|
 |
Russish, Spanian, Joanthemaid | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5287 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 145 of 200 10 April 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged |
|
April 10th, morning:
Spanish - Read one "cuento de Eva Luna" by Isabel Allende ("Dos Palabras") - Entered 150 and learned 80 words in Anki (from the frequency list, a lot of them cognates) - 45 minutes of TV: 24 horas en espana. Afternoon: Russian - Started lesson 49 of Princeton but I just wasn't in it. I remembered there was a good reason why I always do Russian first and then Spanish. I need to e really fresh to learn Russian. Spanish is just reading, Anki and watching TV, with the extra effort of doing it in a foreign (i.e, in which I'm not fluent) language. Bad news: I'm changing my fluency in English from "native" to "advanced". I can't fool myself, I can't "pass" for a native speaker anymore. I hope it's not permanent, but learning new languages is seriously messing with my English, plus I don't really do anything high-level with it anymore. Even my oral comprehension has gone down I think (having trouble with cartoons). But it's probably going to change next year as I'm going back to school and also probably going to be a translator on the side. So I'm not too worried. Edit: then again, re-reading what "basic fluency" is, I'm definitely there in Spanish now. I'm a triglot :DDDDD ! Well I'm not contenting myself with that, and I wouldn't call myself a triglot but I've reached a very basic fluency. Russian: 157 hours Spanish: 111 hours Edited by joanthemaid on 12 April 2010 at 2:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5287 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 146 of 200 11 April 2010 at 1:25pm | IP Logged |
|
I had a conversation with my mother last night, and although she knows I'm studying languages and I've already learned English and like half of my family are di-or polyglots (although all of them with European languages), she of course told me I was crazy when I told her I also wanted to learn Arabic, Turkish, Chinese and Japanese. I told her about my loss of some English fluency and she took it as a point for her, saying "It's useless learning a language if you don't know it perfectly", with which I completely disagree, and so does my sister (another language enthusiast, and way more gifted than I am: she's only twenty and fluent in English and German, knows quite a bit of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese without trying that hard). We were on the side of "it's more fun to be understood and understand ten languages somewhat, than to master two completely".
I wonder what other people on this forum think? I know Sprachjunge is something of a perfectionist, and that some people can't resist their urge to dabble in fifteen different languages. I'd say I'm somewhere in the middle: there are some languages I would like to speak perfectly, like English, because, well, it's sort of like a second native language for me: my husband is American, it's what I've studied, I'm probably going to end up working as a translator... On the other hand, I want to be able to communicate fluently in Spanish but I don't really care if I murder the conjugations, and although speaking Russian is neat, I mostly want to be able to read it. Generally speaking in most of the languages I want to learn, comprehension, be it written or oral, is my priority, although like for Russian I suspect that when I start learning them I'll want to speak as well, although not necessarily be able to write/type. Edited by joanthemaid on 12 April 2010 at 2:37pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5287 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 147 of 200 12 April 2010 at 2:45pm | IP Logged |
|
April 12th
Russian - Finished Princeton Lesson 49 - Did lesson 50 - Listened to the dialogues and did the oral exercises from lessons 56 and 57 of chapter 6 as best I could, provided I couldn't find the PDF files for them. Besides there are apparently other lessons 56 and 57 in Chapter 7 and they're different. Anyway there were some exercises on aspect and one on relative clauses. I don't think I'm missing much, I suspect they are leftovers from an earlier version of the course or something like that. So I'm done with chapter 6 or rather the 3 lesson I had of it. It was mostly review, pretty easy, helped me practice declensions a bit. Although I still make a lot of mistakes, at least I don't automatically put everything in the nominative case. The genitive feminine and of course plural are still giving me a lot of trouble though. Spanish - Half an hour of a TV program about the history of the Gran Via in Madrid (man, do the Spanish like their main street) - Entered vocab from the show into Anki + learned some from the frequency list + Reviewed vocab. I'm definitely in a learning phase again: I'll have 250 words to revise at this time tomorrow. - One "cuento de Eva Luna" (Cartas de amor traicionado) Russian: 161 hours Spanish: 112.5 hours Edited by joanthemaid on 13 April 2010 at 12:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5287 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 148 of 200 13 April 2010 at 12:41pm | IP Logged |
|
April 13th
Russian - Lesson 51 Princeton - Anki vocab Spanish - 1h30 min of Spanish TV (El desayuno de no recuerdo su nombre) - Anki (lots of it) Russian: 163 hours Spanish: 115 hours Edited by joanthemaid on 13 April 2010 at 10:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5287 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 149 of 200 14 April 2010 at 1:54pm | IP Logged |
