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Total Annihilation - Volte | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 57 of 72 24 July 2007 at 1:55am | IP Logged |
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Every once in a while, an extended pause is good. Another day of relaxation.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 59 of 72 24 July 2007 at 4:30pm | IP Logged |
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I read a little of "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language". Other than that, nothing.
Schaumgebremst: thank you; why do you say that? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 61 of 72 27 July 2007 at 2:00am | IP Logged |
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The last 2 days have involved little miscellaneous bits of language study, but nothing serious. I've been gathering my materials for a vacation. I'll update the log once I'm back.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 62 of 72 18 August 2007 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
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The vacation was quite so/so language-wise. I had the majority of my study materials on an extra harddisk, which decided, as soon as I tried to use it, that it was actually blank. This included -all- of my audio material, other than what was on my mp3 player.
For study materials, what that left me with was 'Contemporary Linguistics', 'The Loom of Languages', a book on phonetics, and Assimil Italian (the second one, in Italian/German). I read all of the Loom, finally, except for the 'language museum', which was essentially a comparative dictionary. I read parts of the rest of the other books. Glottal and larynx control, and controlling voicing/devoicing are still problematic for me, but I'm making some small progress. Nasalizing vowels is quite tricky as well. I ended up doing a lot of reading in English, including a significant amount of fiction, which is something I hadn't done for a while. I also read a bit in Italian and German, though much less. I spoke Italian a fair amount, though not quite as much as I spoke English. So, overall, it was an ok vacation, and both my German and Italian are the better for it (except, perhaps, accent-wise), but it definitely threw quite a wrench in my plans. I didn't experiment with the audiobook method, and I didn't use assimil + audio + shadowing in any language, or assimil at all for anything other than Italian and reading grammatical explanations and Italian/German comparisons in German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 63 of 72 01 September 2007 at 2:00pm | IP Logged |
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Due to a recent flareup in a physical problem which makes typing painful, I haven't been spending much time on this forum. I'll be back once it has improved.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 64 of 72 12 September 2007 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I seem to be spending time on the forum again... and my wrists are somewhat better, though still not in great shape.
I haven't been totally idle. I've been listening to music/radio/etc, and watched a few movies. I've also started trying out lingq (as of today). I'm both pleased and disappointed with it; it does some things nicely, but makes others rather non-obvious, such as how to delete words accidentally selected and added to the unknown word list. I've been interested in computer-aided language learning for a while - I'm not sure whether to be more happy or disappointed that lingq doesn't obsolete the tools I have in mind. I've continued paying close attention to Italian; I feel fairly confident with the present conditional at this point, as compared to previously. My attempt to spend a week on Polish listening-reading flopped dramatically (through -my- actions; I still haven't managed to give the system a fair try). My Dutch doesn't seem to have been seriously harmed by the pause; it took me about half an hour of listening without understanding much for my brain to click back into "Dutch mode", but after that, it seems to be more or less up to my previous level (aka, anywhere from picking out words to understanding everything; the latter tends to occur during some news broadcasts, while the former occurs during music/movies). My quest to find Dutch online radio stations that don't include English continues; http://www.wereldomroep.nl/luisterlive/luisterlive_nederland s isn't bad, but at least sometimes seems to only play (neo?)classical music, which, while not English, doesn't really help me with Dutch. More randomly, I was pleasantly surprised yet again at how much written Swedish I can understand, but I'm planning to continue ignoring it, for the moment. I've read 4 books on language learning in the last 24 hours: "Speak like a native: Professional Secrets for Mastering Foreign Languages" by Michael D. Janich, "Learning Foreign Languages: Everything You Need To Know", by Brandon Simpson, "Learn a Language Your Own Way", by "Michael A. Stelzer, and "The Linguist: A personal guide to language learning", by Steve Kaufmann. The first and last were the only two worth reading. The middle two read like copy/pasted compilations. "Speak like a native" had a few tips, such as listening with increasing levels of noise, whether artificial or with headphones which don't block noise in noisy public locations, which I hadn't previously seen in print, and which I think is valuable advice; listening to languages with noise is by far one of my weakest areas, and frequently diminishes my understanding even during films. "The Linguist" was a bit dogmatic at times, and focused on anecdotes, but it was still a fascinating read. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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