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Vermillon 文言文 / Deutsch / Ænglisc | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4683 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 1 of 35 25 February 2012 at 9:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi all! New to the forum, this is my first TAC and I will be part of the 龍 team. My focus as part of this team will be on Korean and Classical Chinese. I am also studying Latin and Icelandic (and others?) on the side, but this may be the object of another log.
Korean Background: I've been living in Beijing where I resided in the "Korean Area" (五道口), so I've been almost immersed in a Korean world, but never really got the chance to learn anything about the language at that time as my intense focus was on Mandarin. Early last year I've had the opportunity to attend an evening course in Edinburgh, 2h a week for around 15 weeks, and it confirmed my feeling that I would love this language. After this course, I've mostly maintained the little knowledge I had gained until the end of the year. As 2012 started, I embarked on a year-long multilingual project and Korean is my absolute main focus for that time. Current Level: Difficult to say, probably somewhere between A1 and A2. Practice on past TOPIK papers suggests I have a TOPIK 2 level, but I've never found any CEFR equivalence. In terms of vocabulary, I know around 1100 words, which is clearly not a lot. Goals: I would like to achieve a basic fluency by the end of the year, but it may be too much to ask, we'll see. Intermediate goals are to pass the TOPIK beginner in April (should be a piece of cake) and be able to pass TOPIK 4 by the end of the year. I want to be able to get a basic understanding of what's going on in dramas, and possibly be able to read a novel. The general purpose is to potentially live in South Korea some time in the future, and enjoy to the fullest a potential trip to the North side. Resources/Methods: I don't have any long-term method at the moment. For now I am using Routledge's intermediate grammar and workbook (have completed the "basic" one) to quickly get a better understanding of the sentence structures and conjugation system, do its exercices and write down in a notebook the structures for easier review. I expect to complete it by mid-April, and from there I'll see where to head to. For vocabulary, which I always consider very important, I have a copy of the "Handbook of Korean vocabulary" by the University of Hawaii, which is quite convenient as it gives the roots of the words. Having learnt quite a lot of Mandarin before, I have an almost free access to the 60% of the vocabulary that the Sino-Korean words constitute, and I hope to take advantage of that to spend more time learning the 40% that is left. I also bought Hawaii University's "Korean intermediate reader", which will hopefully be a step towards reading authentic material. I have bought a few manhwa, those are good to get the feeling of reading many pages while in fact the amount of text was low. A reward for an artificial effort, but motivation is the key here. Finally, I hope that joining the 龍 team will provide me with intersting discussions (in Korean!) on the way to go further. Classical Chinese Background: I've spent two semesters in China during my engineering studies in 2008 and 2010, and completely fell in love with the language, which has been part of my daily life since then. I don't know where to place myself in the CEFR's scale, but I've passed the new HSK 5 (which doesn't say much, considering how low they've put those levels nowadays). I shall just say I regularly read Mandarin novels for pleasure (Yu Hua has taken quite a lot of my reading time, discovering Mo Yan now) and I feel that I can chat about any topic (that I'm interested in...) without preparation. My tones got better, though lately the lack of spoken practice probably got me worse, but anyway, it's just a matter of practice. In this context, I thought it would be nice to start learning Classical Chinese, and that's going to be my second main goal for 2012. Current Level: I've completed the textbook Princeton's "Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader" and am now well in the middle of Harvard's "A New Primer of Literary Chinese" (which despite its name is only dedicated to Pre-Han texts). Perhaps that doesn't say much on my level though, but I don't see how to assess it. Goals: I want to read interesting classics! For now, I am more interested in stories than philosophical texts. Both show the culture of China in those days, but for now I find philosophical texts boring to read (while the stories are fun). Among the (I believe) easy classics I'd like to read first are the 说苑, but surely time will guide me to the works I may be more interested in. I would also like to be able to compose some simple texts in Classical Chinese, simply for fun and because it feels good. Resources: The two books I've mentioned, and perhaps a third textbook after that, "A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang" which, they say, bridges the gap between textbooks and starting to read authentic material. After that one, I'll try not to touch anything else than authentic texts. I plan to read, take notes of the grammar, probably practice making sentences according to those patterns myself, and finally do a lot of scriptorium. I have never tried scriptorium for any other language, but I have found that texts I did not quite understand became much clearer a few days after when I used them for scriptorium. That's probably it for now. I also plan to do some sort of 6WC all year long because there's a huge list of languages I want to discover, perhaps I'll even reduce it to a mere "4"WC, but that's another story. Good luck to everyone, and I'd be more than excited to collaborate with people to work on Korean and, if there are ways to, in Classical Chinese, particularly for composition. Don't hesitate to contact me! Vermillon Edited by vermillon on 25 June 2012 at 6:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4873 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 2 of 35 26 February 2012 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
