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LittleBoy’s Log (中文, Fr, Es, Eo, De) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5122 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 9 of 22 10 February 2011 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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Post the First - Vanishing off the Face of the Earth
Yeah... That went badly. The excuses list starts off with being in my last year at school before university, and continues to hit burnout with doing hundreds of Anki reps a day, and rediscovering my love of computer programming and game design. I always knew that motivation would be a problem, but I hoped to last a little longer than I did before the first collapse! Toki Pona, Esperanto and Spanish are going to have to sit it out a while. I'll dabble here and there from time to time, but I'm not going to be able to give them the time they need for a while. I'd prefer to make proper progress in two languages, and build up my desire for the others, than continue to gently bump into a brick wall. I interupt this post to talk about foreign languages. Vanishing off the face of the Earth (see post title), is clearly an English idiom. I can do the vocabulary in French: disparaître, le visage and la Terre, without any trouble, although that's the normal word for face. A quick search reveals that disparaître de la circulation, (to vanish from circulation/traffic), seems to be the phrase of choice. Spanish goes for the awkward spelling of desaparecer, then la cara/el rostro and la Tierra. For the phrase, the WordReference forums give "se esfumó de la faz de la Tierra", esfumarse being to evaporate or a familiar word for to vanish for a person or money. Finally, Esperanto takes the verb malaperi for to vanish, with a face being faceto and Tero being Earth. I have a feeling that single r will be annoying to learn... French is currently driven by school, which is providing great exposure to the language (about an hour and a half of speaking lessons with a native a week), but also huge piles of vocabulary that I really could do with learning. So that has to be priority number one. As for Mandarin, I'm determined to beat RSH Book One before the end of the year. So this will have to restart in earnest, if I can find my practise sheets... Edited by LittleBoy on 10 February 2011 at 9:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 4927 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 10 of 22 11 February 2011 at 1:46am | IP Logged |
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Yay, you're back! I'm glad to see you only temporarily vanished off the face of the Earth. :P
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5122 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 11 of 22 25 February 2011 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
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Post the Second - Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
Okay, I didn't expect to be writing this post today. Really, I should be finished a French essay, either on the poetry of Jacques Prévert, or the Eau des Collines books of Marcel Pagnol, the former of which I highly recommend to any learner of French. Indeed, some are even free online: http://xtream.online.fr/Prevert/indexeng.html As expected, I failed to stick to my plan. I've dabbled in listening to more Spanish podcasts, and have started watching "Pasporto al la Tuta Mondo" for Esperanto on Youtube. The acting and scriptwriting of the latter can be cringe-worthy at times, but it seems to be worth it. Annoyingly, I'm still not really intune with spelling for Esperanto, despite it's regularity. Also, I'm struggling with differentiating some of the correlatives. I like the beauty of the table, but having kio, kia, kiu, kie, kiel, etc, all the different words seems to just be asking for trouble, and slightly raises the barrier to entry. As for Hanzi, I've started learning again, before realising I haven't really put my full faith in the Heisig method, or full effort, and thus have forgotten everything without the regular Anki review to keep the knowledge fresh. As such, a detailed review of the 175 characters I've already learned is under way, and will be absolutely vital. Now to explain the title. My laptop broke earlier this week, well, more accurately the power pack did. The main problem was that this cut me off from Anki for a few days, so my hard work in getting back on top of everything started to become pointless. It also limited time with a computer and thus I became pretty reliant on my MP3 player, as I don't have many physical materials. I've also decided to take the title as inspiration to try LiveMocha again, to get as much Mandarin as possible. Slightly annoyingly, they've changed at least the first lesson since I last used it, without updating some of their system records, so I'm fiddling about with that at the minute. The "one size fits all" methodology also came across a hiccup with the last phrase in a lesson of "hello", "thanks", etc. Most of the phrases are obviously short, or I already knew them. Apart from the last phrase "祝 你 有 一 个 愉 快 的 一 天" or "zhù nǐ yǒu yī gè yú kuài de yī tiān" in pinyin, which knocked the wind out of me a bit, especially given the fearsome pace at which it was read. Also, I think a tone marker was missing in one of the phrases, and at one point they said "ying wen" when the transcription was "ying yu", but that's fair enough (both mean English). On a brighter note, I realised that there is at least one phrase for which I now know all the characters: "早 上 好" (zǎo shang hǎo), which greatly pleased me! I'll quickly finish this with an exploration of the title. Eggs in French are "oeufs", with the