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Branching Out in Amsterdam TAC2011 - IJ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| J S Newbie Netherlands Joined 5105 days ago 25 posts - 31 votes Studies: Irish, English* Studies: French, Dutch | Message 1 of 7 06 December 2010 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am a recent arrival in Amsterdam and will be starting on Dutch from the absolute beginning – starting today. Being in The Netherlands ought to help! I am keen to join the “January Dutch Challenge” and connect with other Dutch learners and speakers.
I cannot remember the username I had a couple years ago here, so I created a new account. New country, new language, new login! Language Background Finding how-to-learn-any-language.com a few years ago (after picking up Barry Farber’s book from the discount table at a shop) completely revolutionised my study of French. After years of unproductive classroom study, I got more serious about learning French. Using the techniques discussed on this site, I got myself to A2 level and began to really enjoy using my language skills to converse with friends and travel in France. I am putting French into “maintenance” mode in my first attempt to seriously learn a third language. I have some concerns about interference, as I find myself occasionally starting to speak French. Sometimes it feels as though my brain is wired not for “French”, but for “not-English” – so I expect I will be upgrading the wiring to accommodate more categories. I am Irish, but not educated there, so did not learn Irish as a child. In addition to maintaining French, I will also plan to continue adding Irish phrases. This is more about continuing to feel connected to country than about attaining useful fluency, so it is difficult to predict how much time to devote. Because it is about an emotional reaction rather than a practical goal, I expect my attention to Irish will vary. Learning Plan I plan to maximise my early learning on listening and pronunciation, then proceed to reading and vocabulary development. I expect speaking skills will develop naturally at first, as I use opportunities in shops and restaurants to reply in Dutch and to converse with Dutch friends. Then I will evaluate my progress and decide how to continue from there. I have begun to assemble tools and resources to support my studies... -- Immersive listening. From today, I switched away from the BBC and other English-language television, and have Dutch TV on (nearly) all the time. Sometimes RTL news, sometimes Disney cartoons – depending on how aurally appealing the show is at the time. -- Audio books. For additional listening practice, I plan to listen to a few books I know well as audiobooks in Dutch, such as “Grimms’ Fairy Tales”, “The Lord of the Rings”, and “Harry Potter”. -- Pronunciation. I am interested in having excellent pronunciation and willing to invest the effort needed, so I plan to start early with focused study of prosody, phonetics, “mouth set” (as Rikyu-san has called it), and phoneme articulation. As I am living in Holland now, I find myself remembering words from my environment with my close-approximation-if-this-were-English pronunciation in my head. Terrible bad habit! -- Language Courses. I have not yet decided which study program to use first – Assimil, Michel Tomas, or Teach Yourself. There is so much advice and discussion about each program on the forums that I am still working my way through it all. -- Flash cards. I plan to use Flash Cards Deluxe (flashcardsdeluxe.com) for SRS. I auditioned several flash card programs for smartphones and laptops, and chose Flash Cards Deluxe for its appealing interface, ease of integrating audio and video, support for three-sided cards, and easy editing either on the handheld or in Excel. I plan to copy the sentences from whatever language course I choose into flash cards for easy mobile revision. Thanks! Writing this first log post has already been helpful in clarifying my intent, and I am excited about posting my progress and reading your comments. Thanks very much to everyone who has contributed to this site for the rich resources and warm encouragement. Regards, J.S. Edited by J S on 23 December 2010 at 12:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| J S Newbie Netherlands Joined 5105 days ago 25 posts - 31 votes Studies: Irish, English* Studies: French, Dutch | Message 2 of 7 08 December 2010 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Lots of incomprehensible input the last two days... and I am starting to pick out patterns and sounds in the language. I have to laugh when my brain, in its desperate search for pattern and meaning, creates a language mondegreen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen). And I have to wonder: this dialog can’t possibly actually be about “the cold cut side” of the “corning ware”, can it??? And: did he say “hang tight”??? :-D
