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TAC My poor overwhelmed brain | ||
Tags: Afrikaans | Wanderlust | Brain | Teach Yourself | Finnish | Swedish | Vocabulary learning | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Pronunciation | Grammar | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 121 of 223 23 June 2009 at 1:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Afr: Ek het terug weer! Ek het 'n onopsetlike vakansie van die forum, alhoeweel ek het nog my tale gestudeer. Ek sal nooit hierdie misgis weer maak nie, omdat my inmandjie was oorstroom met boodskappies van hierdie forum, ek dink oor 150. Ek het vir drie uur alle my epos gelees, en ek is moeg, maar dit is kwart-voor-drie en ek moet vandag nog Spaans, Fins, skeikunde, en wiskunde studeer. Ek het 9 Junie 'n koerant artikel om te gevind, Wanneer 'n kind se lag verdwyn, ongelukkig ek het nooit dit klaarmaak nie. Ek het gehoop laaste week sou 'n goed vakansie van skool en die forum gewees, maar dit was nie 'n goed vakansie heeltemal nie, dit was blote meer stres tot tuis.
I have returned from my unplanned break in posting, but I did find time to study all my languages in my absence from this forum. This morning I found about 150 emails (mostly notifications from this forum) in my inbox. Reading all the emails took a very long time, and I still have much studying to do tonight. Aside from studying languages, my week off from school was so stressful that I'm actually glad to be back in school. I almost forgot that I did promise in a PM that in this post I would try to explain in a little more detail how I go about learning languages, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Right now I need to learn a few more Finnish words and then get something to drink, sitting at a computer for 5 hours is too long to go without drinking anything even if it is colder than usual for mid June. Mick EDIT 6/25/05 I forgot to mention that in my Afrikaans portion of the above message I also mentioned an article that in English would be entitled "when a child's laughter disappears" though I think "fades" might also be a good translation. Edited by mick33 on 09 June 2010 at 10:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 122 of 223 24 June 2009 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||
Now, to explain how I learn languages. To start off, let me be very clear about a few things; I consider myself a beginner and to be totally honest my strongest language currently is still English, my first language. My next strongest language is Afrikaans, I know probably between 500 and 1,000 words; but even after almost three years I would still claim to be at a low-to-mid beginning level because I haven't had the opportunity to speak it with anyone yet and my writing still contains many errors, including odd word choices. Spanish might be next and I'm definitely claiming to be at a low-beginner level because I'm taking a class at school but I don't how to say or write much yet. Finnish, Dutch and perhaps Swedish (no I haven't added Swedish to my profile yet) would also be at what I will call very low beginning level just because my knowledge is still limited. I believe that languages (at least written languages) have three basic components; in no particular order these are:Sounds, Writing system, and Grammar. Sounds includes phonics, intonation, stress (what part of a word or sentence I should emphasize)this may the least important thing since I'm not convinced that I can achieve a native accent in any language (and in fact i'm sometimes told that my accent in English is a little unusual.) Writing system comprising the alphabet or character system as well as the spelling system, which is important when studying languages and/or dialects which are simialr such as Dutch and Afrikaans since one noticeable distinguishing characteristic is the slightly different spelling systems. Grammar, which I will describe as being word order in a sentence, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions or postpositions, plural and diminutive forms of words, and negation and assuming these things exist case endings, verb tenses (including conjugation patterns), and genderization. First thing I want to do is get an idea of how a specific language should sound so I start looking for both recordings and written explanations of how to pronounce letters (I haven't begun to learn any language that does not have an alphabet, so I can't say whether this is a good strategy for Chinese, Japanese or Korean) and words. I am somewhat of a musical person so I then find songs, and radio broadcasts online in the target language, I do this becasue I want to get my brain accustomed to the sound and rhythm of the new language with the ultimate goal being to eventually spontaneously think in the