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Sprachprofi’s TAC 2012 - Team ’Ne Nur’ | ||
Tags: Swahili | Finnish | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Mandarin | Japanese | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 1 of 13 26 December 2011 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just spent some thought on what my current level is in various languages, what my
goals for 2012 should be, and how I want to go about them. Seeing the number of languages, this is a clear case of "ne nur" (not only). Yay for being in the geekiest team ever! http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=30251 (team pre-discussion) http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=30629 (team updates) I intend to use this log for gritty details, random observations and posts in foreign languages. More worthwhile musings on language-learning will appear on my blog. Anyway, here we go: Mandarin Chinese Currently, I can read a modern Chinese book if the style isn't too literary and I'd understand what's going on, but it's not enjoyable for me. I can also have a 45-minute conversation in Chinese, but I'm often missing words, I stumble over words and make too many mistakes. By the end of 2012, I want to be able to do both in a more enjoyable manner. Method: * Reading "Confessions of a Shopaholic" in Chinese-English parallel and entering colloquial expressions from there into Anki * Listening-Reading "Mr Ma and Son", which I have already read but for which I now found an audiobook * Reading or Listening-Reading the modern Chinese novels which I brought back from the USA * Reading the Chinese-only novels I found in Berlin * Watching episodes from the new Romance of the Three Kingdoms TV series and from 家有儿 女 * Mastering the song 中国话 by S.H.E, which is fast and full of tongue twisters * Hopefully lots of talking! Finnish Due to a challenge I couldn't resist ( http://how- to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=30352), I will spend 45 hours on Finnish in February, despite it being nowhere on my hit list. Right now, I have zero knowledge of Finnish and it will be interesting to see where I'll be at the end of the month... and where the others will be. Method: mostly Assimil in conjunction with Anki, occasionally talking to a tutor for confirmation, possibly looking over other courses, children's books or videos in order to keep up interest. French I can read any piece of French literature, including really old stuff, and my listening comprehension is also really good, but I feel that my active usage of French is lagging behind. I would also really love to exchange my German accent for a Québécois one. So my goal is to develop a good accent in 2012 and to reach a mistake quotient of less than 1/100 words. I shall also keep reading French classics. Method: * Talking to any Québécois who doesn't run away fast enough * Writing texts on lang-8 where they can be corrected * Learning to imitate at least one recording of fast Québécois French * Reading at least one French book per month Indonesian & Korean These were actually next on my list of languages to learn (I only know the Korean alphabet, and did a few lessons of Indonesian some years ago), but for now they're taking a back seat to Finnish and Japanese. We shall see if there's time, maybe in the second half of the year. For Indonesian I wanted to try out a translation-based course I have, and for Korean I just got Assimil Korean as a Christmas present. Italian / Dutch / Spanish I can read all of these with ease and make myself understood in conversations, but it's more a case of make-believe than actual ability at this point (my Italian is full of Spanish and vice versa). I'd like to find time to work on one of these languages in particular and acquire real fluency in it. For that, I first have to find a language partner though. Modern Greek I'm happy with my ability to read Greek novels, but my speaking ability used to be better and fell into disuse. Hopefully I shall have the chance to re-activate it at some point in 2012. Japanese I know zero Japanese at the moment, and I would love to be able to understand enough spoken Japanese in order to follow along in "Hikaru no Go" without the subtitles. Apart from that, it would be awesome to be able to watch Japanese Go lectures or Go TV. I am not interested in learning the written language because it would probably interfere with my knowledge of Chinese characters, which were difficult enough to acquire. Method: * Studying a quick course called "Le japonais tout de suite" * Memorizing 600 of the most useful words * Watching anime * Whatever else I can come up with Swahili To my greatest regret, I stopped studying Swahili after completing 100 lessons of Assimil's passive wave and 50 lessons of the active wave. In 2012, I intend to complete the rest of the active wave, assess my abilities then for the purpose of the experiment, and then start wildly using any materials I can get my hands on. My goal is to be able to comfortable read my collection of Swahili poems as well as understand Swahili audio news. Method: * Completing Assimil * Scanning "Essential Swahili" and other courses I have lying around * Creating & using Listening-Reading materials on the basis of Deutsche Welle's "Learning By Ear" * Reading the "Little Prince", some children's books and my advanced reader in Swahili * Listening to news broadcasts Edited by Sprachprofi on 22 September 2012 at 5:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 2 of 13 13 January 2012 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Watching Richard and Luca's polyglot Youtube video
