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TAC 2013 Asian Team 鶴 (crane) TEAM THREAD

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vermillon
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4473 days ago

602 posts - 1042 votes 
Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, German

 
 Message 433 of 457
06 December 2013 at 10:25am | IP Logged 
Hello!

I haven't been very active at all for several months now, since I dropped all of my Asian languages (and Mandarin/Minnanhua are just two I maintain vaguely), but since Druckfehler asked, I will report earlier than I had planned:

I have finally completed my goal for 2013 in Classical Chinese: I have finished reading the 553 pages of 說苑! I am happy to have reached this goal, even though I totally lacked regularity, sometimes not reading for a couple of weeks, and then reading 20p/day. I am now sitting with around 15.000 pages of Classical Chinese on a bookshelf, at this pace (550 pages in 11 months) it would take 25 years to read them all! I hope I'll get more regular. To help me in this task, I plan to invest in a tablet, the Pleco app along with 古汉语大词典, since my current dictionary is small, character only (almost no multi-character word) and this must surely keep me from getting some of the meaning. I'm also interesting in any advice on "how to become better at Classical Chinese". I'm reading and reading and reading, it does help, but I was wondering if people here had other techniques?

And of course, I reached my goal for the year in Minnanhua months ago, as well as for Breton, whereas I failed in Mandarin (didn't push it, won't attempt exam), Korean (dropped, even decided to delete my Anki decks) and Japanese (same), bringing the final "TAC" success rate to a mere 50%. In the meantime, I have studied a few other languages (Norwegian, Polish, German, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Arabic), so at least I've discovered things. :)

Edited by vermillon on 06 December 2013 at 10:54am

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druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4663 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 434 of 457
06 December 2013 at 1:52pm | IP Logged 
Congrats on reaching your goal for Classical Chinese! Even if you dropped 3, you reached your goals for two languages, which is more than what most of us studied on the Asian team this year ;)

That means you've also completed the November challenge you set for yourself, right?

I have no idea how to go about learning a dead language apart from what you're doing at the moment. I personally don't see a problem with less regularity - I think that's just life. Sometimes there's less time for language study, sometimes we just don't feel like it... I imagine it's harder with a dead language, because you only have reading instead of a lot of varied activities to choose from should one get boring.

By the way, are you still going to do the December challenge? In Mandarin oder Minnanhua perhaps? Or even in Classical Chinese? ;)

Edited by druckfehler on 06 December 2013 at 1:55pm

1 person has voted this message useful



vermillon
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4473 days ago

602 posts - 1042 votes 
Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, German

 
 Message 435 of 457
06 December 2013 at 2:30pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for the kind words. I guess it indeed means I have successfully completed the November Challenge (I even finished within the boundaries of November rather than the 6WC!), which is probably the second time only that I complete a challenge?

Unfortunately there will be no third challenge completed: I'm trying to finish off my 2013 projects (like finishing reading an entire book in German by the end of the 6WC)... and in the same time, get some rest with my family and think of realistic goals for 2014, which will include nothing Asian (I will definitely read Classical Chinese regularly, and probably have to improve at Minnanhua for a trip to China, but those won't be "goals" per se).

As for learning a "dead language", the case of Classical Chinese is a bit more annoying than, say, Latin, it seems to me: nobody knows how it was pronounced (nobody seems to bother trying to recite it with a reconstructed pronunciation, at least), and nobody seems to focus on production (whereas for Latin/Greek, some people actually have conversations, see Inversen and dekaglossai), so you're left with reading, and possibly reciting poetry with Mandarin pronunciation. Or Cantonese, but since I don't speak it, I can forget. Or Minnanhua, but then none of my Chinese friends would understand.
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4502 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 436 of 457
08 December 2013 at 11:51am | IP Logged 
Anyone studying Korean here that wants to join the TAC 2014?
1 person has voted this message useful



druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4663 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 437 of 457
09 December 2013 at 2:10pm | IP Logged 
I think all of us are already on board ;) But I'd be glad to be proven wrong!
1 person has voted this message useful



js6426
Diglot
Senior Member
Cambodia
Joined 4315 days ago

277 posts - 349 votes 
Speaks: English*, Khmer
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 438 of 457
19 December 2013 at 5:45am | IP Logged 
Regarding our final challenge, does it have to be strictly audio/video, or are we allowed to do something written as
we were for the first challenge? My writing has definitely been my biggest improvement over the year, and so if
possible i'd rather finish the year in my best area!
1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6347 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 439 of 457
22 December 2013 at 9:22pm | IP Logged 
This is my entry for the December challenge:

이거 내 마지막 도전이에요. 처음에는 뭔가 말해 보려고 했는데 그냥 쓰기로 했어요. 그동안 한국어 말하기 연습 별로 안 했거든요. 쓰기도 별로 연습 안 했는데 말하기보다 쓰기가 더 쉬워요. 그래서 쓰고 있어요.

저는 올해 한국말을 많이 배웠어요. 원하는 만큼 못 알아듣지만 1년 전보다 훨씬 알아들어요. 한국 드라마 많이 보고 Anki 많이 썼어요. 그리고 기본적인 문법을 많이 복습했어요.

In English (loosely translated):

This is my last challenge. At first I wanted to try speaking some Korean but in the end I decided to just write something because I haven't practiced speaking almost at all. I haven't practiced writing either but writing is easier than speaking so I'm writing.

I learned a lot of Korean this year. I can't understand as much as I'd like to but I can understand a lot more than a year ago. I watched a lot of Korean dramas and used Anki a lot. I also reviewed basic grammar constructions a lot.

---------------------

This doesn't seem like a lot of text but it was challenging enough to write it. I never write (or speak) in Korean and no one ever corrects me so I have no idea whether my text is full of mistakes or not. Probably somewhere in between. I can tell you though that writing this assignment was easier than writing the one in January. I'm pretty comfortable with all the grammar constructions I used here, my problem is vocabulary. If I knew more words related to language learning then I'd have written more. As it is, I learned 도전 and 기본적인 for the first time today.
4 persons have voted this message useful



The Real CZ
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5444 days ago

1069 posts - 1495 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 440 of 457
23 December 2013 at 3:24am | IP Logged 
That was very good, Evita! However, you want to use 제 instead of 내 when you're using
polite language.


1 person has voted this message useful



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