As I write this, I am really enjoying listening to “Alice in Wonderland” in Dutch. I have a ~19 minute recording playing on loop. The story is so familiar, I find that I understand the gist of what is happening in the story from non-language cues: the rhythm of the Walrus and Carpenter poetry, the sound of croquet balls in the background, and the different voices the narrator adopts. Assimil Yesterday I tackled Assimil lesson one, and tried to work out the study method that might be most effective for me. I downloaded Audacity to edit out silences, then discovered I could use the editing process as part of my learning process. Here’s what I tried on day one: (1) I listened to the lesson several times on a loop, first without the translation, then with it. (2) I opened the sound file in Audacity. Using the label function, I labelled each phrase with the Dutch text. Finding the ideal start and end to the sound clips took several repetitions of the phrase, which I heard while reading the text. (3) While labelling the clips, I also typed the text into my flash cards spreadsheet. When I was done labelling, I used Audacity’s Export Multiple function to create individual sound clip files with the Dutch phrase as filename. My goal for this evening is to develop a streamlined process to bundle the exercise text and sound files, then sync to my iPod Touch for SRS review. I am terribly uncomfortable forming the Dutch sounds, so I find the “read aloud” and shadowing practice daunting. I hear that I am not making the sounds correctly, and I feel frustrated that I cannot move my mouth (and tongue and jaw and the whole apparatus) into the right position to make the sounds I hear. It is tempting to skip altogether. As soon as I post this, I clean the kitchen (master procrastinator, myself) then get to work on Assimil lesson two. Pronunciation Tutor No initial luck to report in finding a local pronunciation tutor. I emailed a few professors and researchers from Linguist List (www.linguistlist.org), but none of them had someone to recommend. Next step is to contact the language departments at the Vrije Universiteit and Amsterdam University. Egads, the VU charges outrageous fees for private tuition: http://www.let.vu.nl/en/department-dutch-as-a-second-languag e/courses-in-dutch/private-tuition. My search of the forum here has not turned up a post on pronunciation tutors in Amsterdam, so I plan to start a new thread to solicit recommendations. Procrastination & Distraction One of the strange experiences in returning to the forums is stepping into years-old arguments and attacks. It is sometimes annoying, often fascinating, and always distracting. It makes sifting through the forums for gems of wisdom stunningly time consuming. Though I am tickled pink at the idea of seeing intergalactic demonic playboy bunny sex ninjas throwing stars made out of cheese. It occurred to me that the bulk of useful information about learning languages is in the site forums, rather than in the static sections of this site. In my experience, a wiki is a very useful environment for this material, such as the forum glossary (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp? TID=5640) and Dutch FAQ (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp? TID=17864). A search of the forum turned up the thread on the unofficial How To Learn Any Language wiki project (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp? TID=10076) so at least I know someone thought it was a good idea two years ago. I think this would be especially motivating to a new learner who really needs a summary of learning approaches, resources, and language information in an easy-to-navigate, accessible format. As I looked over my bookmarks, notes, and extracts from forum posts to see what I can contribute to the wiki, I realise this is an exceptionally good way to procrastinate. I muster as much will power as I can and... start writing my log entry. ;-) Study Materials I am chastising myself for not getting out to the library today for more source material. But, it is just too cold out! (-2 today, though not fogged as yesterday. And, slightly off topic, I learnt the weather app on my phone uses the word “dreary”. How depressing.) I will focus on feeling glad I have my lovely Dutch brown bread from Hartog’s Volkoren Bakkerij & Maalderij to sustain me while I study. Num num! I browsed through the Shtooka project site this afternoon (http://swac-collections.org/). The database looks as though it is an excellent resource for the three-side flash cards I plan to use (Dutch text/Dutch sound/English text). As with my Assimil extracts, the real challenge will be to find a streamlined process for exporting the sound and text for quick flashcard creation. Off to clean then study... Regards, J.S. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| J S Newbie Netherlands Joined 5105 days ago 25 posts - 31 votes Studies: Irish, English* Studies: French, Dutch | Message 3 of 7 20 December 2010 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Progress! It is too early yet to claim I have found a groove, but I think I have a good start on a workable, repeatable study plan for Dutch. And, I am signed up for the 2011 TAC Challenge on Team IJ and the January Dutch 6-Week Challenge. Exciting times! :-)
