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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 5953 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 177 of 242 22 September 2010 at 8:50am | IP Logged | ||
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DAY 7/8: Swedish, Japanese; Russian, Swahili
Anki Reviews: 1049 repetitions in 1.15 hours (just today) Kanji Reviews: 988 due; 0 reviewed; 0 restudied I think I'm finally making some progress towards my goals of adjusting to a better sleep schedule (although still not ideal) and still getting all of my stuff done. Yesterday and today have been good because I've done just about everything I needed to, except that a few days ago I somehow let my Japanese Anki reviews slip, and here we go with that whole story again. I'll try to get those all caught up first thing tomorrow before they get even more out of hand (~200 as opposed to ~800). Svenska: I worked for a little under an hour from Colloquial Swedish, lesson seven. This book really gives a lot of good vocabulary! After a while I got a little tired of working because it was so late when I was doing this (hence why I didn’t post last night), so for the last 20 minutes or so I just read a thread in Swedish on here, which I am happy to say that I understood almost all of, minus a couple words here and there (but most of which I understood immediately from context). I’m again motivated for Swedish, which is good since I seemed to have lost a little passion for it in the past month or so. Also, next Wednesday is the one-year anniversary of the beginning of my Swedish studies! My original goal was to be at basic fluency within eight months (or was it six?), but I’m still not quite there. I didn’t have a very structured and balanced approach to it in the beginning, and am still finding lots that I think I should know before I could “promote” myself to basic fluency. I’ll probably be there in a few more months… 日本語: I was tired last night, so I didn’t do my Japanese. Instead, I took my book with me to school today and instead of studying for a test on stuff that I already know for my class, I studied out of Ultimate Japanese in class today for about 15 minutes. I reviewed all of lesson 34 (the lesson I had last completed), including the vocabulary. At home, I typed up the dialogue for the lesson and read over it a couple times to try to understand it well. It’s incredible how much more difficult this material is than my Japanese class at school! Well, actually it’s not, because school language classes are notoriously of not great quality. Русский: I studied Russian for about 1.5 hours today instead of just the required one. I worked on lesson seven from Teach Yourself Russian, which was about visiting a post office, and taught the genitive singular and plural of adjectives, and the genitive plural of nouns. When I read about the genitive plural a month or two ago on a website about Russian grammar, it seemed impossible to comprehend, yet somehow TY was able to explain it so clearly and succinctly. It’s definitely still more complicated than the other cases I know so far, but not impossible by any means. At the end of the lesson, I was again delighted to see that I was able to understand nearly all of the reading, this time about the city Novgorod. Kiswahili: I haven’t done any Swahili in so long! I feel like I’m forgetting things and losing motivation, which must NOT happen. I was going to work from TY Swahili for my 30 minutes today, but I decided last minute reviewing my huge pile-up for Anki would be a better use of my time. So, I reviewed about 500 words of Swahili today (I think), and cut the amount of my reviews for that language nearly in half. Now just to do the same for Greek and Japanese and I’ll be all caught up. :)
Thank you very much, Jinx! Did you seriously read through all 22 pages? How long did it take you? Anyways, thanks again for that huge compliment. I can’t actually believe that I’m so inspirational and “mind-blowing…” I thought my writing was actually fairly boring and repetitive. Well, I’m glad I can be of assistance in your motivation! God natt! お休みなさい！Спокойной ночи! Lala salama! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5160 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 178 of 242 22 September 2010 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Ellasevia
I just want to second Jinx's post (I've also just read through a lot of your pages, took my about an hour!). I think it's fantastic how dedicated you are to languages when you're still young. You're quite lucky to have realised your language passion at such a young age, it's given you a great headstart and if you keep up your level of ambition, motivation and hard work then you could become a great Polyglot. You already are an inspirational Polyglot so I can't imagine what you could be in 10 or 20 years time. Well done and keep it up. I'll be following your journey on here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5504 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 179 of 242 22 September 2010 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, I read it all (in about two/three hours!) – I didn't mean to, but I discovered that I was as interested in your goals as if I'd been watching a movie: "The Self-Taught Polyglot! How far will he get?" Pretty darn far, it appears. :)
