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Estival Ambitions: A Linguistic Odyssey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 73 of 242 23 July 2010 at 10:43am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 7: Japanese, German, Swahili
Anki Reviews: 773 repetitions in 35.46 minutes Kanji Reviews: 953 due; 5 reviewed; 0 restudied Today's excursion was rather pointless, and could be characterized rather aptly as a giant waste of time, energy, money, and gasoline. At least I managed to do some stuff in spite of the gaping hole of unproductivity in my schedule. Today was Japanese day, and I really love Japanese days. Japanese is definitely one of my favorite languages, and today (and on my last Japanese studying day) a lot of the stuff that I was confused about before started clicking and making a lot more sense, which makes it all the better. Today I completed lesson 25 from Ultimate Japanese, which was about the famous Japanese 温泉 (onsen), or hot springs. It also continued to teach about the comparatives and some other interesting tidbits of grammar, and as I read the grammar section I typed up the example sentences (this helps me to pay more attention to them and understand the concepts better because I don't really understand the way the book explains the grammar very well, but its examples are good) and I even tried looking at the English first and then producing the Japanese sometimes. The vocabulary was not difficult at all and there was quite little of it. Anyways, I was very pleased with my progress after completing the lesson so I wanted to include the dialogue from today as a marker of my abilities as of now. Here it is (please do point out any misuses of kanji or anything else that I may have typed incorrectly): 25. 温泉旅行の計画 伊川： この連休に温泉に行くつもりなんですけど、 カーターさんもよかったら、行きませんか。 カーター： 僕は温泉に入った事がないんです。ぜひ、連 れて行ってください。でも、高いでしょうね 。 伊川： そうですね。あまり有名でない温泉なら、宿 泊費は皆が言うほど高くないと思いますよ。 それに、有名で、込んでいる温泉に行くより 、人のあまり行かない温泉で寛ぐほうが楽し いと思うんです。 カーター：どこの温泉が一番込んでいますか。 伊川： そうですね。本州では熱海等が込んでいるで しょうね。 カーター：草津はどうですか。 伊川： 草津は熱海ほど大きくないと思いますけど、 やはり、有名な温泉ですから人も大勢いるで しょうね。この間友達から聞いたんですけど 、九州の北にある姫島と言う島に小さくて、 静かな温泉があるそうなんです。どう思いま すか。 カーター：いいですねえ。乗り物は何にしますか。 伊川： 勿論飛行機で行くのが一番早いですけど、新 幹線に乗ってもいいですね。早く決めたほう がいいですから、明日温泉の本と時刻表を持 ってきます。 After I did the lesson I researched some stuff on this very good Japanese grammar reference about some things that I had forgotten or were still a little unclear to me. Then I still had some time from my two hours left, so I typed up some more previous dialogues. Later I continued with some Greek, finishing off lesson 19 from my LGWT book. The vocabulary was a bit more difficult than usual for that lesson, so that lesson was all I did for my hour of Greek. I had a bunch more Livemocha reviews to do, and since I only had 20 minutes of Portuguese, I just continued doing those for my Portuguese practice. After all, I was having to write explanations of English grammar in Portuguese, so that counts, right? Finally, I was trying to decide whether I would finish the night off with some German or Swahili. I chose German because it takes less brain power and also because I'll be doing Dutch (and also Swedish) tomorrow and I don't want to get mixed up. Anyways, for my hour of German, I continued working out of the Aktuelles Deutsch 2 vocabulary lists. I only have a few more to go, and then I can go back to concentrating on TYIYG, German Grammar Drills, and then get around to starting my German Vocabulary book (from the Practice Makes Perfect series like my Spanish, French, and Italian versions). I was too tired tonight to go through over 450 Anki reviews of Japanese, so that will also be put off until tomorrow, along with... - Swedish: 2 hours - Swahili: 1.5 hours - Dutch: 1 hour - Greek: ½ hour お休みなさい！ Gute Nacht! Usiku mwema! EDIT: I forgot to mention that I also watched an episode of El Internado. That show is way too addicting. Edited by ellasevia on 23 July 2010 at 6:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 74 of 242 24 July 2010 at 6:42am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 8: Swedish, Dutch, Greek
Anki Reviews: 720 repetitions in 36.35 minutes Kanji Reviews: 959 due; 0 reviewed; 0 restudied Today was a pretty good day, although it should have been better. I got back up to date on my actual studying times, but at the expense of kanji (yet again) and not reviewing Anki for Japanese or Swedish. Ah well, tomorrow. I began my morning with two hours of Swedish study. I studied the vocabulary from the last lesson of Beginner's Swedish, and then reviewed most (until I got too bored of it) of the dialogues from that book by listening to them. I suppose it was good that I got bored because it wasn't straining to understand as it used to be. After that, I proceeded to enroll in Livemocha's Swedish 201 course and did the first three of those lessons, of ten total. Next came Greek, which I studied for half an hour. All I did for this period of study was lesson 20 from LGWT. Nothing especially exciting to mention here. Swahili was next. I began and completed lesson 10 from TY Swahili, which wasn't too difficult at all. After that I still had a good amount of time remaining so I began to work on lesson 11 from Spoken World Swahili, which was about computers and the Internet. I got through most of that lesson, but there is a bit left to do still. Finally I worked on Dutch for one hour. I typed up the final vocabulary list from the trip (yay, I'm done) and then continued to work on lesson 13 from TY Dutch (which I finished). I'm eager to finish this book quickly because I've discovered a Dutch course that looks really good: Routledge Intensive Dutch Course. It looks very in-depth and comprehensive, and takes one to a B2 level. I'll try to get through the last three lessons of Teach Yourself quickly, so that I can get working on the Intensive Dutch Course. Also, I bought a good Dutch dictionary, which I am desperately in need of. The dictionary at the back of the TY book barely merits the name and doesn't even come close to having all the words used in the book. That's all for tonight. I'm excited for working on Russian (and Japanese and German) tomorrow. :) God natt. Goedenacht. Καληνύχτα. Edited by ellasevia on 24 July 2010 at 6:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 75 of 242 25 July 2010 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 1: Russian, Japanese, German
Anki Reviews: 2062 repetitions in 1.97 hours Kanji Reviews: 970 due; 158 reviewed; 100 restudied Today was a very good day. I got everything I wanted done (and other non-language obligations too) and it’s not very late yet. I still have time for more! I started off this morning with Anki. I reviewed all of my up-to-date lists as usual, and did about half of my Japanese reviews, which were just tiring to do. I think it makes me forget more words when I have a big pile of them waiting to be reviewed simply because I get overwhelmed. I then moved onto Russian. Русский! Why did I ever abandon this language last year? I love it so! I started by studying the vocabulary from the first lesson of Penguin Russian, and simultaneously doing some pronunciation practice with some of the more challenging sounds. Then I moved on to Teach Yourself Russian, and completed lesson one, including studying the vocabulary. Finally, I did a lot of listening to the MT Russian course, which I am most of the way done with. In total, I did about three hours of Russian today. :) Japanese was next. I love Day 1 of this new schedule—two of my favorite languages as the two main languages (and German isn’t anything to complain about either)! In my hour of study time, I was able to complete an entire lesson from Ultimate Japanese, about traditional inns (旅館, ryokan). However, it was a short lesson, and that’s why. I do have one question though. I may just have forgotten this bit of grammar or I might be being an idiot and missing the obvious, but what is the function of のもの in the following sentence: 直ぐ係りのものが参りますから、少々お待ち ください。(By the way, I have decided to just not work out of Yookoso! anymore, because it is just so boring and my Ultimate Japanese book is a lot more advanced. I’ll just skim through a little bit later to make sure there is not any vocabulary I don’t know, but other than that, I get to keep indulging in this wonderful Ultimate Japanese book.) Finally I had German, for which I continued working on those infernal Aktuelles Deutsch 2 vocabulary lists. Only two left though, so then I can be assured that I will have gone through all of the vocabulary needed for my level 3 (possibly level 4?) German class once school starts. I’ll also mention that I did finish reviewing my Japanese Anki deck, which took forever, and also did my Swedish, almost all in one go. The Swedish, despite many more reviews, didn’t seem nearly as bad after having struggled through the Japanese ones. So that’s why my reps on Anki today are numbered at over 2000. For the rest of my study time tonight, I’ll be working on reviewing kanji, which I have hardly touched for a long time. Not good. So that definitely needs to be done, and I don’t like the idea of my reviews getting way over 1000… That’s just scary. I’ll be updating this post later with however many kanji I am able to review. That’s all for now! Tomorrow I’ll be working on Italiano, Svenska, and Nederlands. :) Скокойной ночи! お休みなさい！ Gute Nacht! Kanji Note: I'm done with kanji for the evening now. I am failing a lot of it because I haven't practiced in a long time, and I can sort-of half remember everything, but not enough to say that I remember it. I'm going to attempt to do (at least) 100 reviews and restudies per day so that I can eventually get caught up. This is going to take a while though. Edited by ellasevia on 25 July 2010 at 7:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5274 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 76 of 242 25 July 2010 at 7:47am | IP Logged | ||
もの is a polite way of saying "person". This is an example of kenjogo, which is a type of polite speech in which people use words to humble themselves or others in their group to people outside of the group. Here, the staff member is telling the customer that someone will come to see them soon. The person coming to see the customer may be the speaker's boss, but even so he is a member of the speaker's group (うち) and should therefore be denigrated to the customer, who is an outsider (そと). This phenomenon is why you get businessmen telling people their wives can't cook properly and mothers telling people their kids are stupid!! It is also why a secretary will not use -さん to refer to the company president when talking on the phone to a client of the company. This division between うち and そと is very important to Japanese society. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 77 of 242 25 July 2010 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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ありがとうございます TixhiiDon. :) That was very helpful, both linguistically and culturally. The usage of もの was mentioned several lessons ago, but I have since forgotten. The もの should be written as 者, correct? So the sentence would be like this:
