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TAC 2009 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 67 24 November 2008 at 5:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I plan to:
- hit basic fluency and pass the airplane test in Esperanto, German, French, Polish, and Japanese. - read at least a dozen books in Italian during 2009. Where I'm currently at: - Esperanto: I'd probably be able to pass the airplane test. I can write semi-decently (but with too many mistakes for my taste). I have a fairly good oral understanding of podcasts, but only catch perhaps 50% of what I hear in music. A week ago, I was entirely rusty and unconversational (I could hardly stammer out basic phrases); I'll find out today how much that's changed, but I think I'll still need significant work. Vocabulary and oral conversationality are my stumbling blocks; I can manage real-time written conversation. - German: I was never that great at it, and I've let it rust. I can follow basic presentations in it (I did the weekend before last), handle some simple spoken transactions, and do language learning through it. I'm not comfortable reading even a large percentage of non-fiction in it though. - French: I can read Camus and catch almost 100% of high-register French TV if it doesn't involve heavy regional accents (my comprehension of music, colloquial Parisian French, etc are lower), but I speak/write it mind-wrenchingly badly. I expect pronunciation to be my largest hurdle. - Polish: I can wade through non-fiction, and understand people speaking (face-to-face, on TV/radio, etc); I can't stand listening to Polish pop anymore, since I can understand a fair chunk. I can't properly read fiction, understand decent music, or produce Polish. I had some interesting times the weekend before last, talking with people fluent in Polish and German; I wouldn't even notice when they'd switch between the two; I almost uniformly had to reply in German though. - Japanese: I can sometimes pick out bits, but my Japanese is quite weak, both in oral and written form. Italian: - I'd like to improve my accent - As said above, I aim to read at least a dozen books; I'll leave the list open, other than saying that I intend to read a grammar book (in Italian, about Italian). This is, admittedly, a very low goal; I figure the rest of the list compensates. Challenges: - I'll need to figure out language maintenance. Other notes: - This is really a plan of consolidation. I'm not an utter beginner in any of the languages involved. I've successfully used all of them in some real-life situations (albeit at very different levels). - This is actually only part of my actual plans, but I think it's more than enough to post for now, and to have as a benchmark for the 2009 TAC. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6107 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 2 of 67 24 November 2008 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||
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No Russian at all, or is it part of the outside TAC 2009 plans?
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| GoldFibre Diglot Senior Member Kuwait koreaninkuwait.com Joined 5977 days ago 467 posts - 472 votes Speaks: English*, Korean | Message 3 of 67 24 November 2008 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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It's great to read that you are setting some challenging goals! I believe you will always achieve more if you aim high. Have you already built up materials in each of your target languages?
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 67 24 November 2008 at 7:16am | IP Logged | ||
It's one of the (long) list of languages that I'm seriously considering, but I've come to the conclusion that it's better to get this 'core' list in place first. I have very strong reasons for all the languages currently on the list: - German, French: there's a ton I want to read in them, both about languages and more generally, and they're official languages of Switzerland. - Esperanto: I feel like it would be useful for me to fully internalize a foreign grammar, so I've chosen Esperanto's. I've internalized perhaps 90% of it by now (a large percentage of which I previously hadn't internalized), and I'm finding it very useful already. I'm only aiming for basic fluency simply because I don't think I'll spend the time to get my vocabulary up to a level I'd consider sufficient for advanced fluency - but who knows? In the general reading I did about grammar over the last few days, I've learned things I hadn't realized about Italian, Polish, and so forth as well. - Polish: I butterfly about it too much, but I do genuinely love the language. It also has a lot I want to read/read better: classic sci-fi, atamagaii's writing about language learning, really good reference grammars.... - Japanese: When I see a website I want to be able to read easily and thoroughly, but can't, it's almost always in Japanese... My 'non-core' language lists have a few dozen entries, including Russian. I certainly hope to tackle it someday, but I've decided that I could easily spend a lifetime prioritizing, and I'd rather spend some time (intensively) learning now, and choose my next language as I become ready to study another one. So, in short: while I might well tackle Russian in 2009 if all of the above goes very well, I'm explicitly (and reluctantly) not putting it on my list... just like Dutch, Mandarin, Persian, Finnish, Turkish, Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Arabic, Hungarian, etc - all of which I'd love to know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 67 24 November 2008 at 7:24am | IP Logged | ||
