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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 577 of 646 01 January 2015 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wish you all the best for a fantastic 2015, possibly with less drama both online and off!
Me too!!! ;-) Oh oh! I just said I shouldn't start a new language in the new year. Maybe I could just pretend that my previous dabbling means that Japanese is not really a new language. Whom am I kidding? :-D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 578 of 646 02 January 2015 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you, guys! You're, as always, the best! I also hope for a less dramatic year than in 2014.
For Japanese, I can highly recommend Genki, although you should be seriously interested in the language. It requires you to learn the kana syllabaries right from the beginning and teaches the first kanji in unit 3. If you're more interested in spoken or even tourist Japanese, an audio-based method like Pimsleur or Michel Thomas would probably be much better. Also, you may have noticed that I have renamed the log. I thought the new title reflects my two main interests, music and languages, quite nicely. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 579 of 646 02 January 2015 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
The new title is, indeed, evocative and suits you (or at least my idea of you) beautifully.
Speaking of Genki, I actually have a copy lying around. I’ve entertained the idea of learning Japanese for ages now, so a couple of years ago I bought Genki second-hand when I found a bargain online that I couldn’t resist. But then it has remained untouched for far too long (same thing for Nakama). That’s the kind of impulsive purchases that I’ve promised myself not to repeat this year. My bookshelves are groaning under the weight of textbooks for a multitude of languages. They are probably great textbooks, if only I started studying those TLs in earnest. :-( Has the time finally come for Japanese? Maybe. The mood in the new year seems propitious. So, have you any tips on how to best use Genki and avoid false starts or burn-out? What pace to keep, what priorities to have, what mistakes to steer clear of? Any advice will be greatly appreciated. PS. I think I have the whole pack: books and CDs. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 580 of 646 02 January 2015 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've never used Genki, so I can't offer any advice specific to that package. In general, however, I'd suggest learning the kana (or at the very least the hiragana) at the very start. If your books are pure romaji, then you'll have to put up with that, but if not, then make use of the kana as soon as possible: I found that very helpful when it came to pronunciation. If you have some material to listen to, then you can start listening straight away, just to get a feel for the language. (It's not 100% phonetic, there are some reductions and so on). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 581 of 646 02 January 2015 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It looks like we have a similar language learning profile for the TAC again, and I look forward to comparing notes on Irish and Russian throughout the year. Which Irish children's novels did you have in mind incidentally? Here's to a performance in 2015 in concert with all your goals!!
Edited by Teango on 02 January 2015 at 10:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TimmyTurner93 Groupie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3665 days ago 45 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 582 of 646 05 January 2015 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey Josquin! Just stopped by to wish you luck and ask you how you found the Genki books.
Were they helpful? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 583 of 646 05 January 2015 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey guys, thanks for all the good wishes!
I returned from Denmark today and am staying with a friend of mine in Northern Germany right now. I'll travel home by train tomorrow, and then my TAC year can start. Concerning Genki, I think it's a great resource and you can't really do anything wrong with it. My only piece of advice would be to learn the vocab well. Each lesson has a vocab list with words that appear in the dialogues AND words that appear in the exercises. As I mostly skip exercises, I missed a lot of vocab, so I often encountered supposedly new words in later dialogues that had already been introduced in an earlier lesson. Also, you should make sure to learn the hiragana right from the beginning, because Genki doesn't use romaji (except in the first lessons). And you might skip some of the college-related vocab, because Genki was designed for college students and some expressions might not be useful for people who are already past this stage of life. So, you won't need the words for "to major in" or "scholarship" right in the beginning of your studies. @Teango: I thought of reading the books Jeff has already read, i.e. The Hobbit, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Before I can do that, I need to reinforce my grammar and vocab with Learning Irish though. @Cristina: Thank you! I think my best skill is reading, followed by writing, listening, and speaking. As I want to read in Russian, that's great, but I nevertheless need to work on my active skills. I hope I can improve them this year! Edited by Josquin on 05 January 2015 at 7:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 584 of 646 13 January 2015 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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TUESDAY, 13 JANUARY 2015
Okay, the new year started just as the old one ended, which means I have been busy with everything but languages. When I arrived at home from my trip to Denmark, my flat was as cold as ice, because the heating was broken. I had to call the handyman to fix it - twice. Now, it's working and I hope it won't break again. Besides that, I had several appointments at my doctors and other time-consuming duties to fulfill and on top of that I started dating again after what feels like decades. Of course, there's also my thesis to look after, because I am to finish it this year. Well, I'll have to see whether that's realistic or not. My scholarship will expire in October and my advisors expect me to finish my thesis by then. As I said, we'll see if that works out. But, yes, we're here to talk about languages. After organizing the TAC for several weeks (mostly using a tiny tablet, because my laptop wouldn't connect to the Danish WiFi), I felt like I had enough of this forum for at least six months. Well, that didn't last long and neither did my New Year's resolution to concentrate more on important things and less on languages, which are but a hobby for me. I can't say I have done any real studying this year (for the above reasons), but nevertheless I'm eager to work on my Japanese and especially Irish. I'm rather comfortable with my Russian, so it can wait, but I have a real urge to do something with my Irish. The problem is where to start. I had a look at where I left off Learning Irish and Genki 2 last year and I realized I would need to go back a little bit and repeat a thing or two. I think I already said that in one of my last posts of my old log, but I'll say it again. As I had been studying languages rather loosely for most of 2014, there are some gaps in my vocabulary and my grammar which need to be filled. That means I need to start at some earlier point in my textbooks in order to repeat the things I've already forgotten. Concerning Learning Irish, I'll probably repeat the vocabulary of all lessons. I'm rather comfortable with grammar, but I think I'll have to repeat some of that, too. The situation in Japanese is more complicated. I think I'll have to repeat a great deal of Genki 2 in order to prepare for my intermediate resources. I think it is important to do more exercises in the future. I used to mostly skip them, which is the reason why I didn't learn things properly in the first place. So, this is my agenda for January: 1) Repeat forgotten vocabulary and grammar from Learning Irish and Genki 2. 2) Read or watch something in Russian when I feel like it. Other than that, I'm very interested in other Celtic languages than Irish at the moment. I'd love to get my feet wet in a little bit of Old Irish or even Welsh, but I'm afraid I don't have the time for that right now. If you want to know what got me interested, well, iguanamon posted an interview with a Dutch celticist, who has published a Student's Companion to Old Irish Grammar, on HTLAL. This was one reason. For the other one, simply listen to this song and I hope you'll understand! Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh! Edited by Josquin on 13 January 2015 at 5:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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