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TAC 2014 - tabidachi, 旅立ち - komorebi

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
komorebi
Diglot
Newbie
Germany
Joined 3772 days ago

10 posts - 12 votes
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Japanese, Latin

 
 Message 1 of 6
01 January 2014 at 3:08pm | IP Logged 
Welcome to my log for the TAC 2014!

This is my first time participating and I'm very excited to start learning languages
again. I haven't really done that for about three years, just on and off. But if I want
to get any better at my languages or even learn a new one, I'll have to sit down and
simply study it. The TAC is kind of my incentive to do exactly that ^^

My main language in 2014 will be Japanese. I'll also take up French again and Latin
will be my new language.


JAPANESE
I'm currently at N3/N4 level, I think. I have never taken the test and don't plan on
doing so in the foreseeable future. So I can only guess by looking at grammar and
vocabulary lists. I've been studying Japanese on and off for years without making any
considerable progress. That's something I want to change in 2014.
My overall goal is to reach a solid N2 level, especially in terms of grammar and
vocabulary.
As for Kanji, I'm going to take a different route. I'll (re)study all 1006 elementary
school kanji with special regard to vocabulary building. In the past I've already
studied those 教育漢字 (kyouiku kanji) up to grade 5 and I actually remember a great
part of them. But my vocabulary is too limited. That means, quite often I can't read
and understand a word, even if it contains only kanji I know.
Since vocabulary is my weak point, I set myself the goal of increasing it by 5000
Japanese words.

FRENCH
I used to study French in school for years. I've always had very good grades. And
according to my certificates I reached a B1 level. Well, that seems like a very long
time ago, even though it's really just a couple of years since my last proper French
lesson. The truth is, I've forgotten a lot. I look at my old notes and see strange
words all over the place. I must have known them once, I'm sure about that, but not
anymore. The same goes for grammar, especially tenses.
So, my goal for this year is to reactivate my French and maybe even reach the stage,
where I can think in French without too many problems. I've never achieved that. French
always stayed a foreign language, which is probably one of the reasons why I
forgot so much of it.
As mentioned above, vocabulary is my weak point, so I'll set myself a word goal just
like in Japanese: 4000 words.

LATIN
My new language this year. I've never learned it, although I did have the opportunity
in school once. Too bad I wasn't interested in it back then :( But I bought a textbook
a couple of years ago, when I first thought it a great idea to learn Latin. It's been
sitting on my shelf ever since, waiting for me to finally open it and get started.
I don't have any specific goal for Latin yet, apart from working through the textbook.
We'll see, how far that takes me.

Wanderlust
I guess, wanderlust will find me some time or another. I wanted to do one new language
this year and finally decided on Latin. But there are a couple of others that I have
quite some interest in, namely Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Italian and even Icelandic.
Oh well, let's see what happens :)

1 person has voted this message useful



komorebi
Diglot
Newbie
Germany
Joined 3772 days ago

10 posts - 12 votes
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Japanese, Latin

 
 Message 2 of 6
17 January 2014 at 11:07am | IP Logged 
This is my little corner where I'll post the language material and resources that I find useful and/or interesting.

JAPANESE
- http://forum.koohii.com/ - The forum to the website Reviewing the Kanji, very useful even if you don't use Heisig's
Remembering the Kanji (eng)
- nihongodaybyday.blogspot.de - A blog written by a Japanese teacher for Japanese language learners (jp)
- http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy - NHK news in easy Japanese with audio and furigana (jp)
- http://newsmanga.net/ - News in manga format (jp)
- http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad - Online Japanese Accent Dictionary (jp, eng)
- http://accent.u-biq.org/ - Japanese Accent Study Website (jp, eng)
- http://wadoku.de/ - Japanisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch (de)
- http://happylilac.net/syogaku.html - Lots of free learning material for Japanese elementary school students (jp)
- http://www.geocities.jp/mutasanjp/ - Lots and lots of practice sheets for kokugo and maths aimed at Japanese
elementary school students (jp)

FRENCH
- http://frvocabulary.blogspot.de/ - French Vocabulary Illustrated
- http://bufyvs.free.fr/series/btvs/transcript.php - Transcripts for the TV series Buffy in French

Edited by komorebi on 02 February 2014 at 8:27pm

1 person has voted this message useful



komorebi
Diglot
Newbie
Germany
Joined 3772 days ago

10 posts - 12 votes
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Japanese, Latin

 
 Message 3 of 6
17 January 2014 at 11:08am | IP Logged 
Due to my getting sick right at the beginning of the new year I didn't achieve as much
as I wanted to. But I still got a couple of things done.

JAPANESE

I reviewed all kanji from first and second grade, altogether 240 characters, and did
some tests. As expected, the problem lies not so much with the kanji per se but with
knowing the words they can form together. For example, I may know 遠 and 足, but
looking at 遠足 I can only guess its reading and meaning.
So far I've only added 86 cards to Anki. I expect that number to rise the more kanji I
review and the more I read.
I haven't done much reading yet. I read one blog entry at "nihongo day by day" and one
entry at NHK News Easy.
As for grammar, I've begun to review the grammar points for N4. There are a couple of
them that I can't use properly even though I understand them. I hope to finish them
until the end of January.

