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Buchstabe’s diary of a verbivore | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| buchstabe Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4644 days ago 52 posts - 108 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: Czech, Swedish, Japanese | Message 1 of 15 16 March 2012 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been thinking about trying out this log thing for some time and was a bit reluctant to do so because I loathe to burden myself with unnecessary commitments that could potentially turn something I enjoy into a chore.
But then I really like following other people's logs so I decided to just give it a try to see how it goes and how I like it. I'm hoping that logging might help me make faster progress in my language studies, because I'm a notorious language hopper. I'm mostly muddling along without goals or structure. Sometimes I switch back and forth to a degree that it becomes quite inefficient. So, here I am. At the moment, I have the following delicacies on my personal linguistic menu (ordered by current priority): Spanish Czech Japanese Hindi On the back burner: Swedisch Latin I'm one of those nerds who don't learn languages primarily for communicating. Above all I'm curious about how different languages work and generally intrigued by words and idiomatic phrases, and their origins. Being able to use them is more like a nice spin-off. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| squonk Groupie United States Joined 4688 days ago 44 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish | Message 2 of 15 16 March 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Verbivore...I like it.
I could have written your first paragraph. I was hesitant to begin my Irish log for the same reasons, and, only three or four entries into it, I'm already rather bored of it (the log, not the language!). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4810 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 3 of 15 16 March 2012 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great title! I myself am more of a nounivore, but have great respect for verbivores :D And interesting selection of languages. I'm looking forward to reading more. How are you studying your languages?
Initially I wasn't sure about the log thing either. When I logged Persian it was more of a chore than something I enjoyed, but with Korean I find myself looking forward to logging day :) I'm sure this log is doing a good job of keeping me accountable and I like the idea of being able to look back on my progress. I think it depends a bit on whether you choose a format you like and how often you update. Having a set time for updates (that isn't too often) works really well for me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| buchstabe Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4644 days ago 52 posts - 108 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: Czech, Swedish, Japanese | Message 4 of 15 18 March 2012 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Druckfehler: Thanks! Nouns are something I wouldn't want to miss out on either. :)
Initially, I learnt Spanish and Czech at university, switching between courses and self-study. That was because I once had to skip a course because of a schedule conflict. I took the 1st course, then studied the next few lessons of the course's textbook on my own in the term break, and continued with the 3rd course in the following term. It turned out to be a lot less hard that I had expected: My fellow students came back to the courses after a long break in which they hadn't practiced at all and struggled to remember the basics, whereas I was probably a bit less comfortable with speaking than most others, but my memories of the vocabulary and grammar were still fresh. So I decided to stick with the "take one, skip one" strategy for the remainder of my language studies at university. After having graduated, I occasionally watched a Spanish film, read a Spanish magazine or browsed Spanish web sites, but didn't talk or write ever. That was just enough to keep my passive skills alive, but the gap between my passive and active skills became huge. A few months ago I went to a Spanish meet-up with a very high percentage of natives (I was surprised we have that many Spanish and South American ex-pats in my town) and I was able to understand nearly everything, including jokes, but my lips were involuntarily sealed. :-( I felt like even basic small-talk was over my head. In Czech, I've lost a lot of my passive knowledge too, because I didn't get much input any more after completing the last course, and my vocabulary size was a great deal smaller than in Spanish in the first place. To revamp my active skills in these two languages, I decided to brush up on my grammar and writing, so I supplied myself with grammar drill books and text books with lots of exercises for both languages, and started to use Ling-8. In addition to that, I have Anki sets galore for all four languages. Realistically, I'll only be able to do exercises and post on Ling-8 on the weekends, because at moment, when I get home from work during the week, I'm reduced to a vegetable, but I hope to be able to squeeze in some Anki sessions on the commute or before I go to sleep. * * * Ok, now let's continue with this weekend's diary of a verbivore: ES: Bueno, a continuar con mi diario de una verbívora de este fin de semana: CZ: Takže, tady je můj slovožravcův diář na tento víkend: (Any natives reading this? You're very welcome to correct my mistakes!) This weekend, I reviewed the Spanish pronouns and the Indefinido forms, and did the exercises of the first two lessons of the textbook "New Czech Step by Step" (numbers, some basic declinations). SRS groundwork to keep me busy during the week: I added 94 Czech words into Anki, starting from words I found in lesson 1 and 2. I didn't use the exact words but instead looked them up in an online dictionary (slovnik.seznam.cz) and added compounds or phrases in which they are used to my Anki set. So for example, instead of "athlete", I added "professional athlete" (vrcholový sportovec); instead of "weak", I put in "to have a weak memory" (mít slabou paměť), instead of "high" I used "high blood pressure" (vysoký krevní tlak); or instead of "old" I added "Old Testament" (Starý zákon). For Spanish, I bought the Kindle edition of the Routledge Frequency Dictionary. I plan to go through it from start to end and enter everything where I'm not 100% sure I can use it actively into a set, sometimes increasing the difficulty by entering a compound or idiom instead of the basic word, like I did with Czech. So far I've added 73 words. Edit: Fixed formatting. Edited by buchstabe on 18 March 2012 at 10:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sirkka Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5588 days ago 35 posts - 39 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Sign Language, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto, Thai, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 15 22 March 2012 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi there from a fellow language hopper! This is exactly what happens to me with French. I know French, but I don't know how to use it, and I feel very self-conscious about using it. Getting out there and using the language in writing on lang-8 or the forum seems like a good option to get started. I can totally relate to studying languages just for the fun of it. I've had quite a number of languages on my plate for years, and I never really got anywhere with any of them. I cut it down to two for 2012 (Dutch and French) and will allow myself to study the others as part of a 6 Week Challenge, just to keep myself from getting distracted again. So far, it seems to be working out okay, although I couldn't resist the temptation to continue with Esperanto even after the February 6WC... Good luck with your languages! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| buchstabe Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4644 days ago 52 posts - 108 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: Czech, Swedish, Japanese | Message 6 of 15 25 March 2012 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's weekend again - time to post some updates.
