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Jellyfish’s TAC ’12 - Teams ɬ and Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4596 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes  Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 25 of 35 07 March 2012 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
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Sorry for the delay, I've been quite offline for the past week (and it's been a very, very lazy week for studying, too - feeling a little bad about it.)
The Chinese generally don't speak English, so it'd be a good idea to at least carry a phrasebook and learn some of the essentials. I don't know how hard exactly it is to get around with no Chinese, as I'm blessed with a relatively proficient boyfriend, but it can't be much more difficult than Central Asia with no Russian - I think you'll be fine! China is a ton of fun. I do recommend having some kind of reference for food vocabulary with you, or just learning the characters for various types of ingredient, lest you miss out on the glory of filthy streetside restaurants that'll provide absurd quantities of delicious dishes for the equivalent of 40 euro cents. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4596 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 26 of 35 29 March 2012 at 7:53am | IP Logged |
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Back in Japan; my apologies for neglecting this. I don't tend to be online much while travelling. Didn't get nearly as much studying done as I would have if I hadn't been in China, of course, but I think I did okay.
Got through a fair bit of Teach Yourself Modern Persian, and am determined to properly work my way through the entire book before going back to London in October (which shouldn't be too hard, it's an easy book). I found out that there are two Persian elective modules available at my university back home, and expect that I might be able to get into the more advanced one if I do TYMP on my own - the woman who wrote it is also the lecturer of the first module, and uses her own book in class. Besides that, I added over 60 sentences from the Routledge course to my anki sentence deck. I also wrote two postcards from Hong Kong to my friends in Iran (hopefully they can decipher my Persian handwriting...) Russian has been suffering a little; I only got up to Pimsleur 2-15 or something during the past six weeks, which is less than ten lessons. This doesn't mean I don't like Russian anymore though (still love it), and once the new semester starts over here I'll be taking classes again. Need to get my hands on a nice compact little reference grammar to carry around and browse on public transport, I don't seem to feel "safe" with Russian until I actually know its grammar by heart... I'm happy to say that I'm getting on better with Japanese again. Picked up a small Japanese paperback about the peculiarities of Osaka in a hostel somewhere in China, left behind by a Japanese visitor I assume, and it's been a fun read so far. I don't really need to look anything up - there are words I don't understand but they tend to be obvious from context, which is all greatly encouraging. A good source of vocab too. Also, after six weeks in China (five on the mainland), I actually quite enjoy being back in Japan, I think. I've only been back for a few hours, mind you, and might be being overly optimistic, but just now, I can actually appreciate all the cleanliness and quiet. It's pretty chill compared to China. ;) Also made up my mind to take that Thai course that's on offer. I really shouldn't add another language, I know, but it's just for shits and giggles, and it'll be an easy pass, and fun. And Thai is quite high up on the list of things to learn, and I love the country and all. I don't think anyone on this forum would've been able to resist in my place. ;) time to brush up on my rusty Thai letters... Edited by jellyfish on 01 April 2012 at 9:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4596 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 27 of 35 07 April 2012 at 3:44am | IP Logged |
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Update time! I've recovered nicely from the holiday-induced laziness and have, again, been spending most of my free time studying. (And uni hasn't started again yet, so most of my time has been free.) I forgot to keep track of my hours, and will try and remember to do so this week.
For Persian, I've mostly been working my way through the Teach Yourself book, with its own little Anki deck and all. Also added more sentences from the Routledge book/CD to my sentence deck, and went hunting for all the missing vocab in those sentences, adding it to another deck. And the clock is ticking; the boyfriend and I have just bought our flights to Tehran for the end of July, and if all goes well with the visas, we'll be spending three weeks there. We'll be visiting friends we met there last summer, and my goal is to finally have conversations with their parents, who don't speak any English but were incredibly sweet and friendly to us anyway. A little under four months to go! Russian, I am happy to say, has overtaken Persian for total time devoted to it. Probably just by a small margin, but I've been enjoying it a great deal, and finding it less intimidating than I did. Haven't done much more Pimsleur (it's boring and I'll save it for when I'm cycling to uni again in the mornings), and focussed on Teach Yourself Russian instead. I got confirmation from my Russian teacher at uni that he'll be running a fairly more advanced class this term, and from the teacher of a so-called "Foreign Language Practice" (外国語演習) module for Russian saying that my Japanese is probably adequate for me to take her course (no Anna Karenina in Japanese though, phew). So I've been brushing up on my vocab from last term a lot. Also started an anki deck for Russian sentences and it's overtaken the Persian one already, since I don't need audio files for any missing vowels or suchlike. ;) Japanese going well too, decided to study towards JLPT1 on my own so that I can take the test some time next year. Still reading that book. Looking forward to starting that Thai course, too, although I'm determined to only spend an hour a day on Thai, otherwise it'll get out of hand. Also, can anyone tell me when the next 6-week challenge is happening? I want to use it as an excuse to do some Turkish. :3 Sorry for the novel! Edited by jellyfish on 07 April 2012 at 3:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4596 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 28 of 35 14 April 2012 at 9:44am | IP Logged |
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Just a small update this time; been doing more Russian than usual, and lots of Japanese, and Persian has started poking me, going "what about me?"
