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Kuji’s Krazy Log II

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4494 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 417 of 706
24 January 2014 at 2:24pm | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
Serpent wrote:
Nah, it's the Russian site vk.com that tries to be
as successful as facebook (and in Russia it is). So if you don't want to register on
facebook, you can use VK to meet native speakers:)

I see. Thank you!


VK is basically my primary source of Russian.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4953 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 418 of 706
24 January 2014 at 5:32pm | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:

I don't work on any active translation drills. I do feel a need to do something active
like that, but to be honest, I have no idea where to begin.   Do I just take what I
read in English and translate them?


You surely do! Every time you work on an island/dialogue, or answer a challenge at the
Iberian Team :D you are working on active skills, but what I had in mind was working on
translations of complex sentences from English that would focus on specific grammar
skills. That is, besides making your own sentences, you should select a group of
features you need to work more on. For example, the subjunctive, relative clauses.

If you don't have Assimil or one of the Routledge grammars, you could do the following:

a) Go to an international broadcasting site that has a Brazilian Portuguese edition
(Deutsche Welle, I wonder if BBC, too).
b) Find the article in both English and Portuguese, open each at one tab.
c) Start trying to translate the English into Portuguese yourself, and then checking
with the translation from the site.Pay attention to changes made in order to make the
language more idiomatic - as well as to the excerpts where the translator overlooked
that and the result was just a calque from English, that exists, too.
d) Be sure to do one paragraph a day AT MOST. You don't have to "complete" a text,
don't take yet another chore into your daily life.
e) Proceed to fiction, like fairy tales or Aesop's fables, if you feel like. Actually,
it may be better to start from an Aesop's fable.
3 persons have voted this message useful



kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4634 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 419 of 706
25 January 2014 at 6:21am | IP Logged 
dampingwire wrote:
Can't you keep that book for when you can read in private and just read something else in
public?

As for me, I'd probably be boring and read a newspaper on a train anyway.

I guess that is a possibility. For what it's worth, the comic is now at home, and I've loaded other reading material on my Android Walkman for the time being (including news articles).


1 person has voted this message useful



kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4634 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 420 of 706
25 January 2014 at 6:25am | IP Logged 
1e4e6 wrote:
How about learning both Spanish and Portuguese concurrently? I have heard about avoiding
very similar languages simultaneously, but I think that if done intelligently, it might
actually help from each other. The structures are not always similar, but many times are,
and can be learnt simultaneously.

I thought about that before. I'm a bit worried about taking on a third language, especially while learning Japanese, as Serpent alluded to. But if I, say, limited myself to travel language, or really basic conversation, that might be doable. We'll see.
1 person has voted this message useful



kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4634 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 421 of 706
25 January 2014 at 6:26am | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
VK is basically my primary source of Russian.

Another vote for VK... nice.

tarvos, thanks for stopping by!
1 person has voted this message useful



kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4634 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 422 of 706
25 January 2014 at 6:29am | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
You surely do! Every time you work on an island/dialogue, or answer a challenge at the
Iberian Team :D you are working on active skills, but what I had in mind was working on
translations of complex sentences from English that would focus on specific grammar
skills. That is, besides making your own sentences, you should select a group of
features you need to work more on. For example, the subjunctive, relative clauses.

If you don't have Assimil or one of the Routledge grammars, you could do the following:

a) Go to an international broadcasting site that has a Brazilian Portuguese edition
(Deutsche Welle, I wonder if BBC, too).
b) Find the article in both English and Portuguese, open each at one tab.
c) Start trying to translate the English into Portuguese yourself, and then checking
with the translation from the site.Pay attention to changes made in order to make the
language more idiomatic - as well as to the excerpts where the translator overlooked
that and the result was just a calque from English, that exists, too.
d) Be sure to do one paragraph a day AT MOST. You don't have to "complete" a text,
don't take yet another chore into your daily life.
e) Proceed to fiction, like fairy tales or Aesop's fables, if you feel like. Actually,
it may be better to start from an Aesop's fable.

That sounds like a nice plan! Thank you very much. I will try to do this and see how it goes.

I think NHK and euronews also have news articles with English and Portuguese, although euronews has European Portuguese.

Aesop sounds like a good idea as well. I sometimes read Aesop fables in Japanese. Short, sweet and interesting.
1 person has voted this message useful



kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4634 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 423 of 706
28 January 2014 at 1:36pm | IP Logged 
I felt like I had no choice but to resign as co-captain of Team 旅立ち. I'm going through a busy stretch thanks to work, and I realized that a total of six months out of the year, I'm this busy. That makes it harder to maximize my language time if I'm having to do extra duties like captaining a TAC team. Computer time is more limited during these times. I can't be a co-captain just for half the year - it's not fair to my teammates - so I resigned.

In addition to that, I've been having some serious inconsistency problems the last few weeks. There have been several days where my study has only consisted of Anki and nothing else. That has to change.

I might finally have to take up Serpent's offer to join the consistency thread. Hmmm... need to hunt down that link... it's in my log somewhere...
1 person has voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5049 days ago

2237 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 424 of 706
28 January 2014 at 2:20pm | IP Logged 
Consistency Thread.

Marshall Brickman wrote:
I have learned one thing. As Woody (Allen) says, ‘Showing up is 80 percent of life.’


"Showing up" is consistency. This applies to language learning as well.

Edited by iguanamon on 28 January 2014 at 9:34pm



3 persons have voted this message useful



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