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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 129 of 242 22 August 2010 at 8:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm just going to post now again because I don't know if I'll be able to think later on when I finish for the night.
So I've gotten quite little done since I last posted. I was feeling extremely depressed all afternoon about my Romanian friend, and even more so when I subsequently learned at a dinner party at another friend's house this evening that I was one of the only ones who was not told, apparently because she was afraid that I'd have a fit. So now I'm feeling very sad and I broke down into tears several times while doing Romanian vocabulary. I feel pathetic, and it's connecting a negative feeling with my Romanian studying now. I just am so...well, sad, that I was not told and couldn't say goodbye or anything. Because Romania is probably not a place I'll be able to visit anytime soon. :( In any case, I did more Romanian despite the tears, and have (almost) finished up through lesson three, vocabulary and all. My Anki deck for Romanian now has about 220 facts. As I've been reviewing grammar, I was pleasantly surprised at how much easier it seems now than how I perceived it back then. It seemed all irregular then, and now it mostly makes sense and seems to follow the rules for the most part. Romanian is so fun (as long as I'm not bursting into tears)! This morning when I was trying to decide about a) whether or not I would take on another language, and b) which one, my other main option was Finnish. I'm still actually considering adding this one (or Georgian), but I think it'd be a bad idea. I added Romanian because I've had a consistent desire to learn it for a long time and it will not be too difficult and won't weigh down my schedule too much like a difficult language would. However, I regretted my decision a bit this evening when I met a girl from Finland at this dinner party, and was only able to say a few simple things in Finnish: hyvää päivää, kiitos, tervetuloa, and minä olen amerikkalainen. She will be going to my school though, so if I decide to take on Finnish, I'll have a conversational partner. :) No more Anki. Like I said, I had to go to a dinner party for a long time this evening, and as such I couldn't do anything during that time. Tomorrow I have to do the rest of my homework which I neglected today and also have yet another social engagement, this time a birthday party. I should still find enough time though to (hopefully) finish off my Anki reviews for the most part and to maybe get some Romanian and perhaps some Russian or something else in. Now to go finish that vocabulary for lesson three. Noapte bună! (Hyvää yötä!) EDIT: I should mention that I don't know how Romanian will fitting into my study schedule, partly because I still haven't figured out how my schedule will work. I'm going to experiment for the first few weeks and see how much work I tend to have from school, and base my schedule off that. I might end up having a schedule similar to that of at the beginning of the summer with an eight- or nine-day cycle with one or two languages per day, with about an hour each. EDIT2: I also bought Assimil Le Roumain Sans Peine. It looked like a nice deal because it was cheap compared with the outrageous price (in Euros, besides) on the Assimil website, but then there was the shipping from France... Oh well, it's on the way anyways. And did I mention already that the library here has a copy of Colloquial Romanian? Edited by ellasevia on 22 August 2010 at 8:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5157 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 130 of 242 22 August 2010 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Ok, you can borrow Colloquial and now you’ve also ordered Assimil, but while you’re waiting to get your hands on them, I’d like to remind you (in case you missed it when it was first posted) that there’s a free Romanian course online. http://cnt.dnt.md/romint/undp/index.php You can find a textbook, an exercise book and the audio for each of its 3 levels. Here’s the thread where it was discussed: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=20569&PN=1&TPN=1 and where you can find instructions on how to download the audio for level 3 (the links on the site seem broken). The course is for Moldavian, but the general opinion seems to be that there’s actually almost no difference with the Romanian spoken in Romania. Good luck with this new challenge, Emme PS Delete the blanks in the links. 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 131 of 242 23 August 2010 at 5:41am | IP Logged | ||
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RO: Bună seara! Ce mai faceţi? Eu sunt bine, dar nu sunt fericit pentru că am şcoală mâine. Am facut două lecţii de Teach Yourself Romanian şi am scris o scrisoare la prietena mea româncă pe româneşte, şi ea a spus că eu ar trebui să vizitei sale în România. Am învăţat multe cuvinte noi, deci sunt mulţumit. Limba română nu-i foarte greu pentru mine.