|
April 14th
Russian - Princeton Lesson 52 - Lots of anki, had to add all the perfective forms to the verbs I know 3.5 hours - some passive listening Spanish - Watched 30 minutes of TV - Added 200 and learned 80 words in Anki 1 hour - some passive listening Total: Russian: 166.5 hours Spanish: 116 hours Edited by joanthemaid on 14 April 2010 at 7:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5287 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 150 of 200 15 April 2010 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
|
April 15th
Spanish - One "Cuento de Eva Luna": "El huésped de la maestra" 116.5 hours Russian 166.5 hours Week 2 hours: 13.5 Russian 11 Spanish Mi proyecto para el ano siguiente de escuela es volver a la universidad. Les habia dicho que mi trabajo no me gustaba mucho y ademàs no soy buena como profesora de inglés. Entonces voy a volver a la universidad para recuperar mis estudios y parece que la mejora posibilidad par mi es hacer un master de traducciòn, y para hacerlo tengo que progresar en espanol: todos los estudios de traducciòn son trilenguales en Francia. También tengo amigos que estudian en este master y aunque no fueran muy buenos en espanol tenìan éxito en los examenes, asi que pienso ser capaz de hacerlo. Por eso voy a trabajar mi espanol màs que antes para lograr a un buen nivel hacia el principio del ano. Entonces tengo que leer y comprender màs espanol escrito porque tengo ser capaz de traducir desde el espanol en francés. Sé que no hablo o escribo bien pero lo màs importante es comprender y leer. Edited by joanthemaid on 15 April 2010 at 12:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5426 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 151 of 200 16 April 2010 at 10:09pm | IP Logged |
|
Hi Joan! Interesting convo you had with your mum.. I guess my answer may be fairly obvious, but I definitely find it very rewarding to be able to speak in various languages at least to a level where I can get by in a country. But I am also a perfectionist I guess - of course I want each of my languages to be as good as I can make it!!! So somehow I want to have it both ways :P
But I am happy as long as my languages are progressing, hopefully I still have many more years to live, so I dream of speaking reasonably well in some languages such as Arabic and Japanese, and even better in other languages which are more related to my native one, such as Spanish, French and German. I guess my outlook is very similar to yours actually! My family are mostly bemused I guess, they are more supportive than anything, but none of them have the same drive as me to learn languages! My mum also comes at it from a much more logical utilitarian point of view, she learns only what she finds useful I guess. I on the other hand just seem to fall in love with certain languages ;) To be honest I'm not sure I have a choice! Hehehe :) Escribiste en castellano! Bravo! :) Yo también tengo que escribir más en mis idiomas acá ;) En este foro hay demasiado inglés, jeje, aunque siempre pienso en los que no entienden, supongo que pueden utilizar Google Translate o algo así! Te deseo mucho éxito en tus estudios! Traducción me parece muy interesante :) Tenés mucha razón, lo más importante es comprender, pero estoy segura que lograrás tus metas! Suerte :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5287 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 152 of 200 17 April 2010 at 6:47pm | IP Logged |
|
This whole language choice deal is pretty hard. At the beginning I was pretty utilitarian too, I only wanted to learn UN languages because they are the most common, but the more I think about it, the more languages I want to know, those that immigrants speak in France, those of the neighbour countries, etc... So I'm torn between perfectionism (which was my approach for English, although I always had a pretty laid-back take of the languages, trying to speak it like native rather than 'perfectly', i.e., in an overly academic way. The other problem is that I also have other plans in life and when I get into something, it's really hard to stop me. I also want to learn at least one martial art, get a scientific diploma, learn how to draw, play an instrument, etc... The renaissance man ideal. But now that I'm into languages, I just want to learn like 30 of them!
Muchas gracias para tu aliento. Es verdad que en otras lenguas que inglés no se encuentran muchos discussiones en este foro, pero pienso que no hay muchas personas aquì que no entienden inglés. Si tienes interés para idiomas pienso que el inglés es el primero que aprendes y el màs fàcil porque la cultura de Estados Unidos es en todas partes del internet, en el cine, en muchos libros que circulan en todo el mundo. Es posible que muchas personas aquì no lo hablan con fluidez pero pienso que màs probablemente son capaz de comprender lo que decimos y sino de buscarlo en un dictionario. Pienso que si estaria bien si mas discusiones fueran en otras lenguas, particularmente sobre todos subjectos porque la mayorìa de discusiones en otra lenguas tratan de la gramatica de esa lengua y no son muy interesantes, pero el inglés es el idioma de mejor comunicaciòn y permite alcanzar casi todos, asi que es logico :'(. 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. |
