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Amerykanka’s TAC 2013, Teams Żubr & Nebun

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4961 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 65 of 176
21 February 2013 at 3:11am | IP Logged 
Thanks for the support, Fuenf_Katzen and Mooby!

@Fuenf_Katzen, I am focusing on both classical and ecclesiastical Latin this year. My main textbook is A
Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin
by John Collins, but then I also translate bits of Catullus and Cicero and my
grammar reference books all focus on classical Latin. As far as I can tell, there isn't that much of a difference
anyway - some grammatical structures appear more frequently, or exclusively, in one variety or the other, and
then ecclesiastical Latin seems to have a lot of religious vocabulary adopted from Greek (baptizō, evangelizō,
etc.), but other than that I haven't seen much of a difference. That could just be my inexperience, though. :)

@Mooby, I can relate to the issues with listening comprehension. If I see things in writing, they are so much
easier to understand! I feel like my listening comprehension has improved, though, and I'm sure yours will,
too, thanks to your rigorous study routine.

As for Drużyna pierścienia - well, I don't know if you know much about The Lord of the Rings, but it is
my favorite book, so I am enjoying listening to The Fellowship of the Ring in Polish. I am a big fan of epic
quests set in fantasy worlds!

Edited by Amerykanka on 21 February 2013 at 3:12am

1 person has voted this message useful



Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
Joined 5185 days ago

1232 posts - 1740 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 66 of 176
21 February 2013 at 3:18am | IP Logged 
Amerykanka wrote:
\As for Drużyna pierścienia - well, I don't know if you know much about The Lord of the Rings, but it is my favorite book, so I am enjoying listening to The Fellowship of the Ring in Polish. I am a big fan of epic quests set in fantasy worlds!


This has nothing to do with languages, but have you ever read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series? It is my ultimate favorite. :)
1 person has voted this message useful



JohannaNYC
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4242 days ago

251 posts - 361 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English*, Italian
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian)

 
 Message 67 of 176
21 February 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged 
Amerykanka wrote:

After talking in Polish this week, I have come to the conclusion that my biggest issue at
the moment is
forgetting words that I once knew.



Unfortunately, I'm in the same boat. Apparently this is normal, I took an online quiz to
find out my dosha in Ayurveda and one of the questions was if I learn quickly and forget
quickly too. I guess the trick to make progress would be to learn more and faster too :)
But in all seriousness having regular conversations in my TL more than doubles my
retention rate. So hopefully your schedule will allow you to practice Polish with Julie.
1 person has voted this message useful



Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4961 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 68 of 176
23 February 2013 at 3:53pm | IP Logged 
@Kerrie, no, I never have. I'll check it out, though - I'm always looking for new series to read! :)

@JohannaNYC, it's good to know I'm not the only one with this problem! Hopefully vocabulary review and
more conversing will do the trick. I've been out of touch with my Polish for a while, so I suppose that makes it
even more likely that I should have some memory issues, but I hate it when I can't remember a word I've
known for over five or six years!

I'll be posting this week's study update later today or tomorrow.

Edited by Amerykanka on 23 February 2013 at 3:54pm

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6387 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 69 of 176
23 February 2013 at 4:46pm | IP Logged 
In our native languages we can forget words we knew for 5, 20 or 50 years :)
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Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4961 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 70 of 176
24 February 2013 at 7:03pm | IP Logged 
Celebration time!!! : ) I finished reading Las Dos Marías, which means I have officially read five books in
Spanish. It also means that I am on track with my goal to read at least 12 books in Spanish this year, since it
is February and I only have ten more to go!

I also have an Epic Harry Potter Challenge that I am currently designing for myself - it involves reading three
of the books in Polish, three in Spanish, and one in Italian. I've been wanting to reread the series for a while
and it would be way too boring to do it in English! ; ) I'll figure out the details later. And I will update this log
later, too - this weekend has been crazy, since my Anki decks wouldn't synchronize and I spent a lot of
Saturday figuring out the problem and also resolving several other technological issues I've been having.

Serpent wrote:
In our native languages we can forget words we knew for 5, 20 or 50 years :)


Yes, indeed! :) This is some comfort, but then, I don't have any doubts about my ability to speak English, so
forgetting English words doesn't bother me as much as forgetting Polish ones.

Edited by Amerykanka on 24 February 2013 at 7:04pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4961 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 71 of 176
02 March 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged 
I finally have some time (after an EXTREMELY busy week), so here comes my update for the past two
weeks.

