druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 137 of 344 30 December 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
TAC 2013
After long deliberation, this post is going to shape up quite differently from what I originally envisioned. I had more ambitious goals in mind, but I'm currently going through depression and think what I need most is fun and relaxation instead of challenging goals. I'll also hopefully graduate this year, so 2013 will bring quite a few changes, not all of them foreseeable. So for this TAC I will not enforce difficult goals and rules and instead let myself be surprised by whatever destination my passion for languages takes me.
Korean 한국어
I always loved learning Korean, but 2012 was the year where I studied most intensively and got more addicted to the language than ever before. I intend to spend 2013 by enjoying the rewards of my hard work (reading Korean books, watching dramas, listening to podcasts, etc.).Part of this entails spending more time with Koreans, something which I have rarely done since my last tandem partners left in August. I'll also do some more systematic studying when and if I feel like it. The pace of learning will probably be slower, but I'm sure that I will still continue to make progress as long as I spend time with Korean.
Goals:
One definite goal I have for Korean is a leftover from last year. I want to pass TOPIK level 4 (high intermediate) in April. I also hope to have regular meetings with a tandem partner to improve my speaking skills. And I'm determined to complete all team challenges of the Asian team.
Persian فارسی
Persian sneaked up on me when I wasn't looking. I do volunteer work (more like having fun and trying out my German teaching skills) with a group of refugees and have become increasingly interested in their culture and language. Almost all people I regularly meet are from Afghanistan and Iran, so I had started studying Persian last November as a 6 Week Challenge. You can find my log from that time here: my 6WC Persian log. I got a little burned-out from the intensive studying and later promised myself to concentrate on improving my Korean before focusing on a new language. After reaching that goal I'm itching to get back to Persian. I have plenty of opportunities to practice whatever I learn and am looking forward to that.
Goals:
I feel that this will be my main "study language" for now - and maybe for the whole of 2013. I would like to be able do the things people can usually do at level A2, like having basic conversations. I'd also like to learn more about the culture of Iran and Afghanistan.
Mandarin 中文
I grew to like this language by watching Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese TV series and movies. I love the crisp sound of Mandarin and think the tones add more beauty to the language. The characters are also quite fascinating and I'm interested in finding vocabulary overlaps between Korean and Mandarin. Unfortunately all of this was not my main reason for adding Mandarin to my language list for this year. Despite feeling a bit overwhelmed by adding two beginner-level languages I felt that I needed to start studying Mandarin to get to an acceptable level by the time I'm 30. Why? Because it's such a useful language, career opportunities, yadda, yadda... (none of which may actually apply to me).
Goals:
There are no milestones I want to reach with Mandarin this year. If I do study Mandarin, I want to be motivated by an inherent passion for the language instead of ambition. Basically, my goal is to resurrect that passion and see where that takes me - and if no real passion for Mandarin shows up this year, I will leave the language for later.
Edited by druckfehler on 05 January 2013 at 5:51pm
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 138 of 344 30 December 2012 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
Thank you, Bakunin and vermillon!
vermillon wrote:
I guess we can only wish you (and ourselves) to be able to come up with such a conclusion again next year! :) |
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I do hope we all reach a positive conclusion at the end of the next TAC! But to be honest, I also hope to not get as obsessed with language study next year. I'm glad I made this much progress and don't regret it, but sometimes studying too much Korean upset my work-life balance. I'm quite curious how I'll manage to fix this problem in 2013, especially with adding two new languages. I hope to firmly move Korean to the "life" category and be more relaxed about the "work" part of Persian and Mandarin. I guess assigning a fixed time to language study will help.
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yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin
| Message 139 of 344 31 December 2012 at 1:52am | IP Logged |
Impressive sum-up! you've accomplished a lot this year ! I'll try to follow your example
and hopefully, as Vermillon said, be able to reach the same conclusion in a year, of
course along you and the others!
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 140 of 344 05 January 2013 at 5:45pm | IP Logged |
January 5. 2013년 1월 5일. 16 Dey 1391
Crap... I accidentally deleted this entry. I'll try to reconstruct what I had written originally.