直ぐ係りの者が参りますから，少々お待ちく ださい。 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kidshomestunner Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6215 days ago 239 posts - 285 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 78 of 242 25 July 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Then it means person, yes, that is the correct kanji for it. If it means concrete (non-abstract) thing then 物 is used: e.g: 乗り物, riding concrete thing 着物, wearing concrete thing 食べ物. eating concrete thing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 79 of 242 26 July 2010 at 7:21am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 2: Italian, Swedish, Dutch
Anki Reviews: 1251 repetitions in 1.06 hours Kanji Reviews: 824 due; 107 reviewed; 104 restudied Today was a nice day in terms of study too, but a little too chaotic. There were numerous interruptions throughout the day which kept delaying my work. Luckily, tomorrow I will have the entire house to myself for most of the day so I will probably be very productive (I hope). The next day, July 27th, is my 16th birthday and I likely will be inviting some friends over for a little while during the day, but otherwise, it will probably be similarly quiet and peaceful in the house here. :) I studied two hours of Italian today. For the first bit, I was listening to some LearnItalianPod episodes and doing the last Livemocha Italian 102 lessons (which I have neglected for probably about ten months) simultaneously. I finished that Italian 102 course, and then moved on to my reader. I then spent the rest of my time working through several texts of that. They've gotten much more interesting now, and also informative. I'm in the section that is essentially a history of Italy, so today I read about the rule of the Roman emperor Augustus and the collapse of the Roman empire, medieval society, cities, and cuisine, and the biographies of San Francesco and Marco Polo. And there's still more to come, all the way up to il nuovo secolo. For Swedish I just kept working on finishing all of those Livemocha courses before I start on any new books. I'm now 70% done with Swedish 201 on there, having completed another four lessons during my one-hour-long study period today. They are exceedingly easy and I'm not gaining much from them, but I'd like to take advantage of any resources I can find. Once I finish these courses I'll quickly run through TY Swedish Conversation, which I could probably do in about an hour, and then I'll move onto one or both of Colloquial Swedish or Assimil le Suédois Sans Peine. I was feeling a bit annoyed towards the TY Dutch course today, so I worked instead from the other one, the ‘Routledge Intensive Dutch Course.’ It seems to be very comprehensive from what I can tell, with good grammar explanations, lots and lots of good vocabulary, a nice organized structure, good audio… I think I mentioned this already, but it says that it will take you to a B2 level. Today in my 30 minutes of study I only did half of the first of eleven units, which was about 16 pages of material, and already I have over 80 words of vocabulary listed. And those are NEW words—I didn’t write down ones that I already knew well, of which there were many. After all, the book is called an intensive course. :) Anki-wise, I didn’t do any new lists except for some of my French list (but not the whole thing), and also my normal reviews. In terms of kanji, I think I’m getting back into the feel of it again after having neglected it for so long. You really do have to practice this skill every day. Although I’m still “failing” a lot of the reviews, nearly the instant I see the kanji after it shows me the answer I can remember the story very easily, so that makes it a snap to restudy them. Hopefully I’ll get these reviews down to a manageable number again soon. That’s all for now. Tomorrow I will be studying Swahili, Russian, and Japanese, three exotic languages. Hooray! Buonanotte! God natt! Goedenacht! EDIT: I completely forgot to mention that I studied about 45 minutes of Russian today from the MT course while I was riding around on my bike. It was quite amusing at the end of my listening session where the teacher was teaching the Russian alphabet through an audiocourse. I suppose the listened was supposed to have the booklet out in from of them, but I still thought it was amusing. It was also funny a couple days ago (or yesterday?) when the teacher informed the two students that they had now learned all of the tenses of Russian, and they were incredulous that that was all! When she had finally convinced them, one of the students remarked something like "wow, brilliant language." :) Edited by ellasevia on 26 July 2010 at 7:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 80 of 242 27 July 2010 at 7:28am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 3: Swahili, Russian, Japanese