optional ligature, but I'd depressingly forgotten the Spanish "huevos". Even though I'd eaten enough of them in the form of "tortilla" whilst in Galicia on an exchange. To put is "mettre" in French, and "poner" in Spanish, the second one of which becomes "pongo" in the first person singular present indicative, a fact which we as a young teenage male class loved! Finally basket is "un panier" or "une corbeille" to the French, and "una canasta" or "una cesta" for the Spanish. Those three words in Esperanto are egg - ovo, put - aljungi/meti and basket - korbo. In Spanish, to put all your eggs in one basket would be "jugárselo todo a una carta", whilst the French is literally "mettre tous ses oeufs dans le même panier". Edited by LittleBoy on 25 February 2011 at 5:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5122 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 12 of 22 21 March 2011 at 11:04pm | IP Logged |
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First, a disclaimer. At the moment, http://popupchinese.com/ is running an offer of a free basic subscription in exchange for reviews, to help boost traffic to their site. Having battled with my conscience a bit, I’ve reconciled myself with three facts:
1. I’m about to head to university and so strapped for time and money, so I wouldn’t buy it myself at the minute, and won’t use it that much. 2. I’m hopefully, in some short way, helping them out. I will also promise here that if I ever have a blog with traffic of over 1000 hits a month, I will review their service again, to help them some more. 3. I will throw money in their direction in the future. Now the review. I love this method. Okay, you won’t progress quite as fast via podcasts as you might with a really rigorous diet of grammar and vocabulary, but the style makes it so much more fun. The pdf lesson guides, coupled with a great lesson format make for a really enjoyable progress, and I’ve enjoyed all the podcast services I’ve tried. In fact, I can only find one minor criticism: I would also prefer a little bit more structure to the lessons, with signposting of what you need to learn at each level, what lessons you could use for this, etc. Although there is nothing wrong with this open method of choosing whatever interests you, it wouldn’t be my preference. But this is far outweighed in my opinion by the positives. For example, the use of native speakers, at native speed in normal situations (talking through doors, etc), right from the get go, that is awesome. Then there is the pinyin chart on their website. A simple idea that is so useful. Finally, unlike some of their competitors, they repeat the dialogue having given the translation, which I really like. To conclude, a great service that has a slight edge over some of it's competitors for me. A reccomendation! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5122 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 13 of 22 05 May 2011 at 10:20pm | IP Logged |
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Post the Third - Milestones under my belt
Etymology, a subject that is equal parts dull and fascinating. Fascinating when you do it because it's piqued your interest. Potentially dull when you're forced into it. At least, that's what this maths student thinks. Anyway. Milestones, that words obvious, it comes from stones every mile to mark progress, so you've made progress when you reach a milestone. Under my belt is odd. Surely that's just your trousers? Unfortunately, the Internet does not want to reveal the origin of the phrase "under one's belt", and I don't have time immediately to explore this phrase in any form of foreign. So, milestones time. 1. Change of TAC team. During the recent reshuffles, I've been moved into Team 唐 along with, maybe, jimbo, whitefish and Li Fei. 2. My French anki deck has hit 1001 cards, of which 313 are still to have their first review. However ugly 313 is as a number, they are both palindromes which makes my brain happy. It also feels as though I'm progressing, greatly helped by becoming a fan of canalplus.fr and other providers of online french television. On the slight downside, a quick mental "guesstimate" shows I've only spent about 500 to 1000 hours so far on French, still a long way to go then! A fact shown again whilst reading a French novel, Manon de Source, in the original. Knowledge of the English aside, I don't know or recognise as having previously seen maybe one in every 10 words. Okay, mostly technical or low frequency vocab, but it still feels as though fluency is a way off. 3. I've almost finished school, ready for exams and then university. The main thing this means is that revision has kicked in big time - although instead of spur me to study Maths and Physics for exams, Chinese has been getting a boost. Also, it means I'll soon have finished with regular scheduled French lessons, and will be a completely independent language learner. C'est la vie. Sorry about my prolonged silence. I find little value in writing ignored log updates, preferring to dedicate the time to learning languages, but promise to update more frequently from now on. Also apologies for the low standard of writing in this update. My brain is elsewhere - partly asleep, partly musing over my ever increasing pile of work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 4927 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 14 of 22 05 May 2011 at 10:43pm | IP Logged |
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Hey! How's it going? I'm sorry I disappeared for awhile. More than feeling sad about my own lack of progress, I feel bad for being a crappy teammate. But now I'm back, with more enthusiasm than ever before! I even look forward to my Esperanto time, which is a good sign.
