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Estival Ambitions: A Linguistic Odyssey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 5857 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 89 of 242 29 July 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
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That's more than me work was so busy all I managed to do was review Nominative plural case in my grammar book. I've only just added section 1 vocabulary from my Take off in Russian book to Anki after putting it off for so long. I hate procrastination. Anyway keep up the good work
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5959 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 90 of 242 30 July 2010 at 7:21am | IP Logged |
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DAY 6: Dutch, Greek, French
Anki Reviews: 1121 repetitions in 51.98 minutes Kanji Reviews: 932 due; 100 reviewed; 103 restudied Today was one of those days where I had plenty of time and wanted to advance and keep studying, but I didn't actually want to work. All day, I could not for the life of me concentrate! I was feeling groggy and lazy all day, probably a side effect of waking up late and being so tired yesterday, and it was very hard to work in that state! I have as of now finished my active studying. I did all 3.5 hours today, but after I finish this update I'm going to work on kanji and some more Anki. Those new figures will be included in an edit to this post later on. Today was a Dutch-focus day, and luckily my new Dutch dictionary arrived today! It's really big and smells a little weird, but it's extremely helpful. Today I continued to work from the RIDC, Unit 1, and finally finished that. So it is intensive after all! As a final total, I ended up with over 170 vocabulary words in BYKI, but I deleted several that I decided I knew well enough already, so instead I now have three "small" lists of 55 words each (165 total). I was able to get through one of those in the time I had today. I'm not sure how the time went so fast. It seems like I should have been able to do the last 16 pages or so of the lesson faster than in 1.5 hours... The vocabulary in BYKI only took about half an hour. I also approximated the total vocabulary words in the glossary of the book, which usually gives a good idea of how many words it teaches. I don't have the exact figures anymore, but it was nearly 2000 words... My bout of Greek studying today was quite problematic, due to technical difficulties, a dizzied mind, and a terrifying surprise visit by a raccoon scratching and hissing at my open window. It took me the entire hour just to get through lesson 23 of LGWT and to study the vocabulary in BYKI. Only two more lessons to go with that... For French I just completed two chapters from my Practice Makes Perfect French Vocabulary book. The first one took most of the 30 minutes, and then the second one only took me about two! I also started a third, but then decided to stop, realizing my time had elapsed and there were still more important things to do. Tomorrow is an exciting Japanese-focus day, along with German and Swahili. I hope it will be a better day in general! Goedenacht! Καληνύχτα! Bonne nuit! EDIT: Updated numbers for Anki and kanji reviews. Edited by ellasevia on 30 July 2010 at 8:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5959 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 91 of 242 31 July 2010 at 7:26am | IP Logged |
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DAY 7: Japanese, German, Swahili
Anki Reviews: 1033 repetitions in 54.62 minutes Kanji Reviews: 870 due; 100 reviewed; 103 restudied What a great day! It's not past midnight yet (I still have another hour) and I have accomplished all of my goals, with the exception of the optional Anki reviews for French/Portuguese/Spanish/Esperanto. :) My Japanese study this morning was very successful. I first studied the vocabulary from lesson 27, and then continued to work through all of lesson 28. I typed the vocabulary and grammar section's example sentences and the dialogue and learned the vocabulary. Lesson 28 was about 天災 (natural disasters), so I got to learn exciting words like 洪水 (flood), 火山 (volcano), 火事 (fire), 台風 (typhoon/hurricane), 地震 (earthquake), 雷 (thunder), 風 (wind), and 被害 (damage). Anyways, I finished everything for that lesson, so on my next Japanese study day I'll be able to jump right into lesson 29. I'm 70% through Ultimate Japanese! For my hour of German I just used BYKI to study the vocabulary from lesson 3 of TYIYG, which I went through on Wednesday. It was only 76 words, but I was having trouble thinking right then, so it took all hour just to do that. Finally for Swahili, I just finished up lesson 13 from Spoken World. I read through the reading section, about job and educational opportunities for children growing up in East Africa, and I'm still very pleased with how easily I'm able to understand most of those texts now (for some of the first few lessons they were just undecipherable and I skipped several of them altogether). Then I read and listened to the dialogue, which was about someone welcoming a new employee and showing her around her office and the company. I also did a little over 45 minutes of Russian (Michel