EN: Good evening! How are you? I'm fine, but I'm not happy because I have school tomorrow. I did two lessons of Teach Yourself Romanian and I wrote a letter to my Romanian friend in Romanian, and she said that I should visit her in Romania. I learned many new words, therefore I am pleased. Romanian is not very difficult for me. So I had to look up a few things in order to write that, but the vast majority of that was my own composition. I think that's pretty good progress for two days of study, don't you think? So like I said, I did lessons four and five of TY Romanian, both of which yielded good amounts of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. I'm now done with a quarter of the book (because it has 20 lessons). I'm quite pleased with how my Romanian is coming along. :) I also did a fair amount of Anki, but still not enough to meet my goal of being all caught up. I did 1772 reviews today in 1.03 hours, including most of my Portuguese list and some Swedish, Greek, Swahili, and Esperanto too. I'm currently all caught up on Romanian, French, German, Russian, Dutch, Japanese, Italian, Persian, and Spanish reviews. I just have Swedish, Portuguese, Greek, Swahili, and Esperanto left. That is probably it for today's studies, but I've also made a new study schedule for the school year. I found that this summer the time-based system worked a lot better than the task-based one, because I knew exactly how much time was needed and it seemed more manageable and just better in general. With the task-based system, I really have no idea how long things will take, so I tend to overestimate how much I can get done, and then I feel behind all the time. With time, I just work for that long and then I'm done. Anyways, I'm reverting to an eight-day schedule like the beginning of the summer, with some minor changes. I'll only be doing two languages per day this time. The main language, listed first on the list here, will be studied for at least one hour, and the second for at least half an hour. That's an hour and a half per day, which means that by the end of the eight day cycle, I will have racked up an hour and a half per language and 12 hours total. I think that's pretty good for a school schedule... Anyways, here is the schedule: Day 1: 日本語, Deutsch Day 2: Română, Русский Day 3: Kiswahili, Ελληνικά Day 4: فارسى, Svenska Day 5: Ελληνικά, Română Day 6: Deutsch, فارسى Day 7: Svenska, 日本語 Day 8: Русский, Kiswahili This goes into effect tomorrow, meaning that tomorrow will be Day 1 and I'll be studying Japanese and German. That's all for tonight. Now, off to do that math and science and science homework which I put off all weekend. I was telling my friends today that I hadn't done my homework yet because I kept getting distracted. My friend's response was "Was it something shiny?" (because yes, we do get distracted by shiny objects) and I was like, "Yes, it's called the Romanian language." :) Okay. Good night. Noapte bună! P.S. Thanks for the link, Emme. I'll take a look at that later. That just reminded me, I went to the library while I was out today, and Colloquial Romanian is checked out for about another week, but then I can get it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 5850 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 132 of 242 23 August 2010 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Really nice schedule I get distracted all the time by shiny things lately vietnamese so understand you there :-)
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| Felipe Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5840 days ago 451 posts - 501 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Italian, Dutch, Catalan | Message 133 of 242 23 August 2010 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm impressed with your Romanian after such a short time. In fact, your whole list of languages is quite impressive. When my Dutch is "good enough" I am going to go back to studying Romanian. It is such an awesome language. 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 134 of 242 24 August 2010 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 1: Japanese, German
Anki Reviews: 675 repetitions in 36.22 minutes Kanji Reviews: 1447 due; 0 reviewed; 0 restudied So today was the first day of my new schedule. The languages for today, Japanese and German, also happen to be the languages I take at school, so really I got my studying for these twice as much today because I did stuff for school and then stuff at home too. :D Japanese Class: In class the air-conditioner for the language department (on the third floor) was broken, so we had to go outside because it was way too hot to be inside. So we did some worksheets for simple grammar (review, I would hope) while sitting in the grass. Japanese Home: At home I did lesson 34 of Ultimate Japanese, minus the dialogue. It was about "indoor entertainment," so I learned about things like 将棋 (shōgi; Japanese chess), 碁 (go; Japanese strategy game), パチンコ (pachinko; pinball game), 麻雀 (mājan; mah-jongg, a Chinese card game), 賭け事 (kakegoto; gambling), トランプ (toranpu; Western-style cards), etc. The grammar section had some confusing parts, dealing with the tiny nuances you can have with changing something from normal to plain style and vice versa in some cases, and differences between