|
 |
Polish: another attempt | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | Polish | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kealist Senior Member United States kealist.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6236 days ago 111 posts - 124 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Uyghur, Mandarin, Shanghainese | Message 89 of 154 10 March 2008 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Ok, thank you. When (and if) I get to that point (I'm sure that I will still be on Anna because it seems to be over 50 hours long), I will see how comparable my comprehension is at that point.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 90 of 154 11 March 2008 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Good luck! I'll be interested to see how you're doing. There are a number of factors that immediately come to mind: Both Polish and Chinese: - have some sounds which are moderately difficult for English speakers - I find that words with these tend to be the most difficult to retain. - are somewhat similar grammatically to English: they both have major differences, but both are much more reminiscent of it than, say, Japanese is. Harder with Chinese: - Chinese has a more complicated writing system, by far - Chinese comes with a different set of cultural associations, groupings, idioms, etc. Harder with Polish (I think... my knowledge of Chinese is sadly lacking): - Polish is a fairly inflected language. The verb tenses are a nice change from the Romance and Germanic languages, but aspect takes some getting used to (all the more as I've been far too lazy about setting up a clear mental picture of perfective vs imperfective in any language I know, including English - I can use the right form 'by intuition', and discuss some of the most basic theory, but it's not something I'd say that I had a firm grasp on). The multiple genders and cases also complicate things a lot, especially as endings change based on phonetic properties, and there are a fair number of irregularities; it can be difficult to know if a word is an inflected version of one you've already seen or entirely new, especially at first. - Polish strikes me as being somewhat irregular. One form in the present of the verb 'to be' is 'jest'; 'był' is one form of the past. I've previously mentioned how 'he' varies between the cases as well: 'jego' and 'mu' bear no immediate resemblance. I don't know which language is harder to bootstrap into; getting the first things to stick tends to seem hardest. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6360 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 91 of 154 11 March 2008 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Hey Volte,
I just wanted to say I´m really impressed not just with the amount of Polish learning you´ve done recently, but also the consistency in which you work on a daily basis and update your log... its a good bar to try and compete with. I have been silently preparing a German/English parallel text (Metamorphosis) with the idea of finally having a serious go with listen-reading, but I want to get a week where I can hit at least 3-4 hours a day to start the process off, and I haven´t been able to find it yet. Again thanks for the continued inspiration and detailed log keeping... it truly is beneficial, and actually quite rare as well, to have it on the forum. Cheers and keep it up! Shawn/Blindsheep 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 92 of 154 11 March 2008 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Day 30:
About 20 minutes of L-R. I did Andersen's "The emperor's new clothes" at 150% speed, 3 times. I started by briefly trying both normal speed and 200%, but couldn't maintain concentration on either. I'm not sure what it is about Andersen, but I always find his stories a bit difficult to follow in Polish, especially the first time I do them. (I'm posting this log nearly a day late, as my energy levels plummeted last night). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 93 of 154 11 March 2008 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks. I'm glad that my log is serving some purpose! I find it's a good focusing tool; it makes the days when I do far too little stand out. Most of them tend to have causes (either extremely low energy, or unexpected obligations), but I've found before that it's all too easy to fall into patterns of studying too little, and too infrequently. If it makes even one other person do better, that's a great bonus. I also find that days when I do 2 or more hours tend to be the best. My initial goal was 1.5, but it doesn't seem to be quite as helpful, somehow. 3-4 should be fairly good. Good luck with 'Metamorphosis'! I've been meaning to read that for a couple of years. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 96 of 154 11 March 2008 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Day 31:
Several hours of Polish music, 30 minutes of L-R. I tried doing L-R with "Catch 22". Unfortunately, I think my audio is incomplete, and while what I have seems unabridged, it doesn't match the Polish text I have. It's interesting to see how they differ - sometimes they have almost no words in common, sometimes they're the same except for word order, and sometimes they're the same except that one uses 'to' and the other doesn't. Nonetheless, it's distracting. Doing it at normal speed was also a mistake. It's -painful- to force myself to read as slowly as I need to to keep in sync with the audio, so I found myself more than a paragraph ahead more than a handful of times. On the good side, my comprehension is high enough that I can pretty much instantly figure out where I should be as soon as I stop reading, and return to that place. jonilinga tried to post in my log, but unfortunately, has been muzzled, so I haven't been able to see his/her insights. I'm rather less than happy about that. I still need to decide what to do next; not having firm plans makes procrastination far too easy. My options: - Continue with "Catch 22"; even in a less-than-ideal form, it uses a very different set of vocabulary from the other works I've been using, and I've started picking some new words up. - L-R "The Master and Margarita" a 4th time; there still is a lot I could learn from it. - Try very, very hard to ignore how poor my French is, and try reading some Camus with French-Polish texts. - Look around for other material, wincing at the amount of time it takes. Thoughts? Suggestions? 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
