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Arekkusu’s TAC 2012 Team ne nur | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 265 of 407 23 January 2012 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Quick update.
The last few days have been mostly devoted to Japanese, watching the sumo tournament, Japanese home renovation shows, etc., meeting with partners and taking part of the weekly language exchange group. But I’ve also been working on a speech as I’m seriously considering taking part in the local annual speech contest again, this time in the advanced category. I realize how much I learned from the process last time, so I’m sure it will be very beneficial this time again. I met a Korean student yesterday who, besides being VERY advanced in Japanese, said that they typically teach pitch accent in beginner’s Japanese classes in Korea – not just the simple HAshi vs. haSHI, but the actual system and patterns. I’m jealous! Unless I’m mistaken, it’s virtually never taught in North American classes, at least no one I’ve spoken to has ever been taught it. If your experience is different, please let me know! I've been told by Prof. Ota that accent is introduced at York University (in Toronto), but I have no idea how much is taught when it comes to predicting verb pattern changes, for instance. One of his classes introducing pitch can be viewed here -- check from slide 11. I was particularly happy to hear him say, shortly after the 34th minute, that having poor pronunciation at the beginning will affect listening comprehension. Edited by Arekkusu on 23 January 2012 at 4:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 266 of 407 24 January 2012 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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This weekend, someone asked me how I learned Japanese.
I didn't know what to answer. I still don't know what to answer, actually. There is no doubt that the most important part of my learning is having partners to speak with, but apart from that... I frankly haven't been studying much. I seek some exposure through video, look up words, I read but not that much (mostly blogs lately), I exchange emails, but not that much... The upside is that I'm quite comfortable speaking with people because I've done hundreds of hours of it since I started, but the downside is that I've got to take this more seriously. For instance, I'm not very comfortable manipulating the different degrees of politeness, and I really need to improve my academic vocabulary. I need to step it up! Well... I'd like to step it up, but with all my other projects going on, it may simply be impossible. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 267 of 407 27 January 2012 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||
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As a first step towards my goal of translating professionally from Japanese within 5
years of study, I actually did my first translation today! Into Japanese to boot! However, I'm not getting paid, and I'm doing this to help a friend who is volunteering to translate the local Cultural Centre's newsletter. By far, the best tool I found was http://eow.alc.co.jp. I has tons of examples and I found everything I was looking for. ------ I've amended the suggestions I wrote a few posts ago about the acquisition of pitch. Here is the new version: In our opinion, learning pitch consists of three important steps: a) understanding the pitch system: students need to understand how Japanese pitch works, so that when presented with words and their pitch, they can independently and correctly predict and pronounce an entire sentence; b) understanding accent changes: students need to study the patterns that govern accent displacement, such as how accent placement is determined in compound nouns or how verb endings (gobi/語尾) carry or assign pitch information; c) acquiring independence: students need to learn the pitch of every word through the use of the proper tools, namely paper, electronic or online dictionaries; students might want to establish a methodology or structured study plan. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 268 of 407 01 February 2012 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Finnish Challenge has begun!!!
