JLS log - Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Chinese

[jimmy]

mmm, I also tried very less amount of time so. But after thinking that those website makers was american or not chinese natives, I left.
but youku seems original. you should definitely consider to watch/try youku.
simply, it is chinese youtube as of my knowledge.

谢谢你!

不用谢

[JLS]

I've worked on intentionally fostering a living connection with the words I learn. I've mainly practiced with Chinese and Spanish; but when I went back to Hebrew, the bent was there to make Hebrew words living to me.

It confirms two ideas I've had: 1) you must intentionally foster living connections in your target languages, and 2) skills applied to one language will cross into another.

How can you do this? Three possibilities:

1) If you have the same sentence in two languages--your native and your target--think of what all the sentence means to you in your native language; and then intentionally import the sense and feeling into the sentence in the target language, with adjustment for linguistic nuance that may be in the target language.

2) Take a selection from the target language to read out loud; first think of how you should be feeling and reasoning when reading it out loud, and then repeat it several times over with those sentiments in mind.

3) Speak with native speakers. Nothing creates the living connection by experiencing relationships in the language. Nothing makes it so real.

[JLS]

Nothing big to share, just happiness when basic words and syntax come a little easier off the tongue in conversation.

[JLS]

I'm happy to find that if I'm generally consistent in language study, an occasional few days off will hurt nothing. My Chinese study has been sporadic lately, but what I've attained seems to stick.

[JLS]

I'm diverting in order to dip into Japanese. See here. It's an experiment in order to evaluate potential long-term plans. I doubt I'd be fluent in two years, so I'm keeping this at the level of "experiment."

I'm not intimidated by lack of resemblance to English letters, nor the words themselves sounding at all like English. I've dealt with that in learning classical Hebrew. Kanji are a bit new, but I've accustomed myself somewhat in studying Chinese. It's a new thing to me, though, to look at a language that has three interchangeably-used writing systems, on top of reflecting the way of thinking of a culture historically distinct and isolated from my own.

At the same time, the Hebrew authors didn't exactly write like Westerners either, and I can follow them.

We'll see.

[JLS]

I'm using DuoLingo free version for learning the Japanese hiragana. Apps all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I find DuoLingo to be good for brute force practice on basics. You can use its highly repetitive nature to nail the basics, which creates foundational blocks for later on. The less you have to think about the elementary ideas, the better.

[JLS]

I've now exposed myself to 28 hiragana. DuoLingo thinks I'm well-practiced in 12 of them (あ、い、う、え、か、こ、さ、し、す、ち、み、わ). I'm writing down vocabulary in a notebook that I pick up with the hiragana exercises and them applying them where I can (ie. if I see something that is あお I say あお.

This Japanese keyboard is going to be fun to get used to. I can tell.

Nothing exciting. Just a basic advance over the past week.

[golyplot]

This Japanese keyboard is going to be fun to get used to. I can tell.

Is that a Duolingo specific thing?

The normal way to type Japanese for westerners is to use an IME, where you type in the romanization and it gives you a drop down of choices.

[JLS]

This Japanese keyboard is going to be fun to get used to. I can tell.

Is that a Duolingo specific thing?

The normal way to type Japanese for westerners is to use an IME, where you type in the romanization and it gives you a drop down of choices.

It's not a DuoLingo thing. I installed the Japanese keyboard because I want to compose as part of my practice. I can't imagine getting used to switching between hiragana, katakana, and kanji. I did see it does auto-suggest, but I imagine there's some judgment involved in making your selection.

[MorkTheFiddle]

I've worked on intentionally fostering a living connection with the words I learn. I've mainly practiced with Chinese and Spanish; but when I went back to Hebrew, the bent was there to make Hebrew words living to me.

It confirms two ideas I've had: 1) you must intentionally foster living connections in your target languages, and 2) skills applied to one language will cross into another.

How can you do this? Three possibilities:

1) If you have the same sentence in two languages--your native and your target--think of what all the sentence means to you in your native language; and then intentionally import the sense and feeling into the sentence in the target language, with adjustment for linguistic nuance that may be in the target language.

2) Take a selection from the target language to read out loud; first think of how you should be feeling and reasoning when reading it out loud, and then repeat it several times over with those sentiments in mind.

One of the most original pieces of advice that I have read on this forum.
I am trying to make it work with ancient Greek. When I read a passage from Herodotus or Thucydides, who wrote about cataclysmic events, how would a native of the time responded to it intellectually and emotionally? The events of their histories certainly can resonate in our times.