I have a question for you: I noticed a few times you mentioned how you've been making a little money by tutoring on LiveMocha. Interesting! How does one become a LiveMocha tutor? I would love to help people out with English and make some money doing it, and online seems to be the easiest interface for that sort of undertaking... how much time a day do you normally need to devote to it? And how do you get paid, through PayPal? Any advice and tips you have for me would be much appreciated! Keep on rockin' those languages, man! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5953 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 180 of 242 22 September 2010 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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@ hribecek
Thank you! I do feel lucky that I realized this passion at an early age and that I had a favorable linguistic situation already (native English, secondary native Greek and Spanish). The first language I actually tried to study on my own was Mandarin, when I was 12, but it was not long-lived. The first one that I studied continuously to fluency was French, semi-simultaneously with Portuguese. @ Jinx I've had that experience with other peoples' logs too, but I never thought mine was interesting enough to be viewed that way! About Livemocha, I was a tutor for English and Spanish for almost a year and a half. Apparently though, I've just been "let go," for what seem to me completely fake reasons. This is actually a drama in process right now! I logged onto Livemocha at the beginning of September to do some reviews only to find that the tutoring page was gone. I emailed the guy in charge, and only got a reply back a couple days ago. He said that while revamping their tutoring system, they took the opportunity to get rid of the "inactive" tutors. According to him, I hadn't done any reviewing in months, which is completely untrue, and that I hadn't informed him of the absences we were having this summer, also untrue. I replied saying all this and backing it up with proof: pictures of my screen showing my Livemocha contributions page for tutoring with the dates of the reviews and the teacher rating I received (almost all “extremely helpful”), receipts/confirmations of payment for the reviews done during certain time frames, and the very email that I sent to him informing him of the absences. He hasn't responded yet, and I don't know that he will, but this particular episode has really put me off of Livemocha, even though I've had negative opinions about it for quite a while actually. Of course I'd like to have the position back, but I doubt I'll get it, even if their decision was based on false grounds. At this point, all I'm hoping for is an apology and recognition that I actually was working, instead of passing off the hours of time I invested as nonexistent. If you’re willing to go through all this hellish nonsense though, go ahead and apply for a position. They don’t seem particularly open to the idea of more tutors since they’ve been getting rid of perfectly good ones, but you can still try. When I originally got the position in May 2009, a big part of it (then, at least) was that I could speak Portuguese and was to be tutoring Brazilians in English and Spanish. As I understood it, part of the premise for the paid courses was that the students would receive the explanations in their native language so that they could actually understand what is being explained since after learning 12 words of English in the first lesson, I rather doubt that they would be able to understand grammatical explanations in that language. That is still a benefit now, but apparently not required anymore, as the tutors that they kept for the queues that I was part of do not actually speak Portuguese and compose their reviews in English. Despite the chaos from the Livemocha Team and a bit of a legal threat in December from a crazy Brazilian woman who threatened to call the police when I said I couldn’t understand her submission, it was a very fun thing to do, and even more so since I would get paid for it, further funding my linguistic shopping list. I made several hundred dollars off of the program, so it was definitely a good use of my time while it lasted! If you want to be a part of the program you’ll probably have to email the guy in charge (if you’re interested I’ll PM you his email address) and ask for a position. As for payment, you get $1 for every submission you correct, and you are paid twice a month through PayPal. Good luck if you decide to apply! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5504 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 181 of 242 23 September 2010 at 4:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I would appreciate his email, yeah, thanks... I'll be cautious about this whole thing due to your warnings about your problems with the people there (how unpleasant!), but I think it would be worth it to try applying in any case, just because getting the tutoring experience would be valuable to me – I'm hoping to do some ESL teaching (and maybe other languages too, once I'm good enough in them) abroad, and I don't really know how to get started! Thanks a lot for explaining the whole situation to me. :) And good luck sorting everything out! I hope they let you keep your position! Edited by Jinx on 23 September 2010 at 4:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5953 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 182 of 242 26 September 2010 at 8:20am | IP Logged | ||
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So. I haven't done very much since I last posted. I'll try to sum it all up quickly so that I can do some more studying... The last day I posted about was day 8 of my schedule, so I'll talk be talking about my activities for all of my languages, since all have been covered by the schedule in this time.
