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Better than Nothing: 日本語/deutsch/español | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 33 of 40 18 April 2011 at 10:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Two exciting new developments this week:
1. After hearing so much about how Korean has such an awesome alphabet from a linguist's perspective, I finally decided to learn it (or I should technically say relearn it, as I once memorized it in 15 mins. on a bet, passed my friends' test by writing a few words in it, and promptly forgot it!) It took a Wikipedia read for me to understand exactly how the alphabet depicts the phonetic features of each sound, but once I got it, the alphabet was much easier to remember and yes, a linguist's fantasy come true :) I've been using a hangul Anki deck in order to make sure I don't forget it again from disuse. Then, out of pure curiosity about how similar the language is to Japanese, I took it a step further and downloaded Hanja deck, which just has the kanji I'm familiar with on the front and the Korean pronunciation on the back. Most of the Korean pronunciations are very similar to the Japanese ones, and a few I was actually able to recognize thanks to my barely-existant Mandarin! (I'm guessing that for some or all words, Korean borrowed from a different dialect of Chinese than did Japanese, and that this dialect was closer to modern-day Mandarin than the dialect which Japan borrowed from, which would make sense as Korea is further North.) Also, some of the pronunciations are different from the Japanese ones in predictable ways: initial obstruents are usually voiced, inital "k" of Japanese is usually "h" in Korean (as in Mandarin), and oddly enough, kanji ending in "tsu" in Japanese end in "l" in Korean. This has reinforced my interest in learning about the older Chinese languages that have had such a great influence in Asia. However, I'd characterize my interest in Korean and the Chinese Sprachbund as mostly academic in nature, so it's not so much an "I'm fascinated by this culture and just have to understand everything about how the people think and live!" kind of intense burning desire like I might feel for other languages, so only time will tell if this exciting forray into other East Asian languages will actually lead anywhere serious. 2. I've enrolled in the 6 Week Challenge for Spanish, beginning in May. I've written a list of materials I need to prepare, such as bilingual readers and hunting for a good movie or TV show. I wasn't planning to begin Spanish until June, but I've decided to take the chance, even though it unfortunately means putting my German on hold before reaching my goal of C1 proficiency. During the 6WC, I plan to keep listening to podcasts and adding sentences to Anki at a much slower and scattered pace. After the 6 weeks are up, I will probably be balancing my time more evenly between German and Spanish. I'm actually quite worried about the possibility of overstretching myself with Japanese, German, Spanish, and occasionally Persian. I really don't want to lose any of them, and they are all at the point where they need active daily maintenence (although Japanese will be a bit more low-maintenence than the others). Also, this is a very busy time for our English school. Effective time management is definitely something I'll have to keep struggling with -- starting with not spending too much time on this forum! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5233 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 34 of 40 19 April 2011 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
A week or two ago I read quickly through an old Teach Yourself Japanese to get a sense of the grammar, and I had a lot of these same epiphanies you had, only in reverse. It's pretty cool to see such random resemblances. To be honest, though, I don't really like SOV word order. Sometimes when I'm reading a sentence in Persian, I get impatient and think, "Just get to the verb already!" I really like Arabic word order: it's VSO. (Or at least Classical/MSA is.)
It seems like in Persian compound verbs are far more common than simple, native verbs. Is it like that in Japanese too? One great thing about Persian is how colorful the compound verbs can be. The normal word for "to fall" is oftādan, but another way of saying it is zamīn khordan (lit. "to eat ground"). I thought that was pretty funny when I learned it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 35 of 40 19 April 2011 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Wow, I had no idea! That's really fascinating. I imagine that must give it the feeling of being more "straight to the point" than Persian, Japanese, or German (which is famous for its longwindedness and habit of stacking up verbs at the end).
