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Total Annihilation - Charlmartell | ||
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| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6246 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes  Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 25 of 71 25 May 2008 at 1:03pm | IP Logged |
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General remark: If I want active knowledge I have to slow down, curb my impatience. Take yesterday's Hungarian: The 2 lessons about someone suffering from jealousy. The word 'jealous' was in the headline of both lessons, so why did I not know the word when I wanted to use it? Or the word for 'originate/derive/come from' that I'd had in a previous lesson? Because I am perfectly content with recognizing it in context, remembering the context but not really knowing the word itself. One thing I do correctly, I make sure I know what the texts are about, what words or constructions are used, but that is only the first step in a language I want to be able to use. It's good enough for ancient Greek that I won't ever use actively now that I have given up trying to help people who insist on using "the good old method" of learning by rote and translating. For any other language passive recognition has got to be followed, once pronunciation is not an issue any longer, by actively using the words and structures, thinking what they imply, what they really stand for, NOT what they are called in English. The same goes for grammar. NOT: what does the rule say? But what does it sound like? Does it SOUND like the meaning I want to transmit? Hungarian olvasok sounds like I read something, olvasom sounds like I read it, i.e. something definite. Spanish 'la sopa es buena' sounds like 'soup is good (for us)' whereas 'La sopa está buena' sounds like 'the soup tastes good' (intrinsic quality versus state (estar). Or Russian решил which sounds like I actually decided on something whereas решал sounds like I spent time trying to make up my mind, and приготoвлю means I'll prepare a specific meal whereas буду готовить just feels like: I'll be the cook. So
Hungarian I went over lessons 33 Hogyan gyártunk szovakat, all about how Hungarian words can be made spaghetti-like long by adding bits. That's the lesson the "derive from" came from. In the exercise it asked: "Where does Man come from?" good question. In another book, Russian Assimil I think it was, a little girl asked her grandmother if she'd been a monkey when she was young. Indignation, she sure hadn't. And grandpa? No! the other grandpa? No? Okay, so it must have been the other granny. So now I had to look up 'monkey' in Hungarian: majom. I don't think I'll forget it now, not "originate from' either. Honnan származik az ember? majomból. 34 Önéletrajz, succint CV, someone describing himself and his family. I could transfer all of that to myself and to other people I know. And revised the 2 lessons about Karcsi being féltékeny (jealous). Japanese Spent so much time figuring out Sheetz' Harry Potter sentence that there wasn't any time left for kanjis. They wanted a rest anyway, as it's Sunday. But that is the other thing I've got to do is: Stop coming on this forum first thing in the morning, leave it till later when I've done what I intended to do. Russian Anna Karenina: Finished listening to chapter 3 (couldn't do so yesterday, because I had to download the audio for the 2nd part of that chapter first. For some reason I didn't have that). Then re-listened to 4 and listened to 5. Did much better than yesterday, don't know why but did. Good! No Anna Karenina in person yet, but she's going to arrive any minute now. Ancient Greek The Library resembles a Who's Who? again, lots of gods, half-gods etc. fell in love, begat offspring galore. One, called Evenus had his daughter, wooed by Apollon, snatched by someone called Idas whom Poseidon had given a winged chariot to. Evenus gave chase but couldn't catch them, so what did he do? Slaughtered his horses and threw himself into a river that henceforth carries his name. They're completely mad, those mythological Greek higher beings. Well, Apollon caught up with Idas and the snatched damsel and there was a fight. Zeus intervened and told the blushing maid to choose whom she'd want to marry. She chose Idas - though Apollon would have seemed a much better catch - because she was afraid Apollon would desert her once she'd grown old. Good thinking. We are NOT told if they lived happily ever after. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6246 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 26 of 71 26 May 2008 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
