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日本語 and me the next round TAC 2012 Team い | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 145 of 333 11 July 2012 at 8:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I know you didn't mean it like that, but I really do feel a little embarrassed about it sometimes. I'm also more impressed by someone who knows 5 languages that are widely different like Japanese, Swahili, Russian, Hungarian and Vietnamese, than by someone who knows ten languages, but they are all Romance and Germanic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5037 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 146 of 333 12 July 2012 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's one of the reasons why I chose German, Japanese and Russian. J&R is also said to be a fairly common combination and given the kind of nerds that abound here I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's a fairly common motive as well :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 147 of 333 13 July 2012 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think if I was just doing this to try and impress anyone, I would have given up ages ago. Four years to a kind of sort of B1 level in Japanese is not all that impressive, although it's been fun trying to get there!
No plans to give up Japanese yet, or even take a break, but it is definitely taking second place to German for now. This week I have chipped away a little bit more at Kanji in Context, listened to a couple of Japanese radio podcasts and done an hour long class with JOI after I realised I had paid for some group lessons that I'll need to use up before August. I also intend to practice some writing this weekend and of course I shall be doing my weekly language exchange. For German I've knocked up around 4.5 hours of study so far (I'm only counting because it's easy at this point). I did three hours of Michel Thomas, which I think is proving to be just the kind of introduction to the language I always needed. I also did the first 3 Pimsleur lessons but I'm not so sure about continuing to use this method. Michel Thomas keeps asking me "how do you say...?" but you often have to think a bit to work things out and there's a good variety of material in just this three hours. Pimsleur is just "how do you say...?" all over again, but the material is much more limited and I'm clearly quite bored of the SRS effect because the lessons already feel painfully repetitive. I might switch to Assimil, as one passive wave lesson should take the same amount of time as a Pimsleur, but will probably be a bit more interesting. I couldn't resist on my way home from work today and popped into Waterstones in the city centre to have a look at their German selection. No surprise, it was a little more extensive than their Japanese selection. I nearly picked up a big fat hardback Collins German-English dictionary but decided it might be a bit much for my pannier bag...it was so big and heavy I think me and my bicycle may have ended up in the River Taff on the way home. However, I did pick up a much slimmer and more sensible volume called German Grammar Made Easy. I'm a bit wary of any language product with claims of speed or easiness in the title, but this one actually looks like it might be pretty useful to consolidate and expand my knowledge once I've finished or got bored of Michel Thomas. I've also been listening to some of the music I just happen to own already which just happens to be in German. It's one of the few instances of foreign language music I bought because I liked it, rather than because it's not in English. Anyway, I suddenly found, after just 4.5 hours of study, I could actually understand a few snippets of a few of the lyrics. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened with Japanese :) Edited by g-bod on 13 July 2012 at 10:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 148 of 333 13 July 2012 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'd look for a decent dictionary for your smartphone over a paper dictionary. So much more portable. That said I didn't have a smartphone when I studied German and I'm amazed how effective the little pocket langenscheidt ones were. I'm also a fan of the Oxford paperback grammar series (they're cheap and not very heavy). I used Oxford for German and Spanish. I also got the Japanese one but I haven't used it as much since I'm taking a course - I use their textbook instead.
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5037 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 149 of 333 13 July 2012 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@g-bod Oh, the reason was obviously not to impress Brun_Ugle ;) --nor anybody, seriously--, but since I have no real need for my languages, some strange factors had to be at play... and I specifically chose languages that were relatively far away from each other -- that is, linguistically :)
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 150 of 333 13 July 2012 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So I've just learned that the word "weil", meaning "because" (plus lots of other words linking to subordinate clauses it seems), starts to do all kinds of strange things to German word order, e.g. "weil ich es haben kann" or "because I can have it". Seriously, if you could just put "weil" at the end, add in a few particles after the pronouns and finish it off with a です, it would almost feel like Japanese.
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| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 151 of 333 14 July 2012 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yeah heh. I thought that Japanese wouldn't be so bad when I saw the verbs came at the end (thanks to German)... but unfortunately my brain still fought against it every step of the way ;/.
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| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 152 of 333 14 July 2012 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@ g-bod. I'm certainly not trying to impress anyone either. I just meant I feel a little embarrassed when I see so many people who know or claim to know 4 or 5 foreign languages and the only one I know is the easiest one for an English speaker to learn. It also makes me a little regretful since I've loved languages since I was a child, but never managed to learn any before now and I'm almost 40. (Well, Norwegian I learned in my mid-twenties, but other than that...) Had I had the discipline and the knowledge of how to learn, maybe I too would have 4 or 5 languages. But regret is stupid. I just have to keep going from where I am. And I am having a lot of fun, so that's enough. (Don't take this too seriously about the regret and embarrassment. It's really not a big thing.)
After Japanese, I'm thinking of doing Spanish, partly because I learned a bit when I was a teenager so I think getting to an A2 level shouldn't take very long at all, but I also like it. Of course, I like all languages, so I suppose that's not saying much. Anyway, I think after Japanese, almost any language should be a piece of cake. By the way, I read about a study showing that exercise increases IQ. There is even a formula. For a 70 kg man, every time his fitness increases so he can go up by 12 watts on his stationary bicycle or whatever, his IQ goes up by one point. The study also showed that taking a brisk walk before a test activates a larger area of the brain and makes you do better on tests. So when you take the N2, you can try taking a walk around the block first. @kraemder. I have an ancient Wordtank Super and it's fantastic. Of course, it's not for a smartphone, so it's still something extra to carry around, but it's so light and so easy to look up words. So I agree, an electronic dictionary is the way to go. There's no way I would be able to carry around a paper dictionary that was big enough to be of any use. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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