So although the thought of Turkish still makes my brain salivate, I'll be a good girl and stick with what I've started. My 6WC target will be Persian, and I've decided that after the 6WC is over, I am going to start reading that Persian copy of The Kite Runner that a friend gave me as motivation. I'm nowhere near good enough to actually read a novel, so if I don't make a real effort during the 6WC, I won't enjoy the book much, I guess. (I've read it in English, but only once.) The 6WC will also be a good exercise in tracking my study time, because just now I obviously don't. I'll be better, I promise. Edited by jellyfish on 14 April 2012 at 9:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5145 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 29 of 35 20 April 2012 at 10:48pm | IP Logged |
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Happy to see that you are getting more time for your Russian studies. I wonder why so many of you are doing both Russian and Japanese though. For some reason it seems to be a fairly common combination here on the forum - whereas here in Norway I know of exactly one guy who is interested in both - and he works for me!
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4518 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 30 of 35 21 April 2012 at 12:54am | IP Logged |
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Actually, since I want to take that train in the opposite direction, I'm very interested as well...
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| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4596 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 31 of 35 26 April 2012 at 5:30am | IP Logged |
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I wasn't aware that Russian and Japanese are a common combination - maybe it's because they're so immensely different in so many ways?
Haven't personally done the Transiberian; Russian and Chinese would doubtlessly be helpful though! Looks like it's been a while since I updated, although I thought I'd posted something last week. Studies are going alright; my normal week currently looks like this: On Monday, 90 minutes of a class that involves speaking Japanese a lot; then a 90 minute lecture on Middle Eastern history in Japanese, which seems to be doing wonders for my Japanese listening comprehension. On Tuesday 90 minutes of Thai taught and explained in Japanese, which is also pretty good for my Japanese, and if some Thai sticks in the process, that's all the better. Then on Wednesday I've got two 90-minute Russian classes, one focussed more on reading, the other on conversation. And then a four-day weekend. Studying in Japan is pretty chill... ;) I have started keeping track of my daily study durations, and for the last week - Tue 17th to Wed 25th April - they came to: Japanese: ca 11h (lectures for listening, and an anki deck of sentences using JLPT vocab) Russian: 10h15m (classes, anki vocab revision, Pimsleur and Teach Yourself Russian) Persian: 8h30m (TYMP and anki) And a tiny bit of Thai, but I'm not planning to take that very seriously. Looking forward to the 6WC now, seeing how Persian is trailing behind a little...! Edited by jellyfish on 26 April 2012 at 8:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4596 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 32 of 35 08 May 2012 at 9:18am | IP Logged |
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Looks like I'm gradually switching from weekly to fortnightly updates here, which may be more sensible anyway. Golden Week (a week of holidays) forced me to socialise more than usual, which resulted in me completely missing the first day of the 6WC! But I've been catching up on missed study time. At least for Persian. :)
Persian Going as well as ever, the 6WC is beautifully motivating and I've been breezing through "Teach Yourself Modern Persian". Even been enjoying my anki vocab revision; my deck is up to almost 600 words, and I expect my total vocabulary exceeds that by a bit. Seems like Persian and I are made for each other; I can stuff as much into my brain as I want, and hardly ever get a buffer overflow and subsequent shutdown. Unlike with Russian. ;) Russian The absence of cycling-to-university-and-back time during Golden Week greatly reduced my use of Pimsleur, which I only got out again yesterday. I've taken a break from formally studying grammar and suchlike from Russian textbooks (can't. retain. anything. ARGH. It's too frustrating.), and I also think I'll switch to Michael Thomas from Pimsleur. Reached lesson 27 of Pimsleur's Essential Russian Two, and am getting a little tired of endless repetitions of "she was supposed to make a telephone call but her car didn't work" and "I'm living at my friend's house". So it's not been going fantastically well, but I think I'll just take it easy and study at a more leisurely pace than planned. My brain just can't cope with large quantities of this language and I don't want to get to a point where it's so frustrating that I decide to give up. I'm not really in a rush, and Russian is more of a long-term project anyway. :) 2x90m of Russian class tomorrow, which will be fun. Japanese All's good, not making too much of an effort but improving anyway. Decided that I'll be studying for JLPT1 over the next two years - I probably won't need that long, but if all goes according to all my various plans, I'll be taking the JLPT1 just after finishing the MSc Translation I'll be applying for soon (fingers crossed). That'd be nice. For now I'm just doing some sentences in anki every now and then, improving my listening through 7 hours of quite interesting lectures per week, and of course through using it daily. Thai Oh dear. This is WAY. TOO. MUCH. FUN. I've had two classes thus far, and have been reviewing the script at home (which came back to me really quickly.) I even have a feeling that the tones won't be as terrifying as I always thought. It's definitely moved from the "something to play with" list to the "something to learn properly someday" list, but that was to be expected. And since Thailand is also really high up on my "need to live here for a bit" list, it even makes a bit of sense. ;) I kind of want to spend the next 12 hours just doing Thai and nothing else, but for now I can restrain myself, and Farsi's waiting. Total hours (last 2 weeks) 26h50m Persian: 3h40m from the 26th to 30th, 11h20m since the first of May! 15h Russian: 3h30m from the 26th to 30th, 1h40m since the first of May :/ 5h10m Japanese: 5h Thai: 1h40m 1 person has voted this message useful |
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