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Monday, May 26th
Ancient Greek: Book I, chapters VIII and IX. Nothing special, more names, more violent deaths but nothing out of the ordinary, for once no torture involved. Italian: Old Assimil 42 (revision) and 43 (some jokes) Hungarian: Assimil 45, a little child asking mummy where things can be bought. A bit boring this lesson, as far as content is concerned. Useful vocabulary though..... which I knew anyway. And telling children and friends: Do this! do that! imperative forms I was a little hazy about. Easy stuff. Spent quite some time making the 2 Alices (English and Hungarian) coincide parallelly. Japanese: 30 minutes spent on Heisig kanjis, I am getting on better, over the 600 mark, but like the French tiercé, dans le désaordre. Russian: Anna Karenina still hasn't appeared and chapter 7 has me confused. A philosophical discussion that I, like Levin, am not really following. I would have to sit down quietly with the book and try to make sense of what the professor is saying. But do I care? Not really. So went on and added chapters 8 and 9 instead. Good story and the text is really not as difficult as I had anticipated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6246 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 27 of 71 27 May 2008 at 4:43pm | IP Logged |
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Tuesday, May 27th
Japanese: 30 mns kanjis, 15 mns revised one lesson in Assimil, lesson 23, called 仕事 (work). It sounds ridiculous, but the same as with kanji, my knowledge is all passiveSo I've got to do several things at the same time right now: 1. kanjis à la Heisig (for the kanjis to actually mean something even if it isn't 100% accurate) 2. L-R some real texts for better passive understanding 3. activate the passive knowledge I have by going over easy lessons and relating everything in them to my personal life, my experiences, my thoughts..... Which isn't quite as easy as it sounds. Old habits die hard, that's why I've got to make sure that the material I use isn't too difficult. Assimil, here we go again. There's nothing in the first Assimil book that I don't understand, hardly anything I would have trouble with when translating into Japanese, but, just like with the kanji, an awful lot I wouldn't be able to use in real life. Like words we have pat when revising wordlists or flashcards, because we know they are there, but that become elusive when we're faced with having to use them without the wordlist crutch. This Japanese is going to be a hard nut to crack, I hadn't realised quite how hard. Luckily I have no problem with basic grammar and weird (for Westerners) constructions, the mountain to climb is words and expressions for speaking. And kanjis for reading and writing. Ancient Greek: I was wrong yesterday when I said I'd read chapter 9 as well as chapter 8. It just felt like 2 chapters because chapter 8 was very long. Chapter 9 came today: interesting story about where the name Hellespont comes from and some old friends of mine: the golden fleece, Pasiphae, Circe, Minos... 30mns Italian: Some more jokes in the old Assimil. Mildly amusing, but the problem is I'm not very good at remembering jokes. For recall proper context is vastly superior. Give me stories, or a family and their shenanigans or hundrum lives and I'll remember, give me loose proverbs or sayings, I might remember, but give me jokes and I'll forget 8 out of 10 totally, the rest I'll remember just before you come to the point. Most of the vocab introduced is easy to remember though, because of Latin and Spanish, so if context has gone missing it is no big deal. Whereas in Japanese or Hungarian it would be. While Japanese is turning out to be much more difficult than I anticipated, Italian has done the opposite, it's dead easy, at least in the early stages. Thank the Greek gods for small mercies. Hungarian: L'Etranger, L-R 1 hr. Again the same as with Anna Karenina, I have trouble concentrating. My mind has a tendency to wander off from time to time. And the recording during chapter 3 became all fuzzy, which doesn't help. I'll have to try and do better next time, not a great success so far. I'm also still making the Alice texts (English-Hungarian) parallel, another 1 hr at least. Again, like Japanese, I've also revised some early Assimil lessons, actively and find that, contrary to Japanese, I can recall all sorts of things from texts I'd heard (recorded) or in some cases, just read, without having to resort to translation. My method of learning Hungarian was obviously better than my method for Japanese. Hungarian IS difficult, but it is still Western, Japanese is as alien to me as English is to them. I'll just have to forget about it being "alien" because it is actually "fascinating" so I'll have to get my head inside that fascination and that fascination inside my head. Edited by charlmartell on 27 May 2008 at 4:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6246 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 28 of 71 28 May 2008 at 4:23pm | IP Logged |
