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Ugla soars higher TAC13 Sakura桜 & Romulan

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Brun Ugle
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
brunugle.wordpress.c
Joined 6418 days ago

1292 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1
Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish

 
 Message 81 of 156
20 January 2013 at 10:36pm | IP Logged 

I haven’t been getting much studying done lately. I’ve been rather stressed. For one thing, I made a new budget for the year and it didn’t look good. It looks like this year of probable low income collides with a year of extra expenses, so I’d better learn to like gruel. Fortunately I have some savings, but using up them isn’t a good solution.

Also, my mother rang me yesterday and told me that my father had been extra confused this past week. After a while he said himself that he wondered if maybe he was getting Alzheimer’s. She had to remind him that he’s been taking medicine for it for over a year now. They are supposed to be moving to a home, but the process of clearing out the house seems to be taking a long time and none of us are able to help much. I don’t even live in the same country. I need to go there soon, but it’s difficult because of my present situation.

We are all worried that something could happen before they manage to move. We are also worried that it could happen to us. We could get our mother’s eyes (she’s going blind) and my father’s brain. Old age isn’t pretty. It’s like you start rotting long before your body lands in the earth.

So, I’ve been having a bit of trouble concentrating at times, but I have managed to do some things. Apparently Sanchez’s party really was “en su oficina,” just as mrwarper thought. And this other guy is either not very bright, or he has the world’s worst interior decorator because he keeps asking. “What is this? Is this a table or a chair? And that? Is it a table?” (It wasn’t, it was a chair.) It doesn’t sound like his furniture can be very comfortable if you can’t even tell which ones are tables and which ones are chairs.

In Japanese, I’ve been doing a little LR (I count that toward listening). I’ve been listening to the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze and reading along with the parallel text both in English and Japanese. I got the audio from this voiceblog. The recordings are very professional and a lot of the stories are linked to the texts in Aozora Bunko. He links directly to the text, so you don’t have to search for it. I didn’t find any others that have parallel texts to match the recordings, but I haven’t looked very hard either. There are a bunch of parallel texts here, but I haven’t noticed that any of the others there match with any of his recordings. There are probably other sites for parallel texts though, and even without them, it is still possible to listen to his recordings and read the Japanese texts from Aozora. He doesn’t just do Sherlock Holmes; there is a wide variety. It’s just that the Sherlock Holmes story was the only one I found a parallel text for.


And to end with a laugh: Cristina mentioned on the Viking team thread that it is acceptable to write “huet” instead of “hodet” (head). That reminded me of another time when I had only been in Norway a short time. I visiting my former mother-in-law, and she was gossiping on and on as she always does. It was winter, and she started talking about how shocking it was to see old ladies going around without a “huv” (hat) on. Well, I confused “huv” (hat) with “hu” (head). So, I thought it must be very shocking indeed, and I was a little disappointed and shocked at myself that I’d never noticed such a spectacle. (Those are dialect words, by the way, so don’t curse your dictionary if you don’t find them.)

And then there was the time I tried to tell the doctor I was born in 1923. Fortunately, her medical expertise allowed her to determine that I was a lot closer to 30 than to 80, and she was able to figure out what I really meant. She also figured out that the big purple sausage-like thing sticking out of my hand was my finger and that it was most likely broken. It was. It is a fairly common result of having a tree rolled over your finger apparently.

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Brun Ugle
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
brunugle.wordpress.c
Joined 6418 days ago

1292 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1
Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish

 
 Message 82 of 156
23 January 2013 at 10:27am | IP Logged 
Not only has this guy lost Sanchez, but now he can’t even find himself….

He asks, “Where are you?”
The other guy answers, “I’m here, and so are you.”
“Really?!”
“Of course. We’re both here in the classroom.”

I thought FSI would be boring, but it’s so ridiculous sometimes that it’s actually funny.

1 person has voted this message useful



Brun Ugle
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
brunugle.wordpress.c
Joined 6418 days ago

1292 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1
Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish

 
 Message 83 of 156
27 January 2013 at 9:55pm | IP Logged 
I had a minor depression setback (or perhaps it was exhaustion due to spending 1,5 hours together with 9 other people on Thursday) and spent two-and-a-half days sitting/lying on the couch unable to move, but now I'm back. I'm a good bit behind where I wanted to be, but I think I still stand a fairly good chance of making my January goals.

