a bit boring, then fun, then boring again, then fun again, but it is still a waste of energy. I am competing against myself. I dream of being able to reach the comitted pages in Chinese or Russian, and I'm actually glad to notice the Russian goal won't be that difficult. That is, I started reading in Russian this weekend! I managed to choose a book I hadn't read yet but in a topic I'm familiar with, part of a series. It was written originally in Portuguese. Unfortunately, the Russian translation got the French translation in between, but it doesn't make it unreliable, I think. I went for a resource searching craze again for Chinese reading, and I'm glad this happened at a weekend. I know I can't wait for everything to be favorable: planets aligned, nice weather, Chinese text as epub, translation, audiobook...I decided I'm going for the books I already have, which were recommended by my teammates, and add up shorter texts on the go. I'm also going for the 400 characters a page rule, as is the case with Tadoku, but I will only make 'use' of it when it comes to texts read within the browser. Even with the actual ebooks I will stick to the pages the way I found them, which is that average of 800 characters. This weekend I did spend some time trying to find the ideal set for reading, and I decided beggars can't be choosers really. I need to have the book both at my tablet, for reading with the built-in dictionary while looking up complex sentences at GT with the hope of understanding a little more; and at the computer where I'd select the text and paste it at GT for getting instant pinyin and a loose translation while still hovering over the sentences and making use of Pera Pera. The Pera Pera plugin beats the iBooks built-in dictionary, but both beat GT by and large. On the other hand, I can see a clear different in level between the books Ant Tribe and the other one on ghosts and the novels by Yu Hua such as Brothers and The Life, the ones by Yu Hua being much easier. Yet I manage to work at the former in a rythm that doesn't tear me up, and this makes me quite motivated! I believe I am going to see some improvement of speed in a few months. I've come to a point at which I see Mandarin as a 'learnable' language, and doing the character-selection+translating game has been quite rewarding. I'm going to reserve my weekends for reading and I'm not really going to worry about video falling behind now. Chinese is the fastest and I may accomplish a full video challenge, while Russian is the last one, but as I see I'm less and less dependent on textbook I believe I'll see more quality time available for videos. All that was said at the article and discussed at the SC thread matched what I felt about the topic - I have a Korean friend who simply recommends 4000 hours of immersion for learning Mandarin or Japanese to fluency and I keep trying to demonstrate him this isn't the funniest or the most efficient way to learn either. This discussion reminded me of the importance of textbooks in the early stages if only for placing focus on the most relevant linguistic issues. 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 212 of 415 12 May 2014 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, today was the day I finished Kurze Grammatik der Georgischen Sprache, which means only three books are left for Georgian, then it's all native materials.
The book did well both for my Georgian and my German. It is the type of grammar I like, with lots of sample sentences, especially when it comes to syntax. I managed to go through really complex subordinate clauses that look odd in both Georgian and German from the point of view of a Portuguese and an English speaker, and to make it harder, Georgian and German didn't match each one's word order either! To follow the tradition that the best resources for Georgian so far are in Georgian, I have to state that this grammar is the most didactical one I've met. It's shortness allows us to learn the basics without bothering too much on morphology exceptions. Comparing it to Tschenkéli's book, it is evident that KGGE isn't as comprehensive, but it has just what a beginner or an intermediate learner needs. Both grammars are way better than Aronson's or Hewitt's works, for that matter. So, to sum up, I recommend you to use this grammar early on at your studies, preferably after going through your first or second textbook. 'Georgian Syntax' will replace it. I already gave it a go at the weekend. It's in English and I have a background, so I believe I can reach a good understanding in spite of the technical linguistical terms. I still haven't set a goal of number of pages to be read daily - 10 could be ok but it depends on the topic being adressed and how much attention I should pay. Tomorrow I will know. This week will see some changes in other resources, which makes me motivated. I'm still lagging behind concerning my time for starting Estonian, but I believe I can still do some incursions this year of 2014. 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 213 of 415 13 May 2014 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I keep seeing a good sinergy as I take on the multitrack approach, boosted by the Super Challenge. At today's Speak Chinese lesson, I found words I met at my Memrise deck and at the book I'm reading. Now I'm going to try to read a few pages more in Chinese. I managed to read a little more in Russian yesterday, but Russian, Chinese and Georgian are all falling behind. I need at least 8 pages a day if I want to be comfortable about accomplishing the half challenge.
