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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 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 249 of 415 26 June 2014 at 11:36pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you fabricio! I'm not sure I have anything to tell in terms of effectiveness,
though. Maybe only in terms of self-discipline and time management. I'm progressing very little in my languages, not even close to reaching fluency the way you and tarvos reach so quickly. I really lack conversation practice. Today I managed to read a few more pages in German. I'm reading Verborgene Zusammenhänge alongside with its original in English. I'm also a bit more optimistic about Georgian, as I'm getting a consistent daily exposure to vocabulary with translations. It's like I were studying several Assimil lessons a day. Only missing notes, but at this point I can figure out grammar on my own. Estonian is also going smoothly. If I knew Finno-ugric languages were so nice I'd have started them earlier (only that I couldn't...). As for Russian, I'm not reading it consistenly. Still studying from podcast and textbook daily, but I need a more consistent string of native materials in order to consolidate some more work. Now comes Norwegian...don't want it to turn into the disillusion of the year. Maybe creating islands for speaking and getting films with subtitles in Norwegian will help. Ah, and finding some time for Learn Norwegian, too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 250 of 415 27 June 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
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It's normally like this: one day of rant follows one day of optimism.
Today I contacted two Chinese girls who study Portuguese in college in China. I added them to Skype and chatted with one of them. We (text)chatted in Portuguese and then a while in Chinese, and I was happy about how easily sentences would come and they wouldn't look so Indo-European-biased, they did look Chinese, even if I don't actually know if they are correct. Then I exchanged a few lines with an American of Chinese origin I regularly meet at the IRC. It was easy, too. I realized one thing: the fact I can use the PC and not the tablet makes a huge difference. It wasn't any less practical to use hanzi than it would be to use pinyin (except that Google Translator crashes all the time here, I have to close the tab and open a new one everytime I perform a new search). I also had a better time with watching Ylvis with subtitles. I'm following and understand much more of the audio. I did an experiment of listening-only for a few seconds and I could infer most of it, even while performing another task! As for reading, I had to do it extensively again (also for French) because I was busy elsewhere waiting for a meeting to take place. Then comes Georgian. Today I was better at TED's dialogue than at Paulo Coelho's book. I managed to watch the 15 minutes of a dialogue almost intensively, pausing sentence by sentence and often understanding the Georgian text at a glance. Maybe I'm just better at TED because I read Paulo Coelho's book first and that works as a warmup. It also adds to the fact that the French translation doesn't match exactly. Chinese reading is becoming easier, too. I'm starting to 'jump' on a string of characters and expressions I already know, that is, I don't roll over them with Perapera. The new words from the book are also starting to stick, which means I'm not simply reinforcing what I've learned elsewhere through Anki or textbooks. And I'm enjoying 'El Chino de Hoy II', it's even helping with Spanish! I'm eager for reading am audiobook, though. I got one from Yue Hua with translation and text, but this will probably have to wait till I finish 'The world is flat'. Anyway, I'm quite more confident that I'm close to being able to put my grammar knowledge to work and actually understand the Chinese I read with a dictionary. I finished Colloquial Estonian. A long overdue book. I did some lessons several years ago and I thought the learning curve was too steep, and I still think it is. Like other books from Routledge, such as Georgian - A Learner's Grammar, they get rid of translations too soon and assume you will understand how the language works idiomatically just by memorizing wordlists. It simply doesn't work, as a word in context means more than in a wordlist - not to mention the idioms. Anyway, this time I am lucky to have Google Translator help me most of the time. It wasn't a bad introduction right now, and I retained more than I usually do. Better than expected. Now i'm taking TY Estonian. Want to get rid of commercial English textbooks asap and do other more meaningful and comprehensive ones. What I still need to do is speak and chat. I'm more confident now, regardless the language. I think for each of them I have something to talk, a couple of 'islands'. I need to work on my own islands, like saying where I work, where I live, what I studied. This is no ordinary textbook. I read this at an email I got from Benny's list but it's something I always suspected. I just haven't realized so far that one really should work on their critical vocabulary, otherwise they will get in trouble for the same vocabulary in each of their languages will never go so far. And this even if you do have a larger vocabulary awaiting: you'll kill the conversation due to the lack of the necessary words to say basic info about yourself. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 251 of 415 30 June 2014 at 10:21pm | IP Logged |
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Not much to report about the weekend, language-wise. I tried to read some Russian but couldn't get past 2 pages. It's still quite tiresome to read in Russian. Well, at least now I'm once again working faster on my tasks, especially the Chinese reading. That means I could read a couple of pages in both German and Russian on Friday and I may succeed today as well.
