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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6722 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes  Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 41 of 47 29 July 2009 at 12:29am | IP Logged |
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Kösz szépen Chung!! :)
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| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6722 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 42 of 47 01 August 2009 at 2:27pm | IP Logged |
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Here I am, still battling on!
I've had a few really busy days since my last post, but today things started to settle down again. HUNGARIAN I've continued to work hard on having as much Hungarian input as possible around me (as per AJATT). My new favourite Hungarian artists are Friderika and Nox. I LOVE their music - INCREDIBLE voices!!! I've had no trouble at all to listen to them at the very least, on my iPod, and I'm picking up the lyrics quite easily now. Tonight, I'll be watching the movie Nyomás Utána - looking forward to this one :) Tomorrow I'll spend some good time with my Hungarian friends, in which I plan to stick to as close to 100% Hungarian communication as possible. I'll also get some new DVDs to watch from them - I've tired myself out of Vuk for the timebeing ;) I would also like to do a little reading, but not sure if I'll have time for that tonight - might have to save it for tomorrow! OTHER So I decided to have a little play with Japanese this afternoon - just to see if I liked it. I had already found myself a copy of Heisig's RTK (I swear, I'd be a millionaire if I didn't own as many language learning materials as I do!), so I worked through lessons 1 & 2, did some drilling/SRSing... and in the meantime, played one of the manga dvds in Japanese in the background. I probably spent in the vicinity of 1 - 1.5 hours on it. I'm still undecided if it is a path I'd like to take at this point in time - although I am definitely fascinated with the writing system! It seems to be though, that my interest is in reading and writing - not so much speaking... has anyone reading this ever wanted to learn a language purely for reading/writing purposes? One upside would be that, in sticking to a 'watered down' version of Khatz's recommendations, I could spend just a short amount of time daily to learn the Kanji - thus it wouldn't interfere with my Hungarian studies at this point. But... still I wonder... Perhaps I will continue to 'trial' Japanese for a few more days and see how I feel then. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6722 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 43 of 47 02 October 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
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Hi everyone!
I just thought I'd add in a quick update on my progressions. My friend's mother and brother are currently here and I'm quite pleased with my ability to hold conversation with them. I am understanding pretty much everything - the only obvious time was when they were discussing the roadworks and the links to the highways - that threw me off a lot! I am looking forward to the arrival of my other friend's mother & mother in law in December. I get along nicely with the mother (I chat to her every other day on MSN), so I'll be happy to spend some time with her and talking. I am yet to meet the mother in law but I have heard that she is a very nice woman, so hopefully that will be a positive experience too! :) At this point in time, I'm more concerned about production than hitting the books. I feel that my vocabulary is wide enough to say what I want, even if I have to go about it in a different way to get around some words I don't know. I truly believe that at this point, all I can do is try to produce as much as possible and it will eventually improve. My friend (who learnt English from scratch as an adult) is very good listening to me and she has increased the amount of Hungarian that she speaks to me aswell. Unless I say something completely not understandable, she does not correct me. Her reason for this is: She said that whilst she was learning English, a lot of people insisted on correcting her for every little thing that she said, even if they understood the point of what she was saying. She said this was okay the first couple of times, but after that, it really made her feel self-conscious and not want to speak. For this reason, as long as she understands what I am saying, she is not going to correct me. I talk a lot more to the children in Hungarian now, especially my Godson. He is not yet speaking, so it's easy for me to use short, simple language to speak to him. I am still interchanging my conversation with everyone else in the family. Their 3 year old is very good at switching between languages for me. Sometimes she even explains the word to me in English! It's very cute! The last one was "Én választok. That means I choose." (Please excuse if I've mispelt that - I didn't want to look it up). I have also spent some time with my friends and the other Hungarian family they know - thus at the very least listening to a lot more Hungarian. I was surprised at my progress in terms of listening. Not just following the conversation, but my ability to 'hear' the words through the accents. This may sound a little strange, but I can understand a FEMALE voice better than a MALE. I'm guessing this is because I've spent 99% of my time, speaking with females in Hungarian? At first, I found it very difficult to understand anyone other than my adult female friend, but gradually it grew. I understand my teacher VERY well (probably the best now - but she also is an experienced teacher and speaks at the right speed, very clear, etc), the 3 year old little girl, a few other females - but I only really speak to the husband in terms of males, and a lot of the time he is working and I am helping the family, so I spend 99% of my time with the females. Anyway, I was quite concerned that when the mother and brother arrived, I wouldn't be able to understand them because of their accent. The strange thing is, I can understand the mother a lot better than the brother! I like the brother's voice a lot more (it's more calm and smooth and 'gentle' I guess you could say), but I find it a lot more difficult to understand him. Strange! Anyway, I think that's mostly it of my Hungarian experiences at the moment! Well, the 'active' ones anyway. I'm still reading my Virginia Andrews book and loving it. There are a lot of new words in there, so it takes a lot of time, but I'm getting there slowly and I believe that the further I go through, the more the words will stick in my head! Oh, I'm also watching lots of DVDs - as many as I can as often as I can. I haven't been home a lot over the last few weeks, so haven't listened to a lot of internet radio or watched online TV, but I hope to get back into that over the next week or so. My rule of no English TV (except 3 shows a week) has still stood. I just haven't watched any TV at all, really! Okay, I think I've given all accounts, so I'll leave it at that for a while. Any questions are more than welcome. Cheers, Katie 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5998 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 44 of 47 02 October 2009 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
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Good to see you still plugging along Katie, and it's nice to read of other peoples success. Keep up the good work.
Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6722 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 45 of 47 02 October 2009 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks so much :)
Plodding is definitely what I'm doing - but I work and study aside from language learning, so I'm happy wtih the gradual progress. Of course, we all wish it were easier sometimes!... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6875 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 46 of 47 19 October 2009 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Katie
Great to see you're still going at it. I was very interested to read about your commencement of Japanese study. It certainly is a long road to take though, and I myself am still battling on after years. I'm still somewhat reluctant to move Japanese to 'speaks' on this forum if you get what I mean. I also find that I can understand female speakers better than males in most instances. Some Japanese men can be a nightmare to understand, although by the end of my stay in Japan I think I could hold a fairly decent conversation with male taxi drivers and so on. I wouldn't catch everything, but I was certainly better. Keep it up! Clint 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6722 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 47 of 47 26 December 2009 at 7:08am | IP Logged |
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Hi Everyone!
Just thought I would pop into my log and add in another update. I know that I am lax in updating, but I don't feel it really necessary unless I have something of substance to add to it! My decision to update now is because of the New Year and my future plans for 2010. In case some of you hadn't read, my Goal for 2010 is to move to Hungary and live and work there for a period of 1 year. Due to prior-made commitments, I am looking to go there in December 2010. It's still quite some time away, but will still be busy with saving, preparations and improving my language to an 'employable' level! As a result of this decision, I have stopped all of my 'toying' with French & Japanese to focus solely on my Hungarian. Thus, I have deleted them from my profile. I did not make any notable progress in either of the languages, as I was only 'playing' with them. I have previously had quite a lot of success with the AJATT method, so I am going to be using that method as much as I can over the coming months. Of course, I'll be reviewing my progress and making changes/tweaks as necessary, and I won't be going hardcore with the AJATT method (I have a life and a lifestyle that doesn't allow for complete immersion) - but I will be using the basics of the method. So my New Years Resolution is to only watch Hungarian DVDs, listen to Hungarian Music and read Hungarian Books, etc. There will be limited places that I will be allowed online that are in English and otherwise, I need to use Hungarian websites. It's all not a massive step for me - firstly, some of my greatest friends are Hungarian - so spending time with them is not an issue as we can speak Hungarian. Secondly, I don't watch TV or really even DVDs that often - so it's not like I'll be cutting out watching English ones - I'll just be ADDING in some Hungarian ones. I do listen to music quite often (I like to sing & play piano/guitar), so it will be hard to cut out my listening in favour of Hungarian music. I certainly have a few Hungarian groups/singers who I really love - however, I have found getting their CDs here in Australia to be quite difficult/too expensive. So I'm guessing for the meantime, Hungarian radio will be my music fix. LOL Books will be probably the hardest for me. I am a book-aholic. I kid you not. I love to read about any and every topic. Especially Nutrition, Simple Living, Mysteries (my favourite is Poirot!)... As with CDs, it is somewhat difficult to get books in Hungarian without huge postage expenses... but I will do my best!! Unfortunately, I cannot eliminate every English influence in my life. I have books that I read a small portion of every day (and audio books too), that I feel really set me up for my day - and I'm not willing to stop using those. But as much as possible, I will make the switch. Today I used some gift vouchers I received to purchase the Carnivále series on DVD with Hungarian. I will start to watch those a little later today. Here's hoping I like it! :) I'll also start to borrow a lot more dvds from my friends (maybe 1 a week or something). I've set up my "Victory Calendar" - as mentioned both here and on the AJATT website. I think it will be a great motivator. And now, I need to check out Anki and get it set back up so that I can begin using it again! That's all from me for now - I welcome any feedback/comments or questions! :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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