좋은 생각이네요 ^^
그 책은 어때요? 저도 사고 싶어서 궁금해요. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4683 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 3 of 35 27 February 2012 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
그 책을 사용하지 않았지만 좀 봤어요. 두 동아리예요. 제일 동아리는 (책의 85%) 한자어를 갖고 있고 제이 동아리는 (책의 15%...) "순" 한국어 어회를 갖고 있어요. 한자를 공부하고 싶으면 그 책은 도움이 잘 되요. 그렇지않으면 책의 85% 도움이 안 되요... 아, 한국어를 잘 안 해서 죄송합니다... To conclude, I'll just say that "for me", it is a good book, even if it has no use given my current level. Hopefully it'll turn useful later during the year. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4683 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 4 of 35 02 March 2012 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought that, as I'm only starting my log here but I have logged everything at home since the 1st of January, I could post a quick log of what I've done so far:
Korean: 84h from 1/1/2012 up until last Sunday. That's an average of 10h30 a week, but the beginning of the year has been pretty weak and I'm now more consistantly studying it between 12 and 16h per week. This includes a small amount of movies and dramas, and the rest has been focused on reviewing what I had learnt in early 2011 and building from there. I've finished reading Routledge's "Korean Essential Grammar", which was very useful for me, considering it solidified my understanding of the main concepts of Korean grammar. I've also finished reading and doing the exercises of Routledge's "Basic Korean Grammar and Workbook", which was also a refresher for me, except for a few points that I had never learnt. Now I'm working my way through the TOPIK Beginner vocabulary list, of which I know around two thirds. I estimate to around 500-600 the words that I don't know yet, and as the exam is in mid-April, that leaves me plenty of time and I should be done with it in three weeks. I'm also working on Routledge's "Korean Intermediate Grammar and Workbook", which is the sequel of the book previously mentioned. I really like this format, it teaches me what I need to learn for now. The only reproach I could formulate is their constant use of English names in the examples sentences... when I read a book about Korean, I want to see Korean names, not transliterations of Andrew or John. Anyway, given the number of chapters and my study rhythm, I should be done with this book just on the eve of the exam, so probably I should boost a bit if I want to be clear with it. Classical Chinese: 39h from 1/1/2012 up until last Sunday. That's an average of 5h per week, between 3h and 7h depending on my mood and desire for other languages. After reading Archie Barnes's "Chinese through Poetry", which I found interesting for the cultural notes, but really boring for the language part (who starts learning Classical Chinese with 0 knowledge of another character-based language and prior to prose...), I have started reading Paul Rouzer's "A new practical primer of Literary Chinese". This book is very well done, contains 40 very well chosen texts from various genres such as little stories, folk ballads, philosophy and biographies. All of it belong to the pre-imperial era if I'm correct. Each text comes with the new vocabulary.. you have to look back at previous lessons if a word you don't know appears in a text, and it can be tricky to find which meaning is intended in a given text. The 10 first lessons come with a translation as well as exercises, which is very good. It's a bit unfortunate that it goes up only to the 10th lesson, because suddenly you have to do it all by yourself... it may be a good thing in the long run, as it's obviously what's going to happen once you switch to real texts.. I've reached lesson 33, which is the beginning of 8 lessons dedicated to Zhuangzi and which conclude the book. It should take me probably a week or two to finish it, and I'm really enthusiatic about my progress. I've found that when a text was a bit unclear, instead of reading its commentary, I had better put the book down, re-read it in the evening and it often became clearer. Also, copying the text (in a scriptorium fashion, though studying in the early hours of the day doesn't really let me speak out loud in the flat) helped me understand much more the structure of the texts. I would love to compose a bit, because it's very fun to do, and ideally, I would really love to try chatting with some people in Classical Chinese. By the way, if anyone is reading it and has recommendations of interesting works that are easy and not too long to read, I'm very interested. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4683 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 5 of 35 05 March 2012 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A new week has passed, with its improvements and difficulties...