Sunday mornings are an optimal time for meeting Skype partners from China and Georgia. Yesterday I textchatted a bit on Georgian and got important corrections. Will keep trying. I wasn't feeling bad at all despite the intense Saturday, footbal-wise. Today I started Teach Yourself Estonian. I found the first lesson too long and fragmented. Small pieces of exercise that sounded simple and at the same time did sound like drilling. I will try to keep up with 1 lesson a day; that means I can finish the book in 3 weeks, after all. But then it may become overwhelming when they start introducing new words I haven't mastered from Colloquial yet. Once again, Peace Corps' format is the ideal format with short lessons and a glossary that actually explains words according to syntax. Norwegian was a bit neglected today. Again. I didn't watch I kveld med Ylvis' with full attention and I didn't read Karin Fossum's book that intensively. It will get better eventually, though. Maybe I can find time to start working on 'Learn Norwegian'. As for Georgian, TED talks have been more helpful lately indeed. The fact the Georgian from Paulo Coelho's Maktub doesn't match the French doesn't help much, in the sense that I can't make a word-by-word correlation. Sometimes whole sentences are missing from the Georgian text and only exist in the French one, while on others you have two long French sentences for 1 Georgian sentence - and it's not the feature of an agglutinative language; rather of an abridged translation. Anyway, I'm managing to work intensively on nearly a whole video, pausing and comparing subtitles and/or Georgian + audio. It's taking less and less time, and I'm considering using just the Georgian subtitles. So, if the double subtitles are working so well for Georgian now, why not do the same for at least one of my Chinese resources? It's easier to do so with the Singaporean 'Don't Stop Believing' with actual, shorter dialogues than with the travelling series "Happy Journey Across China", with long, reading-sounding lines on geography and history. I tried it the first time today and am optimistic again. Oftentimes it's only 1 word missing in a sentence and I managed to get both pinyin and character. Btw, I've started Memrise's HSK 4 course. I'm motivated now that we get to pick characters as answers. Still so much reviewing of easy characters going on, though. (EDIT: Removing duplicate words.) Edited by Expugnator on 30 June 2014 at 10:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 252 of 415 01 July 2014 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
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The days are getting 'longer', that is, I'm having more time than usual for my studies. This is mostly due to the fact I'm reading Chinese faster and my German lessons are shorter. I'm currently using Aprenda Sozinho Alemão, which is the Brazilian edition of an old TY Course.
Today I did the second lesson from TY Estonian, and it is about as long as the first one. I flipped backwards and it isn't likely it's gonna change. Given the fact I'm finishing my tasks early, I don't see it as a problem, as long as I'm covering mostly reviews on vocabulary and grammar and not much new. The Peace Corps manual remains the best resource so far. I think I managed to learn quite a bit in less than one month. This morning I tried to find people to talk to on Skype, but no answer. I'm not chatting that much alongside the day either, at least not in my weakest languages. Maybe it's time to 'upgrade' Russian and make it a language I (try to) chat at. All in all, I hope I can keep the rythm of 10 pages a day in German since yesterday. I also read 4 in Russian; more than five would be too tiresome, I can't absorb the new words. Then today I even managed to watch one episode from The Big Bang Theory, which I haven't done in several weeks, and now there's still time. So maybe I will work with web Memrise or the tests from Goethe-Verlag. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 253 of 415 02 July 2014 at 10:36pm | IP Logged |
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5 pages in Russian today. I believe I'm understand a bit more from what I read. I'm also enjoying the Chinese series a lot (both of them) and, when I watch the one with subtitles, I understand more and more.
Today the episode from CCTV simply wouldn't load. I watched two episodes from Tutu instead, which means tomorrow is my last episode, as I haven't heard of a 4th season. I'm not replacing this 'slot' with anything for the moment, but I will probably work on some online courses on Estonian when the time comes. Onedrive also didn't work here. When I log in, I just get a blank page. I tried different browsers and different devices here. Will try again at home. Here are the stats for today, just for the record: 02/07/2016 French reading - 24 French video - 12:15 Norwegian reading - 10 Norwegian video - 14:40 Mandarin video - 40:00 Mandarin reading - 8 Georgian reading - 5 Georgian video - 4:54 German reading - 10 German video - 12:15 Russian reading -5 Russian video - 21:04 I've still got time, so I will try to do one lesson from book2 for Estonian. I did one yesterday and it wasn't that bad. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 254 of 415 07 July 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged |
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So, I think today deserves a report. I was so busy on Thursday and I didn't think I had anything to say other than the usual rant. Then on Friday I was focused on the world cup. Tomorrow we have the day off, too. As for today, I'm about to finish the Chinese TV series (there are two in the morning - Tutu, which I watch at its 4th season and understand much more from now; and Happy Journey Across China). I wonder if I'm watching too much TV in Chinese instead of working more on other languages. But then the language I watch the least in is French, which I can understand almost always fluently and effortlessly. So, what could I do with the extra time if I removed 10 minutes/1 series from my daily Chinese coverage? Well, maybe I'd finally start doing active tasks.