male and female speech. Thankfully, I understand the examples of male speech better and I just don’t have to worry about the other weird things with female speech. :) German Class: In class we did a bit of vocabulary and talked for a bit, and then had time to work on a journal entry in German about what we did over the summer. For those of us in German 4, it only had to be 100 words (for German 5 it has to be 200 words) but I think I had nearly 200, probably more. German Home: I typed the vocabulary from German Grammar Drills from when we were camping into Anki, as well as some other random words that were coming to mind. I probably did about 1.5 to 2 hours of Japanese today and about the same of German, including school. I did my already opened Anki lists, meaning I’m up to date on the same ones still. I would do more now, but my parents are clamoring for me to go to bed early… Same with kanji. I might edit this post if I do any more Anki/kanji studying. Until then, good night! お休みなさい！Gute Nacht! Edited by ellasevia on 24 August 2010 at 6:57am 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 135 of 242 25 August 2010 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 2: Romanian, Russian
Anki Reviews: 968 repetitions in 56.47 minutes Kanji Reviews: 1459 due; 0 reviewed; 0 restudied Today was somewhat of what I might like to call a "minimally productive" day. Before school, I got up early, but only enough so to go through all of my "open" Anki lists (and caught up on my Swedish list--just four more "unopened" ones to go!), to read a little on here, and to do a bit of limba română. After school I don't know what happened. The time just slithered away without a trace. I did do the required study time, but it's late and I still have history reading! This morning I went through all of lesson six in TY Romanian (it was only two pages because it was a review chapter so only one vocab word for that) and then part of lesson seven, which dealt with the formation of the definite articles and such. I remembered that as being very difficult, but it makes perfect sense, except for a couple irregular formations. It also introduced the subjunctive form (used the same way as in Greek, it appears), which doesn't seem too hard. I started making a list of some common irregular verbs in the present, so I can keep reviewing those. Finally, I did my vocabulary for Romanian, which was a bit over 50 words (for lesson seven). For Russian I worked a bit out of Cortina, lesson six. It was teaching the singular of prepositional case, which I already know, so it was easy. Only a small bit of vocabulary. When I resume with Cortina, I'll do the translations for lesson two. Anki: I did the open lists and caught up on Swedish. Tomorrow I hope to do all the same, and catch up on another list, preferably Portuguese. Kanji: none today. I would do it now, but I still have homework and I'm really tired. Tomorrow at school we have a bit of a weird schedule (apparently we have this every Wednesday now) where we have some time off between our second and third periods, so I'll probably work on kanji reviews then. Tutoring: None! I really want to keep doing these, to practice Portuguese and get a source of income. My Romanian friend invited me to come visit her in Romania, which would be very feasible if I'm in Greece next year, because the airfare (or train tickets) would not be too expensive, but I would probably have to pay for it myself. Not to mention that I have spent SOOO much money on books lately (really in the past year or two) and I just need to recover it. Miscellaneous language nerdery: I already posted this in the "You know you're a language nerd when..." thread, but I'll write it here too. Today in my algebra class, my teacher wrote some equation on the board including "3ax." When I saw this (mind you, this is my first class so I was a bit groggy), my first thought was "Hm... I wonder why '3' is in the prepositional case here?" (In Russian, to form the plural of the prepositional case you add the ending -ах or -ях.) And then I felt stupid, because it's math, not Russian. Wow. Well, good night. Noapte bună! Спокойной ночи! 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 136 of 242 26 August 2010 at 7:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi. I am writing from my phone so please forgive the the mistakes and simplicity. I did nothing today but should have studied Swahili and Greek. I will postpone that until tomorrow. My merciless father made me get off the computer before I even finished my Anki. In a whirl of strange events I really did not have much time after school because of a podiatric appointment and working on an exciting flyer for the lanuage club my friend and I are starting at school and researching how to get to Timisoara, Romania from Greece. I'm thinking the train from Thessaloniki to Bucharest. It is cheaper than flying and I'll get to pass through Bulgaria too. I'm already very excited. :) so tomorrow will be day 3 and I will get much more done. Maybe I will just "accidentally" set my alarm loudly for 4:30am to spite my father for ruining my precious study time. How's that for revenge and stealing my Persian dictionary?! Mwahahahaha... Fun. So good night (usiku mwema/kalinihta)!
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