The Language Pad

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
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Jinx
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 6:56 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English (N), German (adv), varying levels of French, Esperanto, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Catalan, Mandarin, Japanese
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16835
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The Language Pad

Postby Jinx » Sat Jan 02, 2016 7:05 pm

Hello all!

I haven't been very active on the old HTLAL forum for years, so I missed most of the partial-exodus to this new forum – or, as the moderators so charmingly called it, "the community's vacation home". In that same metaphorical spirit, I am naming my virtual home here "The Language Pad" – a reference of course to both the slang word for "home" and the paper on which you make notes.

Many of you old-timers may remember me from HTLAL... back in the day I was even quite active! However, Real Life(TM) did its thing, and therefore I haven't been able to contribute as much in recent years as I once did. I miss the community, and although luckily I'm still connected to many members through other social-media channels, it's not the same as that focused forum feeling.

Now, I don’t honestly expect I’ll be tremendously active here on the new forum either, but I do hope to be able to drop in more than just once or twice a year, as I’ve been reduced to of late. And when I have any personal updates on my linguistic situation, I’ll post them in this thread. (Posts from others are of course more than welcome as well! I always love hearing from y’all.)
Last edited by Jinx on Thu May 25, 2017 10:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Teango
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby Teango » Sat Jan 02, 2016 7:45 pm

Great to see you on the new forum, Jinx! I recall you were doing a Master's degree in technical translation over in Germany (apologies if I've got some or all of this confused of course). How's that going?
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Bao
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby Bao » Sat Jan 02, 2016 8:09 pm

Jinx ...? Jinx! :D
'Tis feeling more and more like home here.
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iguanamon
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2350
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Location: Virgin Islands
Languages: Speaks: English (Native); Spanish (C2); Portuguese (C2); Haitian Creole (C1); Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol (C1); Lesser Antilles French Creole (B2)
Studies: Catalan
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=797
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby iguanamon » Sat Jan 02, 2016 8:17 pm

Welcome, Jinx! It's good to see that you've found us here. You've been missed.
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Jinx
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 6:56 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English (N), German (adv), varying levels of French, Esperanto, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Catalan, Mandarin, Japanese
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16835
x 378

Re: The Language Pad

Postby Jinx » Sat Jan 02, 2016 11:41 pm

Teango wrote:Great to see you on the new forum, Jinx! I recall you were doing a Master's degree in technical translation over in Germany (apologies if I've got some or all of this confused of course). How's that going?


Thanks for the warm welcome, Teango, Bao, and iguanamon! I'm so happy to see so many of the old gang over here. :)

Teango, you remembered exactly correctly – I'm impressed! After three years of working and studying in Leipzig, I'm now back in the US as of a year and a half ago. I'm working as a translation editor (more fun than translation per se for someone who suffers from chronic language-wanderlust, as I do, because I get to read and edit translations from up to four different languages per day on a good day) in a bilingual office (German/English). This doesn't leave me much time for my own studies and other interests, but I try to cram it in where I can. Excited to be back on HTLAL – excuse me, I mean ALLF ;) – and in a shiny brand new forum.
Last edited by Jinx on Thu May 25, 2017 10:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Jinx
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 6:56 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English (N), German (adv), varying levels of French, Esperanto, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Catalan, Mandarin, Japanese
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16835
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby Jinx » Mon Jan 04, 2016 1:43 am

Well, I kicked off the new year not with a bang, but with a whimper... or, more accurately, a sniffle. A bad cold has kept me in bed for the last three days, but I made the best of it:

- signed up for Tadoku and read the first forty pages of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" in French
- watched a couple of news videos in Croatian (about twelve minutes of material total over three days) from http://www.hrt.hr/
- did a bunch of Duolingo in various languages (French, Dutch, Esperanto, Norwegian)
- watched half an episode of Tatort (German, no subs)
- and, quite unintentionally, memorized all the Japanese hiragana (I swear I didn't mean to! I just stumbled upon this site (http://kana.icann.se/) and the next thing I knew it was two hours later and... I knew them all).

I also did some very limited chatting in Croatian with a new acquaintance online, and listened to three or four Croatian songs while reading along in the Croatian and English-translated lyrics. I LOVE how easy this language is to understand when spoken/sung.

Tonight I plan to finish the Tatort episode (it's the München storyline, my favorite one – following the adventures of police inspectors Batić and Leitmayr, my precious babies) and maybe read a little more French. Tomorrow it's back to work, so I probably won't be able to maintain this standard of productivity. But it was fun while it lasted!
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Jinx
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 6:56 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English (N), German (adv), varying levels of French, Esperanto, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Catalan, Mandarin, Japanese
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16835
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Re: The Language Pad (TAC 2016 HR & EO)

Postby Jinx » Fri Jan 15, 2016 3:31 am

There are four German-language meet-up groups here in Atlanta, and I co-host two of them. Tonight was the monthly meeting of one of the groups, and I just got home from it. It was fun – I talked to a guy from Hamburg for close to five minutes before he realized I wasn't German. Always love it when that happens. :) We also had a couple of attendees who are brand new to the German language, and I did my best to make them feel at home and help them learn some new useful expressions.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of hardcore language study the past two weeks, just the usual: 15 to 30 minutes of Duolingo every night, and my translation-editing/proofreading job during the day, which involves skimming texts in German, French, and Spanish, as well as some other languages once in a while (I had a Swedish one the other day, and actually ended up having to translate several lines of it myself, which was a fun exercise).