On the active skills, I chatted a lot in French today and wrote a few sentences in Norwegian. 2 persons have 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 214 of 415 14 May 2014 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've kept the habit of posting right after I finish my daily-scheduled tasks, which means I leave anything I do exclusively for the Super Challenge for the day after. I believe there's important stuff to report from yesterday, though.
I've been still busy looking for the best resources and the best conditions for reading in Chinese. I tried to buy some bilingual editions for Kindle but Amazon won't sell them at Amazon.com.br ! So, I ended up finding elsewhere the Chinese and the original editions for The Old Man and The Sea. The books seems fairly simple, what a contrast to the essay I was reading. It's better to start with translations, indeed. As a result, yesterday I managed to read 5 pages in Chinese, all resources comprised (1 text at the Chinese Reading Practice site,2 pages from Ant Tribe and what I counted as two pages from The Old Man and the Sea). I didn't read anything for German yesterday, though, since I finished reading that Georgian grammar I used to mention here. Speaking of Georgian, reading on it is still the most uncomfortable task. The vocabulary is still odd and there's no instant translation feature as there is for Chinese. I'm about to finish Paulo Coelho's book but I'm still far from comfortable. Russian is already much better to enjoy reading. Despite reading Georgian at a regular rhythm of two pages a day - or perhaps because of that - it's the language I've read the least so far. I'll have to work hard if I want to reach the pace of 8 pages a day for German, Georgian, Chinese and Russian, and even harder to make up for the time not fully employed so far. I'm not part of the bot discussion but I've accomplished the following: French - 4 books/2 films Norwegian - 2 books/~1 1/2 film Mandarin - 4 films Georgian - ~1 1/2 film German - 1 film Russian - 1 film ============== I'm learning to use my time even more optimally early in the morning. I'm missing any active practice but I wasn't having any lately. anyway. I'm managing to do both podcasts (Chinese and Russian), the Tutu cartoon and another learning series from Chinese TV plus Anki and Memrise. Among these, only Tutu, the Chinese TV learning series and Memrise should strictly be done at that time. In fact, I still haven't finished Travel in Chinese but I've already started watching 'Happy Journey Across China'. I wanted to make sure I'd suceed in watching 'Happy Journey Across China' in that internal. So far, it's been fine. The episodes are only 8+ minutes long. I still have the same issue as of any other Chinese site - trouble at loading the films. Today's episode unexplainably stopped some 30 seconds before the end and wouldn't go any further (I didn't log those non-watched episodes for the SC and I wouldn't miss anything for the SC anyway - they were already at the bye, bye stage). I like the series despite those issues. I realized that I can understand much more now if I pay close attention to the audio and to both subtitles. So, technically this morning wasn't very delightful. I had to start watching Tutu and Youku and finish at Letv. either one would freeze at some moments. As ra result, I got to work...2 minutes later. I usually get 10 minutes earlier, but anyway I made good use of the waiting time for the video to load - I read from the Georgian Syntax grammar. Which is a nice book, btw. I try to read quickly the bits where the authors want to prove some point at their linguistic hypothesis and focus on how the book helps me understand the Georgian grammar, as well as learn lots of vocabulary from the sample sentences, this time translated into English. So, I managed to read 20 pages from it today and I hope to keep the pace, maybe advance a little bit during the weekend and finish it somewhere towards the last week of May. Today I finished Wieso Nicht! What a nice course/podcast. It is meant for the B1 level and I found it easy, which sounds promising. I'm going to start Markplatz yesterday and I bet it won't be that simple. The lessons are longer, there is more than one text, there are exercises. I may even log the course as text instead of audio if I find the text challenging enough. Markplatz is meant for B2, so, I really have to keep pushing. Btw, I'm watching the series extr@ for German, and I find it easy so far as well. Later on I will try some from DW such as Jojo, then videos and films I still have a hard time getting hold of. What I found an easy time was of getting hold of translations in German to start my reading. I even got a couple of books from Clarice Lispector in their German editions, which means I'll finally read a bit more from this Ukrainian-born author which I read at highschool but wouldn't read anytime soon again if I hadn't managed to meld her into my language learning. 2 persons have 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 215 of 415 15 May 2014 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, yesterday I began reading a German book, one from an author I know well, and I managed to read quite a few pages.It is already easy with topics I know! More on this below.
