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TAC 2012 Team Sputnik: M. Medialis RU JP

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M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6354 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 17 of 56
07 March 2012 at 8:18pm | IP Logged 
Team Tac 2012 - Team Sputnik - Log #3


Whoaa. I've been away from this forum for so long. Here's the story:

Three weeks ago I got slammed by a nasty flu that kept me in bed for a week. No language learning, no fun. When I got better, I had to go through a couple of cycles of obsessive piano practice and workout mania before I could find my language learning inspiration again.

But now I have finally found my Japanese groove! I started by LRing The Little Prince again. I'm always so positively surprised of how good and charming that book is.

The last days I have reinitiated my Japanese habits. I'm not really in the mood for literature right now, so I'm fiddling with a podcast based method instead:

Some Background

Yes, we all love LR. But for some reason, basic vocabulary such as 'Special Hair Care', 'Sports Champion', 'Mineral Foundation' and an avalanche of food and cooking related words are rarely found in 100 year old novels (at least not those that have a corresponding audiobook).

(now, I had planned to write that knowing Japanese without knowing about Japanese food is like speaking French without knowing any French verbs. Then I remembered that it has actually been done. Oh, The French! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Train_de_Nulle_Part).


Making Dictionary Attacks fun

So I have started to add some extra flavour to my podcast listening adventures. Every time I catch a word that I don't understand, I look it up on my EeeSlate using the handwriting recognition. It's pretty addicting, because the look-ups enable me to understand 90-95 % of the conversations in the podcasts; I get to look up the words exactly when I need them; I feel a bit like a secret agent trying to decode what's just been said (and get the spelling right); And I just love writing kana by hand.   :)

Thanks to the daily commuting, I can do 1 hour of active podcast listening every day.

Lol, and in order to give this not-so-revolutionizing method some pseudo-scientific weight, I'll include a reference to a non-existent publication. See [1]. :d


References

[1] M. Medialis. "ActiveListening: A Hybrid Technique for combining Real-Time Transcription with The Good Old Dictionary Attack" (2012). Proceedings of the HTLAL, Vol 19 Issue 16, Pages: 1223-1228.


-----------------------------------------

Team Sputnik - M. Medialis
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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5553 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 18 of 56
08 March 2012 at 3:49pm | IP Logged 
It's great to see you back and already getting into the groove! I was almost ready to send a Great Bernard rescue dog your way with a flask of cognac and a copy of Murakami... So sorry to hear you were struck down with the flu and I hope you're now back to breakdance fighting, concert pianist, LR and podcast annihilating fitness. I really like your idea of using handwriting recognition on the Eee Slate whilst listening to podcasts, and of course, being able to understand 90-95% of a Japanese podcast (especially during your daily commute) is absolutely amazing!! And I totally get your love of writing kana and kanji by hand...those magic symbols make the whole experience come alive (as well as fend off evil spirits). お帰りなさい! :D

Edited by Teango on 08 March 2012 at 4:10pm

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Woodsei
Bilingual Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Woodsei
Joined 4794 days ago

614 posts - 782 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)*
Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian

 
 Message 19 of 56
15 March 2012 at 7:09pm | IP Logged 
I do agree with adding a lot of variety to a method you find useful and love. Literature
is great, but sometimes it's so much more exciting to listen to current, non-literary pod
casts and conversations. That "referenced" method of yours is really creative :) Writing
kana and kanji is so much fun! Yes, I know we use computers for all sorts of writing
nowadays, but old-fashioned writing on paper still has its charm, at least for me. Even
more so calligraphy!

