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My learning escapades (Logbook) | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 1 of 18 06 May 2012 at 2:32pm | IP Logged |
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Today I used mnemonics for all my new vocab. The time it takes to think of them is probably less than the time I'd use trying to remember the words without them. So, does that mean I will be using them a lot from now on?
Today: Malay, French, Russian: vocab words. For Russian I tried typing the word in (to Anki) as my answer. It helps me to learn the sounds a bit better - my spelling would be a bit vague otherwise as R. is a very new language for me (not counting that it is similar to Polish of which I know a bit more). German: vocab words and a few sentences. Trying to remember the word order: Daß kann man von Carlos nicht sagen! (Maybe I for word order mnemonics need!) Mandarin: sentences. Conclusion: with a plan of what to learn, learning is a little more effective. Still it is hard to plan an exact target with so many concurrent targets. But without a target, I don't see how I can hit the target! Note: I had a really nice time in the bookshop language section yesterday for about 40 mins. I learned from a book about memory tips that though Churchill was famous for remembering speeches and poetry, quotations, etc., he put in a huge amount of work to achieve this. At school he had a speech impediment but strove to overcome it and won a competition reciting 1300 lines of poetry from memory. Determination! I looked at some Georgian, Turkmen, Tatar, Uzbek. Did actually find a қazaқ book but it was extremely tiny, sealed, and very expensive! Anyway I'm relying on online things at the moment for that. Then I read most of an extremely interesting book on cross-cultural behaviour when dealing with people from Arab countries. Doesn't help me much but it was fascinating. It said that Arab culture is a group culture like Japanese and Chinese. The key principle for the Japanese is politeness, for the Chinese humility, and for Arabs hospitality. So it said. Once again failed to find any Cantonese books in there. I can ask but I just think they should be locatable by customers! Edited by mizunooto on 08 May 2012 at 11:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4706 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 2 of 18 07 May 2012 at 1:17am | IP Logged |
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Let me correct the German sentence for you: Das kann man von Carlos nicht erwarten.
Also, don't get hung up on the word order in German. German is way more flexible than English: " Das kann man von Carlos nicht erwarten. (Dafür aber, dass er den Müll raus bringt!) Von Carlos kann man das nicht erwarten. (Aber von seinem Sohn sehr wohl.) Erwarten kann man das von Carlos nicht. (Aber man kann ihn darum bitten.) Erwarten kann man das nicht von Carlos. (Aber man kann hoffen, dass er es schafft.) Von Carlos das erwarten kann man nicht. (Und dennoch ist darauf er sehr erpicht) " All of the above are correct German. All serve different purposes (to transport different nuances), the last one is rather poetic, we wouldn't use such a version in spoken language, but I guess I got my point across. Edit: I added stuff for you to chew in parenthesis, to show you how we'd use a pattern. Edit 2: (Maybe I for word order mnemonics need!) <-- Let me inline-translate for you: Vielleicht - Maybe brauche - need ich - I auch - also ein - a Mnemonic - mnemonic für - for die - the Wortreihenfolge - word order Vielleicht brauche ich auch ein Mnemonic für die Wortreihenfolge. Maybe need I also a mnemonic for the word order. Edited by atama warui on 07 May 2012 at 1:25am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 3 of 18 07 May 2012 at 1:21am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your help!
(I got this sentence from a documentary about Carlos Kleiber (conductor). His sister was speaking.) Your word order tips were very helpful, ありがとうございます！:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4706 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 4 of 18 07 May 2012 at 1:26am | IP Logged |
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いいえ、どういたしまして。頑張りましょう ！ :)
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 5 of 18 08 May 2012 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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Ok so I have made this into my logbook. Somehow I was continuously creating new logbooks for each entry I wanted to make, but not now. I still don't know if this is how it is done, but this is how I am doing it! (?)
Today's words and sentences to revise (SRS) are in German, French, Malay, and Mandarin. Recently I'm thinking that after this daily work that can't be postponed, I could spend a longer period of time on one or two languages each day, rather than try to somehow manage all of them constantly. I think it will be good because: -When I go to the next day (language), it will rest the previous language. The rest period is almost as important as the learning period. The whole thing is simmering away even when apparently nothing is happening. -It is good to have a bit more of in-depth time spent on something. I have not found any good information yet on here about managing multiple languages efficiently, but will keep looking because I'm sure it's there. Current state of affairs: German, Italian, Spanish, French - can understand well enough to manage with reading books and looking up words etc. I can't understand them particularly well, but it's getting there. I'm looking forward to the huge avenues of literature that they will open up! Japanese: I have been "learning" this (i.e. badly) longer than most. It needs some grammar work (I have the books) and further Kanji work. I have got the general idea but until I learn more about grammar, even simple sentences are a bit mystifying. This seems to be a feature of Japanese! Mandarin: I put a bit more concentrated effort in on this one for about one month and consequently it has improved. I am working with the "Zhongwen" sentences (taken from the website of that name, I think), which seem to be graded and repetitive which is good. I do have a good grammar book which I will use more at some point. Polish: My text book for this (when I was learning to prepare for visits to Poland around 2001 is the very nice, old-style, Teach Yourself Polish by M. Corbridge-Patkaniowska (dated about 1964). I APPRECIATE this style because it is full of grammar, and as someone who learned Latin at school, I am used to declining and conjugating (sometimes I do it in the opposite order, joke). A discussion could be, and probably has been, had about this style of book. My only criticism is that as it introduces things gradually, even by about lesson 42 you are still picking up bits of the masculine gender which could well be needed with your first sentence of whatever-it-is that you want to understand. Needless to say, I