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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 65 of 415 20 January 2014 at 8:42pm | IP Logged |
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So, today everything took much longer than expected. I lost time with other activities,
but the worst of all were the videos at CCTV. I don't know why they freeze and buffer for so long. My connection isn't that bad. I tried to find other sources for the series 'Travel in Chinese', but I couldn't. So, a video that would take 14 minutes took almost an hour at stop & go. I'm really glad I got the Basic Georgian. It's doing wonders, it's like I'm filling in the blanks left by other books which were so outdated or too grammar-centered. I' learning quite much from doing the exercises as well as from writing those dialogues on my own. Doing the reading has also been a pleasure. As for Russian, I really enjoyed lesson 3 at the old TY. That's the way to go. I'll keep doing these translation exercises. Even though I may miss audio for a while, I'm going to finally learn properly some important grammar and vocabulary. Regarding German, I'm done with German Without Toil! Finally! It really has a steep vocabulary curve and neverending notes, just like its Russian counterpart, but at least I had the background from my previous attempts and from Norwegian. Now I'm supposed to find O novo alemão sem esforço a walk in the park, but one never knows. I'd like to share a nice Norwegian birthday song I heard at today's Himmelblå episode. Don't know how widespread it is. Hurra for deg som fyller ditt år. Ja, deg vil vi gratulere. Alle i ring omkring deg vi står. Og se, nå vil vi marsjere. Bukke, nikke, neie, snu oss omkring... Ønske deg av hjertet alle gode ting, og si meg så, hva vil du mere. Gratulere. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 66 of 415 21 January 2014 at 9:29am | IP Logged |
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Hi Expugnator, the birthday song is very widespread, indeed it is the most common birthday song in Norway. Here is a youtube clip of the song being performed at a concert in honour of the 75th anniversary of the Norwegian King and Queen. There are pleny of other verisons on youtube as well.
The lyrics are by Margrethe Munthe, a school teacher and prolific children's song writer from end of 19th/beginning of 20th century. She is most known for her "educational" song texts, telling children how to behave. You can find some examples of her songs here if you are interested. 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 67 of 415 22 January 2014 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
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So, it's time for a new update. Yesterday was mainly routine, I really don't like repeating myself. Today I'll try to note down some things I've
noticed. I think I am ready to absorb more information at once in Chinese. I have little difficulty with Travel in Chinese's dialogues - and much trouble with the streaming that freezes all the time. Ssme goes for the podcast lesson, it's still small chunks of Chinese which I can chew likewise. The good thing to notice is that I'm able to focus on new words. The whole sentence doesn't seem a blur anymore, and I can spot what needs to be worked on first. On the other hand, since my only actual reading resource are the fables, I'm having no training at formal contemporary texts such as news and articles. Wish I could find a similar book with pinyin, translation and audio, but the ones I've checked so far don't have pinyin or translation, only a glossary. And that puts me down to losing time with looking up words - even worse if it's characters I have no pinyin for and therefore need to draw them. This is a luxury I can't allow myself, so, for the moment, I'm sticking to what I have. Once I'm done with Everyday Fables in about two months, I'll have to find a resource that suits my current needs. Most foreign-published textbooks might have become easy by that time, which is a good thing after all. Anyway, I need to learn how an average Chinese clause is structured in a news text, namely complex, subordinate clauses. All in all, I'm happy with progress so far. Even though I feel illiterate , I can see myself talking in Chinese if I get the chance. I'm enjoying Memrise a lot, I'm halfway through HSK 1 course and I benefited a lot from learning characters in depth. I want to finish up to the HSK3 course and maybe I can try the exam, since I already learned a lot of characters from other sources. I have no idea how many I can recognize, though. Sinc yesterday I started doing Memrise while listening to something else in the background. Not ideal, I know, but can save up time in busier days. Another less harmful tactic would be to do the reps while checking the forum. It's funny how with a distant language I usually get to active B1 before passive B1. I can make myself understood in a wide range of subjects in Georgian and Chinese, but I msy not understand simpler texts due to lack of vocabulary, while within the Romance language family I'd probably benefit from a lot of cognates. The only way to fight this feeling is more and more study. In the case of Georgian i'm successfully combining active and passive, while in Chinese I'm still focusing on daily life conversation and thus get to repeat myself too often. Btw, I finished the film Svani. The issue with the clans seem absurd. I'll probably stick to contemporary Tbilisi soap opera then :D I don't know how is my situation with German. I've started Le nouvel allemand sans peine and it's easy. If it weren't for the endless, redundant notes, I'd be able to move faster than 7 lessons a day. Since I'm getting a good aural training at Duolingo, I may consider using my deadest time to just read through some lessons. I've done this for Russian with no bad feelings. I'm glad I could recognize the rule for adding an -e to the definite adjective, that saves up time. Speaking of which, I'm pretty much happy with TY lessons. It was a good idea to go through all those conversational textbooks and leaving a systematic approach to grammar for this very moment, at which I have a good repertoire of conversational sentences and things start to look familiar, and I've also read most about the grammar - I just didn't get down to learning endings, and that's what I can do now with the old TY with much less pressure. Now much on Norwegisn. I go through some hard excerpts at the book Beatles, mainly description paragraphs, but overall it's getting easier, I believe. It's no longer a time-consuming activity. I do need to get down and write more dialogues. I just don't know what to write about. Sometimes dialogues pop up in my head but I'm not close to the computer or a piece of paper. I've started translating lyrics automatically in my head, from Brazilian songs into Norwegian, which is funny but also a sign that I'm improving. I might give this a try at this forum one day. 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 68 of 415 23 January 2014 at 6:48pm | IP Logged |
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Today I was glad to notice I am much faster at translating from English to Georgian!