I noticed Friday for the first time that I could listen to conversations around me in public and pick out individual word-sounds (especially “geen” and “niet”). I am thrilled to have the “I could understand this” feeling already. It really will make me a shameless eavesdropper for a while, I am sure. No replies yet to my request for recommendations for tutors in Amsterdam. Please do let me know if you have anyone to recommend. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=24055 Assimil Dutch With Ease Lessons 1 through 3, done. I got sidetracked in completing Assimil lessons by my search for a flashcard-import process. I am happy to report that I feel it is completely sorted! :-) I am looking forward to powering through the rest of Dutch With Ease. Here is the process I use:
The process of creating the flashcard with audio results in many repetitions and reviews of the lesson. Because I am creating flashcards and reviewing at the same time, I feel good about my productivity. As others have posted elsewhere, I am focussing on the with ease aspect of Assimil. You may be able to tell from my very slow progress that I am not using Assimil as my primary language acquisition method. For that, I am trying L-R... Harry Potter L-R I am on Chapter 10 of Harry Potter en de Steen der Wijzen audiobook (approximately 5 hours listening, not including a couple repeated chapters), and I am reading along in the English. As far as I can tell, the translated audio matches very closely with the text, which makes for an excellent L-R experience. One of the disorienting features of the Dutch translation is that many of the names are changed. “Dumbledore” is “Perkamentus”, “McGonagall” is “Anderling”. I use this page as a reference to the name changes: http://www.eulenfeder.de/int/gbint.html. Because I don’t see much value in learning that “McGonagall” = “Anderling”, I spent some time this weekend editing my eBook file to substitute the Dutch names into the otherwise-English text of the first and second novels. I am hopeful this will make it easier to stay synchronised as I listen and read. Pimsleur Compact Dutch I tried the first lesson in Pimsleur, and enjoyed learning a few “survival” phrases. Because I am living in the Netherlands while I learn, I often feel the need to use polite phrases and basic terms in the local native language (mostly while shopping). I expect Pimsleur will be a good supplement to help me quickly learn greetings, numbers, and similar basics, while L-R and Assimil take me steadily along the road to real comprehension. In the meantime, it is nice to greet locals with a proper “Dag!” French I do not want to dedicate much formal study effort to maintaining French, but I realise my listening comprehension is very poor and just getting worse. For that reason, I will try L-R in parallel with two languages. As this is my first attempt to learn a third language, I am curious to see what effect two L-R practices will have on interference between them. I have the audio recording of Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers and I plan to listen to the French audiobook as I progress chapter by chapter in Dutch. The first thing I have noticed is the French audiobook does not correspond as closely to the original as the Dutch. It is not insurmountable, but in the first few chapters, I have noticed a half-paragraph here and there have gone missing. Procrastination & Distraction As always, browsing the Forum and gathering more learning materials is a tremendous distraction! Negativity I am consistently baffled by the sometimes-overwhelming negativity displayed by certain contributors to the forum. What I find completely inexplicable is the need some people feel to join in a discussion on a topic about which they have nothing positive to say. I only wish posters would take advantage of their virtual “ignore” button to skip entirely the threads about topics they find annoying, uninteresting, redundant, or excessive. And we can all hope for a day when the forum software includes such a feature to allow us to more easily ignore that which we find annoying. Esperanto I am delighted to have stumbled across postings about Esperanto by Sprachprofi, Volte, Fasulye, T0dd, and others. I previously knew less than nothing about the language. Now I feel as though I have an excellent understanding of the utility of this language as well as what to expect in learning it. And, funnily, in reading about the language, I started learning the language! Without taking time away from my Dutch and French studies, I plan to continue reading about Esperanto. Using the same process I developed for my Assimil flashcards, I made the lessons from the Fundamento (http://en.lernu.net/kursoj/fundamento/) into a Flashcards Deluxe deck to review occasionally. I am looking forward to joining the conversation when I get my 100 hours in. ;-) Grammar Reading linguistic discussions on this forum and learning about Esperanto elsewhere have both brought to my attention how poorly I understand underlying grammar concepts. Like many, I learned native grammar prescriptively. Although I can diagram a sentence in English, I have not developed functional understanding of universal grammar