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TAC 2011, Team KEN: M. Medialis - RU JP | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5351 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 57 of 113 03 June 2011 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Like the weather, thing's are starting to hot up...yes, it's that time of year again to don your hachimaki and do something amazing! :D
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| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6152 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 58 of 113 04 June 2011 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Teango, you're an indepletable source of cultural references, I love it!! :D :D
I just have to get one of those hachimachis - Banzai! *breathing in the fresh summer inspiration* :) Edited by M. Medialis on 04 June 2011 at 4:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6152 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 60 of 113 09 June 2011 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Team TAC 2011 - Team KEN - Log #15
I feel soo good right now. I have just managed to kick-start my summer, boost both my languages - And that annyoing language block is nowhere to be seen. Last week - Starting the engines I spent last week relaxing and resetting my brain. Every other day, I LRed for 1-2 hours, prepared some parallel texts. Oh, and of course, enjoyed the sun! Fresh LR-adventures I've had two inspired LR days. I started out with Russian, and was soon immersed in the "Russian feeling" again. It's a good thing about LR - it's easy to recover things you've forgotten. Then, I shifted focus to Japanese. I warmed up softly by LRing The Little Prince, and continued with Botchan by Natsume Soseki. I've LRed Botchan a number of times before, but this time I listen to a different voice actor. She has more drama and personality in her voice - so I'm rediscovering this book! I feel that the words more and more are beginning to jump out of the pages into my memory now. Having access to a fast pop-up dictionary makes all the diffence. I've never had to use pop-up dictionaries for Russian, but it's almost essential for capturing all the subtleties of the Japanese words. It's so fun to LR Japanese. I am finally able to follow along with the speaker, read the translation, read along in the Japanese column, recognize most of the kanji compounds, look up the pronunciation and definition of individual words with the pop-up dictionary, and again: LISTEN to the voice actor and ENJOYING the story. All at the same time without any stress. In general while LRing, I've started to try to also shadow the voice actor when it feels natural. Not all the time, but every now and then. Stats for the last two days: ------------------------------------ * Russian LR (Master and Margarita) 3 hr 34 min * Japanese LR (The Little Prince) 31 + 135 min = 2 hr 46 min * Japanese LR (Botchan) 2 hr 22 min Total: 8 hours 42 min ----------------------------------------- Plan for the upcoming week I want to create many parallel texts this week, hope I can do something every day. Time for a new round of Scriptorium Mania! ----------------------------------------- Team KEN - M. Medialis 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6152 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 62 of 113 20 June 2011 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Team TAC 2011 - Team KEN - Log #16
Russian LR I just finished LRing Master and Margarita in Russian. What a book! I've been searching for a English word to summarize it, but I failed, so instead I get the opportunity to write a Swedish word: It was an "omtumlande" book. 'Tumlande' is the same 'tumla' as in Tumble Dryer. Or as my friend Merriam-Webster so poetically put it: Tumble: to roll over and over, to and fro, or end over end : toss That's how it feels when you enter the outlandish imagination of that novel. :) My current Russian level
It was a lot of fun to LR Russian with a parallel text. It was easy to follow along, but I feel that there are tons of words that I just know to 30 %. It would still be immensely challenging for me to read it without translation since it's so hard to predict what's going to happen in the story. And as you know, our friend Bulgakov didn't write it in 'simplified Russian'. ;D In my next Russian 'stress test' I'd love to add some more 'stress', i.e. not letting the intensity drop. That's the dilemma when reading good books for me, sometimes I need to put away the book and letting it 'sink in' before I continue. I probably have a long way to go before I reach fluency. It's hard to say right now.. (but who knows, maybe I only need to do one Massive Assault to get there..) What else has happened? I've continued to LR Japanese, and I've just aligned a Japanese novel that I look forward to dive into. I also have started a little Japanese sub-quest: Collecting Animals! One of the rules for my Japanese quest has been to never ever look up a word in an English-Japanese dictionary. (it's okay to go the other way around though: translating from Japanese to English). A little eccentric rule, but I like it. :) :) Anyways. The other day, I realized that my vocabulary is a bit weak in the "first week of a Japanese class"-areas - you know: animals, fruits, colors etc. So now I'm actively trying to catch all the animals that pass by when I LR, watch anime, read manga and blogs. I think it's quite fun to learn vocab in that way: "きつね...fox...Yes!! I caught the Fox!". Every now and then I make a little game where I try to count how many animals I have collected. I simply try to recall as many different animal words as possible. You could call it the "opposite of word lists". Maybe not very effective, but I love it. (^-^)/ Plan for the upcoming week Do 4 words of Japanese Scriptorium every day, and 2 words of Russian Scriptorium. -Been failing to do scriptorium for months now, so it's time to set a dead easy goal. :) ----------------------------------------- Team KEN - M. Medialis 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6152 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 64 of 113 24 June 2011 at 2:22am | IP Logged | ||
Lol. Sorry for writing so much. Once I start discussing methods, there's no stop. ;) ☆ Why I avoid English-Japanese dictionaries When I started with Japanese last year, I wanted to aim for full native-like fluency. So I reasoned like this: If I try to translate English or Swedish to Japanese, I will risk to bias my vocabulary towards how I speak Swedish and use words and expressions that are not Japanese-like. This may not be an issue for simple words like cat and dog - but really, who knows? This is also the reason why I still avoid speaking Japanese. I don't want to risk "creating my own Japanese language", I want to speak like they do in Japan. I was also inspired by Prof. Arguelles' advice to avoid dictionaries altogether in the beginning - instead he deduces the word meanings from context and parallel texts etc. (If I remember it correctly, he starts to use dictionaries when he can understand 75 % of the languge. And thereafter he only uses them for clarity). These were the first reasons. But the real reason is an aesthetical one (and now my eyes begin to sparkle, I could talk about these things forever): ☆ Let the words come automatically My Japanese learning strategy has been to never learn a word before "I'm ready for it". The idea is that as soon as I'm ready for a word, it should automatically jump out of the environment and I'll remember it without effort. When I started to LR Japanese with almost zero previous knowledge, the only words I could catch was simple sounding words like 'tokidoki', 'neko' and European names. Sure, I could have looked up words like いっしゅうかん, but that word has too many subtle sounds and I'm 100 % sure I would have confused it with the gazillion other similar-sounding words. When I learn a word (that I'm ready for), I can catch it even when the speaker talks at breakneck speed! :) So as I continue to LR and listen to podcasts, I constantly 'unlock' new words. When I watch anime or listen to radio (at fast speed), I can easily look up words that 'stand out among the rest'. These are the kind of words I want to learn - the words that come to me. I never care if I forget a word that I've looked up - if that happens, I clearly wasn't ready for it. Japanese has plenty of words, and I'm not in a hurry, so I gladly wait until the forgotten word turns up again. :) ☆ Word hunt! Living the life of a hunter, without the gore Avoiding English dictionaries encourages me to use massive input. If I really want to know the Japanese word for 'eagle', I better start LR, or start to read manga! (It's like going out hunting (except no one gets hurt) - You step out in your language environment and keep your eyes open, "maybe I'll be able to catch the eagle in this LR session..") I'm very happy about my progress in Japanese. Sure, wordlists could be faster, but my "exploration method" is much more fun. :D What about you guys, do you use similar/different strategies? Of course, my ideas are tailored to suit my specific goals/dreams, so they are not universal in any sense. Edited by M. Medialis on 24 June 2011 at 3:19am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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