I did order Assimil's "Kroatisch ohne Mühe" the other day, finally – a New Year's treat for myself, because although I have "Le croate", it somehow feels horribly unnatural to me to study a Slavic language from French. I don't know why, but my mind sees the Germanic family as being positioned solidly between Romance and Slavic, and learning Croatian from German feels immeasurably more "right". Does anyone else know what I'm talking about, or am I the only one with this weird opinion?

I am even more susceptible to wanderlust than usual this winter, it appears. Besides languages that have been on my "currently learning" or "maintaining" list for a while, such as German, French, Esperanto, and Croatian, I have now finally succumbed to the Duolingo addiction and done at least one lesson for every single language they offer in English, as well as starting "reverse trees" for French and Chinese, and also starting the "Catalan from Spanish" course. The ones I'm progressing best in, however, are Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and Norwegian.

A reverse tree, for those who aren't familiar with Duolingo, is when you speak language X and want to learn language Y, but a course teaching language Y is not yet available on the site. However, a course teaching language X for speakers of language Y is, and therefore you sign up for THAT course, thereby learning your target language "in reverse". Since I already did all my graduate studies this way (studying translation in Germany, in a grad program aimed at native German speakers), I'm pretty used to doing things backwards like this.

All right, those are the updates for right now. My only noticeable progress is in Croatian: the other night I was lying in bed humming one of my favorite Croatian songs to myself, and I suddenly realized that I could, for the first time ever, remember ALL the lyrics to it. YAY! :D
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Bao
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Re: The Language Pad (TAC 2016 HR & EO)

Postby Bao » Fri Jan 15, 2016 4:21 pm

You win! You know how to do the thing. :D
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Cavesa
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Re: The Language Pad (TAC 2016 HR & EO)

Postby Cavesa » Fri Jan 15, 2016 4:40 pm

Great to have you back, Jinx!!!

I hope you've been having the best time while you were absent! :-)
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User avatar
Jinx
Yellow Belt
Posts: 96
Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 6:56 pm
Location: Germany
Languages: English (N), German (adv), varying levels of French, Esperanto, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Catalan, Mandarin, Japanese
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16835
x 378

Re: The Language Pad (TAC 2016 HR & EO)

Postby Jinx » Tue Jan 19, 2016 4:19 am

Thanks, Bao and Cavesa! :D

It's late and I should have been in bed half an hour ago, so instead of expanding this list of my linguistic activities from this weekend, I'm just going to post it as-is and add a few notes for each item.

This weekend's language studies (including Monday, which I had off from work):

– watched a couple of Youtube videos of polyglots (the usual suspects: Richard, Timothy, Luca, Emanuele...) speaking in various languages, in order to motivate myself to study.

– watched entire first “book” of Kaamelott (about 300–400 minutes of FR television, with EN subs)
notes: I love this show. Seasons are referred to as "books". I could only find the first book with subtitles, so I guess I'll have to struggle through the rest of them without any (unless someone can help me out here...?).

– watched half an episode of Sense-8 in FR (EN subs)
notes: I really find it difficult to enjoy watching dubs, reading translations, etc. I guess for me the whole purpose of learning a language (well, one of the purposes) is to have access to native material produced in that language. People keep telling me "check out dubs of shows/movies you know, read translations of books you know", etc. – but it's never really enjoyable to me. I only consciously came to this realization today. Hopefully this epiphany will help me be more focused in seeking out more successful and enjoyable study materials in the future.

– did lessons 1–3 of TY Spanish (1977)
notes: Suddenly obsessed with activating my tremendous amounts of passive Spanish knowledge. This book is one of the few learning resources I have that moves fast enough for me (I am so far beyond starting something for "complete beginners" in Spanish; I've tried it many times but lost patience because doing it that way was much too slow and boring). After half an hour of working my way through the book from the beginning, I was translating from English into Spanish with no mistakes sentences like "¿Cuándo tomarás tu sombrero?" and "Los reyes tienen sus palacios, nosotros tenemos nuestras casas" and "Yo compraré su casa; tiene siete habitaciones". Still not very impressive, I know, but perfect for an impatient false beginner!

– spoke lots of German and French
notes: mostly to myself, partly to the cat

– wrote in my journal in French, German, and Esperanto
notes: Lots of journaling. I'm really getting into journaling in my target languages, especially French and Esperanto, which I don't so much enjoy speaking but do enjoy writing in.

– read blogs in French
notes: Mostly Kaamelott fan blogs with easy content. Very rewarding and not very challenging.

– did a bunch of Spanish and French on Duolingo
notes: I am an official Duo addict. It's terrible. (/great)

– dabbled in Norwegian and Japanese (physical books) and Polish (Duolingo)
notes: I have a vintage TY Japanese and a book called "Spoken Norwegian" by Haugen and Chapman. Not sure why. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am SUPER wanderlust-y this year, and I'm blatantly not even trying to restrain myself.
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