Polish: yes; I have enough parallel texts with audio, and a moderate amount of pronunciation information. German: partial. I have some parallel texts with audio, and bought a slightly obscene number of audiobooks (and corresponding German books) in Berlin a week ago. French: very partial. I have some parallel texts and some audio. I'll probably use the "French in Action" videos too, to tune my ear a bit better to Parisian. Esperanto: No - I've got a shortage of reading material, but I'm working on remedying this. Given sites like lernu, helpful Esperanto speakers I know, etc, I think it should be doable, though. By the end of the first week of January, I intend to be primarily in maintenance mode with it. Japanese: very partial. Italian: Yep. Tigresuisse kindly corrected my two major phonemic errors in Italian last week, and I have about 3 gigs of local podcasts to shadow, and no shortage of books. My general idea is to focus on one language at a time, while just sparing a bit of time each day for maintenance, and worry about materials only when I'm about to start intensively concentrating on the corresponding language - getting them in order while continuing to deepen the previous language(s). Like all plans, it may or may not survive contact with reality. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6146 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 6 of 67 24 November 2008 at 8:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Bona fortuna tibi sit!
Are you going to attempt full-time listening-reading for any of those languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 67 24 November 2008 at 8:34am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, Polish, before 2008 is over - first, I have a trip to the Netherlands (to get Esperanto books). I have the materials, and I have the time now. I also intend to use L-R for German, French, and Japanese, but... later. It's just insanely more effective for building passive vocabulary and comprehension than anything else I've ever tried. Gaining active proficiency is, for me, an open question - and one I intend to explore this year. I was going to start intensively L-R'ing Polish last week (actually, I did start it, although I only did a few hours - and it was incredible), but for reasons way too long to get into here, I became convinced to flip around part of my language plans for the rest of 2008 and do Esperanto first. I would L-R Esperanto, but the materials simply don't exist; the largest audiobook I know of is 'Gerda Malaperis'. This linguistic side-trip has been really interesting, though - I've learned quite a bit about studying from reference grammars, and about what materials work/don't work well for me. I think it's also interesting from the point of view of gaining active proficiency - as I have that in the written language (but at a fairly low level unless I use a dictionary), but not (yet) with speaking - or so I think; I'll be trying to speak it orally about 4 hours from now, since I found a local Esperanto speaker last night. I may do some shadowing, and I also have a week of Esperanto immersion coming up in just over a month - I'm very curious to see what will result from that. I intend to get my Polish up to a level where I can use it as a base language for studying Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 67 24 November 2008 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Pre-TAC, stunt 1:
I've now read Kauderwelsch's "Esperanto: Wort fuer wort"; it took about an hour and a half. I missed perhaps 5% of the vocabulary (and used the Esperanto wordlists to understand the German more than the other way around), and a few of the grammatical subtleties, but for the most part, it was very comprehensible - both the German descriptions and the wordlists (when cross-referencing German and Esperanto - either in isolation was a bit weaker). I _highly_ recommend this book. It's extremely well-laid-out, presents a huge amount of useful information (from summaries of every grammatical concept in Esperanto to useful phrases to a list of abbreviations), and in general, is excellent. I plan to use it as a reference to German as well, simply because it's so good; it extremely clearly distinguishes some subtleties which one or both of Esperanto and German have (and which English often doesn't). ------ I'm not planning to log most of the details of what I do in this log; I'm keeping a paper log for that, and I doubt it'd be worth the time or have anyone else's interest. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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