The exercises at Basic Georgian didn't take long. They were made of shorter phrases, indeed, but I think I'm actually starting to think faster in Georgian. I'm doing similar exercises in Russian but it's much slower obviously, one of the reasons being the exaggerated number of words introduced at each lesson at TY. In Basic Georgian I also get many words but I already know many of them. That shows me something else, that my Russian still haven't catched up with my Georgian as I suposed it would happen. I based this assumption on the fact that Russian is an IE language and that the quality of the resources is better overall, but I've been through a critical point at Georgian at which I know more familiar words at each text and I've been through most textbooks and became aware with most of the grammar. Russian is still far behind, at a distant stage. Those version exercises are also important for my German, but I will start writing them down only when I start the intermediate Assimils, which might happen in a month and a half. Back to Georgian, I was excited when I looked at the title of today's text at 'A Gergian Reader': "Three ways of dating". I thought "I'm finally going to have a lighter, more up-to-date, maybe even humorous text. I got disappointed the very first line when I saw the word 'manuscript' :P I lost my patience with Travel in Chinese and the bad quality of streaming at CNTV. Today I struggled for long and ended up finding an Youtube video, almost two hours later than my usual time. From tomorrow on, I decided to take just the text for the dialogue/translation and the notes from CNTV site and then watch only the dialogue which I can find at YT. I didn't manage to find the full lessons at YT starting from the second tenth, and that's why I'm struggling at CNTV which I don't usually do, but now that I noticed there's no way out and it only gets worse, I'll have to do without DaShan's explanations. We'll see, maybe back at the computers I normally use the video will load normally. Papiamento is quite easy, both the novel - few new words - and the videos - comfortable understanding. Reminds me that I really deserve to keep working on the book I'm planning. I watched the first episode of a series, dubbed in French, yday, and that was off - schedule. It's really easy to follow dubbed French, and I got the subtitles just to make sure I didn't miss important stuff, as it was the first episode. Next time I'm going to either watch it dubbed in French w/o subtitles or get the original in English anyway. But this is really for leisure time, it's an additional step to combine leisure and language learning, it's not part of my routine. I'm going to start Le dîner des cons as part of today's routine. 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 69 of 415 24 January 2014 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
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It took me 16 hours by bus to get home from my parents'. I avoided the plane this time
too, after realizing the airline was tracking cookies to raise the fare every time I made a research. Well, I'm quite used to such long trips and I'm still on holidays. I slept over 10 hours out of these 16, so, it was ok. While at the bus, I managed to do everything that could be done at the tablet without using my files or the internet. I read the French novel, the Georgian reader and the Georgian novel, read the whole lesson at Basic Georgian and left only the version exercises to be done at home. I also read all the notes to the 7 lessons of Assimil Le Nouvel Allemand Sans Peine I studied today, leaving the text & the exercises to read and listen at home. And I read Tuttle's Flashcards and the explanations to Teach Yourself Russian. I know I'm still too dependant on internet + desktop at my routine and I have to work on optimizing that, but I'm relieved it worked out eventually. I got home at 11h30, had lunch, started studying, went to the gym and the groceries' and resume studying until now, half past eight pm. Listening to Beatles got much faster. I can look up words while the audio is playing, then quickly read/skim and regain track of the text. Quite productive. I also feel more attached to the story now. I realized the 60's is a period before the oil made Norwegian the richest country, so it's a huge change in perspective! Learning a lot from the book. It complements Himmelblå which deals with contemporary lives. I gave up on Travel in Chinese when it freezed at about 6:50 minutes. Will stick to plan mentioned yday: study the dialogue the way I'm studying now - which only gets easier, as I recognize more and more words - then play the dialogue at YT and read the remaining notes at CNTV's site. I have to paste some of these sentences at GT to get full pronunciation, but sometimes I'm surprised by how I already know some of them beforehand. I'm happy with the synergy created by the whole set of Chinese resources I have. Memrise is doing great, even though I reached a time with too much watering. I know it's temporary, since the course only has 400 items. I believe I can do it, considering it's something I can do in background to something else. The French film 'Le dîner des cons' is simply terrific. A quite smart film, despite its title. And I'm glad I'm not only having a good understanding of the spoken language (well, it's easier than contemporary comedies as it tries to parodise this 'nobility' atmosphere and therefore is a more 'soutenu' language, but still...), I'm also following the jokes and laughing altogether! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 70 of 415 25 January 2014 at 8:09am | IP Logged |
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I also want to get away from my pc/internet when it comes to languages. It's useful but it's not good that sometimes we depend on it. I still use good old fashioned dictionaries rather than look up a word online, because I seem to learn the word better if I work for it.
Nice log Expugnator. 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 71 of 415 27 January 2014 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
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So, another day is over and it took me longer than expected to finish off with the
whole schedule. I really need to watch it out and maybe find means of shortening it, as tomorrow I resume working and it may be much less calmer. I have two weeks to finish Basic Georgian, which is perhaps the most time-consuming activity, as the lessons are rather long and involve translating into Georgian. I don't regret it at all, and I would stick to it even if all the rest would perish. It's a final investment I'm making into the language and it's been profitable after 15 installments out of 28. I may now acknowledge that the A2 stage prior to native materials' introduction may be the worst in language learning. I'm doing lesson 36 of Le nouvel allemand sans peine. I simply can't stand the lenghty and redundancy of Assimil's notes. I won't just skip them because I want to do this book only once and I shall not live with the feeling that I left 'important' notes unread. Therefore, I've decided to systematically read the notes and fill-in-the-blanks exercises before playing the recordings with the lesson's text and exercises. I'll do this for this volume and for the 2k's L'Allemand. Then I will start the intermediate courses and everything is gonna be different: I'll have to slow down to 1 lesson a day and I believe the notes will be novelty and interesting again by that time. I'll have to have found time for native resources, though. I have the film 'Das Leben des Anders' but my first resources will probably just be translated books. Since I was late for most of the morning, I tried to catch up by watching XiYangYang while having lunch. It wasn't the best experience, because I couldn't concentrate enough to follow the subtitles. Maybe in a better stage. I also watched today's excerpt for 'Le dîner de cons' and I stuck to subtitles given the circumstances. I have realized that the old TY Russian does have a way too old-fashioned and useless vocabulary, and this is preventing me from learning the grammar more accurately. My brain simply can't focus that much when the sentence being translated is "The captain is paying the soldiers". I believe I tend to pay more attention at the sentence as a whole when it is more meaningful, and that includes the grammar involved, as much as the declension patterns. Don't know if that is the case with anyone else. Anyway, will stick to the plan for the time being. I don't know which resource could replace it now, maybe Penguin's or some grammar from Routledge. 30 lessons more will mean 1 month and a half, that's not much considering that I'm stuck at a low-middle A2 for Russian. I've got the official list of languages available for iBooks, and that will restrict the languages I can read more comfortably in epub format. Norwegian is out, but Chinese and German are in. Found today's Travel in Chinese lesson 24 split into 3 parts at Youtube. Won't have the same luck tomorrow, though (already checked). Now this dialogue, which happened in fact (online, though). Pay attention to the video suggested =D : - Jeg er så trøtt av å lære språk! - Så må du høre musikk. - Haha. Jeg må fremdeles se den filmen. - Jeg har ennå ikke sett den. - Det finnes ingen BDRip ennå. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 72 of 415 27 January 2014 at 10:18pm | IP Logged |
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Looks like you are still making progress! I admire your
discipline! Any advice for Chinese? Edited by tarvos on 28 January 2014 at 11:26am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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