concepts such as declensions, case, aspect and mood. I spent some time this week studying basic grammar. Here is an introduction I found useful: http://www.nativlang.com/linguistics/grammar-morphology-less ons.php Deliberate Practice A discussion thread here reminded me how inspirational I found the book Talent Is Overrated. Like many, I believed the people who told me I just was not talented enough to do certain things... sing, play a musical instrument, or speak foreign languages. It had always been my secret wish to have a lovely singing voice. Last year, after reading the book, I decided on a whim to take singing lessons. It was a shock to discover (to be convinced by my tutor, really) that I am *not* tone deaf, and that I *can* sing – if I only put the time and effort into the deliberate practice necessary to learn how. Everyone who had told me it was a matter of talent – that I didn’t have – were flat wrong. For anyone who is not familiar with the book, here are some links you may find interesting:
Time for Assimil! Wishing you all the best for today.... Regards, J.S. N.B.: Please note that, as a forum newbie, all my links have a space automatically inserted by the forum software. You must remove the space when you cut and paste the address. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 4 of 7 20 December 2010 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Holy ****, those fees are indeed outrageous!
What exactly are you looking for in a tutor? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| J S Newbie Netherlands Joined 5105 days ago 25 posts - 31 votes Studies: Irish, English* Studies: French, Dutch | Message 5 of 7 20 December 2010 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am reassured that you agree!
In short, I am looking to replicate a brilliant experience I had in 2008 with a French phonology instructor at the Alliance Française in Paris. But since you weren't there (were you? **peer**) I will explain... I struggled for years (and still do) with listening comprehension in French. My writing was passable, my individual word vocabulary was excellent, and my ability to speak was effective. But I could not participate in a "real" conversation because I simply could not hear the words within the phrases of my interlocutor. In 2008, I took a phonology course at the Alliance Française and had a sincere breakthrough in my comprehension. The instructor taught the music of the language, as well as how it is actually pronounced by native speakers. We drilled positioning the mouth and tongue to create the sounds. In learning the phonology and (what I now understand is called) the prosody of the language, I found that I could suddenly hear the language in a much more comprehensible way. Although I still have a long way to go, I am making progress in listening comprehension that I could not make before. As I embark upon Dutch, I am hoping to replicate that experience very early in my learning. I have found my native-speaking friends can make the sounds, but cannot explain how they do so. Therefore, I would like to find a Dutch tutor who specialises in pronunciation, prosody and phoneme articulation. If any linguists in the group feel I am asking for the wrong thing or being unclear in my description, your suggestions are welcome. Many of the liguistic terms I see on the board are new to me, and I am not always comfortable that I am using them correctly. Many thanks, J.S. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 6 of 7 20 December 2010 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Since English students at my university take a course in English phonology, I thought maybe Dutch students take one in Dutch phonology but that’s apparently not the case. I searched through the online study guides of both the UvA and the VU and I can’t believe there’s not a single course on Dutch phonetics! I’m afraid I can’t really think of anything I can do to help you. I see you’re already planning to connect the linguistics departments at the universities. If you want, I could ask around among fellow-students and professors if anyone knows someone at the UvA (or the VU) who specialises in Dutch phonetics. (There must be someone in the whole of Amsterdam who has studied that, right?) I would certainly recommend you keep reading about grammatical terms and maybe acquaint yourself with the IPA and common terms in phonology. I think that if you do find someone who can help you, you’ll probably need that kind of background knowledge. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 7 29 December 2010 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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NL: JS, ik wens je veel succes met het leren van de Nederlandse taal. Wat leuk dat je ook belangstelling voor het Esperanto hebt. Ik zal de activiteiten van het team "IJ" meevolgen.
EN: JS, I wish you good luck for your studies of the Dutch language. Nice to read that you are also interested in Esperanto. I will follow the activities of team "IJ". Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful |
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