Right now, I'm trying to decide if I should do a 6WC. Several of my teammates are, so it's very tempting. I just can't decide....Japanese? or Spanish? I'm kind of leaning toward Japanese because I wanted to make a real push forward with it this year and get it to a level where I could just use it. Plus, it might help me to get a little closer to my goals in the SC. On the other hand, working on Spanish would give more obvious signs of progress since I've barely scratched the surface of that one.

I think I should probably go with Japanese this time and Spanish in May, but it's so hard to decide. I still have four days left though.
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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5780 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 84 of 156
27 January 2013 at 10:06pm | IP Logged 
I would go for whichever one you think you'll put the most hours in! Whichever language you pick, I look forward to competing against you :)

But in the mean time, take care of yourself. Sounds like you're having a tough January too.
1 person has voted this message useful



Brun Ugle
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
brunugle.wordpress.c
Joined 6418 days ago

1292 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1
Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish

 
 Message 85 of 156
29 January 2013 at 9:42am | IP Logged 
Thanks, g-bod! Yes, it's a bit difficult lately. Some of the problems, like with my parents, would probably be difficult for anyone, but some of the other things are only problems because I'm an autist and everything is stressful for us. Much as I like to blather on about such things, I think I will skip it this time, since I'm probably starting to get annoying. So I will write about something more language-related.


I've just signed up for my first 6WC. I decided on Japanese because I'm hoping to soon be too good at Japanese to be allowed to participate with it. If I enjoy it, and I think I will, I will join in the next 6WC with Spanish. So for the next 6 weeks, I will be concentrating on Japanese. I will continue with Spanish though and aim for about 1 hour a day with Spanish. That's enough time to get through about 1 FSI lesson or 1 chapter in one of my textbooks or 1/2 a chapter in the other. For Japanese, I plan to do a lot of listening, mostly because I need to, but it will also rack up a lot of hours for me since listening takes a lot less effort than other activities. Spending 3 hours watching dramas is perfectly easy and enjoyable. Spending 3 hours cramming kanji would kill me. I won't be giving up on kanji, iKnow, reading, writing, etc. I'll just be adding a lot of listening practice, which was what I was intending for this year anyway. As an added bonus, I might complete the movie portion of the Super Challenge. I haven't been including anything other than movies and dramas there, and other than the first few, I've only included one run-through. So, if I'd counted audiobooks and watching movies more than once, I might be finished already. So far, Woodsei hasn't signed up, so maybe I'll even have some chance at winning the 6WC. I hope to at least make the top 5.



By-the-way, did you notice I learned to use color?



Edited by Brun Ugle on 29 January 2013 at 10:34am

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4463 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 86 of 156
29 January 2013 at 8:21pm | IP Logged 
Brun Ugle wrote:
If it doesn't make sense, I can try again, or I could possibly send you
a simplified, blank version.


That makes perfect sense, thanks. I'm a little confused about not getting an email
update, but I'll worry about that some other time.

Right now I think I'll think about what my log would look like with colour coding :-)      
1 person has voted this message useful



dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4463 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 87 of 156
30 January 2013 at 12:52am | IP Logged 
Brun Ugle wrote:
I've just signed up for my first 6WC.


I thought the 6WC was for
beginners? What does it involve (over and above what one might
already be doing for TAC)?


1 person has voted this message useful



Brun Ugle
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
brunugle.wordpress.c
Joined 6418 days ago

1292 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1
Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish

 
 Message 88 of 156
30 January 2013 at 11:21am | IP Logged 
dampingwire wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:
I've just signed up for my first 6WC.


I thought the 6WC was for
beginners? What does it involve (over and above what one might
already be doing for TAC)?



You can be up to lower intermediate which is why I want to do Japanese now before I get too good at it. I'm sure I can't be over lower intermediate considering I usually only understand about 10-20% of what I listen too with a few exceptions for things where I already know the story very well. The only skill area where I do reasonably well is reading, and even that goes extremely slowly.

There is a thread in the general discussion section of the forum that explains it. You don't really have to do anything extra except to keep track of the time you use on your studies. Usually you would use Twitter to keep track, but I don't think it's an absolute requirement. Other than that, you just study as intensely as possible and try to win by having the most hours in your target language.

Edited by Brun Ugle on 30 January 2013 at 1:08pm



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