new language. At first I don't care that I won't understand anything I'm hearing but after a week I try to find lyrics for the songs I listen to and try to discern distinct words while listening to the songs a few times; but I don't try to produce the sounds I hear initially, I'd rather wait until I can hear the song or letters and words in my head first, which usually takes me 4 listens then I try to speak or sing along simultaneously with the recording. I usually look for songs on YouTube and also used the Music & Languages thread in the General Discussion room of this forum. Song lyrics, and poetry, are not a good way to learn grammar because often to make words rhythmically flow the phrases are not grammatically correct but that doesn't matter at this stage because I just want to hear languages as they are spoken and sung. After at least a week of spending at least an hour a day listening, I figure it's time to learn basic vocabulary and grammar. This means things like greetings, pronouns, and a few verbs, pronouns, and nouns (I try to learn the same words in every language, because I'm the same person regardless or whether I happen to be writing or speaking Afrikaans or Spanish) so that I can give a brief introductory message. To do this I need to know a little about word order and the most basic tenses. My introductions could include things like my name, my age, where I live, what I do during the day, my interests hobbies maybe a little bit about why i'm learning the language. I often use Teach Yourself series, and for Spanish I also have Living Language which seems to be be better, to learn about how to introduce myself, then I start listening and repeating recorded dialogues and making up my own simple sentences and deconstructing them by translating them into English using the word order of the other language. When the above activities start to feel like unnecessary reviews, then it's time for finding authentic material to read. Authentic material could be poems, stories, newspaper articles, I like to have a bilingual dictionary at this stage, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary and I have only two, one for Spanish and one for Dutch, I can't find any good bilingual dictionaries for Afrikaans, Finnish or Swedish at a price I can actually afford right now. First I try to read the material and see how many words I actually know without looking them up. Then I might try to do Professor Arguelles' scriptorium technique which is to find a written text, (preferably a book but newspaper articles may work better at this stage) and read it aloud one sentence at a time; but you read each sentence 3 times first time reading out of the book (or article) the second time write and pronounce each word (don't worry about how awkward it feels and sounds to do this) separately finally read the sentence as you wrote it down. Scriptorium is probably a somewhat advanced activity and I've only been able to do this for Afrikaans though Spanish is definitely next, but I like it because it helps me get over being self-conscious about speaking, reading and writing a language all at the same time. I learn more grammar and vocabulary gradually as needed, so for example Afrikaans may have 9 tenses (though I can only find information on 4) but I only know 3 of them, past, present and future; I don't need the other 6 yet. Spanish has at least two subjunctive tenses (or maybe they are moods) but I haven't learned them yet because I have no reason to use them right now. To Be Continued. I don't know when I will do this; but it feels incomplete as it now stands. Nahdään tääs Mick EDIT 6/25/09 I corrected a few typos and tried to clarify a few things I thought were unclear when I reread this. EDIT: 7/6/09 I found a few more typos and changed some things I thought didn't make sense. All future revisions, corrections, etc will be in new posts. Edited by mick33 on 25 October 2009 at 9:28am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 123 of 223 25 June 2009 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think I've already explained the preterite tense in Spanish, so I'll just say that I'm still learning it and write about other things. I'm getting a little frustrated with my Spanish class because I think that perhaps I'm being given too much vocabulary I'm not likely to use, for example I've necer gone scuba diving; thus the word "bucear" is one I'm not likely to encounter often in conversation or reading. Words like "anoche" (last night), "anteayer" (day before yesterday), "desde" (from) and "la semana pasado" (last week)' are terms I would use more frequently given how often I use the correspdonding English words. This minor complaint and other similar ones are probably why so many people on this forum say that language classes are ineffective.