Korean: My most intense week for now with 18h, and quite productive. I've learnt quite a bit of grammar, and I realise it has clearly had a positive effect on my understanding of the drama I'm watching. Particulary, simply knowing the existence of a verb grammar structure (like -ㄹ래요 for isntance) makes me understand better what was the stem and therefore what was the complete meaning. I don't watch dramas without subtitles, otherwise I would simply understand almost nothing and that's not very motivating. So, I watch them with English subtitles, and from that I see if I can understand what was said in Korean: it's probably not ideal from a learning perspective, but at least I like it. I've also learnt a few hundreds of words, which also has an impact on my listening.. Finally, I've met two Korean men on Saturday and spent the day chatting with them (in English), but even there knowing some Korean was very nice to express a few sentences or try to rephrase myself when they couldn't understand the English. Also, knowledge of the Hanja's pronunciation has proven very useful to talk about Chinese topics: guessing the Korean name of my favourite Chinese rock star and having the guy actually know him (though not knowing the Chinese name) was really thrilling. On the whole, a very pleasant and motivating week for Korean (detrimental to my Latin and Icelandic but well), with the perspective of perhaps moving to Seoul this year to work. Classical Chinese: An average week of 5h of studies, as I haven't had any time on Saturday to push for one or two more hours. I've started the lessons on 庄子 and it's not very easy. I understand quite well what's going on when reading quite fast, but often there's one detail (like that 若 which was actually a proper noun, though it made perfect sense otherwise) that changes the meaning of the whole text... I'm wondering if trying to translate the texts could be any good for that, because it would force me to pay attention to the details and go to the bottom of the details that I tend to overlook when reading quickly. Also I plan to go to SOAS's library to see their Classical Chinese collection, and hopefully spend a bit of time there to find some nice texts to read at week-end, far from the computer... Hopefully this week will be even better in terms of improvement! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4873 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 6 of 35 05 March 2012 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for telling me about the Intermediate reader! I guess for now it won't be useful for me, because I know almost no Hanja. But I've decided to study vocabulary using the same Hanja, which is fun and very useful. I'll pay more attention to the pronunciation, but maybe some Hanja will stick, which would be a plus.
Which drama are you watching? Actually, I've picked up lots of words and expressions from watching subbed dramas. I read somewhere there was research that people only remember the subtitles or something, but I think that depends on the mindset with which you watch. I have not found this to be true. My brain often connects the subtitles to the words I hear, so I found watching with subs quite useful and at that point watching without subtitles would've been almost pointless. Chinese rock sounds interesting! Any recommendations? The only Chinese (well, Taiwanese) musician I know is Jay Chou. Is Classical Chinese grammar very different from Mandarin? Or does the difference mostly lie in the characters? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4683 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 7 of 35 05 March 2012 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah, I think you may be mixing the Intermediate Reader (which is a "reader", and only introduces a handful of hanja) and the "Handbook of Korean vocabulary" which contains vocabulary lists sorted by their hanja (for the Sino-Korean vocabulary, of course). Both are published by the University of Hawaii Press and, from the other books I've seen at the bookshop from this editor, they're all very useful books for any serious learner of Korean. They have other more advanced readers that I won't buy before long...
I haven't had the time to look properly at the Intermediate Reader because I want to accumulate a bit more grammar under my belt before that, but the texts seem to be interesting and of appropriate difficulty for us. I only wish they had a cd of their readings, that would be absolutely perfect. Perhaps I'll try to get someone record them... I'm watching "때려 / Punch". You can find a review here : http://koreanfilm.org/tvdramas/index.htm#punch . This is the first Korean drama I watch, and I find it very good. The story is a bit predictable at times ("something must go wrong" => it does), but overall I like the main characters and the language seems to be not too difficult to understand. Ask me if you're interested. I agree about the subtitles. To me, it's like one of the parts of the L-R method, listening L2 while reading L1, it surely does help. Anyway, finding Korean videos with Korean subs doesn't seem to be very easy, and if I watched with no subs at all, I would understand nothing. Chinese Rock, hmm... I really love 崔健 (Cui Jian), his album from 1987 新长征路上的摇滚 (Rock on the road of the new Long March?), which is really great. China also has a more contemporary indie rock scene, but it's usually not that great (except if you learn Chinese, in which case you learn to love everything in the language), but there are a few very nice bands like 嘎调 (English "Gar") or Queen Sea Big Shark... but my favourite bands over there are probably more "folk" (understand it as "folk rock" or "traditional folk", I meant both of them), with bands like 苏阳乐队: two nice videos : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPYrOG1xMRg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyb0HrjSq9E&feature=related (ask if you want more). Finally, Classical Chinese... well, some people would correct me if I dared saying anything about its relation to Chinese as spoken two millenia ago, but let's just say that it's very different from Mandarin. The grammar is absolutely different, the characters used at that times are now obsolete (or have a different meaning) for a good part, but speaking Mandarin clearly is a huge step in the direction of reading Classical Chinese. It's not immediate though, it requires learning how to do it, but the reward is clearly there: it's intellectually challenging and understanding the stories gives me immense satisfaction. Ah, and finally (bis), I've bought a collection of poems from 최현석 (崔賢錫) "詩集毬果", which is a beautiful book divided in Japanese/Korean/English containing the same poems translated (from Japanese, as the poet is a Korean who has lived from an early age in Japan). I bought it because it was really appealing to me on that book shelf, and the Korean is written in mixed script, which I really love. The language is a bit difficult for me for now, but I could understand good parts of it so I have good hope I'll be able to enjoy more of it soon. Yeah! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4683 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 8 of 35 12 March 2012 at 11:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Another week has passed and we're already in the 11th week of the year. Improvement is rather fast and I'm very happy with it, at least for Korean.