Not at all. I think that roughly every verb has one "native" way of saying it and one Sino-Japanese two kanji compound. One is used in conversation, and the other is generally only used in writing, so maybe they're used equally as often (maybe something like English pairs such as "go back" and "return"). But this isn't 100% always the case, because for some pairs the Sino-Japanese equivalent sounds ridiculously rigid and formal("katai") so is never used except maybe in newspapers, and for others the Sino- Japanese word is the only one that exists (as in denwa suru and ensou suru "to perform"). In the end, I guess they balance each other out. :)
I can't decide whether I should be sad to hear that the Arabic-derived verb compounds far outnumber the native Persian verbs, because I agree that this is a really interesting system! I was also entertained to learn that "to visit" literally means "to strike head"... Edited by Lucky Charms on 19 April 2011 at 4:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 36 of 40 27 April 2011 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'll be participating in the 6 Week Challenge with Spanish beginning on May 1st,
so my other languages will be taking a back seat during this time. My progress in Spanish will be recorded in a log I made especially for this purpose, at [http://how- to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26336&PN =1&TPN=1] . In the meantime, I'll continue to update this log with any breakthroughs that might occur in Japanese, German, or any other language, as well as insights about language learning in general. What I've Been Doing for 日本語 Nothing besides the usual maintainence. What I've Been Doing for Deutsch I've been listening to about 3-5 episodes of Germanpod101.com's Intermediate Series Season 2 each day. I'll probably finish the series by tomorrow, so I'll either begin Intermediate Season 3 or move on to Upper Intermediate (I prefer the latter, but for some reason they don't show up on my iPhone even though I've downloaded them!!!!) I've entered the Assimil German with Ease lessons into Anki up to Lektion 85. What I've Been Doing for Other Languages Nothing new to report for Persian, although I'm considering buying a textbook (based on aldous's very kind post on his log - Thank you!) after my 6WC with Spanish. These scattered online resources aren't helping me progress efficiently enough. I've been continuing to study the Korean hanja readings every day (at a pace of 5 new cards/day), and having a lot of no-pressure fun with it! What I Plan to Do for my Languages I'll continue to add to my Anki decks, and I won't say no if any good opportunities come up to practice German, but I won't be actively studying these languages while I focus on Spanish for the next 6 weeks. My greatest goal with regard to this challenge is to become more organized and aware of how I spend my time, so I hope that when the challenge is over I'll become more efficient when studying all my languages! Thanks for the support :) Edited by Lucky Charms on 27 April 2011 at 5:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 37 of 40 12 June 2011 at 6:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The 6 Week Challenge is over!!
You can read the details of the challenge and how I feel about my results at my 6WC blog: [http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26336&PN =1&TPN=1] Now I can finally get back to studying my other, hideously neglected languages and updating this blog! Since I've decided to continue actively studying Spanish as well, I've brought it on board here and updated the title to "Better than Nothing: 日本 語/deutsch/español". It's not very pretty, but it's the result of a battle of wills between my love for Spanish and a short character limit. What I've been doing for every language that's not Spanish Here's the breakdown of how I spent my study time in the last 6 weeks: Spanish (104h 52min) 87.35% Japanese260 (4h 20min) 3.61% Persian 35 (0h 35min) 0.49% Korean 183 (3h 3min) 2.54% German 433 (7h 13min) 6.01% The time recorded for Persian was only Anki reviews, without adding any new cards. Same with Korean (hanja readings), except that I'm using a premade deck so I automatically get 5 new cards every day. German was also almost all Anki reviews, but there were probably two days where I caved in and made new German cards from Assimil. I just couldn't handle seeing less than 20 reviews due for German on some days... Despite being surrounded by Japanese and speaking it possibly more than any other language on a given day, I only recorded my Anki reviews and two (boring) seminars I attended as Japanese practice because they were the only times I felt I was putting in a mental effort and stretching my ability in the language. It was a fun experience to be able to focus so intensively on a brand-new language for 6 weeks, but at times I felt like a kid in a roomful of Christmas presents who was only allowed to open and play with one! Especially, seeing my reviews due on Anki wither away day by day for each language (except Spanish) was almost physically painful. I'm definitely looking forward to spending some quality catch-up time with my other language, especially German, and letting them know that mommy still loves them :) In light of my new commitment to Spanish, I'm thinking of holding off or at least scaling back on my flirtations with Persian. As it is, I was spending so little time with Persian that I was forgetting it almost as fast as I was learning it. Someday after I'm satisfied with my levels in German and Spanish, I'll give it the attention it deserves! Stay tuned... next I'll be posting my lessons learned from the 6WC, a review of a new program I've been using, and of course, my updates and future plans for Japanese, German, and Spanish (plus hanja on the side)! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| getreallanguage Diglot Senior Member Argentina youtube.com/getreall Joined 5462 days ago 240 posts - 371 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Dutch | Message 38 of 40 12 June 2011 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Estoy encantado de que hayas decidido seguir estudiando castellano. Bienvenida al lado oscuro de la fuerza :)