So how has your studying been? Which language are you focusing on these days? Have you done much Esperanto? I just realised you wrote a post today, which I didn't read until after writing everything I just wrote. So I'll address that stuff now. :P No change of TAC team! Since I came back, the Esperanto team has been reestablished! As for log updates, they're not ignored. I always read your posts. The only reason I haven't replied all that much on your log is because most of your posts have been on the subjects that we don't have in common. I guess we both need to work on our log updating. Perhaps we could spur each other on in that? ('to spur on' Oh, I know that one, it's a horse reference! :P ) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 4927 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 15 of 22 22 June 2011 at 8:31pm | IP Logged |
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Saluton! Kiel vi fartas?
How did your exams go? Are you finished them yet? I'm not familiar with school year schedules in the UK. What are you planning on taking in university? In case you didn't see on my log, I'm learning French now! So that's one more language we have in common, although I'm quite a few levels below you in it. So now I'm focusing on Esperanto and French, and I'm thinking of devoting a day or two some time soon to brushing up on my toki pona. As long as I'm doing French, I can't even think about German. I think one hard language at a time is enough. What have you been focusing on lately? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LittleBoy Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5122 days ago 84 posts - 100 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 16 of 22 01 January 2012 at 12:28am | IP Logged |
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Post the Fourth - Yeah...
So, I'm back. And a bad team mate. You can possibly guess the reasons for absence - life. A mix of starting uni (which required 25 hours a day commitment) and various things closer to home meant languages fell by the way side. I also got in to the habit of coding during any free time, instead of looking at languages. In the end, I still have only released 2 of the 3 games I said I would release this years, and even then, they're only demos ( http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/191939-just-demo and http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/191938-oh-shoot-demo ) Sorry again to my team mate, Lianne. I promise I'll be a better team mate next year, whoever gets drawn with me. To answer the questions in the previous post in this log - My exams went pretty well thanks, and yes, I'd finished by the time of your post. I'm reading Maths at uni. 2011 Review Let me start by saying this did not go well... French - I read most of Harry Potter, but didn't get in to Lingq. I didn't do much of the grammar book, if any. As for vocab, I have pushed forwards a bit, my Anki deck now has 1857 entries. A completely meaningless statistic, and only a couple of new words a day, but it's something. Having left school at a fairly advanced level, I'm struggling to motivate myself to move beyond this plateau. But I have some ideas - stay tuned! Spanish - Basically, I was far too over optimistic, given how much I had to do work wise, and what I wanted to do as regards other hobbies. As such, Spanish was completely forgotten. I'm really not proud. Mandarin - Well, the sequel to Remembering Simplified Hanzi hasn't yet appeared (I don't believe), so it's a good job that I've only learnt about 100 new hanzi. And I'm not sure I can claim to have even fully "learnt" them. I'm recognising a pleasing number in texts now, including ones I haven't yet seen in Heisig. I've also listened to a whole pile of podcasts, watched quite a few episodes of CCTV's Growing Up With Chinese (indeed, I've made a playlist of all I can find on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFB7F966BC824B0E4&feat ure=mh_lolz ), and am moving through the consolidation process with Anki. Esperanto - I keep flip-flopping with Esperanto. At times I love it, and really want to learn it as fast as I can. At others I think it is absolutely pointless and a complete waste of time. Needless to say, I'm still quite a beginner. I will say, however, that I learn it an order of magnitude faster than I do Mandarin when I do work on it - helped no doubt by it's similarities to English, French and Spanish. Toki Pona - This was going fairly well, then I stopped for a bit to not be spread so thinly. I tried my Anki deck again a few days ago. I hadn't got a clue about anything. I hope that if and when I restart it will come quicker than otherwise. Remember kids to not forget. Or something like that. And the extras: Conlanging - Yep, I've tried a bit of conlanging recently. Done very little though. Oh, and creating vocab based on other languages has made me fall in love with Icelandic... All in all, a little bit rubbish me thinks. Ah well, roll on 2012. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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