Sorry to hear you were feeling under the weather recently. お大事に!
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Solfrid Cristin
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Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
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Norway
Joined 5331 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 20 of 56
17 March 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged 
Glad to see you are back, we have missed you! I may get back to you in order to understand better your method for looking up words. For some strange reason Japanese seems to be singing like a sirene to me :-)

Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 17 March 2012 at 11:19pm

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M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6354 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 21 of 56
21 March 2012 at 11:48pm | IP Logged 
Team Tac 2012 - Team Sputnik - Log #4


@Teango: Haha. "This Elite Squad Great Bernard has been specially trained to recognize the scent of lost Gaijins" :)

@Woodsei: I absolutely love old-fashioned writing. I loved to practice handwriting when I was a kid, so I rediscovered my passion when I started to learn languages with foreign scripts. Calligraphy sounds amazing! I'd love to try in the future :)

@Solfrid: Now that's a wonderful sign! You know, once Japanese starts to sing to you, you know for sure that there are good times ahead :)


Russian Speaking Practice

I just had a very exciting weekend. We had some visitors from Estonia, and one of them tried to speak to me in German but I didn't understand a word. Since he didn't speak English we simply switched to Russian and I had the second real conversation in Russian of my life! :D

So we went out and had a lunch and I could barely believe that I was actually chatting away with them in Russian. Sure, those were no deep advanced metaphysical discussions, but I managed to make myself understood and understand their replies. Lol- Although I failed quite miserably when I tried to tell a random story about a fun Russian birthday tradition that I had heard of. Lol. They got confused, and then I got lost when I tried to explain what the point was so I was rewarded with 10 very awkward seconds. Hey- At least I tried :).

I also quickly found out what my current weak areas are. My mind went blank when I wanted to talk about the food or saying motion related things like 'we went to Moscow' and 'now we are going to this place'.

Do I need to add that I'm soooo inspired to become better at Russian now!    :D



My new hobby - The Plyolinguistic Workout

The other day I told myself: "Medialis-san, these piano pieces you are trying to play are too physically demanding for you. It's time to stop being such a 弱虫 (weakling). You need some athletic power. You need to get fit!"

So I set out on a heroic quest to find a way of doing cardio that's not going to bore me to death. After having some fun looking at this guy and reading a couple of excerpts from his book I was convinced that high-frequency jumping is The Ultimate Thing. I mean, you just have to love a guy who writes cool stuff like: "It is during the landing phase that you develop balance while subtle neuromuscular adjustments prepare your body for the subsequent load and flight phases". Lol.

But instead of using a jumping rope, I use a stick (kobudo-style!) so I can practice my lightning-fast arm moves while I'm jumping. This will come in handy when I play challenging piano pieces.

And to make things even more interesting, I do all this while watching Japanese (subtitled) drama. This way of exercising is so bizarre that I simply can't resist it! -I've just finished 20 minutes of Plyolinguistic Workout, watching a fun Japanese detective show. I feel like a king! ;D ;D


The Mandarin (Taiwan) project

And finally, I think the time has come to start Phase Zero of my long-term Mandarin Project. I don't plan to do any fancy LR yet - I just intend to learn the basic components of the language, like the bopomofo writing script, the standard pronunciations and get used to the tones.


-----------------------------------------

Team Sputnik - M. Medialis

Edited by M. Medialis on 22 March 2012 at 12:37am

2 persons have voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5331 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 22 of 56
20 April 2012 at 10:55pm | IP Logged 
Looks like half our team went underground at the end of March. How are you doing?
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Woodsei
Bilingual Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Woodsei
Joined 4794 days ago

614 posts - 782 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)*
Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian

 
 Message 23 of 56
01 May 2012 at 6:32am | IP Logged 
What's happened to the team?! Everyone suddenly disappeared, for some reason, with the
exception of Solfrid. Looking forward to your posts again :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5553 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 24 of 56
01 May 2012 at 7:02am | IP Logged 
Don't worry comrades, I have every confidence in Medialis-san! I am sure his absence is for a very good reason and that he will appear again very soon, as always, with sagely pales of wisdom and fresh fields of inspiration. I imagine he's probably meditating right now on some kanji LR scrolls somewhere high atop Mount Kurama, all whilst still managing to devise cool new software and research for his peers. Be patient, grasshoppers, he will come...

Edited by Teango on 01 May 2012 at 7:02am



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