have some grammar missing due to not finishing the book, but I know what things are doing in the sentences so I think I will start reading and see how it goes. Breton, Irish: PAUSED. Need to get familiar with Celtic languages and how they work (e.g. mutation and things) before I can do more. Welsh: the same, though I have a bit more experience with it so I am intending to get on with that as my "in". I stayed in a Welsh-speaking house for a week once in Pembrokeshire so that was a bit of live experience that counts for something. Czech: my friend's girlfriend is Czech so I would like to know more so as to be friendly/encouraging. I have a nice edition of 'Švejk' that I got in Prague, so I would think to read that. I have the 'Colloquial' book for Czech. It's been quite helpful. Fortunately my Polish learning bolsters my Czech learning and vice versa due to similarity. Russian: I have not really studied this much. Will be starting soon. I am reading the alphabet faster now. Malay: Using "Teach Yourself" which I have done about four chapters of before. It's OK, not a difficult language at all. When I improve I will see what I can learn about the culture through what they have said/written or what have you. Portuguese: on a lower rung for now, not exactly paused. I did a very fast intensive period on it and I think it is all sinking in still. Norwegian: I really like this one! I'm ready to get going again with it. I paused myself when I got to suffixed definite articles. I have resolved the Bokmål/Nynorsk controversy which is not well explained anywhere except here. The answer is Bokmål, right? Now I have to see if my book (Colloquial N.) is keeping too many secrets from me in its attempt to present a 'general' picture of useful Norwegian. I wonder. Cantonese: Had a quick period of familiarisation and it is simmering. I think I've got the tones learned , which was the big difficulty for me. Someone (HK) told me his name and I got the tone right. So I can understand one syllable! Hurrah!! :) I think some of the other languages could be trimmed off the list by my name. Although I have set some to "not studying". Korean: I know Hangul very poorly now. (Improvement!) But I'm not studying it at the moment. Also I don't have any big ambitions for this language. I don't like it as much as others. Though I know a lot of Koreans and I'm sure it would/will be useful for me. Anything else listed, I have not returned to/not expecting to return to until I get better at the others, or in the case of Icelandic I have not started it at all! (I find it exciting though!) Swedish and Danish...don't know what to do with these, let's see how things are going in a few months or something. In other news, I am working up to Thai/Lao/Khmer, which for me will involve learning the alphabets first. I have had a try with Thai and Lao scripts. I would like to study all three together and get the relationships sorted out in my mind. That might not be manageable though? Well, that was rather a lot of information. Fortunately I will only do this once in a while!! ________________________________________ Today I got three books: a Thai book called [EDIT: this is a translation of an English book! Gaaaah!! Should have looked more closely], 'Breakfast of Champions' (Vonnegut) in Polish, 'My Childhood' by Maksim Gorky (one of my favourite books) in Russian. Plus my recent cache of ebooks and audiobooks, I can get going quite well with a lot of things now. I hope you all (if anyone is still reading, ha) have had a productive day! [last EDIT: I have ruthlessly edited my language list! Now it only contains the ones I am physically studying and concentrating on in the coming two or three month period] Edited by mizunooto on 09 May 2012 at 1:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 6 of 18 10 May 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
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I have organised all my materials now. That takes a long time when you have a lot of languages. Oh well, that's just a fact! Anyway it is done now.
Based on the problem of "I know a fair amount of X language but I can't speak it to you", I am addressing my grammatical weaknesses and learning conversational ploys. First the grammar. I worked on Polish and French tonight, adding the example sentences from the grammar books into my SRS. I think if I add 30 a day for French and other languages I'm a bit stronger at it will be reasonable. For Polish there are more words I don't know yet so probably about 10 a day will do for now. At that rate it would take ages to finish the book, but of course it will get faster eventually. - Needless to say, the daily work goes on in Mandarin, German, Malay, I forget what the others were but the computer tells me what to do so I suppose I don't need to know as such. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 7 of 18 11 May 2012 at 3:27am | IP Logged |
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Same daily work today as always. I'm considering the (known) benefits of a short intensive period devoted to one language.
The thing is that if I stick to one then obviously the others don't progress. BUT, I can then rest that one knowing that it's at a higher level, and get on with another. The other possibility is to put more hours in on this. But I have a lot of hours to put in on other things too. Priorities: French (won't take long to improve it to a useful level) German (needs grammar work as I have never studied this language, just picked it up) Mandarin (one of my target languages for fluency - needing more work than European langs - so having reminded myself of that I should keep it up when I can) Japanese (I am tired of not knowing this one) Decision: 1a. Continue small amount of daily Mandarin (Zhongwen sentences) 1b. Continue Japanese (Core 2000 sentences) with tiny amount each day. 2. Study French grammar until the end of the book. (estimated 3000 sentences) 3. Then study German grammar until the end of the book. 4. After the French period ends, create more time and introduce small amounts of Polish grammar and others. So essentially my decision is to get the simpler ones out of the way now and in the meantime get some exposure to the others, while continuing Mandarin at a low level. Perhaps I will put in another burst on Mandarin after a while too. I have a lot of people waiting to talk to me! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 8 of 18 11 May 2012 at 3:31am | IP Logged |
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The conflict here is that I seem to think that some languages are useful and easy, therefore I should just get them out of the way, yet also there are others that I am more excited about and which I would be happy to spend time on.
I think it's actually fine because it's a pragmatic solution and you have to decide something. In five years it will all be equal anyway. OK. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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