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15 Minutes a Day | ||
Tags: Hawaiian | Ancient Egyptian | Creole | Gaelic (Irish) | Simultaneous study | Latin | Swedish | Japanese | Russian | German | French | Spanish | ||
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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 5350 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 78 31 October 2012 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Aloha everyone!
I'm back from my swimabout in the big blue yonder, and so my first port of call is to check in and reassure everyone that I didn't drown at sea or get carried off by a lonely manatee... As "lolo" (Ha: crazy) as it may sound, I feel like a large part of me has been missing during my absence from the Forum, and I'm delighted to be back again on virtual home soil! I've finally found a small studio apartment on the oceanfront, just a stone's throw from Waikiki beach, and have officially "survived" (*wink*) my first tsunami this weekend! The workload has been crazy, as I arrived a month later than planned with my wife due to visa complications, and am still trying to catch up and work my way around all the floating red tape. I'm currently teaching English academic writing at the University of Hawai'i this semester, and will be unleashed on some poor unfortunate souls next semester, when I start teaching some actual SLA courses. Whatever's left of my time after teaching duties is then divided over the several graduate courses I'm taking in preparation for the long and winding road to PhD. I've only met one other Brit on the island so far, and am mainly surrounded by Japanese speakers and stores. A lot of locals also speak Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole English) outside the tourist areas, which I've started to learn and is a lot of fun. Apart from my bashful attempts at Russian conversation here and there, and joining a German language group at the university, I seem to have completely dropped the gauntlet in my language studies over the last couple of months. SO...it's time to make amends and put this unforgivable oversight right! Let the games commence... I will be starting up a new project this week [actually, I've restarted this in August now, so if you want to skip all the warm-up preliminaries, feel free to jump here] that hopefully fits in and around my work hours and studies, putting a hold on some of my other past projects for the time being (but still dropping in from time to time in these logs to update on any significant hop, skip or jump in progress and play with my language maps). My "big kahuna" goal right now instead is to consolidate all my efforts into one crazy language adventure in 2013 and beyond. This will be my focus: Learn 10 languages simultaneously by trying to study each one at least 15 minutes a day! (Mon-Fri) Here's the lineup of languages in order of my current estimated reading level (according to CEFR guidelines): 1. German (B2+, high intermediate) 2. French (B2, high intermediate) 3. Spanish (B1+, high intermediate) 4. Russian (B1+, low intermediate) 5. Swedish (A2+, high beginner) 6. Latin (A1+, low beginner) 7. Irish (A1+, low beginner) 8. Japanese (A1, low beginner) 9. Ancient Egyptian (A1, low beginner) 10. Hawaiian (A0, complete beginner) As you can see, there's a good variety of starting levels here, ranging from complete beginner through to high intermediate, and hopefully there's also enough variety across language difficulty levels and language families to keep my mind from wandering too much as well. And here are some of the questions I'd like to try and answer through my new blog that keep popping up on this forum like happy august mushrooms: - Can I study more than one language at a time without falling prey to language interference? How about some of the more closely related languages in my list? - Is it possible to study a language consistently over a longer period of time with heavy work/study commitments? - How much progress can I make and what level will I reach after a year, if I study a mere 15 minutes a day (i.e. little but often)? - How can I stay motivated and not burn out over the long run? - Is there a positive synergistic effect that comes from studying several languages at once? Mahalo for dropping by and surfing to the end, Teango ----- Edit on 15th August, 2013: After a couple of failed attempts that didn't really get started (largely due to heavy work commitments and illness), I've chosen to rethink this noble project again. However instead of falling back to fewer languages or a kinder schedule, I've decided to up the stakes and say "Impossible? Hell no, let's go for it!" instead, and return to my original idea of learning 10 languages at the same time. I've also decided to extend each session to 15 minutes, as this is a more honest appraisal of the time it really takes to set up my resources for each language, review vocabulary from previous sessions, and engage in new study. Hence the change from "10 Minutes" to "15 Minutes" in the title for this thread. Finally, I've put Hawaiian Pidgin and Jamaican Patois on the back burner for now. I really enjoy listening to creole languages and find most of them relatively easy to understand, and that's good enough for me right now. I'll still watch Jamaican films and listen to Hawaii's "Liddo Bitta Tita" and "Bradajo" from time to time, and maybe look up a few words in my "Pidgin to Da Max" book too, but that's as far as it goes. Well, with 10 second languages now, I've got to draw a line somewhere (lol). Edit on 24th March, 2013: I've decided to combine my studies in Hawaiian and Pidgin into the one study period, alternating between the two languages every week. Pidgin is largely situational and closely linked with being a local born and bred native of the island, whilst the chances of running into any native speaking Hawaiians are almost second to none. So my goal here is not so much to reach any level of fluency in these languages, but to learn enough of these languages to gain a clearer understanding and empathy for Hawaiian culture and to integrate better into the community here. Edit on 1st January, 2013: After an initial trial period leading up to the new year, I quickly came to the conclusion that it's impossible for me to fit in 10 languages a day AND AT THE SAME TIME i) work as a university teacher for 30 hours a week, ii) study at least 30 hours on top of all this for several graduate level courses, iii) secure additional funding to keep a roof over my wife and I's head whilst juggling all the perennial red tape, and finally iv) prepare for my PhD and publish journal papers along the way. If I stretched myself any thinner, I'd resemble a glass noodle right now! So with this in mind, and some modicum of sanity still prevailing, I'm going to try and study 5 core languages and 1 of 2 further elective local languages on a regular daily basis (i.e. 6 languages a day), and have amended my introduction above accordingly. Edited by Teango on 17 August 2013 at 10:58pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5718 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 2 of 78 31 October 2012 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Aloha!
This looks like a great idea, and I look forward to reading your answers to the questions posed at the end of your post as I follow this log. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5350 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 3 of 78 01 November 2012 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
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@mick33
Thanks for the words of encouragement! I'm not sure myself what the answers will be, and a lot of people have already told me that I'm probably nuts in trying, but I'm going to give it my best shot to find out anyway and will try to have some fun along the way. Edited by Teango on 01 November 2012 at 12:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mahasiswa Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 4226 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Malay Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Persian, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi | Message 4 of 78 01 November 2012 at 1:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I plan to spend my exam break (38 days long) devoting between 30 minutes and an hour and a half to the
languages I study so that I can perfect them, or, in the case of Arabic and Hebrew, better them to proficiency. So I am definitely interested in hearing about your results! You may want to consider ginkgo biloba. Edited by mahasiswa on 01 November 2012 at 1:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5350 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 5 of 78 01 November 2012 at 1:48am | IP Logged | ||
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@mahasiswa
Lol...I think I'll stick to a good ol' fashioned cup of tea and a choccie biscuit to kick my brain into action each evening. Good luck with your languages over the break period! Edited by Teango on 01 November 2012 at 9:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6034 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 6 of 78 02 November 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Aloha!
Another creative and interesting project and as always with an entertaining introduction. Must have been hard to limit yourself to ten, right? No Spanish for instance. Glad to hear you're in good spirits and enjoying your new life. //aloysius 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 78 02 November 2012 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||
We know you are nuts. We love you anyway :-) I am sure this will be another fun log, and that you will gain insight which will be useful for all of us. In fact this is the first 10 languages at the same time experiment I have seen which is likely to succeed. Best of luck!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 78 02 November 2012 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
But anyway, best of luck from me too! Edited by Serpent on 02 November 2012 at 7:20pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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