Thomas) today while weeding and biking. It's pretty boring to listen to it while you're not doing anything else, but if you're doing something else like those activities at the same time, it becomes very entertaining and fun to listen to and makes those activities much more bearable. Today she officially introduced and was explaining the imperfective vs. perfective, but she described it as general vs. concrete, which sort-of makes sense too. One of the very last things she had us say before I stopped was this sentence: Как говорил Мишель Томас, то, что мы понимаем мы знаем. И то, что мы знаем мы не забудем. (As Michel Thomas used to say, what we understand we know. And what we know we will not forget.) Kanji reviews are getting pretty easy to go through now, fortunately. I got a much higher score on my reviews this evening (above 70% I think, as opposed to less than 50% or 40% before), and the restudies are going quickly too. Although I'm getting up into ones I don't remember as well (like in the high 1800s and early 1900s) in the restudy box, it's not too difficult to relearn them as I've already picked out a story that works and have memorized it once, even though I probably hadn't seen it since then. I have only 130 more cards in the restudy box, and at the pace of 100 per day, I should finish within a couple days. I'm not going to do that extra Anki reviewing tonight because I want to go to bed early (ha!) so that I can get up earlier. I think I will have to have most of my studying done by about one in the afternoon tomorrow, because we're having people over for lunch(ish) and I will be expected to be present. I'll probably have to help out with setting up too, so we'll see what I get done tomorrow (мы увидим что я сделаю завтра). Tomorrow, assuming I have time, will be Day 8, and as such I'll be studying Swedish, Dutch, and Greek. お休みなさい！ Gute Nacht! Usiku mwema! EDIT: I'm going to listen to some more MT Russian before going to sleep tonight. Я люблю русский язык! Я хочу его изучить чтобы я могу его говорить бегло. Edited by ellasevia on 31 July 2010 at 7:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5959 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 92 of 242 01 August 2010 at 9:10am | IP Logged |
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DAY 8: Swedish, Dutch, Greek
Anki Reviews: 1106 repetitions in 56.78 minutes Kanji Reviews: 801 due; 100 reviewed; 100 restudied It's late now, so I'll make this as short as possible, as I tend to ramble on (just a bit ;)). This morning I woke up late and then we had the party thingymajig and then I was feeling lazy for several hours, so I'm only now, at almost 1 in the morning, finishing... The first studying I did this morning was Dutch. I knew that for Swedish I would be doing Livemocha, which is boring, so I decided to study my Dutch vocabulary instead. I finished BYKIing the rest of the words (110) from the first unit of RIDC. Much later in the day ( well night actually) after being lazy for several hours, I finally started my Swedish. I worked on Livemocha the whole time. I finished the last lesson of Swedish 201, about giving directions or something absurd like that. Then I did seven lessons of Swedish 202, so I'm 70% done with that now. Most of the lessons were not very useful at all, and you can really tell how they based the course content off the original English version. One ironic example from today was in the lesson about irregular past tense verbs, most of the verbs were regular, but in the regular past tense verb lesson, most were irregular! The courses (101, 102, 201, 202) are all divided into different units, and 201 and 202 are divided into two of these. The second (and last!) unit of 202 is all just vocabulary, so it actually looks really good. I've done two of these lessons (of five total) and I've gotten a bunch of good vocabulary, but still have to study the list for the second lesson. For my 30 minutes of Greek I did one lesson, lesson 24, from LGWT. Not too much vocabulary, so I even had time to study that in BYKI in that time too. Then I studied kanji. I reviewed and restudied exactly 100 each, but it spread over the "midnight gap" (whoa, I just realized it's August now--eek!) so the numbers got a little messed up. Anyways, what's important is that I studied those. :) I should mention that I listened to probably about half an hour of Russian from MT today. FINALLY it is starting to introduce noun cases. It went through the formation of the feminine accusative singular (*inanimate* masculine and neuter are just the same as nominative, *animate* masculine is like genitive) for nouns and adjectives. When I start listening again, the next thing is the notorious Russian verbs of motion. Ooh, and that party today was semi- a family birthday party for me, so two things I was given were a 常用漢字 poster with over 2000 kanji on it and "5000 Russian Words With All Their Inflected Forms: A Russian-English Dictionary." The latter is essentially a frequency dictionary and grammar reference combined in one, because it lists alphabetically the 5000 most common Russian words (I think, I might be wrong though) and gives all of their inflected forms. So, looking at a random entry, it looks like this: ПОЛЁТ SS m.in: flight полёт полёт полёта полёте полёту полётом полёты полёты полётов полётах полётам полётами (I couldn't get that to look right. Oh well. I need to stop being OCD.) Okay, that's all for tonight. Tomorrow is the beginning of the cycle again so I'll be doing Russian, Japanese, and Swahili. I love Day 1! God natt! Goedenacht! Καληνύχτα! Edited by ellasevia on 01 August 2010 at 9:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5959 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 93 of 242 01 August 2010 at 11:48pm | IP Logged |