ES: Este fin de semana, he aprendido un par de palabras bonitas relacionadas con los gatos, como "maullar" (qué onomatopéyico!) y "arañar" (sinónimo de rascar). Yo misma tengo un gatito. Es una pequeña dama muy adorable de piel atigrada en blanco y negro, con una cola toda negra. Parece que le hubieran cosido la cola de otro gato. This weekend, I learnt a couple of nice words related to cats, like "to meow" (how onomatopoeic!) and to "scratch" (synonym of "rascar"). I have a cat myself. She's an adorable little lady. She has a black and white tabby-pattern fur with a tail that's completely black. It looks like if they had sewn another cat's tail onto her. CZ: V neděli odpoledne jsem opakovala pádové přípony datívu a lokálu. Mimo to, jsem četla článek se slovíčky ohledně potraviny a potravinových obalů na této webové stránce: http://www.radio.cz/de/rubrik/gesagt/trocken-und-kuehl-halte n Slova v tomto článku byla dost pokročilá. Sunday afternoon I reviewed the dative and locative case endings. In addition to that, I read an article on vocabulary related to food and food packaging on the following web site (...). The words in this article were quite advanced. I continued reading Japanese the Manga Way but didn't touch Hindi at all. Edited by buchstabe on 25 March 2012 at 11:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| buchstabe Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4644 days ago 52 posts - 108 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: Czech, Swedish, Japanese | Message 7 of 15 25 March 2012 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Miscellaneous other discoveries:
Czech uses the same word for sausage (frankurter) and couple - for both you can say "párek". Funny. I'd like a "couple in a roll" (hot dog = "párek v rohlíku"), please. :) In Spanish, you can say "clavado (a alg)" if you mean something is identical or someone looks exactly the same as another person. It also means "nailed". "Clavo" is a nail, and "clavar algo en algo" means to hammer something into something. I wonder how the additional meaning developed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| buchstabe Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4644 days ago 52 posts - 108 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: Czech, Swedish, Japanese | Message 8 of 15 31 March 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm currently working with Routledge Frequency Dictionaries to ramp up my vocabulary. :) I've bought the Spanish and Czech editions for Kindle.
For Spanish, I see it more as a tool for bringing my passive vocabulary back to live. For Czech I primarily use it to extend my vocabulary and relearn those I have forgotten. What I especially like about the Czech edition is that all example sentences are also translated, not just the main entries, like in the Spanish one. ------- start of language practice section ------- ES: Para revivir mi español activo, estoy repasando el Routledge diccionario de frecuencia con los 5000 palabras españolas más usadas. Reconozco casi todas las palabras, pero algunas ya no forman parte de mi vocabulario activo. Mi vocabulario activo se ha atontado más y más por la falta de uso. Para remediar eso, cuando leo una palabra y no estoy absolutamente seguro que podría usarla activamente, pongo una frase española con esa palabra en Anki. Al frente de la tarjeta pongo la frase con tres puntos en lugar del término que desea ser capaz de usar de nuevo, y al reverso pongo el término. I'm reviewing the Routledge Frequency Dictionary Spanish, which contains the 5000 most-used Spanish words. I understand almost all of them, but some are longer part of my active vocabulary, which has been slowly fading away for lack of use. To change that, each time when I find a word where I'm not absolutely sure I could use it actively, I create a new card in an Anki set with a Spanish usage example on the front (the target term being replaced by three dots) and the term that I'd like to be able to use again on the back. CZ: Koupila jsem si pred nedávnem taky frekvencní slovník ceštiny. Je slovník který obsahuje kolem 5000 slova se v ceštine používají nejcasteji. Jsem zacínala delat výukové karty se softwarem "Anki". Taky mám AnkiDroid pro svuj mobilní telefon. I recently bought a frequency dictionary for Czech. This dictionary contains about 5000 words that are used the most in Czech. I've started to create vocabulary cards with help of the software "Anki". I also have AnkiDroid for my mobile phone. ------- end of language practice section ------- I'm considering leaving out Hindi for now, meaning that I will not try to learn new stuff, but would still like to review the vocabulary I've learned to date, because I would hate to forget everything and have to learn Devanagari again in 2 years or so. The interest is still there but I would need much more time than I currently can spare to make reasonable progress. It will be more rewarding to invest that time into Japanese. Edited by buchstabe on 05 April 2012 at 12:13am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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