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Mick’s Afrikaans study journal | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 9 of 57 21 October 2008 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm back to briefly explain how questions in Afrikaans are formed using the past and future tenses. To make it easier to demonstrate the form, I will now quickly review how past and future tense sentence work Subject>1st(Helping) Verb>Object>2nd(Action)Verb. (NOTE: The past tense usually adds "ge" to the 2nd Verb.)
When making a question the form for both tenses is similar This concludes, for now at least, my foray into studying Afrikaans grammar. I hope to make more progress in learning vocabulary. Edited by mick33 on 27 October 2008 at 2:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 10 of 57 27 October 2008 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been doing some thinking about the best way for me to continue studying vocabulary, as well as trying different techniques. I am still not at all certain that I have found an approach or combination of approaches that works for me yet. I have, as I previously mentioned, tried making long wordlists, making flashcards, and translating articles or song lyrics; but never attempted all three techniques together. When done separately these methods don't work very well for me though I haven't entirely given up on them. Perhaps very short wordlists will work if I write out the words I do not recognize when I read articles or song lyrics and then look them up, but I'll have to do more experimenting to know how or even if this will work. Another thing I have tried is Professor Arguelles's scriptorium exercise, and I really like it; though finding time to do that for longer than 5 minutes here and there throughout the day is difficult for me. One of my concerns is spelling, in English I am an excellent speller. Afrikaans spelling is far more phonetic than English spelling, but it is not the same and some things such as the more frequent use of the letter "k" take some time to get used to when writing. I mention this because although in other things I am not a perfectionist I cannot ever tolerate, or ignore, my own spelling mistakes! It does not matter what language I'm writing in, spelling mistakes are unacceptable even when they are the result of my poor typing skills. (thus I often re-read my posts and correct the spelling, often after having previewed a message prior to posting it.) This fixation with precise spelling does indeed slow me down when studying Afrikaans; but I figure the time spent learning proper spelling is worthwhile since it has helped me recognize new words or potential false friends. Edited by mick33 on 28 October 2008 at 2:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 11 of 57 28 October 2008 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have decided not make wordlists or flashcards to learn vocabulary; except perhaps to write down any particuarly troublesome "false friends" and irregular words, or to keep the pronouns straight (this might be very useful when I delve more deeply into Dutch)but other than these two exceptions, such methods do not work for me. I shouldn't be surprised by this, as I've never used these methods to learn English words. I've always learned new words by simply looking them up in a dictionary. I will definitely continue with Prof. Arguelles's scriptorium exercise as described and demonstrated on his website, it helps me actually read and write words in a proper context and organically absorb grammar by seeing how sentences are correctly formed; these things are of vital importance to me. To briefly explain; the scriptorium exercise is:
1.Find a written text in the target language. 2.Slowly read text aloud, one sentence at a time. 3.Write the sentence one word at a time while saying each word aloud. 4.Slowly read sentence aloud from paper I wrote it on. The scriptorium exercise does take time to do; but every method of learning languages I've ever heard of or attempted is time-consuming and this is one technique that actually works quite well for me, making the time spent worthwhile. I would also like to try his shadowing exercise when I can find the time. I do not have any recorded instruction programs for Afrikaans now and it will be a little while before I can acquire anything like that. When I do get recorded material, I'm unsure how to proceed with editing the instruction program to make it more useful for shadowing. Another concern is that the only easily available programs are Teach Yourself, and Colloquial (Assimil currently only offers an Afrikaans phrasebook in French or Dutch unfortunately). I know many people may wonder why I didn't choose to study a more commonly spoken language like French, German or Spanish all of which have more study material available; my answer is that 1 year ago when I decided to get serious about studying languages, the one that intrigued me the most was Afrikaans, and I think I have now invested just enough time and energy in Afrikaans to begin making real progress in comprehension. Therefore, it is impractical for me to start another language at this point. I also do not often consciously translate Afrikaans to English when I study now; translation just seems unnatural and awkward to me at the semi-intermediate stage I hope I have reached. Edited by mick33 on 28 July 2010 at 9:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 12 of 57 30 October 2008 at 3:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Since my last post I've been pondering over the final sentence about translation. Translation really does seem very unnatural; and I doubt I will ever consciously translate words or sentences when I get the chance to converse with a native speaker in Afrikaans, or any other language for that matter. I wonder if the reason translation feels unnatural is because it is still so much work for me. When I consciously translated things; often I felt I was making virtually no progress. This remains a very uncomfortable and discouraging thought, I don't like any task that is intended solely to keep me busy. Recently, I have realized that I am not always comprehending what I read as well as I would like, which is what led me to think about translation a little more. Sunday I came across an intriguing website woes.co.zafor people who want to post their writing in Afrikaans on the internet and discovered I understood only about 60% of what I read (on a really good day) without using the dictionary, so I ended up trying to literally translate the page explaining what the website was about. I was a little frustrated but I did make progress; I finally remembered that the word "ontwikkel" can correspond to "develop". The word "ontwikkel" had been a problematic word for me for a while; I'd encounter it in reading fairly frequently and never remembered its meaning, but on Sunday I found a context that must have made sense for my brain and now I remember the word.