General impressions and Assimil So far, I've only been able to do 30 minutes (alarm clock didn't ring!) of Assimil, but I'm loving it!!! I sort of skimmed through the first 4 lessons back and forth and I quite like how it's introducing various grammatical points right away, like genitive, accusative, inessive (?), etc. The lessons are also very short, I suppose they'll get longer as we move on. I first thought it'd be impossible to finish the whole book in 45 hours, but given the length of the lessons so far, who knows. I do not intend to do any passive phase. Technique So far, I've been reading everything presented in the book outloud, and I did all the translation exercises orally. I also improvized and created various sentences (orally always) playing with the vocabulary that had been presented. This is what feels natural to me, and I felt quite comfortable with the material I'd "acquired". At the end, I did however write down the verbs that had been covered. I also reread all the conversations at the end for review. Recording Out of curiosity, I decided to record (audio only) my study sessions since I basically talk the whole time. I won't be able to record everything as I might end up studying in all kinds of places, but it might be interesting to go back to see what I did exactly. I could potentially make these recordings available if there were any interest. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 269 of 407 02 February 2012 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finnish Challenge Day 2 (total 2 h)
During yesterday's hour, I did lessons 5 to 9 of Assimil, and this morning, for 30 min, I did lessons 10 and 11. Each session was preceded by, and ended with, a quick review of previous lessons (reading the dialogues and doing the into-Finnish translation exercises). Either the lessons are getting harder or my review sessions are getting longer, but my average time per lesson is slightly increasing (from 12 min per, to 15 min). As I said before, I'm doing the active phase right away. I care about the time because I really hope I can finish the whole book and move on to something else before the challenge is over. At this point, it seems possible, but I assume the lessons will keep getting longer and I also plan some sessions with a partner. I also did a few minutes of Anki on the bus, but the cards were actually for Teach Yourself, so it's just a way to expose myself to some new words -- one already popped up in Assimil though -- aamulla. I also plan to listen to the recordings on the bus this morning (I couldn't yesterday as the filenames were too long and I couldn't read the lessons' titles...). I'm still really enjoying Finnish. Japanese Since I can't just abandon my Japanese, my tutor came over and we spoke Japanese for about 1 h 30. Tomorrow, we will be meeting with another Japanese friend to discuss the translation of the Cultural Centre's newsletter for which she is responsible. I already did a short translation (into Japanese) for her and since she was quite satisfied, I'll probably be doing more. Edited by Arekkusu on 02 February 2012 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 270 of 407 03 February 2012 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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As I have reached lesson 15 of Assimil Finnish, I’m left to ponder how vocabulary was chosen.
The author must have decided at some point that fun was more important than functionality; otherwise, why do I know how to say the verb “to swim”, when I can’t say “to think”? How come I know how to say “swimsuit”, “unfortunately”, "pool" and “via”, but I can’t say “because”? I don’t remember using “swimsuit” in the last few months, but I know I use “think” and “because” at least several times an hour. I'm probably being too harsh; perhaps the author has indeed gone through the trouble of actually analyzing frequency and still decided to add a few additional words for fun. I suppose it's up to me to ignore them... In the meantime, I can't think and I can't give the reason for anything. Then again, I've only been studying for 3 hours... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5122 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 271 of 407 03 February 2012 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Ugh, I hate it when courses do that. My Esperanto course has already taught me words like apple crate and overcoat but I've been forced to look up some of the more relevant words myself. Congratulations on your progress with Assimil, by the way. 15 lessons since the start of the challenge is impressive! Edited by ReneeMona on 03 February 2012 at 4:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 272 of 407 05 February 2012 at 3:11am | IP Logged | ||
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@ReneeMona -- Thanks, and hats off to you for all the hours you've put in so far in the
challenge! Accelerated Finnish Challenge At this point, I'm nearing the 5.5 h mark (out of an allowed 6) in the Finnish challenge, and if the 6wcbot info is anything to go by, no one seems to have reached the 1.5-hour daily allowance. I'm starting to wonder if the rate of attrition mentioned in another post isn't going to affect the challenge as well. I do know some people are waiting till the end to work intensely though, and others like Sprachprofi have been exceptionally busy of late. Perhaps others aren't using the bot regularly. The fact that I'm only allowed 1.5 hours a day (and that I need to keep track of it) has an effect on how I study. Normally, I would study here and there, but now I sort of have to set aside time to study. And since the time is limited, I have to study more efficiently, which means that I avoid studying further when I'm tired -- in absolute terms, any study time would otherwise be worthwhile, but in this case, I need to limit my study to more optimal sessions. Today, I finished lesson 17 of Assimil. Thereafter, I had a one-hour session with a new language partner who, besides speaking outstanding French, was kind enough to help me practice my Finnish. I read dialogues 4 to 11 and he asked me some questions about the text or asked me to translate English sentences into Finnish. Of course, my knowledge is still limited, but I hope to be able to do more next time we meet. I enjoyed it and could have kept going for another hour (we didn't cover lessons 12 to 17). Lovely language, lovely challenge. Japanese I was given another text to translate! I'm liking it... I used Wordfast Anywhere as a TM. Quite useful. Edited by Arekkusu on 05 February 2012 at 3:12am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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