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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Tenebrarum Groupie United States Joined 5408 days ago 84 posts - 115 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi | Message 1 of 43 15 July 2010 at 6:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello! So I've been learning Hindi for maybe 7 months. I don't think my current level
is indicative of that number, but I guess the fact that this is my first foreign language plays a part. I don't have a very organized study routine, but this suits me just fine. Below is the laughably small amount of resources I'm using: -Teach Yourself Hindi Complete Course -Anki -Children's book -Movies, music, etc. I had a tutor at one point and we went over the first few chapters of Teach Yourself. But now I'm near the end of the Teach Yourself book, and the way I study it is pretty liberal. I simply study whichever part(s) I feel like studying at the time. Despite the entertaining dialogues, I find it rather difficult to listen to them over and over in one sitting without becoming bored. Still, the book is certainly useful and I always try to do something with it. I hear so much about Assimil and therefore would like try it, but as far as I know, the only Hindi course is in French. I'd love to L-R, but I haven't had much luck in finding audiobooks; or at least ones I'm even vaguely familiar with... Another possible future purchase is Harry Potter. No audio unfortunately, but I suppose having the English version and Hindi version would be better than nothing! Goals: I guess my vague short-term goal is to be more "comfortable" conversing with others, so speaking and listening are most important. I currently get no speaking practice with natives, but once school starts again I'll make it a point to speak to my friend in Hindi every day instead of English. Long-term is something like advanced fluency, but I'm not worried about that right now; it's "long-term" for a reason. And Arabic(MSA)? Well, I'm not seriously studying it right now, but I'm taking a class when school starts. The class will likely be heavy on grammar and not on speaking skills, but I'm okay with this because I'm concentrating on Hindi. I've been learning the alphabet at a very leisurely pace just to get some kind of exposure to it beforehand. Taking this class may be a terrible idea in terms of grades and taking away from Hindi, but I'll try my best to manage. Finally, I'll be going into more detail about my studying as time goes by. I think this log will be a good place for me to express my feelings (AKA ramble) about my language learning journey. Comments are more than welcome. Thanks! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tenebrarum Groupie United States Joined 5408 days ago 84 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi | Message 2 of 43 16 July 2010 at 7:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Very recently, movies have been making up most of my "studying" and I'm having a great
time with it. I was watching Bollywood films before I even began learning Hindi, but only now am I seeing them as serious learning tools. Today I watched most of Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai. I've seen this one a few times so I'm familiar with what's going on. But today I wanted to be a bit more intensive with it. I transcribed a scene at first, but this proved to be too slow a process. I proceeded to watch more scenes, rewinding and checking the subs if I wasn't entirely sure of what was being said. I think expanding my vocabulary will really help with my understanding. I also briefly tried repeating some lines of dialogue after they were spoken. This felt better than expected and I'm looking forward to doing it more. Later on I watched Koyla. My ability to understand during this one is quite poor. I don't have a very good grasp of the dialogue, but I still chose to watch without ever putting on the subs. I think next time I will watch it more intensively, then extensively, and so on... So far, my listening ability seems to vary depending on the film (though I may be kidding myself). But in any case, I have a very long way to go. I think I now have some sort of routine when it comes to watching movies. It depends on what level I'm at with the film, but it's something nonetheless. I'm also more thankful than ever that the average Bollywood film is 3 hours long. And I think I can do 2 movies a day; not massive exposure, but still a good habit. The only other work I did today was some Anki. Sometimes it's pretty mind-boggling how easily I forget words. I'll see it and just a minute later I can't recall it. But I do find myself remembering certain words that once gave me trouble. I also listened to music, but I do this so often (or at least consistently) that I almost don't even count it. In fact, I often wonder how much listening to music has done for me. I guess I can't say for sure, but I would say not much. I have a hard time learning the lyrics to English songs so doing the same for Hindi songs isn't exactly successful. I don't find the vocabulary very useful nor the grammar. But I guess it doesn't help that listening to music is a pretty passive activity for me. I've listened to songs many times and not realized I understand certain parts until I read the lyrics. But enough complaining... If there's one benefit I see, it's that listening to only Hindi music results in me having Hindi in my mind all day. And who knows... perhaps it's done something for my pronunciation. Well I guess that's it for today... thanks for reading! Edited by Tenebrarum on 16 July 2010 at 7:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5679 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 3 of 43 16 July 2010 at 10:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Do you use romanized spellings when you use Anki? If you'd like my IM details, I'd be
happy to PM you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tenebrarum Groupie United States Joined 5408 days ago 84 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi | Message 4 of 43 17 July 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Nope. No matter what I'm doing I use the Devanagari script. And sure that'd be great - thank you! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tenebrarum Groupie United States Joined 5408 days ago 84 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi | Message 5 of 43 21 July 2010 at 10:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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After a busy weekend unrelated to studying, I'm kinda back on track. I planned on
reading just a few pages of the children's book I have, but ended up reading much more because I was enjoying it. But I have one problem with it... As I expected before buying it, the book's vocabulary is mostly from Sanskrit. This means I'm unfamiliar with many words, but also, and more importantly, that they won't be very useful in informal conversation. This makes me a bit less motivated to read intensively. Other things I've done include some translating using Teach Yourself as well as Anki. I haven't made flashcards for vocabulary since the beginning of my studying, but I'm wondering if I should start making some again. I like the idea of flooding your brain with words and just having the important ones stick the more you see/hear them, but I'm wondering if I should try focusing on the more useful words rather than a lot of what I have in Anki. I've been listening to plenty of music as usual. Watched some of a movie, though I had more important things on my mind and was zoning out a bit. Saw Chandni Bar a little while ago (excellent but depressing movie), but I had subs on so I don't really count it. With subs I find too much English popping up in my head instead of Hindi which is why I try to go w/out them after the first viewing. Sometimes I'm feeling good about my learning while other times I'm more discouraged. Recently it has been the latter! I just can't help but wonder if what I'm doing is helpful or not. I know learning a language is a very long process and I'm fine with this, but I want to make sure I'm actually making progress along the way! I think being able to speak to someone come fall semester will be both helpful and motivating. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6231 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 43 21 July 2010 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I found this course much less monotonous than Teach Yourself:
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279709086&sr=8-1">Spoken World Hindi It has 3 times as much audio as well. It is a bit pricey, but this course is great if you don't mind the FSI style drill to kill approach Cornell Spoken Hindi सौभाग्य!!!! You can get the book used on amazon for 10 bucks or so.. Edited by liddytime on 21 July 2010 at 12:50pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tenebrarum Groupie United States Joined 5408 days ago 84 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi | Message 7 of 43 21 July 2010 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you very much for these suggestions liddytime! I like that the Living Language course comes with so much audio. And I'll definitely buy the Cornell book for that price. शुक्रिया!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6231 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 43 21 July 2010 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just be aware that you have to get the cd's from Cornell. There are 20 of them but they are something like $200 (sounds like gouging a bit to me!) I have the book and it is pretty good...but it would be better with the audio... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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