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Brun_Ugle flies again (TAC 2012 team い) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 209 of 276 02 October 2012 at 7:55am | IP Logged |
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I finally got my landlord to fix the fan over the stove. I thought it would be a quick and easy job, but it took three hours. First they couldn’t get the old one out, and then the new one was a little too big, but they got it sorted in the end.
Anyway, they were from Poland! (There are a lot of Poles here that come to work, mostly in carpentry, painting and general handyman stuff, and I think there are several living in my building.) So 3 Poles came to my door and the one showed the other two what was to be done and then he left. I sat here on my couch and listened to the two workers talking to each other. At that point I wasn’t 100 % sure they were Polish, but I figured it was likely as Poles work pretty cheap and my landlord surely wouldn’t pay someone more than he absolutely had too, plus most of the people doing that kind of thing, if they don’t speak Norwegian, are probably Polish. But of course, like any HTLAL’er, what I was interested in was the language. Since I wasn’t completely sure it was Polish and I really don’t know anything about Slavic languages, I tried to figure it out just by listening. I decided after a while that is couldn’t be Russian because it had a lot of sh-sh sounds, but I could hear any of those strange noises one makes way down in the back of the throat somewhere. But to be absolutely sure, I tried to ask one of them. But he didn’t know any English. I did get the question answered though even if he didn’t understand it. He pointed to himself and said something like,”Polen. Eenglish nix.” Then he asked me if I knew German, but of course, I don’t. So that was the end of any real conversation. The rest of our communication consisted of gestures and pointing at things and saying, “Kaput.” The point of this whole story is that I’ve been trying to decide whether I want to study Russian or Polish (after Spanish). Russian has such a cool alphabet, but Poles seem much more down-to-earth. The Russians around here are mostly students and perhaps a few mail-order-brides. Of course, the students look very nice with their perfect 20-year-old bodies and their nice clothes, and the same with any brides. They all seem way out of my class. The Poles on the other hand come here to work and they go around with their shabby paint-stained clothes. (Just like home!) So I feel much more comfortable around them. So I’m leaning toward Polish. It’s just too bad they don’t have a cool alphabet. Maybe I have to learn both, but that wasn’t really part of my plan. I intended to only learn one language per family. On the other hand, I’m going to start relearning Spanish next year, but at the same time, Romanian is calling to me, so I might need to do both of those too. So many decisions to make! What really excited me yesterday was that I think if I could’ve said even a few words of Polish, I would have spoken to them. My usual way of learning languages is to keep my mouth shut until I feel I can speak reasonably well, perhaps in the B-range. But with Poles who don’t speak English or Norwegian, I don’t have that feeling of inferiority caused by their speaking my languages so much better than I speak theirs. So for the first time ever, I feel like I would’ve spoken a language even if it was only at an A1 level. And that’s pretty amazing. Maybe I’ll have to dabble a little in Polish next year while continuing Japanese and starting up Spanish. I hope that could work. I figure my Japanese is getting to a level where I don’t need as much active study and Spanish should be easy due to lots of cognates, grammar that makes some sense to my Western mind, and the fact that I was once at least A2. So Polish or no Polish? Will I have time when I’m learning other languages? Will the lack of a cool alphabet make it too boring? Will it be too much work when I have to balance it with two other languages, a job, and the necessities of life like exercising, cooking, food-shopping, etc? What a dilemma. I’ve been telling myself that I have to get any old languages up to a level where I can at least read for fun and maybe watch TV for fun before starting a new one, but it is so tempting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4798 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 210 of 276 02 October 2012 at 10:50am | IP Logged |
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First of all, welcome back! I hope you had a great time in the US.
Love all the idiomatic expressions you post. Keep it up! I think kanji makes reading a lot easier. The separation, the meanings, everything. Hiragana gives a false sense of security, although, to me, I don't even get that. I love how beautiful it is, but it does trip you up if there is no kanji anywhere to be seen. I agree that, even though speaking when one is comfortable with the language is beneficial, speaking from the very start is exciting too! That's why I just let speaking come when it comes, I don't really assign numbers or limits. I hope you are able to decide which of the two you want to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 211 of 276 02 October 2012 at 4:02pm | IP Logged |
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More interesting expressions courtesy of Harry Potter: 寝耳に水：ねみみにみず：a great surprise; a bolt out of the blue I’m guessing that getting water poured in your sleeping ears really would come as a great surprise. 寝耳 by itself, by-the-way, means “something heard while sleeping.” 身から出た錆：みからでたさび：(rust coming out of the body): paying for one’s mistakes, getting your just deserts In other words, if your insides are rusty, you probably deserve it. Shame on you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 212 of 276 03 October 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
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Remember how happy I was to get the exhaust fan above the stove fixed? Well, I tried it out today while making fish soup. Unfortunately, it turns out that instead of blowing the air outside through the roof as one would expect, it blows it out the vent in my bathroom which now smells strongly of fish soup.
