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Estival Ambitions: A Linguistic Odyssey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5205 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 185 of 242 06 October 2010 at 12:27am | IP Logged | |||||
Philip, would you PM me his email address also? I've been around there for awhile and would be happy to make it a second part-time job. LOL 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5205 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 186 of 242 07 October 2010 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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You're using the Ultimate Japanese book, aren't you? Do you like it? I am thinking of playing around with Japanese, but I noticed that they don't really introduce any sort of writing system for what seems to be a LONG time.
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| 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 187 of 242 09 October 2010 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, it's been a long time. (Happy October!) I wrote before that I would check back in if all went well, and it didn't quite. I then decided for some reason that I would not write in my log until I was all caught up. Well, it’s been a couple weeks and I’m still not there. I’ve been taking notes on what I’ve been doing though, but I was afraid that these are just going to get too long by the time I finish, so I’ll post them now, with some explanations. They aren’t in chronological order for the most part; I’m grouping them according to categories.
РУССКИЙ: According to my notes I did lesson four from Ultimate Russian (didn’t study the vocabulary yet though). I also spoke with some Russian people at church when I was there for my great-aunt’s one-year memorial service, and with the girl from Tajikistan in my German class. I also studied the vocabulary from lesson seven from TY Russian and went through lesson seven from Penguin Russian. I later studied that vocabulary and proceeded to read through lesson eight of the same book. DEUTSCH: I wrote and read quite a bit in German in the past couple weeks. I ended up substituting some of this unintended study time for German activities later in the week so that I wouldn’t get more behind my goals. I’ve also done some studying, mostly related to school stuff and looking up new words in the texts that we’ve been reading in class and adding new words I hear in class into Anki. My German class is just wonderful—I learn lots everyday, and I would like to think that I don’t sound like *such* an idiot when I speak anymore (my writing/listening/reading is okay, but my speaking was/is not very good). فارسى: I have done quite a bit for Persian. I have done several hours worth of Pimsleur, up through lesson 20, I believe. In addition, I’ve finally studied the vocabulary for lesson two of Spoken World Farsi (so I now know and understand all of the crazy relative terms) and reviewed the grammar notes. I also previewed a bit of lesson three. KISWAHILI: I’ve made some progress in Swahili. I had hit a bit of a rut in my motivation, but now thanks to a Swahili thread in the Multilingual Lounge I was pushed to regain contact with the language and have regained motivation. I wrote a couple posts there and was pleased to find that it was not as difficult as I had thought it would be and reading what the other member wrote was also very easy. I’ve reviewed quite a bit of the grammar, most of which came back quickly and painlessly. I’ve also reviewed most of my Swahili Anki deck, but it has grown a bit again. I’ll attempt to bring it back down this weekend. ROMÂNĂ: According to my notes, I did 2.25 hours of Romanian at one point, but I forgot to note what I was working from! I would guess that it was Assimil, but I’m not quite sure. I’ve also studied the vocabulary from lesson nine of TY Romanian, and gone through some of lesson ten. I also wrote an email to my friend all in Romanian and she responded back in Romanian. When I study next I’ll send back a reply in Romanian. :) SVENSKA: Last Wednesday, September 29th, was my one-year anniversary of starting to study Swedish. My original goal was basic fluency in six months (later revised to eight), but as I wasn’t quite there yet in May and still am not, my current goal is basic fluency by the end of 2010. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to work more than a couple minutes on Swedish on its birthday. :( However, just a few days ago I finally finished lesson seven from Colloquial Swedish (that book is truly a vocabulary goldmine) and studied the vocabulary in BYKI. 日本語: My Assimil Japanese arrived sometime in the past week or so, but I haven’t used it at all yet. Maybe I’ll do some this weekend… I found out though that it has romanizations under each line of the dialogue, which is disappointing. I would have much preferred just having furigana, because that is much easier to ignore, but nothing much I can do for that. I also worked for and hour and a half out of Ultimate Japanese, lesson 35. If I remember correctly, I’m all done with that lesson now and ready to move on to lesson 36. As for my presentation for class, thank you TixhiiDon for those corrections, they were helpful! I presented it in class and I got a 100%. ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ: As I was reviewing my Swahili Anki deck, I had a big boost of motivation and was able to get through my Greek Anki deck in just one go I think—about 900 due cards! So I am up to date on that now, which is happy news. I haven’t done any Greek besides that, but I will be continuing to work when I get around to it… Oh, and my grandparents will be returning from Greece for the winter and spring in just a couple weeks, and I intend to have as close to a complete immersion environment as possible when I’m with them. ESPAÑOL: I have gotten addicted to watching El Internado again, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it is the most amazing show that I’ve ever seen in any language and because it’s in Spanish so I’m getting lots of exposure still, but it’s a curse because it’s eating up my time! I have watched five new episodes since I last posted and am most of the way through the sixth season, which is excellent by the way. I was a bit shocked and traumatized when one of the main characters was killed off though… :( CYMRAEG: A couple weeks