Oh no! I'm out of time for now I'll be back in about a half hour to complete this post. The rest of my post I'm back, an hour later instead of a half hour but I was hungry. I mentioned one minor complaint I have with my Spanish class, but the rest of this will probably be more of an observation. My Spanish class is in what is called a lab format, and I know I mentioned this before, possibly in my earlier Afrikaans log but I didn't fully explain what that means. The lab format means that the class only meets twice a week and the class periods are two and a half hours long, and students are supposed to learn Spanish on their own, but a teacher is present to administer tests and also to answer questions as needed. The lab format does indeed have both advantages and weaknesses; the most obvious weakness being that it only meets twice a week, and the extended class periods don't quite make up for that, another problem is that I have to follow the course structure as outlined in the textbook which is somewhat contradictory to the way I want to learn Spanish, I've already written about the fact I have not yet learned the simplest future tense yet, (I think there may be more than one but I won't look it up now) and I don't care that I am repeating myself when I state that I wanted to learn the preterite tense earlier rather than wade through five chapters with too much vocabulary that I may or may not use. Furthermore I would prefer not to learn the word "preterite" here or many of the other formal linguistic terms for tenses, the next tense I will be learning is called the imperfect tense which English also has though I doubt many people actually know what imperfect means in the context of grammar. I wonder why these tenses can't be respectively referred to as simple past tense and continous past tense which would be better for me. However I have learned some interesting ways to say things such as "tener que" which denotes something one must or should do, and "acabar de" which is a way saying one has just completed doing something but the verb must follow these phrases is conjugated in the present tense. Now to get to the advantages; because it is not a lecture class, I can study at my own pace and could complete the course work for Spanish 121 (the lowest level beginning class) in two quarters instead of one. Most important for me is that my teacher is quite helpful, for example when I complained in this log about spelling changes when conjugating verbs like "jugar" and "volver" I asked the teacher to give further explanation of how these changes work and she did and it looks like the concept may be somewhat like consonant gradation in Finnish though perhaps in Spanish it is a little less logical. Now that I'm thinking about Finnish I think I need to complete my first written message which I will finally post here in a few days, and if all goes well over the weekend maybe I will attempt to post some Swedish also. Mick Edited by mick33 on 26 June 2009 at 8:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 124 of 223 27 June 2009 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I will now get back to learning Spanish Mick Edited by mick33 on 12 August 2009 at 1:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 125 of 223 06 July 2009 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I am still doing TAC and I do indeed plan to post something in both Finnish and Swedish but I don't know exactly when, hopefully soon. Also I have a paper to write for my Spanish class this week and I will post it here. Mick Edited by mick33 on 06 July 2009 at 8:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5707 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 126 of 223 06 July 2009 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I help you with the paper for your Spanish class if you want (of course I don't perfectly know Spanish, but not bad). I hope your studies aren't stressful now.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 127 of 223 06 July 2009 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 128 of 223 08 July 2009 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Esp: El mensaje primero de español por mi diario! Tengo que explicar mi papel para la clase de Español. El papel es dos secciones, también los secciones deben ser cuatro frases en cada frase debe ser por lo menos cuatro palabras. Por el sección primero escribí en el pretérito y describí mi rutina higíenica, y usar palabras de secuencia por ejemplo antes de, entonces, después y durante. En la sección dos, miré las fotos en una pagina de mi libro y describelas. La sección dos es en el pretérito también.
Ayer, me levanté son las siete. Fui difícil despertarme porque estuve muy cansado. Después de levanté, fui el baño y miré el espejo, entonces quité mi ropa y lavo me en la ducha. Yo siempre me se lavo con agua calor. También canté durante yo lavé mi cara, mi manos, luego acordé a mi pelo lavé con el champú. Después mi se ducha, sequé mí y comencé se vestir, afeitar y peinar. Por último, yo comí desayuno, cepillé mis dientes y salí para la universidad. En la foto primera ustedes comieron helado en el parque. La foto segunda ellos conversaron antes de tomaron el jugo de fruta. La foto próxima los jóvenes fueron tomar el sol y el hombre leyó una revista. En la foto última vi ustedes fueron nadar en la piscina. Mañana escribiré una traducción y las correciones. Esta noche estudiaré las matemáticas y la química. chau Mick Edited by mick33 on 14 July 2009 at 1:10am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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