Anki Reviews: 795 repetitions in 41.31 minutes Kanji Reviews: 757 due; 100 reviewed; 105 restudied Hooray for a nice day again. I accomplished everything I wanted besides doing my French Anki reviews, but that can wait until Day 6. Tomorrow for Day 4, which includes Portuguese, I'll be doing my Anki reviews for Portuguese. For Swahili today, I worked solely out of Spoken World. I'm taking a short break from Teach Yourself. I like the Spoken World course a bit more, I suppose, because the lessons are extremely well organized, they're very manageable, and it has excellent grammar explanations. Not all of this can be said for TY however, but it is still good too. Today I reviewed a bit of what I was doing from lesson 11 before, and then proceeded to finish all of that lesson, which was on the Internet and computers. Then I completed all of lesson 12, which was about banking and financial stuff. In the bit of extra time remaining, I listened to some previous dialogues to see if they were easier to understand now that I've advanced more and they definitely are much easier. Looking at this CEFR chart, I'd say I'm around B1, perhaps a little less, in Swahili. I rated my listening, reading, and writing all as B1 and both components of speaking as borderline between A2 and B1. Nevertheless, I'm quite pleased with this level so far and was not expecting to have achieved it so quickly (well, it's been about five months since I started). I have also become a little more conscious of all of the loanwords in Swahili, especially from Arabic. In this online dictionary which I use, it gives the origin of many of the loanwords, and I keep on seeing ones labeled as being Arabic, Turkish, or Persian in origin, as well as many from English and a few from Portuguese, Hindi, and German. In regard to the Arabic ones, there are so many of them that I think it will really help me when I'm starting with Arabic to have a bit of a vocabulary base. Here are just a few examples of the similarities (note--I'm using the transliterations given by Google Translation, so the short vowels aren't included and some of the letters look a bit oddly transcribed): safari - سفر (sfr) - trip, journey, travel kitabu - كتاب (ktāb) - book mahali - محل (mḩl) - place ijumaa - الجمعة (al-jmʻh) - Friday asubuhi - صبح (şbḩ) - morning rafiki - رفيق (rfyq) - friend, companion ishirini - عشرين (ʻshryn) - twenty thelathini - ثلاثين (thlāthyn) - thirty alfajiri - الفجر (al-fjr) - dawn tafadhali - تفضل (tfḑl) - please dhahabu - الذهب (adh-dhhb) - gold theluji - ثلج (thlj) - snow ...and many, many more. The sounds have obviously been simplified, but that makes it easier for me to learn in the first place, and then when I go to learn the harder sound for the Arabic version, the basic sound of the word is still the same or similar, so I think Swahili could make cracking Arabic just that much easier. I overachieved a LOT today for Russian. I listened to probably about an hour of MT, and started the advanced course. Natasha (the teacher) is now attempting to discreetly start teaching some pieces of the Russian aspectual system, but it seems a bit confusing the way she's presenting at the moment, but I only heard a little bit of that. To review the idea of Slavic aspects, I watched this video by Splog, which makes it quite simple to understand (finished vs. stopped instead of complete vs. incomplete). I also exchanged several emails with my grandfather, who is fluent in Russian about it, who explained it very well to me. He said that it is quite similar to the idea of the preterite and the imperfect in Romance languages except also in the future and it's practically identical to the idea of the Greek aspect system, although Greek goes about it differently. That Greek has exactly the same thing going on makes it a lot easier for me to understand, because I understand it well in Greek already. Anyways back on topic now, I also completed lesson two from Cortina Russian. It was very easy with not too much vocabulary and grammar-wise introducing the accusative case, which I still somewhat recalled from a year ago. I reviewed all of the case (because the lesson really only covered part of it) thoroughly and also reviewed the genitive singular and the nominative plural. I started to learn the plural of the in the accusative/genitive, but it was rather confusing, so I stopped. I was going to review the prepositional case, which I had also learned last year, but I then realized that I had spent probably over two hours on Russian already when I only needed one, and I hadn't started my Japanese or kanji reviews yet, so I just left it there. Nonetheless, that was still very good for today. For Japanese, I also excelled and did an hour instead of merely half of one. I typed up the vocabulary list for lesson 27 of Ultimate Japanese, entitled 歴史の古い町, and read through the grammar section, typing the example sentences. Japanese is time-consuming, but I love it. Not much else to say. I reviewed and restudied more kanji and did my Anki reviews, like I mentioned before. I'm not completely sure about tomorrow. Tomorrow was going to be Greek, Portuguese, and Swedish, but since it's my birthday I just decided last minute to invite several friends over just to hang out since we really haven't seen each other since the end of the school year (end of May). I have the morning still, and I intend to use it to its fullest, and the afternoon after they leave. However, I don't have any notions of "greatness" and going above and beyond on all my languages again. Until tomorrow, Lala salama! Скокойной ночи! お休みなさい！ 1 person has voted this message useful |
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