OwnPanda learns Vietnamese and Korean (now with more TAC 2016)

[OwlPanda]

Vietnamese

There's a new year coming, and with it, I have new challenges!

My reading is coming along, and so is my vocabulary. My pronunciation is getting to the point where it's really good, and when I'm talking about Vietnamese, that's not a trivial thing to say. Vietnamese people can understand me when I talk, and they can even tell that I'm learning Southern pronunciation.

Listening, though, remains the toughest skill, and I'm starting to think it's the hardest part of Vietnamese. I almost find it harder to listen to Vietnamese than certain other languages I'm hardly familiar with at all.

That's changing, though, because I will spend 2017 going completely through Glossika's course, and I will also work through all of Vietnamesepod101's podcasts.

One of the most difficult parts of listening is getting completely thrown off when I encounter a word I don't know, not just because of the odd word but because my rhythm gets destroyed and I lose track of everything that comes later in the sentence. I'm hoping that listening to a few hundred hours of audio recordings will help with that. By the end, maybe my ear will be trained enough that I can watch a few more basic television shows.

Other goals include reading more and getting at least a third of the way through my dictionary, but the theme of the new year is listening practice, and I'll see how well it goes.

I'd note that it's a little strange that my best skills are speaking and reading rather than listening and writing, but the more I think about it, the more I think that isn't quite such a weird thing. New vocabulary still tends to be strongly associated with a visual image of the words in my head (older words aren't an issue), so I can basically say anything I can write, and writing is going to be slightly weaker than reading in almost any case. Listening is just an extra challenge, and I'm still at the point where I can say something reasonably well but have trouble understanding someone repeating the same sentence back to me.

My biggest fear right now is that too much of the listening practice is going to be associated with the contexts in which I'm hearing everything. Will I still understand a particular sentence when I'm not in the comforting position of listening to a podcast on Topic X? Can I still follow along with sentences I've never heard before? We'll see. Apparently, other people overcome that, eventually.

Korean

I'm taking my Hanja studies very slowly right now. I'm focused entirely on Vietnamese at the moment, because I care about that more.

But when I get back on track, I hope to get through the meanings of all of the common characters within, say, two years.

[outcast]

The really exciting part, though, isn't the vocabulary. I mean, vocabulary is exciting to me, but I'm finally making an effort to learn Hanja.

For those who don't know, Hanja are traditional Chinese characters adapted for Korean. Since Korean borrows words from Chinese at about the rate English borrows from French (maybe more -- it's something like 60% to 70%), it pays to know the roots. Unfortunately, a lot of the roots have the same sounds, so knowing the characters makes it possible to distinguish them, and that in turn makes it a lot easier to learn new vocabulary. That's aside from the fact that it's basically impossible to read a lot of things without knowing any Hanja.

Even though I just reached the so-called "A1" level of vocabulary in Korean (I have studied around 600-700 words, though I always chop off 50% because studying isn't the same as remembering!), knowing the Hanja has been a huge pressure valve release. Yes, many of the Korean words have merged their sounds, but then when I look at the Hanja the ambiguity is completely dissipated. I am still struggling to see clear correlations between certain Hangul syllable blocks and Hanja characters, though it seems the correlation is only sound based, and even then I feel some sounds from the Hanja have more than one Hangul representation, but at this point everything is still too new and unfamiliar so a lot is still a blur.

[OwlPanda]

Well, well, well.

This year is going well.

Vietnamese:

I "finished" the vocabulary course I was working on last year, but I have been reviewing it mercilessly this year, and that has paid off. Quality time with Memrise each day has turned the difficult words from the course into fairly easy words, modulo problems with synonyms.

It's going so well that I'm having an easy time reading through The Hobbit in Vietnamese. I think reading in general is starting to go a little faster, and my next big challenge will be finding suitable books after I persevere through Lord of the Rings.

Great.

But listening is going well, too! I've been going through Glossika very slowly. For those not familiar with the program, Glossika has several types of audio files. Type A gives a sentence in English first followed by the same sentence in Vietnamese twice. Type B has English once and Vietnamese once. Type C just has Vietnamese. I've been using only Type C, because I don't really have any trouble if I know what I'm supposed to be hearing. I only have problems when I don't know what's being said. So, I'm focusing my practice on the part I'm worst at.

I discovered one other issue, though. Glossika, right now, only uses the Northern accent, and so a lot of it sounds completely unintelligible to me even when the words are easy. This was somewhat demoralizing for a while, because I was having trouble with very simple sentences.

Well, I'm having a relative re-record all of the dialogue for me, this time with a Southern accent. And guess what? It's EASY now! Same sentences. Same pace. But I can get everything on the first try. It's fantastic. It's still worth studying some Northern stuff just to get acquainted with it for when I watch movies, but this has been great for noticing that I have, in fact, made pretty good progress.

I've moved on to learning my dictionary, so I'm going to have a pretty good active vocabulary soon. I don't have an exact count of the words in there, but counting the words on one page and then multiplying by the number of pages gives me a rough estimate of 10,000. I guess I'll know the exact number when I finish adding them all to my Memrise course. Maybe I'll take the course public when I finish.

I haven't commented much on anything, but it's been a productive year so far, and I'm feeling very confident.

[smallwhite]

Re: OwnPanda learns Vietnamese and Korean (now with more TAC 2016)
por OwlPanda » 20 May 2017 03:20

I love your profile pic!
But are you OwlPanda or OwnPanda or is there a trick to this?

[Finolia]

Hey there

First, I wanted to say that your log is very encouraging! I'm currently learning Vietnamese and it's not always that easy so it's great to hear from someone overcoming difficulties and getting better and better. Thank you so much for that!

Also, thank you for the Frozen-Song. It lead me to and through more and more Vietnamese versions of different Disney Songs. Even though EN Subs are rare ^^"
Which brings me to my first question... Do you know where to find films or TV shows etc. in Vietnamese with English Subtitles? I find it very hard to find something >.<
Same goes for the books - where do you get those? And what did you read before reading "hard" books like Harry Potter or the Hobbit? Reading them in Vietnamese sounds terrifying (esp. at my current state but I can't imagine that to change anytime soon...)

And you are mainly using Memrise, books and Youtube, is that right? I'd love to learn through reading but atm it just terrifies me... do you have any tips for me as a beginner? ^^"

I'm sorry to bother you with all these questions, especially in your language log. Finding it just excited me
Keep up the great work