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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5822 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 1 of 7 07 December 2010 at 5:09am | IP Logged |
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While continuing to date French, Swedish, and Chinese with varying regularity, I've started hooking up with German, Portuguese, and Swahili. And kind of Welsh.
And it feels so good. Not sure where I'm going with all this, but Winter Break is coming up and I think it'd be nice to take a break from the usuals and have some fun with some new languages. Also I expect to have a good deal of free time next semester so picking up a new language would be advisable enough for me to devote a lot of time to it, that is how I learned Swedish after all. Currently... reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (translated into French) by Jonathan Safran Foer doing Pimsleur German amassing Portugese resources working through Kiswahili kwa Komputa and the FSI Swahili course flipping through Teach Yourself Living Welsh Let's say for now I'll have my fun until next semester, at which point I stick with one of this new batch (German, Portugese, Swahili, and Welsh, that is). I also may be going to study Turkish, Russian, or Chinese on a scholarship next summer, so one of those may very well become this new addition, also. So, I thought I should start a language log to have some place to track my progress and maybe make some, like, decisions, y'know? Instead of just hurling myself haphazardly at various languages? Seems like it might be a good idea. Edited by kottoler.ello on 08 December 2010 at 5:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5961 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 2 of 7 07 December 2010 at 7:09am | IP Logged |
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Great title! It perfectly describes how I feel about my own studies a lot of the time. I get such enjoyment out of studying new languages and gradually converting the nonsense to meaningful language, but sometimes I think that what I've gotten myself into is just insane!
I've been studying Swahili since February of this year and have not regretted my decision at all. It's a delightful language from some wonderful countries, and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have. I've reached a strong-ish intermediate level, so if you need any help I might be able to assist you, as well as recommending some good resources. Same with Portuguese and perhaps German. :) Good luck with your languages, and I'll be eagerly following this log as you have mentioned several languages here that I'm interested in. Bonne chance! Lycka till! 加油! Viel Glück! Boa sorte! Bahati njema! Pob lwc! P.S. Are you a high school student too? Edited by ellasevia on 07 December 2010 at 7:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5822 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 3 of 7 09 December 2010 at 6:40am | IP Logged |
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I think I'm enjoying Swahili the most right now. Portuguese is a little too close to French to be all too exciting, although I think that's because I've been mostly dealing with the written language when the real reason I'm drawn to it is the sound. Do you have a good audio program recommendation? I like Pimsleur so I *cough* acquired that, but is there anything else you recommend?
I'm gonna finish off Pimsleur German but I think that's gonna be all until next semester when I hope to take German lessons from a friend's parents with a couple guys I know, as German isn't tempting me particularly much right now. So, how did you learn Swahili? I'm gonna concentrate on finishing the FSI course, interspersed with Kiswahili kwa Komputa, right now but I have no idea where I'll go from there. I am a high school student, in fact, although not for long because I'm a senior this year. What grade are you in? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5961 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 4 of 7 09 December 2010 at 6:54am | IP Logged |
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Swahili is awesome. Portuguese is pretty fun too, but once you've been exposed to some of the more exotic delicacies, it's hard to go back and get excited about the more ordinary languages.
As for audio in Portuguese, I'm not sure how much I can help. I've been told by Brazilians that I have a near-native accent in Brazilian Portuguese, but I honestly don't know how I acquired that because I did very little work with audio! I probably listened to some samples on the Internet when I was beginning my learning. I embarrassingly used Rosetta Stone for Portuguese for a while because my middle school was giving out free six-month subscriptions to it in the language of your choice, so I tried it out for Portuguese. It wasn't very good, but I was exposed to the pronunciation. I also used LiveMocha for some pronunciation, but again, not great. One other thing I've used and seen recommended (although I thought it was more annoying than useful, personally) was Brazilian Pod Class. Of course some of the mainstream courses come with audio, but again, I didn't use any of them. By the way, which dialect of Portuguese are you focusing on? I just assumed you were going after the Brazilian dialect. For Swahili I can highly recommend the book "Spoken World Swahili" from Living Language--it was by far my favorite Swahili resource so far. In addition, I have been using Teach Yourself Swahili on and off which is good, but compared to Spoken World it seems rather dull. In addition, I've found the grammar lessons at Mwana Simba to be very useful, and also this online dictionary. For a hard-copy dictionary I have the Swahili Practical Dictionary by Nicholas Awde, which is excellent. In the future, I also intend to start using Assimil's course, which should be accessible to you as you speak French. I'm a junior in high school this year. I made that guess about you being a high school student because of your reference to studying Turkish, Russian, or Chinese abroad next summer, which reminded me of the NSLI-Y Language Program (I'm assuming that's what it is, right?), which is only open to high school students. I'm also thinking of doing that program. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5822 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 5 of 7 17 December 2010 at 12:08am | IP Logged |
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Currently:
Learning the lyrics of Seu Jorge's Life Aquatic David Bowie covers Reading Huis Clos by Sartre FSI Swahili Lesson 14 (gotta put some more time in here but still haven't quite finished those college apps) I've somewhat given up on German, and I think this album will satisfy my Portuguese wanderlust for now (and yes I'm going for Brazilian), so I'm gonna concentrate on Swahili, although I have had a resurgence of feelings for French. I'd already found those sites, but thanks for the book recommendations, I'll keep a look out for them. Now the question is which languages to put on my Christmas list? I feel like I'm going to want to learn Russian this next semester, so I ask for the New Penguin Russian Course, which I have heard is very good. Yah, I applied to NSLI. It's kind of annoying though, because they don't tell you if you're accepted or not until really late in the spring. Oh, I also got some music by Miriam Makeba. I'm really excited for Swahili music, do you know of any? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5822 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 6 of 7 20 December 2010 at 1:26am | IP Logged |
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I finished Huis Clos and now I'm looking for some more good French literature, but I've also been writing a good amount of poetry in French. It's a nice language, really.