Korean 한국어
여러분, 새해복 많이 받으세요! I closed 2012 and greeted 2013 with several Korean podcasts. I especially liked the encouraging messages and music of 전진희의 음악일기. I also found out that 장기하의 대단한 라디오 has a special program on Fridays where he and his Friday co-host Thomas Cook read texts sent in by listeners. They choose a certain concept to read them with. Among others they read the lyrics of Avril Lavigne's "Sk8ter Boy" in English and Korean translation. It was pretty interesting to see how they translated the English phrases and the way they read it (English-teacher concept) was funny.
Persian فارسی
I started a book for the things I learn in Persian. I plan to write down new vocabulary (thematic, random things I find in song lyrics and children books) and grammar in different colours. I'm pretty much starting from the beginning with Persian, although I remember some words and grammar. So I re-familiarised myself with the alphabet and studied basic greetings this week. I listened to two podcasts from "Chai and Conversation", which I liked. They introduce relevant words and expressions and the pace is good as well. Unfortunately there is no transcript in Persian script. I could figure out most words, but not all. Can anyone tell me how to spell "felan" (means something like "for now" and can be used to say goodbye)?
Edited by druckfehler on 16 October 2013 at 7:00pm
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LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5302 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
| Message 141 of 344 12 January 2013 at 12:49am | IP Logged |
Hello, fellow Team 鶴 member! Glad to see someone else who does like the sound of Mandarin, from what I've seen it seems fairly unpopular? Also, I like the idea of giving the date in the different systems in your post. Every little helps, I might nick that idea for my log if I may?
I'm glad you're looking for a real passion in Mandarin, not just learning it for CV/resume points. Don't see that can be much fun. I don't think you should worry that much though - such a good Korean level must be more unusual and very appealing to employers.
Best of luck for the year!
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 142 of 344 12 January 2013 at 12:23pm | IP Logged |
Thanks for your comment! Of course you can give the date in Chinese in your log. I got the idea from Warp3's log.
I suppose Mandarin is not the most popular language sound-wise. I also only started really liking it after hearing it a lot. Great that I'm not the only one who thinks it sounds great :)
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 143 of 344 12 January 2013 at 7:24pm | IP Logged |
January 12. 2013년 1월 12일.
I only have things to report about Korean this week. I haven't really had free time to spend on languages - there were other more important things to take care of and I was glad to get some rest when there weren't.
Korean 한국어
I've become a regular customer in a Korean supermarket in Frankfurt and this week I finally talked to the owner (I suppose) in Korean, which felt great. I asked about differences between two types of 김 (seaweed) and understood his answer (with some pantomime :D). I got complimented on my Korean skills (but I'm sure that would have happened even if I had only said 안녀하세요 - Hello). Tomorrow I'm meeting a Korean girl who will hopefully become my new language tandem. I'm very curious to get to know her.
Last Saturday I watched a Korean action-comedy movie about North Korean sleeper spies which was pretty good. It's called 간첩 and stars Kim Myung Min, who is a hoot. It was pretty hard to understand - I'm still confused about the ending. I also finished watching 드라마의 제왕. The ending was really disappointing after such a consistently good series - but that's nothing out of the ordinary with Korean dramas. I started watching 이웃집 꽃미남, mainly because I liked Yoon Shi Yoon's last drama so much and usually like Park Shin Hye as well. It's certainly cute, but I find it slightly off-putting that the characters are such caricatures. I'll see how it develops. I was surprised at how little I understood - as compared to 드라마의 제왕 - but I suppose it's the typical beginning-of-new-series-syndrome.
Edited by druckfehler on 16 October 2013 at 7:00pm
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 144 of 344 12 January 2013 at 9:00pm | IP Logged |
druckfehler wrote:
Thanks for your comment! Of course you can give the date in Chinese in your log. I got the idea from Warp3's log. |
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When I went to list the dates for my TAC 2012 posts it occurred to me that I wasn't sure what format I wanted to use so I realized it might work well instead to just list it once for each language in that language's standard format. In theory it was also for practice getting used to typing that language's date format, but in reality I cheated on the Japanese one and just generated the Chinese characters as Korean Hanja rather than Kanji. Granted, I haven't learned the Japanese terms for some of those yet, but I should have used that as an excuse to learn them rather than taking the easy way out.
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