I'm managing to keep 1 book2 lesson at a time. I bought their content for their own app but, surprisingly, it only worked on one of my devices. When I started their app at the new device, I was asked to buy it again. Won't do so, obviously. Maybe next time I sync iTunes will figure out I made this in-app purchase and allow me to use it at the new app, too. Who knows. Same user, same id, it's pointless to pay twice for the same content. Reading Russian is still the slowest and most tiresome task whatsoever. Fortunately I'm keeping 5 pages a day during workdays. I have a book I'm reading at home on weekends, but it's been quite slow. I only managed 2 pages last Sunday. I'm enjoying level 4 for Memrise's HSK course. I finally learned I can ignore characters at the web version. Then I do so and when I go to the app the obvious ones are gone. I also like the fact I have to choose the right character now instead of only the English meaning, which was the case so far. All in all, I'm optimistic about the evolution of my Chinese. On Sunday I text-chatted a little and it wasn't really a challenge to find the words or a grammatically meaningful way to say things in Chinese. I'm learning non-obvious, abstract words from Memrise and finding them in my reading of 'The World is Flat'. I sense that once I get to the following book, a translated novel, things will be much easier. 2012 was the year of French, 2013 was the year of Norwegian and 2014 is surprisingly turning out to be the year of Chinese, not the year of Georgian or Russian. Needless to say my Norwegian by the end of 2013 was much worse than my French by the end of 2012; the same goes for my Chinese, which is far from a conversational level. Even in Norwegian I was a bit happy that I could write my report at Team Asgard's log and only had to look up a few expressions. I know it is full of mistakes, but I really feel like I'm writing some Norwegian. I haven't chatted in the past days but it doesn't feel that challenging anymore to just join a conversation at the ##norsk channel. German reading is going smoothly, to the extent it may surpass Norwegian anytime soon. I'm maintaining 10 pages each weekday and, while the subject is also a bit challenging per se, I'm not having that much trouble with word order. I got Tuldava's textbook for Estonian, so now more than ever I'm armed with an arsenal for winning all those linguistic battles against myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 255 of 415 09 July 2014 at 9:16pm | IP Logged |
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Estonian - TY is slower and I'm having to translate dialogues manually, but I'm still learning quite a bit. I like the exercises when you get only the answer to the dialogues and have to think of what you would say. They really help to start thinking in the language.
I finished the Peace Corps Competencies manual, and I liked it a lot. Pity that it isn't longer. It has nice, short dialogues with accurate explanations. Six pages in Georgian again. Still tiresome, though. The sentences are very philosophical and long. I hope I can understand better next time I try video spoken in Georgian without subtitles, btw. Then I watch Alain de Botton's TED talk. I could read it slowly for 10 minutes, then I just had to let it play while trying hard to keep up with the subtitles. In Russian, the episodes of Poor Nastya with Portuguese subtitles are over. So I had to turn to the ones in English subtitles, and it turns out there's a lack of continuity. I'm just keeping watching, since soap operas repeat themselves so often (Though if fact it seems rather the edition with Portuguese subtitles were forward...what was the 20th episode there now is being repeated at the 21 episode with English subtitles). As a side effect I'm watching just 1 part of about 10 minutes instead of half a 42-minute episode. Don't think it will hinder my progress, and it will bring me more free time. It seems I had to translate some subtitles before getting the subtitles to appear, don't know if that's the actual situation. Things are busier today, more like normality, and I may not be able to finish all tasks as in the previous days; I am going to just replace Peace Corps Estonian with the book2 activities, instead of adding another textbook to TY Estonian. That was what I did while studying Georgian, and I think it's ok. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 256 of 415 09 July 2014 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
Gonna use the remaining time to share some SC stats. The fact I'm not signed up to the twitter bot doesn't mean I'm not working on it.
In the case of Mandarin, you should add 24 hours to it. I can't make Excel not round up 24 hours to 00:00 and hide the 'day' information, as I'm using the web platform. Edited by Expugnator on 09 July 2014 at 11:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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