ago, the day after I last posted, Welsh sparked my interest a little bit and I was listening to samples of spoken Welsh from the Bible on Professor Arguelles’s "Language Museum". The spark has faded now, but it is listed on my hit list as low priority. ქართული: I learned the Georgian alphabet in May of this year, but since I didn’t use it much or at all in June, July, or August, I forgot most of it. A couple days ago I made a practice worksheet for myself to relearn it, based on the method which I used to learn it originally. It worked well and I can again read and write the beautiful Mkhedruli script. I still have problems when reading though. I have to sound out the words very slowly, letter by letter, which is rather annoying. However, from my experience with Persian, if I just keep practicing it will get easier because I am finding that I can read the Perso-Arabic script much more quickly and easily (as long as the vowels are marked) now than before I started Persian. 漢字: I am also pleased to announce that my kanji studies are going well too. Although I’m not doing 50 new kanji per day anymore (it was simply too much and the reviews were stacking up, which was what discouraged me from reviewing at all in the first place), I am reviewing several new ones everyday. These are coming back VERY easily. I think that I had just gotten out of the “kanji mindset” and now that I have refreshed myself with even just a few of them, most of them are flooding back with little or no effort on my part at all. I am keeping on top of the reviews and as of right now, I only (ha!) have to restudy about 1250 of them. MISCELLANEOUS: And then some stuff that doesn’t quite go anywhere else… Today was All Cultures Day at my school which is a day when the world language classes hold a fundraiser in the cafeteria by bringing in food from the countries whose languages they teach (Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Latin). It was pretty fun and very tasty! I’m happy to announce that I have finally been able to successfully transition into a sleep schedule that is suitable for the school year. I’m now getting up early enough in the mornings that I can do my Anki reviews and study for a while before having to head off to school. This was how I got most of my studying done last year, so this is a big success for me. This weekend I have a friend staying at my house because her parents are out of town, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to accomplish of my admittedly lofty goals. GOALS: I’ve kept track of the time I have to study for all of my languages throughout this and have tallied up how much I need to get done by the end of this weekend to be caught up through Sunday. It’s a lot, to say the least. And without further ado, here are my goals… - Kiswahili: 4 hours - Ελληνικά: 2 hours, 45 minutes - Svenska: 2 hours, 20 minutes - Română: 2 hours - 日本語: 1.5 hours - Русский: 1 hour - Deutsch: 30 minutes And then, if I have time (as if!)… - ქართული: More alphabet practice - Italiano: 30 minutes MORE RESPONSES: Sunshine, thank you for your message! Kerrie, yes I am using Ultimate Japanese and I find it to be fabulous. The way they explain the grammar sometimes goes over my head, but I usually study the examples enough that I can understand what they mean by way of those. As for the writing system, it is a problem that they don’t even use kana very much. They treat the writing system as an optional thing, so they introduce it only very gradually and never put the main dialogues in authentic script except at the end of the lesson, and even then it doesn’t use many kanji. I actually find kanji to help my reading in Japanese a lot (contrary to what other people in my class think), so if when reading and trying to make sense of a text in Japanese, I would rather read it in rōmaji than in pure kana (but I would prefer most to read it in kana and kanji with furigana). The best situation would obviously be to use complete authentic script with kanji and kana, but sadly they didn’t think of that. I’d recommend getting the book anyways, and to work on the written language from another course, like Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji. That’s about it for now. Give yourself a nice pat on the back if you made it through all of that. Good night! Edited by ellasevia on 09 October 2010 at 5:41am 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 188 of 242 11 October 2010 at 7:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, it was not a very good weekend. My friend apparently had very little homework and did not bring anything to do because she was under the impression that I would be providing entertainment the whole time. This was somewhat the case, but there is only so much to talk about, so many board games you can play, so many computer games you can play, so many movies you can watch...
I, on the other hand, had homework and hefty load of work to do in general. However, because of obligations and distractions, I was only able to do my Russian and Japanese. Of course, I kept up on Anki and kanji too, and actually I also did 15 minutes of Swahili. For Russian I studied the vocabulary for lesson eight of Penguin Russian and then proceeded to read through all of lesson nine and made my vocabulary list for that too. For Japanese, I studied the vocabulary for lesson 35 of Ultimate Japanese and then did the first eight lessons of Assimil Japanese, which were extremely easy. :) For Swahili, I just reviewed with Anki. That's all for now. I hope I can finally catch up this week. I refuse to let go of this study time! EDIT: I forgot to mention that my newest linguistic craving is...Czech! I just adore Czech, and along with its big cousin Russian, it is one of my favorite Slavic languages (Polish would probably come in 3rd place). I listened to Czech audio for a fair amount of the day and it was so tantalizing... I could understand a few words from Russian and it was very exciting. The grammar also looks interesting and similar to Russian. Anyways...Czech is cool. Edited by ellasevia on 11 October 2010 at 2:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5366 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 189 of 242 11 October 2010 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow ellasevia...at least 13 languages (if we include Italian), and now you're getting interested in Czech too (which I don't blame you at all)!