ITALIAN
25 minutes

I reviewed my flashcards and listened to part of Lesson 5 of Assimil. Oh, and the book I was reading in
Spanish had a character who wrote in a mixture of Italian and Spanish - does that count? : )

LATIN
8 hours 19 minutes
- 3 hours 21 minutes of flashcard review in Anki
- 2 hours 40 minutes of translation (see below for details)
- 1 hour 3 minutes of grammar study and review (Units 27 and 28 of Collins, among other things)
- 1 hour of miscellaneous study, discussion, etc.
- 15 minutes of vocabulary acquisition

I translated another paragraph of St. Anselm's Proslogion, a passage from St. Augustine's De Doctrina
Christiana
(that was HARD), Catullus 105, and finally, several paragraphs of Cicero. The Catullus and
Cicero translations were really fun, and St. Anselm and St. Augustine were fun too, except they were a lot
harder, so I had to exert more effort just trying to figure out what they were talking about. Of course, once that
was accomplished, as a Catholic I was totally thrilled to be reading their writings! : )

I also spent some time researching famous authors/poets of the Golden and Silver Ages of Latin literature,
but I haven't counted this as study time.

POLISH
9 hours 51 minutes
- 2 hour 49 minutes of flashcard review in Anki
- 4 hours 25 minutes of vocabulary review + acquisition
- 1 hour 27 minutes of listening to Drużyna pierścienia
- 35 minutes of conversation
- 35 minutes of reading Harry Potter 1 in Polish

I feel like I am at last making some progress in getting my vocabulary switched from my paper flashcards to
Anki. As I am transferring the words, I look them up and make sure I really understand how to use them, so
those 4+ hours of vocabulary review and acquisition were well spent.

In keeping with my Harry Potter Challenge, I started Harry Potter i kamień filozoficzny. So far I've only
read one chapter. I am still reading Kamienie na szaniec, too, but I haven't made any progress there.

SPANISH
15 hours 44 minutes
- 3 hours 59 minutes of reviewing flashcards in Anki
- 4 hours 25 minutes of reading
- 2 hours 45 minutes of listening comprehension
- 3 hours 50 minutes of vocabulary acquisition
- 45 minutes of translating
Flashcard Count: 4,940 cards

I have been spending a lot of time reading over the last two weeks. I finished Las Dos Marías, as I
mentioned, and then I started El Valle de los Lobos. This is another teen fantasy book by Laura Gallego
García. So far I have read 59 pages. This is the first in a series, and I have already purchased the following
two books. My plan is to read these three books quickly and then find something harder to read - a classic or
something. Sometime this year I'll also be reading Harry Potter 3, 4, and 6 in Spanish, but that will be on the
side.

The most interesting occurrence this week was that I received a bit of translating work! A funeral director I
know had a (really long) Cuban marriage certificate that he needed to turn in to the government to correct an
error on a death certificate, but the government wouldn't accept it in Spanish and told him he needed to have
it translated. So he came to me and asked me to do it. It took around an hour and was REALLY hard, but I
was satisfied with my results. My translation wasn't perfect, I know, but it did the job and I received some
valuable experience. : )

EDIT: I almost forgot. I downloaded an awesome Polish app onto my iPad. It's called "Polskie Książki" and it
contains hundreds of Polish classics - 20 or so books by Henryk Sienkiewicz, for example. And it only cost
$0.99! I was thrilled to discover this, because I'll want to read a lot of these classics eventually and a lot of
them aren't easy to buy if you live in the US.


Edited by Amerykanka on 02 March 2013 at 4:08pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4961 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 72 of 176
02 March 2013 at 4:19pm | IP Logged 
HARRY POTTER CHALLENGE
I have no idea where my sudden desire to do a Harry Potter Challenge came from - probably a mixture of my
desires to reread the series and to read as much as possible in all my target languages this year. As the
challenge currently stands, I will be reading the books in order, switching between languages. I own books 1,
2, and 5 in Polish, so those three will be in Polish. I can get all of the books in Spanish at my library, so I'll fill
in the gaps with Spanish books. I also want to read at least one of them in Italian. I chose 7, because it's the
last and I won't mess up my other languages by taking absolutely forever on it. (My Italian is in disgraceful
shape right now!) So anyway, this is the official list:

1. Harry Potter i kamień filozoficzny
2. Harry Potter i Komnata Tajemnic
3. Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban
4. Harry Potter y el Cáliz de Fuego
5. Harry Potter i Zakon Feniksa
6. Harry Potter y el misterio del Príncipe
7. Harry Potter e i Doni della Morte

As I mentioned in my last post, so far I have only finished one chapter of Book 1. I have a feeling my Polish
books are going to take longer than my Spanish books, just because I don't have as much time to read in
Polish as I do in Spanish.

Edited by Amerykanka on 03 March 2013 at 4:41pm



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