He's supposed to fix the internet next week. I hope he does a better job on that. It's not the fault of the Poles, by-the-way. They just hooked the new one up to the same place as the old one. The old one never worked, so I didn't know it was hooked up to the wrong place. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 213 of 276 07 October 2012 at 8:36pm | IP Logged |
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I reached 2 milestones today. I’ve just passed 1000 hours of study for TAC 2012 and I’ve just finished adding all the new words for Core 4000 on iKnow. So now I have just 2 Cores left, plus all the reviews of course.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 214 of 276 07 October 2012 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations on both counts! To fit in an average of 3.5 hours a day study throughout the year is really impressive.
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| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 215 of 276 20 October 2012 at 10:01pm | IP Logged |
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Carve it on your liver!
肝に銘じる：きもにめいじる： (lit.) To engrave something on one’s liver = To bear something in mind. Edited by Brun Ugle on 20 October 2012 at 10:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 216 of 276 28 November 2012 at 8:51am | IP Logged |
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Wow! I've been gone for over a month. But don't worry; I'm still alive and hopefully about to make a comeback. I've hardly studied Japanese all this time I’ve been gone, but I’m hoping to get going again.
I just quit my job last week. I knew I could never go back, so there was no point in staying any longer. I was on a sick leave for the past year anyway. I waited until the sick leave was almost over because after one year on sick leave you go down to about 66 % of your previous income and if you quit or lose your job, you also go down to 66 %. So there was no point in quitting early and going down to 66 % before I had to. I’m not that dumb no matter what they say about me. Anyway, I’ve been going around all this time knowing that I was about to quit, but not able to just get it over with. So the waiting made it kind of stressful which may be why I’ve hardly been doing anything these days. I had to go back to the office to hand in my computer and phone (no more iPhone :( boo hoo, that’s the worst) and to fill out forms, clean out my office, etc. I went on both Friday and Monday. Friday was terrible. My heart was racing and none to evenly, and I was shaking and having a very hard time, but by Monday, I was fine. So I didn’t really have any problems going there then. I also found out that my colleagues (those not in management) know that I’m telling the truth. So that made me feel much better. They aren’t really too please that they’ve indirectly been called incompetent too. But I’ve supposedly made certain mistakes that are so huge it almost wouldn’t be possible to make them. And since all our work is reviewed before being handed on to the partners, it means that my colleagues didn’t catch these glaring errors when reviewing. In other words, about 2/3 of our office must be incompetent! (Sarcasm by the way. In case you couldn’t guess.) Anyway, I feel much better now that it’s over. I decided to look at it from a more positive angle and I’ve found that a lot of good came out of the whole thing. I can actually be grateful for this experience because I’ve learned a lot about myself and I know it will make me stronger. Had it not been for fear of doing a bad job, I probably would never have gone to a psychiatrist no matter how ill I was. (I never did before because of a deep fear of them, so it’s unlikely that I would have done it this time either.) So because of this company, I now have been correctly diagnosed and have a fantastic therapist and am receiving good treatment and I understand myself so much better. I know why I am the way I am and I finally feel proud and happy to be me (at least sometimes). I am also very, very grateful for the company’s insurance plan. We didn’t have to have any medical exam or answer any medical questions, and now I get to continue with the same insurance as private insurance without any medical questions. I could never get such good insurance on my own. And they cover disability, so if I find after a while that I’m not capable of working (it does exacerbate my problems) or can only work part-time, I will have some insurance to help me. And now for some updates that are actually related to language and our purpose here: As I mentioned, I’ve hardly studied any Japanese during this period, but I did manage to finish the Harry Potter series. I also read one other book for young adults. I’ve now started yet another book, but I seem to be struggling on and getting nowhere. I might gain momentum as I go though. The first chapters are always hard. I haven’t been using iKnow or RTK much, but part of that is that my landlord STILL hasn’t fixed the internet and it’s been very bad lately. I often have to wait a long time and try several times before I can get a page to load. Sometimes I go out to the entrance hall because the signal is better there, but it’s cold and dark and even there the signal isn’t always good enough. So, that’s it. Now I just have to get back into the routine of studying. It’s so easy to get out of my routine and so hard to get back. I’ll also try to get around to writing book reviews of what I read before I forget what they were about. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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