Good luck with hitting basic fluency with Swedish by the end of the year. What's your plan for getting speaking and writing up to speed? I can't believe you're already into season 6 of El Internado (I still haven't got past season 1 yet lol)... Edited by Teango on 11 October 2010 at 12:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5159 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 190 of 242 11 October 2010 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Jsem rád, že chceš se učit češtinu. Moc se mi to také libí a doufám, že s tím začneš, protože tento blog je můj nejoblíbenější a chcí sledovat jak se ti to bude dářit. Hodně štěstí!
So if you do start Czech, this is maybe your first reading task! 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 191 of 242 12 October 2010 at 12:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, 13 languages, including English and other ones I already speak. I prefer to make myself feel better about it by thinking of it as "only" 8, which are the ones I actively study: German, Swedish, Romanian, Greek, Russian, Persian, Swahili, Japanese. I do, however, have daily Anki reviews (assuming I do them all, which has not been the case since the beginning of July) for 14 languages, which includes all of those thirteen excluding English, but adding Dutch and Finnish. :) For Swedish, I'm trying to get lots and lots of vocabulary, as I think that is my main issue at the moment. My Swedish grammar-reader which I was using earlier in the year was great for that, but a lot of the words were obscure or archaic, many of which I had never heard of in English and can even now hardly grasp. I'm going through Colloquial Swedish right now which seems to be really good, and then I might race through Assimil Le Suédois Sans Peine for some more. I'll probably return to my grammar-reader to review some grammar. My uncle used to live in Sweden many years ago and has managed to keep up his Swedish, so when I see him I'll try to take the opportunity to speak with him in Swedish. For writing I might revisit my grammar-reader yet again and go back through some of the translation exercises. I'm not really sure actually, so we'll see how this all goes! Sí, ya he mirado la mayoridad de los capítulos de la sexta temporada de El Internado. ¡Es buenísimo! ¡No puedo creer que todavía no hayas mirado más! También lo mirábamos en mi clase de español el año pasado, y los estudiantes del nivel cuatro también lo miran ahora. A las profesores les encanta esta serie, y justifican mirarlo en clase en dándoles a los estudiantes tareas relacionadas con ella. Por ejemplo les dan hojas de trabajo con preguntas de comprensión, interpretación, etc. Y hoy vi un papel de mi amigo que está en el nivel cinco este año que fue una hoja de planificación para un ensayo que van a escribir sobre este tema. Oí a una chica decir que piensa que es la mejor serie de tele que ha visto nunca, en inglés o en español.
Ahoj, hribecek. I bolded the parts of your message which I could understand. These were mostly from cognates with Russian that I know, but several are from prior flirtations with Czech or Polish. There seems to be a very good amount of transfer, considering my limited level in Russian and especially Polish and Czech. Then I looked up the rest. Děkuji za kompliment! Sadly, for sheer lack of time I don't think I'll be adding Czech into my schedule anytime soon. I also think it would be a good idea to get my Russian up to a better level (currently high beginner level probably, maybe A2?) before starting another Slavic language so that I have a strong base already and then don't confuse them later. It's very tempting though! 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 192 of 242 12 October 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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DAY 4: Persian, Swedish
Anki Reviews: 1126 repetitions in 1.26 hours Kanji Reviews: ~90 due; ~40 reviewed; 0 restudied Today was a bit scattered, and I didn't actually get much done despite having plenty of time. I actually worked on Persian and German instead of Persian and Swedish, but whatever. I'm still trying to catch up! Always catch-up with me, but at least it's a bit motivational to be behind all the time. For Persian, I listened to lesson 20 of Pimsleur Farsi and also reviewed over the days of the week, the months, and the seasons in Persian. I also intend to listen to another Pimsleur lesson once I go up to bed. That will get me all up to date for Persian. For German I worked on some vocabulary for school and then wrote a long letter in German. Total, I probably spent more than the half an hour of German which was required. In fact, I almost certainly was working on that for at least an hour, perhaps even an hour and a half. I might substitute this time later on in the week so as not to be even more behind... I was hoping to get some Romanian or Swedish in too, but I didn't have the chance. Sadness. This weekend, the language I was listening to for background "music" was Czech, and I continued that today, but I decided to try something new so I listened to a lot of Arabic today, and I remembered why I wanted to learn Arabic--it sounds so amazing, like something from a different planet. My mother thinks it sounds ugly, but I think it sounds so spectacularly weird and choking-on-every-word-like that it by far makes up for any ugliness. Now, if only I could pronounce that! Okay, up to bed and to listen to some more فارسى. !شب بخير God natt! P.S. Why doesn't Persian/Arabic typeface behave? It just doesn't work. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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