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Ancient Greek: 45 minutes, 4 pages. Some good stories, too long to tell here. Italian: Some more jokes, nothing out of the ordinary. About 30 mns. Japanese 30 mns kanjis, 15 minutes Assimil practice the language using some of those easy lessons as starting points, sort of brainstorming really. See what occurs to me and how it feels, in Japanese. I do have quite a good passive vocabulary which needs activating. But output is not that easy to achieve if you haven't practiced it from the outset. As I'm doing with Italian. But of course, Italian is quite a different proposition altogether. I'll get there eventually, but it won't be tomorrow, nor the next day. Anyway, from now on, when I say "Assimil" I mean "for output, active", in all languages. Russian: Anna Karenina, L-R chapters 10-14 (inclusive), over an hour. It really went well today, I actually managed to read the English fast enough to be able to follow the Russian. I also listened to lesson 50 in the Nouveau Russe Sans Peine. The audio is much too slow and I can't be bothered to try and speed it up in Audacity. I don't really need it either, with all the Anna Karenina I'll get these next few weeks. But I'll still go through the Assimil lessons for, as I said above, activating passive knowledge. Hungarian; 1 hour L-R Camus 'Közöny' (L'étranger). I'm getting much better at reading ahead and following the Hungarian text. Finished 1st part. Start second half of book tomorrow. No active output practice today though. Edited by charlmartell on 28 May 2008 at 4:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6246 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 32 of 71 29 May 2008 at 4:25pm | IP Logged |
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Japanese: 1 hour Heisig kanjis. 20 minutes oral activation with an Assimil lesson as starting point. Shopping: what shops I go to, where they are, what I buy, what I think of the prices, about the service, what I like, dislike, prefer, need, can do without etc. etc. etc. Once started it is easy to go on, branch out.... It's good practice because you find that you know all sorts of words you don't even remember learning, whereas others you were sure you knew are eluding you. But by just thinking around them they all of a sudden re-surface.
Ancient Greek 45 minutes: Last chapter, section 17: the Argonauts set out in search of the Golden Fleece, on the way they passed Lemnos ruled by a queen, no men around. Why? The women of Lemnos are not honoured Aphrodite so she made sure those nasty women smelt nasty. Their husbands promptly bedded women from next door, whereupon their wives and daughters just slaughtered them all. Now Jason and crew arrive and the starved for sex woment are easy prey. What I don't quite understand is this: did the nasty smell those women exuded fade away, or did the Argonauts have totally insensitive noses? Sections 18-22 (inclusive) some nice bits about flying after the Harpies and sailing between 2 rocks that kept clashing against each other in the strong winds and that came to rest for ever after when the Argonauts had finally achieved what no other ship had done before, passed through unharmed. Hungarian: 1 hour spent making Animal Farm parallel, L-R L'Etranger part 2, chapters 1 and 2, 25 minutes activating Assimil. Russian: Assimil, the lesson about someone going to spend a year in Siberia. Afraid of the climate. Why? Like the friend says: не бойся. Там жить можно. People live there the same as everywhere else. I liked the lesson but find most of these lessons too long and too difficult for raw beginners. A good lesson for intermediate learners, though. And a good starting point for thinking about weather, travelling and life in different parts of the world. Italian: Finished the first 50 lessons of both Assimil books. I'm now moving Italian into the lower intermediate stage. The active phase starts tomorrow, so I'll go over the old lessons the way I do for my other languages, use them for activating and branching out, letting the whim take me wherever it wants and see what happens. One thing I can do in Italian which I can't in Hungarian for instance: when I don't know a word I substitute the Spanish one. A little like using Japlish words in Japanese practice. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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