Korean: This is a new record for me, as I've reached 21h of study for Korean alone, which is two thirds of my total study for the week. The progress is relatively fast, I know manage to learn 40 words a day using the TOPIK's beginner list and the Inversen method. It is quite clear that the Sino-Korean vocabulary is just incredibly easy to remember for me, and with the small amount of English loanwords, I'm left with probably only 30% of the vocabulary to learn. Because I learn them in alphabetical order, they stick very well to memory. I still have 270 words from the list to learn, and I suppose I should be finished by Sunday, which is very good as I'll have one month before the exam to make it "mature" and start focusing on other things. I haven't studied grammar a lot, which is a bit annoying as there are still quite a lot of structures I don't understand, and also some that I've learnt but never used and that clearly need some review. I'll try to be a bit more focused on it from this week on, and especially try to activate that knowledge that is rather passive at the moment. One very pleasant thing this week has been to go back to my Intermediate Reader: I clearly remember the first time I've opened it, I could get the idea of the text of the first lesson, though missing quite a lot of the vocabulary and of the verb endings, but I could understand about nothing from the dialog that followed it, due to unknown conjugation and vocabulary, sentence structures... this week, I can proudly say that I could understand the whole text in details and the dialog was just completely clear. I haven't studied this dialog at all, but simply my quick increase in vocabulary and increased grammar knowledge have proven to be useful. Big motivation to keep on this track. I also went to the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) and their library is just awesome. I've looked through many textbooks and I believe the KLEAR Integrated Korean series is the best. As everything I've come across so far published by the University of Hawaii, it's very good. They have 5 levels (beginner, intermediate, intermediate advanced, advanced, high advanced) each having 2 books. I don't know where I am exactly now (apparently "intermediate"), but I'll try to copy their grammar list for each volume, in case it may help people decide what level they're at and which one to buy. I've also read some "Korean" poetry written in Classical Chinese, but that's probably not very interesting for Korean. Finally, in the KLEAR series there is this "Korean Reader for Chinese Characters" which is the best hanja-oriented book I've seen so far. It teaches 500 hanja (well, I probably know them all already..) and show them in mixed script texts. Definitely my next buy, Korean-wise. Finally, watching 때려 (Punch) is very nice and I always catch some words. As they have about 2 songs only in the whole drama (one for the sad/romantic parts, one for the boxing parts), I've been listening to that KCM "알아요" song so many times that I've decided to learn it. In the process (not finished), learning vocabulary and grammar was very pleasant and I can't wait to finish learning it, I really love it. As usual with that kind of music, that's probably the genre I would hate if it was in French, but as it's part of language learning, it suddenly becomes interesting :) Classical Chinese: As opposed to my best week in Korean, this has been my worst week in Classical Chinese: 1h only, and simply reading some grammar rather than playing with texts. It is clearer and clearer for me that getting the right proportion of work between several languages is difficult: I've started the year with 5 languages which I studied in even proportion and it went fine. Then I've increased my Korean study time with no consequence on the other languages as I went from roughly 20h/week to 30-35h/week. Now however Korean is taking the two thirds of my time alone, and I've almost given up on Icelandic (shouldn't have taken a class, it's boring as hell) and Chinese is only doing Anki, which is not very useful. Then depending on weeks the rest of the time is divided between Classical Chinese and Latin, but it's difficult to reason myself to study them, although I absolutely love them, as always want to do more and more Korean. Perhaps it's the way to go, learn Korean with all my energy and have a few other languages on the side to keep busy when I don't feel like doing Korean, and to expand my general language awareness? Ok, and related to Classical Chinese specifically, going to SOAS this week-end was very pleasant, I've looked for a few classics there, and I love the feeling of being surrounded by so many old books. Unfortunately, I quickly realised that reading woodblock prints with 0 punctuation was going to be a great challenge... there's absolutely no way for me, given my limited skills, to understand where sentences start and stop. I hope the next reader I will buy will help with that, as it's what the editor claims. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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