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mviU9Do764) made me realize that right now I could only have a similar interview in 6 languages, and that's rather sad considering I'm dabbling in 15. I have focussed too much on reading ability and I want to add more speaking practice this year. An important step will be doing Arekkusu's self-talk exercise and another important step is finding language exchange partners that I could meet regularly at least once a week, preferably on Skype. I'll report back how this is going. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 3 of 13 16 January 2012 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just spoke Greek for more than an hour with my Greek teacher and current GreekPod101
collaborator. At the beginning of the conversation I'm embarassed to admit that I had to search for "γράφω" (to write), but then I quickly remembered most of what I had learned when I was still taking regular conversation classes. About half an hour into the conversation, I started to even remembered words that had only come up in one of our sessions, more than a year ago: "ανεργία" (unemployment) and things like that. Conclusion: I must make every conversation session longer than 30 minutes in order to hit a good spot. Other good news: I found an amazing teacher to prepare the final exams for the Accelerated Finnish Challenge. Edited by Sprachprofi on 16 January 2012 at 5:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 4 of 13 04 February 2012 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Just a quick update because I'm way too busy:
I'm way too busy. I allowed myself to be talked into teaching a 14-hour Esperanto course for beginners this coming weekend with only one week to prepare and not knowing that the materials they had set out were quite unsuitable. So I've been spending most of my days preparing some good materials. Oh, and studying Finnish, since it's the Accelerated Challenge time. And working on GreekPod101, since my employer would get mad otherwise. I've also been doing quite a lot for my French, 18 hours in the past 10 days, thanks to Arekkusu. He has been helping me practise via Skype, found me a québécois language partner in Berlin (!), recommended a québécois book that I read ("Paul à Québec") and, at my request, gave me a bunch of essay assignments so that I could improve my written French, which frankly needs lots of work. And graded them in a way that lets me work on my mistakes. This is so far beyond the call of duty (what duty?) that I don't know what to say. I couldn't ask for a better sensei. I'm currently 12 hours ahead compared to last year. Expect them to decrease swiftly in the next few days while I teach this class and then struggle to catch up to work. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 13 04 February 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
I loved this sentence. Perhaps I should practice running to follow your example and catch some foreigners to talk with. I may need it since my search on language exchange sites seem to be failing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6550 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 6 of 13 12 February 2012 at 1:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I just figured out that you are the host of one of the podcasts I sometimes use for learning German. It's top notch!
Thank you so very much for the work you do there! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 7 of 13 12 February 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Glad you like it! I try to do the best I can, given the limitations of the format.
If anyone reading this is interested in getting into the business of writing language lessons, contact me. Edited by Sprachprofi on 12 February 2012 at 12:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 8 of 13 18 February 2012 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I recorded a brief video in Finnish to show my progress up till now (exactly 20.5
hours). Actually it doesn't show most of what I've done, because Assimil dialogs are not the easily-reusable and personalizable kind, but it's still a waypoint in terms of what kind of sentences I can come up with on my own, and what my grammar knowledge is. For this video I first wrote down what I might say and then recorded the video without referring to what I had written. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=8CgpqtM8MwY I realize that I made some mistakes when it comes to word stress. Can somebody comment on the vowels and consonants though? Which sounds should I work on? Edited by Sprachprofi on 18 February 2012 at 11:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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