FRENCH

Not much done, I'm afraid. I read the first chapter of "Le jeu de l'ange" by Carlos
Ruiz Zafón. It's fairly difficult to understand, because there are many words I don't
know. But I do know the book, so I can follow the story.
I've also noticed that I had entered about a hundred French words into Anki some time
before. I reviewed them now, but I won't count them for my word goal this year.


LATIN

The book I'm using is Hueber's Latein ganz leicht, a German book. I've done the first
two chapters, out of twenty. It's quite grammatical with lots of grammar tables, so
I'll have to go and create my own example sentences as this is how I remember grammar
best.
There seem to be a couple of mistakes in the book, though. They are small so far, but
that means I'll have to pay a lot more attention.

Wanderlust
hasn't begun yet. But I've started an English deck for Anki. During the last days I've
seen a lot of English words that I don't really know. And since I'm starting to get
used to doing Anki every day, I might as well learn some English vocabulary, too.


I plan to do weekly updates to this log, unless something gets in the way (again) ^^
1 person has voted this message useful



dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4450 days ago

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

 
 Message 4 of 6
17 January 2014 at 4:35pm | IP Logged 
Glad to hear that you're better now.

komorebi wrote:
As expected, the problem lies not so much with the kanji per se but with
knowing the words they can form together. For example, I may know 遠 and 足, but
looking at 遠足 I can only guess its reading and meaning.


A few kanji only have one reading, which helps. However, for the majority of them
I've found that my unit of learning is the word rather than the readings.

In your case 遠 can be EN or ON and 足 can be SOKU or ASHI (plus a few others). Not being
a native speaker I've no idea whether おんそく or おなし (they both do, though the latter is
a place name). So I just learn 遠足 along with えんそく and have done with it. I'd love there
to be a simpler way :-)


1 person has voted this message useful



komorebi
Diglot
Newbie
Germany
Joined 3772 days ago

10 posts - 12 votes
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Japanese, Latin

 
 Message 5 of 6
02 February 2014 at 6:20pm | IP Logged 
dampingwire wrote:

A few kanji only have one reading, which helps. However, for the majority of them
I've found that my unit of learning is the word rather than the readings.

In your case 遠 can be EN or ON and 足 can be SOKU or ASHI (plus a few others). Not being
a native speaker I've no idea whether おんそく or おなし (they both do, though the latter is
a place name). So I just learn 遠足 along with えんそく and have done with it. I'd love there
to be a simpler way :-)


All those possibilities are driving me nuts, sometimes ^^ One of my "favourites" is 一日: いちにち and ついたち
are the most common readings and I know their difference by now. But apparently it can also be read いちじつ、
ひとひ or いっぴ.
Yeah, Japanese is fun :D


Summary for January

JAPANESE
- Anki
- First and second grade kanji repetition
- Second grade kanji practice
- Grammar repetition JLPT N4
- read a couple of articles from NHK Newsweb Easy
- read two entries from nihongodaybyday.blogspot.de

FRENCH
- Anki
- read one chapter of Le jeu de l'ange
- watched altogether about 20 episodes from Buffy contre les vampires and Stargate SG-1

LATIN
- Anki
- studied two chapters of Hueber's Latein ganz leicht

So, am I satisfied with my first TAC month?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, because I actually did something nearly every day, especially Anki, which I haven't been able to do
before. Also yes, because I watched several episodes completely in French and managed to understand enough
to follow the story.
But no, because I didn't achieve as much as I had hoped; some things due to sickness, but others, like the
amount of vocabulary, because I didn't read enough to find enough new words. Also, I didn't finish my
repetition of Japanese N4 grammar.


Goals for February

JAPANESE
- re-study 100 kanji from third grade
- finish grammar repetition for N4 level
- read more
- take the online test at www.j-cat.org in order to get a better idea what level I'm at - well, if they let
me take it, I had some troubles with registering :(

FRENCH
- read 6 chapters of Le jeu de l'ange
- watch some more episodes of Buffy and study their vocabulary in order to understand the episodes even
better

As for Latin, that's the language I'm studying for the 6-Week-Challenge. So the goals are not just for
February. They are modest, though.
- Study 6 chapters of Hueber's Latein ganz leicht - basically one every week
- log a minimum of 30 hours
1 person has voted this message useful



Monox D. I-Fly
Senior Member
Indonesia
monoxdifly.iopc.us
Joined 4920 days ago

762 posts - 664 votes 
Speaks: Indonesian*

 
 Message 6 of 6
21 September 2016 at 7:05pm | IP Logged 
dampingwire wrote:

In your case 遠 can be EN or ON and 足 can be SOKU or ASHI (plus a few others). Not being
a native speaker I've no idea whether おんそく or おなし (they both do, though the latter is
a place name). So I just learn 遠足 along with えんそく and have done with it. I'd love there
to be a simpler way :-)



足 can also be read as "ta", right? What if 遠足 reads "enta" or "toota"? Is it possible?


1 person has voted this message useful



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