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| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 39 of 40 20 June 2011 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@getreallanguage,
¡Por supuesto! No fue solo un experimento. Decidí por principio estudiar español en serio :) Update - My first week back from 6WC Some very sad news, my friends...... The first few days after the challenge, I was enjoying a little too much the feeling of freedom from any obligation to study during every free millisecond, so I went easy on myself and unfortunately have gone right back into my old study habits! In the next few days I'll be writing up my lessons learned from the challenge, and hopefully that will inspire me (guilt me?) toward a more efficient use of my spare moments. However, I am happy to report that my first language exchange with Harold on Friday went really well. I surprised him and myself with how much I could say and how fluidly my sentences came out (well, at least for the time I've been studying, anyway)! Also, I could tell that my practice of reading aloud has had a positive effect on my accent. Previously, I had been noticing a huge discrepancy between my accent when reading a text out loud and when exchanging a few words with my friends: it seemed that I was only able to focus on my pronunciation or composing a sentence, but not both at once, and the sound of the words coming out of my mouth horrified and disappointed me. Since then, I've been spending more effort on reading aloud with the goal of "automating" good Spanish pronunciation, and it seems to have worked. On Friday I was able to concentrate on my message, and the accent took care of itself with much less concious effort. I'll have plenty of opportunity to practice this in July, as I've signed up for the Tadoku challenge taking place then; however, I don't plan to be as hardcore about it as I was about 6WC. ¡Hasta la próxima! Edited by Lucky Charms on 20 June 2011 at 3:37pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 40 of 40 22 June 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Update - English Day, 日本語の日
Lately I was starting to get worried about the linguistic situation with my boyfriend. We speak each other's native language (English and Japanese) at about the same level, so our communication has always been divided roughly equally between the two languages. This was great at first: a conversation begun on a whim in English would continue in English, and the next time the conversation would take place in Japanese, and we had equal exposure and equal comfort levels in each language. We were both progressing a lot. But a few months ago, I started to notice some more "mixing" going on within the same conversation. Sometimes we would switch language mid-topic because we felt more equipped to discuss the topic in a certain language (for example, English for discussions of our teaching methodology, Japanese for discussions of our social life) or worse, we would get lazy and carry on a conversation with each side speaking their native language. When my boyfriend's brother, an intellectual who does not speak English, came to visit for a few weeks, I found myself struggling to express thoughts that I'm sure would have rolled of my tongue before. Similarly, I noticed my boyfriend struggling to put his thoughts into words when discussing more advanced topics with our non-Japanese speaking friends. We both realized that we had been using our bilingualism not to help each other grow in our target languages, but as an escape hatch to avoid having to think too hard! Thus, English Day and 日本語の日 were born. Starting last week, we've designated Wednesday as our English-only day, and Friday as our Japanese-only day (or more accurately, just our Japanese-free day and English-free day respectively, as Spanish is allowed on any day.) We keep having to remind each other constantly throughout the day when one of us forgets, but so far we've been holding to it, and it's been really fun! We can feel the rusty old cogs turning in our brains as we attempt to translate a phrase that's meanwhile trying to fly from our lips in the language it's most accustomed to. In the last week we've even had to ask each other plenty of times, "hey, how do you say that in *****, anyway?!" It's only when we restrict our communication to one language that we realize how much lost territory we have to regain, and what a vast frontier still awaits beyond that. I recommend this system to all bilingual couples who want to keep their skills in one another's language sharp and avoid the danger of creating their own pidgin! Now I have 日本語の日 in addition to my language exchanges with Harold... as if I needed another reason to look forward to Friday every week :) Edited by Lucky Charms on 22 June 2011 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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