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Currently working on my Ultimate Japanese lesson, and I'm a little confused as to how the verb "yaru" (to do; humbling the recipient) is written. The two options it gives when I'm typing are やる and 遣る (and ヤル in katakana, but I doubt it's that). On Google Translate it translates the former as "to do, kill, have sexual intercourse" so I'm a little bit dubious about that option. However, I know the kanji in the latter as meaning "dispatch" and Google translates that option as "do for." I'm leaning towards the second one, but am still pretty confused. TixhiiDon or kidshomestunner, any comment? ありがとうございます。
EDIT: Here are two example sentences with the word in the two possible written forms: 母は犬に水を遣りました。 母は犬に水をやりました。 (My mother gave the dog water.) 私は猫に魚を買って遣りました。 私は猫に魚を買ってやりました。 (I bought a fish for my cat.) Edited by ellasevia on 01 August 2010 at 11:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5281 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 94 of 242 02 August 2010 at 1:45am | IP Logged |
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Hi Philip. To answer your question, やる is most often written in hiragana. I've
actually never seen the kanji before so I guess it must be quite obscure. The Space ALC website gives a single example 海外出張に（人）を遣る "send someone overseas on business" for the kanji version, and this is completely new on me, so it's either a very rare usage or a common usage that has completely passed me by (which is perfectly possible). When you write ヤル in katakana it is a very vulgar way of saying "have sex", so you should be very careful about how you use that!! In its passive form やられる, やる can indeed be used to mean "be done for". Have you studied the verb しまう yet? When you couple やられる with しまう and put it in the past tense you get やられちゃった, which is a very common word meaning something like "I just got beaten so badly" or "I totally fell for that!" You are correct in that when やる is used to mean "to give", e.g. "I gave the dog water", やる humbles the recipient, so you should NEVER use it when talking about giving something to a person as it can cause serious offence (unless you actually want to cause offence, of course!). My dog-owning friends don't even like to use it about their dogs as they love their dogs enough to consider them worthy of あげる! On the other hand, when used to mean "to do", やる is neutral and can be switched interchangeably with する in many cases. Hope that helps. Hopefully someone will be able to enlighten us both about the kanji usage. Edited by TixhiiDon on 02 August 2010 at 1:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5959 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 95 of 242 02 August 2010 at 9:40am | IP Logged |
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DAY 1: Russian, Japanese, Swahili
Anki Reviews: 850 repetitions in 42.86 minutes Kanji Reviews: 777 due; 0 reviewed; 0 restudied As I mentioned many times before, I simply love Day 1. It has three of my favorite languages all packaged together. The only problem--I mistook which languages! I just now as I was writing this noticed that Day 1 actually consists of Russian, Japanese, and GERMAN, not Swahili. Ooops. So, to resolve this little slip-up, I'll just do 1.5 hours of German on the upcoming Day 7 instead of one hour of German and half an hour of Swahili. :) Today I studied Russian for the required two hours, and then some. I studied for at least half an hour extra, so probably around 2.5 hours minimum. Excellent. I began my studying by learning in BYKI the vocabulary from lesson 2 of Penguin Russian. Then I continued to work through lesson 2 of TY Russian. This was also a very good lesson, and I read a short, simple little text about Санкт-Петербург (Saint Petersburg) at the end of it. In that lesson it taught the prepositional case (singular only) so that you could say things like я живу в России (I live in Russia) or я говорю о саду (I'm talking about the garden). Then, after learning the vocabulary for the lesson, I took it upon myself to "finish" learning the case by learning the plural and adjective endings. So, I now know the following cases: - nominative singular/plural - accusative singular - genitive singular - prepositional singular/plural I also wanted to write some example sentences to practice each of these: NOMINATIVE: Это большой мальчик. Это большие мальчики. Это большая гостиница. Это большие гостиницы. Это большое окно. Это большие окна. ACCUSATIVE (singular only) Я люблю большого мальчика. (animate) Я люблю большой город. (inanimate) Я люблю большую гостиницу. Я люблю большой окно. [Skipping genitive because even though I know how to form it, I'm now quite sure how to use it, but here's a guess: У меня книга мальчика.] PREPOSITIONAL