Today I went to Half Price Books to sell some of my old college textbooks that I no longer use and while I was there I saw a complete Teach Yourself course for Afrikaans that looked like it was in excellent condition, but I couldn't buy it then; I needed the money I got for something else. I may go back tomorrow and buy it, since I am not aware of there being any Afrikaans speakers or learners near me. I was actually surprised to find it, as I wasn't really looking for anything like that, and I figure there's a very good chance it will still be there tomorrow. Perhaps I'll wait until winter break to buy it, then I can take time to try out the Teach Yourself course; see if it is something that will be useful for me, and if so incorporate it into my studies, and figure out how to edit the CDs to be useful for "shadowing". The "scriptorium" exercise is not easy for me to do every single day, but it is far more enjoyable than translation. I have been using The Bible as my text for this, I found a site based in South Africa Bybelgenootskap van Suid-Afrika (Bible Society of South Africa)that sells The Bible in Afrikaans and also posts the text online. I know that studying the Bible is not the way to learn any language the way it is actually spoken; but I like reading the Bible in Afrikaans and I already have the KJV in English to use for loose tranalation purposes if I feel the need to do so. There are actually two complete Afrikaans translations of the Bible, the first one was finished in 1953 and a more current version was made available in 1983. I am not sure if the Bybelgenootskap van Suid-Afrika ships overseas, if they don't ship overseas Kalahari.net will. I definitely want to get my own copy fairly soon so that I am not required to always sit and look at a computer screen to do the "scriptorium" exercise, which may be the reason I struggle to make time to do it every day. Edited by mick33 on 05 November 2008 at 3:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 13 of 57 01 November 2008 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I did not buy the Teach Yourself Afrikaans course from Half Price Books on Thursday. I decided that waiting until my winter break from college would give me more time to examine it. I am figuring out how to make a little time to do the scriptorium exercise daily though I can usually only spare about 10-15 minutes at one time. I'm also starting to use online newspaper articles (Afikaans: koerante artikels) for the scriptorium exercise as well. The two newspapers I use are Beeldand Die Burger. I think reading newspaper articles will be good because I will be learning the language the way its written, and hopefully gain some insight into South Africa.
I've also made slight progress in understanding spoken Afrikaans. Yesterday I listened to Radio Sonder Grense (Radio Without Borders) for a few minutes and noticed that I recognized and understood some of the words without intense concentration. Listening to the radio had previously been a discouraging experience for me; most of what was said was completely incomprehensible to me and unrecognizable as a language, since I thought the presenters were talking too fast. This is a good sign; though I still don't clearly understand much of what is said, my brain recognizes that actual words are being spoken rather than hearing only a jumble of sounds. I have long believed that most languages are spoken at about the same speed, native speakers only appear to talk rapidly if one doesn't know their language. Edited by mick33 on 01 November 2008 at 4:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 14 of 57 04 November 2008 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been thinking about two things; developing a more consistent study routine and passive learning. First, I have noticed in my 2 years of studying Afrikaans that I have never lacked for motivation or lost interest in the language, but I have still do not have a consistent study routine. Perhaps the lack of a consistent study routine is the reason that I feel like my progress is now very slow. I figure I need to have about 1 hour a day of uninterrupted study time in any subject to really learn it; and that I need to have a well-designed plan of action for that 1 hour. I think a half hour of the scriptorium exercise is just right for me; I have found that 10-15 minutes at one time is not long enough but I cannot usually spare more than a half hour for it. Then I suppose that because it does no good to study a language without attempting to speak with a proper accent; I listen to songs, and radio broadcasts part of the time just listening silently but very intently and then I try to imitate the sounds I am hearing usually this means listening to a song and singing along with the singer. I'm not certain I can get the proper accent as I do speak American English with a Southern drawl. This brings me to passive learning technique, I'm not entirely sure what this entails. I think that it means listening intently, the way I assume a baby learns its first language but I wonder; Is there more to passive learning than that? Could reading without consciously translating anything also be a way of passive learning? Edited by mick33 on 20 December 2008 at 1:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 15 of 57 05 November 2008 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps I should stop worrying about how quickly I'm progressing. I am learning vocabulary through the scriptorium exercise. I've already mentioned the word "ontwikkel" but I have also learned a few more new new words
The list above is only a small sampling of the new words I've learned, so I am learning vocabulary and I will definitely list more words that I have learned so that I can read and see the evidence of my actual progress. I don't think I will start making or using word lists for study purposes, but it is nice to type a few words and corresponding definitions from time to time as a way to measure my gains in learning vocabulary. Edited by mick33 on 10 November 2008 at 1:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 16 of 57 06 November 2008 at 2:26am | IP Logged | ||
I think I've found another reason that making word lists is ineffective for me; most words have more than one meaning and the meanings change according to the context in which it is used. So I will amend my list from the previous entry:
So, yes I have indeed learned some new words but this is a reminder that it isn't easy to directly translate the meaning of words into another language. I'm getting better at following a consistent study routine which will, I hope, help me to continue to make progress in learning Afrikaans. Edited by mick33 on 20 December 2008 at 1:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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