Today I had to leave home earlier and missed the 'Happy Journey Across China'[link] lesson - even the state-owned TV's website isn't much rest-of-the-world friendly and crashed quite often. But then I decided to google and found the complete official playlist for it at Youtube! That means it's one more series I won't have issues with. Today I finished Travel in Chinese but I already started this new one because I was looking forward to it. Now I'm glad I found HD videos that won't take time to load and can be watched anytime. Besides, I'm confident that I can grasp quite a bit of the language - it's the resource I understand the most now among those with double subtitles. Travel in Chinese was useful and came at the right time, in spite of the technical constraints. The dialogues help not only get the cultural point but also present some specific phrasings that make the language authentic. It was the resource that made me wish to travel to China. One of the reasons I left earlier was to book a ticket for the concert of Adriana Calcanhoto. I really recommend her as an MPB singer. She is quite talented as an interpreter and a composer. I had to stand in line for almost an hour, it was downtown so I dared not pull away my tablet for reading. I kept up with the activities, eventually. Only may not be able to read a bit more today. I keep forgetting that Russian is right-branched like Portuguese and not left-branched like nearly all other languages I'm learning. Today an example at Russianpod reminded me of that: Человек-паук , just like homem-aranha, not like spider-Man. Then at Ylvi's excerpt of the day I found out that the duo 'Madcon' is from Norway! When they were being introduced I thought they would speak in English, as they had African origin. Then they came in and started speaking clear Norwegian! It was a pleasure to figure this out. New course from Deutsche Welle, Marktplatz. It is a whole game from Wieso Nicht?. Lessons are long - over 10 minutes. The speaker's podcast uses the local language - Brazilian Portuguese, in my case. Only the dialogues are in German. That's still a lot, but even so, and also because audio is incomplete and the podcast's transcript (not the pdf lesson, which I didn't even use, but the transcript) is all in German, and is crammed with text, I decided I'm going to count Markplatz as reading. That means over 10 pages each day - and I was so excited about the book I started yesterday. Now, the good news: reading the podcast was even easier despite the number of pages. I would copy/paste at GT just to gain speed, but I did manage to decode the sentences, the word order and there were such few unknown sentneces that I'd just figure them from context. I'm really confident about German this time. I've finished watching 'Vive la France'. It's another silly comedy by Michaël Youn, but I did like this one, if only for the soundtrack: songs that are well-known in France, like 'Douce France', 'Allumer le feu' and 'Que Marianne était jolie', 'Alexandrie Alexandra', but are not yet 'worn out'. Michaël Youn is a sort of Borat but the film is much less gross, for sure. Now I have to find a new one for tomorrow, which is a surprise, as I usually get my material ready in advance. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5260 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 216 of 415 15 May 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
I discovered Clarice last year and I've read two of her books- Laços da familia and Como nasceram as estrealas. Both were collections of well written short stories which I quite enjoyed. Somehow, I can't imagine her in German, but then again, I am currently reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography (originally written in English) in Portuguese. It's a crazy world, language-learning in particular. Here you are reading a Ukrainian born, Brazilian author's works written in Portuguese and translated into German. I'm reading an Austrian born, American's book written in English and translated into Portuguese, :)! No wonder people think we're crazy ;) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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