Они живёт в большом городе. Они живёт в больших городах. Они живёт в большой гостинице. Они живёт в больших гостиницах. Они живёт в большом окно. Они живёт в больших окнах. Not the most interesting or complicated of sentences and some of them don't really make much sense, but they will do in illustrating the cases. Anyways, back into what I did today. I also listened to over half an hour of MT Russian and learned about the verbs of motion. I learned идти, пойти, ехать, and поехать. It doesn't seem too difficult at all, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something here--I've heard so many people saying how hard these verbs are. I also learned about the accusative (I think) usage when you’re saying that you are going somewhere: Куда вы идёте? Я иду в центр. (instead of в центре, in the prepositional) Next...Japanese! I worked for an hour from Ultimate Japanese, like I mentioned in my questioning post before. I finished going through all of that except for learning the vocabulary and reading the dialogue. The lesson was number 29, and about "year-end parties"... TixhiiDon, thank you for that explanation. I'll just use hiragana to be sure. And lastly, the mistaken Swahili. I worked for 30 minutes from Spoken World Swahili, on lesson 14. I did all except the dialogue, reading, and culture section. It taught about the -ji- (reflexive) infix, object infixes, and the "mahali" class. I knew the former two already and technically the latter one from TY too, but I didn't quite understand the "mahali" class. This is because it is both super simple and super complicated at the same time. It has both just one word in it, and thousands. And then for agreement, it depends on which meaning--the "just one-word kind" or the "everything else kind"--which in turn depends on whether the thing is in a definite location, and indefinite location around somewhere, or inside of something. I won't even elaborate further... I'll be skipping kanji this evening since it's too late. I was working very well earlier and then found out that we had to go to a dinner party mid-afternoon until nighttime, so I had to finish when we came back, after I did my reading for school. And after I was done getting distracted by random shiny things. ;) Спокойной ночи! お休みなさい！ Usiku mwema! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5959 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 96 of 242 03 August 2010 at 5:27am | IP Logged |
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I just wanted to announce a big change. As of today, I'm no longer studying any Romance languages at present. Done. (Free!) I've decided that my knowledge of French, Portuguese, and Italian is sufficient for now and I just don't have much motivation to keep studying anymore. If I am going to go to Italy, France, Brazil, Portugal, or another country where these languages are spoken, I will make an effort to refresh myself and study a bit more, but otherwise, I'm done for now. From now on they'll be listed as "not studying" in my profile (even though I'll be taking a French class at school this year) and I'll only work on them with daily Anki reviews and study if I have time and motivation.
I have been noticing that I don't have much motivation for these languages anymore in the past month or two, and whenever I would study them as per my schedule, I would often procrastinate in an effort to "get out of" working on them. This is just because, compared to the exciting new and exotic languages I'm working on now, they're just dull (if you can call a language dull) and not interesting to me anymore. Since I'm not working on those anymore, my schedule will now look at this. No colors this time because it takes too long to put them in and I have wasted enough time (procrastinating to get out of Italian!) today already. Here it is: Day 1: Русский, 日本語, Nederlands Day 2: Ελληνικά, Svenska, Deutsch Day 3: Kiswahili, Русский, 日本語 Day 4: Nederlands, Ελληνικά, Svenska Day 5: Deutsch, Kiswahili, Русский Day 6: 日本語, Nederlands, Ελληνικά Day 7: Svenska, Deutsch, Kiswahili Today I've already done Swedish, so I'll finish off with Dutch and Anki and kanji, and then I'll start over with day one tomorrow. I honestly feel quite liberated, now that I've gotten rid of what had become boring work for me, and can move on to more interesting things. I thought of dropping Dutch too because of its interference with German, but as I still really like the language, I'll give it a little longer. During the school year, which starts in approximately two and a half weeks, I'll be working on these seven languages, one per day. By January I will probably have "finished" Swedish and/or Dutch (aka, to basic fluency; I want German at advanced fluency preferably) so that I'll have more room in my schedule for new languages. I have been planning to start Arabic in January, and depending on how much time I have Hungarian, Finnish, Georgian, or Romanian (haven't quite decided which; ironically the last one being a Romance language) too. I'll be posting a normal update on today's studies later. Now I have 30 minutes of Dutch to do, and some kanji to study. Edited by ellasevia on 03 August 2010 at 5:28am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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