I'm feeling drawn back to Russian, which I planned on learning next before I was struck with this strange desire to learn the languages I've mentioned. I'm going to a Russian banya with my brother and some friends tomorrow, too, so I should at least pick up some phrases if I want to talk to any Russians there - good thing I impulse-bought this Conversational Russian book a few months ago! Swahili is going slow, but so far I'm mainly concerned with enjoying it, which I have been doing a good deal of. It was also pretty fun at this party last night when a bunch of people were asking me to say things in various languages, and somebody randomly pulled "Tanzanian" out of their ass, which isn't an actual language, but since they do speak Swahili in Tanzania, I promptly responded "Ninasema kiswahili!" I need to get some more Swedish practice. I haven't watch much of anything in Swedish in months and now that I've finished Låt den rätte komma in and haven't started anything else my Swedish is rotting a little bit. I still listen to a shitton of Movits! and Zacke though, so that helps keep it in shape. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5822 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 7 of 7 28 December 2010 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
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Reading Carmen by Mérimée right now, just finished Arsène Guillot, and will probably read some or all of the treize autres nouvelles in the book I got. I'm learning lots of good vocab from this. I've unfortunately not had much success reading French poetry, I think I'm just not in it enough yet if that makes any sense, I'm still thinking about the words instead of just understanding them, which is surprising because I never get this feeling outside of reading poetry. Oh well, hopefully one day that Histoires by Prévert will get read.
Not doing too much for Swedish right now, although I may start reading a book and my friend is bringing me some book back from Sweden, which will be much appreciated. Watched part of Låt Den Rätte Komma In last night, prolly finish it today. Swahili is going a little slow, I generally just do one FSI unit at a time, so I'm still only on like unit 18 or so. I feel like I should be committed to SOMETHING at least. I'm telling myself I'll do Swahili as a winter break thing, but it's winter break and I'm not doing much Swahili, so I feel like I should be doing something else. I'm not sure what that is at this point, though. I'm not sure what I'm gonna be doing this summer, either. I got rejected from NSLI, but I may still sign up for some other program, although then the question is where? I don't think I want to major in Chinese anymore, but I still may want to go study Chinese this summer because, damn that would be fun. However, I'm also thinking about studying Russian, which would also be pretty amazing. Or go to Brazil to learn Portuguese. I figure this will resolve itself over next semester, but I want to know what I should be studying in preparation for! So, my choices for next language to learn now are: Russian - Russia is awesome, I absolutely love Russian culture in all forms, art, music, especially literature, and I know I would love studying Russian. Downside - it's hard. Portuguese - Brazil is awesome, capoeira is awesome and I found a capoeira Meetup group whose leader I could definitely practice Brazilian Portuguese with. I'm not as familiar with Brazilian culture, but I get the feeling I would really enjoy it and what music I've heard I've really liked (music is a big factor for me in language learning if you haven't been able to tell, and one of the big things that makes Chinese hard). In contrast to Russian, my background in French makes Portuguese very easy. German - Literature is also a big factor in my language studies and one of the reasons I'm happy I speak French, and a big reason for me to learn German. For some reason there always happen to be German speakers around me and I have a friend who would take German lessons from another friend's parents with me, so getting German practice would be easy, and knowing Swedish makes German feel pretty comfortable. It would still be somewhat harder than Portuguese, though. Swahili - I feel obligated to study at least one African language and I really love Swahili, but I admit, it's fairly random. I mean, it's probably the least random Bantu language, but it's still not quite an A-lister. I'd be satisfied with an intermediate level in Swahili, although I feel like it would degrade quite quickly, so I'm still not sure if it's worth it. I wish there wasn't such a paucity of resources! I'm also planning a Eurotrip with some friends but I'm not yet sure where we'll be visiting, so that may affect my study plans. If anything that would probably mean some Polish or Czech, or a commitment to German. Maybe Danish, although I would really just want to understand it and be able to modify my Swedish to make it more intelligible to Danes. If anyone sees this, please advise me! I'm too indecisive! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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