日本語: I don't actually remember doing my Japanese, only that I did do it. I think I used at least part of my time to get caught up on my Anki Japanese list, which I did. Not sure what else I did! Today I bought a Japanese vocabulary book because I had an urge to go to an actual bookstore to go shopping and it was the only thing that I could actually justify purchasing. I've since realized that our bookstores here have a dismal selection of language books...not quite how I remembered them. On Monday I have to give a presentation for class about my family using specific grammatical constructions which we've been practicing mind-numbingly for the past month or so, so this is what I intend to present: 僕の家族の中に四人です。父の名前はスティ ーヴです。彼の趣味は音楽です。ピアノを上 手に弾けますが，ギターを弾けません。料理 する事が下手です。でも，ギリシャ語を話せ ますよ。僕の母はヨアナと申します。彼女は 先生です。だから教授の本を読む事が好きで す。そして，友達と会って話す事が好きです 。父は料理が出来ませんから，食べ物を料理 する人は母です。料理をする事が上手ですが ，日本語を話す事が下手です。母もギリシャ 語を話せます。ジェイソンと言う男の子は弟 です。十三歳です。小説を書く事が好きです 。そしてギターを弾く事が上手です。宿題を する事が嫌いです。彼は著者か楽士か建築家 に成りたいと言ったです。 Deutsch: I only needed half an hour of German, but I ended up doing almost and hour and a half. I was reading some stuff in German on the Internet and adding vocabulary to Anki, and then doing the same with a text we read in German class about an alternative kind of school where going to class is optional... Română: I've done about fifteen minutes of Romanian study from Assimil so far, which was just one lesson. 2.25 hours to go to be caught up with this weekend's goals. Русский: No Russian yet. I did some listening practice, but I'm not counting that as part of my studying. 30 minutes left. Kiswahili: No Swahili yet. 1 hour left. Ελληνικά: No Greek yet, unless preparing stuff for the Greek class I'm teaching to my friends and teaching them the alphabet counts... 2.5 hours left. فارسى: I did an hour of Pimsleur today, lessons 12 and 13. 1 hour left. Svenska: No Swedish yet. 1 hour left. Anki and Kanji Reviews: Up to date on Anki reviews for all but Swahili and Greek still. I can't believe that I'm still behind from going to Africa in July (although technically I'm caught up on the ones that I was behind on from before; these two are from going camping in August, but I still haven't been completely caught up since June)! In a bout of disgust and frustration, I moved all 1000+ remaining kanji reviews into the fail box (in addition to the 600+ which were already there) regardless of whether or not I actually know them. I'm so utterly disgusted that I invested all this time over the past year or so (especially between January and June) into learning and reviewing all of RTK1 and that now I can barely remember them. I do know many still and can recognize a lot more than I can write, but I'm majorly out of practice. My new goal is to review about 50 for the next month or so, which will get me all caught up. I might decide to lower the number per day if the reviews get out of hand. HOPEFULLY after this, my nightmare of being behind will be resolved. Okay, I'm going to attempt to do as much as I can of my Romanian, Swedish, and Russian now along with some more kanji and Anki. I'll check back tomorrow if everything goes well. EDIT: I completely forgot to mention one of the reasons why I didn't get a lot done in the past two days. As we're back at school now, I'm hearing people in Spanish 4 and 5 talking about El Internado, and it made me realize that I hadn't watched it in a long time, probably because the page I was watching it on was and still is malfunctioning. Yesterday I found a new page to watch it on, and have since watched three episodes of it. Because of lack of exposure recently, it was a little harder than usual to understand (meaning, I could understand what people were saying, but I would have to make a conscious effort sometimes), but soon I was back to normal where I would barely notice it wasn't in English and then when I would hear something in English it would sound weird. I also listened to two episodes of LearnItalianPod while doing math homework. Edited by ellasevia on 26 September 2010 at 8:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5275 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 183 of 242 27 September 2010 at 1:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I guess your grammar for practice was 上手、下手、and …ことが好き, right? By the way,
I think you are more likely to encounter "koto" in hiragana in this case. Here are my amendments, for what they are worth. 僕の家族は四人家族です。父の名前はスティ ーヴです。彼の趣味は音楽です。ピアノを上 手に 弾けますが，ギターを(I think が is better here but I'm not 100% sure)弾けません。料理す ることが下手です。でも，ギリシャ語が(likew ise here)話せます。僕の母はヨアナといいます (申します is too polite here)。彼女は先生です。だから教授(not sure what you mean here. If you mean "educational books", 教育の本 is better)の本を読むことが好きです。そして， � �達と会って話すことが好きです(very nice sentence!) 。父は料理が出来ませんから，料理 する(you don't need to say 食べ物を料理する as 料理する already covers the "food" part) 人は母です。料理をすることが上手ですが ，日本語を話すことが下手です。母もギリシ ャ 語 が(see above)話せます。ジェイソンという(when you use NOUNというNOUN, いう is in hiragana)男の子は弟です。十三歳です。小説を 書くことが好きです 。そしてギターを弾くこと が上手です。宿題 をすることが嫌いです。彼は著者か楽士か建 築家に 成りたいと言います。 Good luck with the presentation! Edited by TixhiiDon on 27 September 2010 at 1:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunshine Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 4986 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, Italian, Spanish | Message 184 of 242 30 September 2010 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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This log has been very inspiring! I'm dying to start working on my Spanish and some other languages after a really important French test. But I have to admit that I, too, am a procrastinator... And while I really should have been studying French, I spent a few days reading these 23 pages. :(
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