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PeterMollenburg
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Apr 30, 2017 7:08 pm

SophiaMerlin_II wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:From your first post:
SophiaMerlin_II wrote:“Le retour de Pitoer Guerre” (movie)


Do you mean Le retour de Martin Guerre?

Nice movie :) if that's the one you mean.

http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/occitanie/emissions/doc-24-midi-pyrenees-et-languedoc-roussillon/actu/martin-guerre-le-retour-au-village-c-est-samedi-7-mars-2014-15h25.html


Probably is. That little list up front at the end of that post are things from other people's logs that look interesting and I don't want to forget about. I've just copy and pasted them as far as I recall.


Cool, that explains it. I once wrote 'Le retour de Pitoer Geurre' in my log as a bit of a joke, I'd say that's where you've got it from.
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SophiaMerlin_II
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Mon May 08, 2017 9:46 pm

I meant to post an update a few days ago, but forgot. Since last post:

Raw Japanese: 1.3 hr
Subtitled: ~3hr

The subtitled stuff, I watch just for fun, not really aiming at any sort of language learning, but I realized that I was actually picking up on some of the easier constructions, and even picked out a few points where I would have written the subtitles differently, which I take as progress, personally. As far as the raw goes, not much to report, as I'm rewatching episodes I've already seen because I forgot the plot points (it has been more than a year since I watched this series). I do feel like it's easier than last time and I did pick up some kanji from watching as well.

Spanish: Literally nothing, not even an article. I feel like I "have" to learn Spanish, because where I live is bilingual, but honestly, I mostly just don't care. I really just don't. It would be like if I tried to learn Tagalog. I have no kind of interest in it really. I can read short articles, I can watch shitty TV, and I can understand simple conversations so I guess I just don't see the point because there's not really much Spanish Language media I find super interesting? Maybe I should just purchase a book I like in English and try to read it in Spanish. IDK. It's just a slog because I have no real interest. It was fun in school because I was constantly writing little stories. In my Junior year, I wrote one chapter in a story for each chapter in our textbook, using each vocabulary words and grammar construction at least once. It was fun and pretty helpful. That's when I went from being super shitty like my peers to being just kinda shitty. Doing something like that again might be fun, honestly.

I called the story Mis Moretones [My Bruises] and it was a story about a brother and sister who were orphaned, and the older brother ~21 had gotten custody of his sister ~17. However, the pain of his loss and the pressure of providing for his sister made him descend into an unfit psychological state, where he snapped and killed his girlfriend. In the first chapter, she goes in his room for something and sees the taxidermied body parts of his former girlfriend strewn about the room. In the second chapter, they go shopping and she tries to act like she never found out. In the third chapter, she confronts him when they go to a restaurant. The fourth chapter she has developed an eating disorder to cope with the knowledge that her brother is killing more women, and tries to focus on soccer as an escape. The fifth I think was that her brother had to attend a parent-teacher conference because her grades were failing, and so on.

I honestly wish that I still had the story, because even though the grammar was horrible, I attempted to explore some pretty deep psychological issues, and created a pretty good atmosphere, considering I could barely use the subjunctive! That was what really got me motivated to learn Spanish. I was googling words and grammar every night as I was writing, with each chapter being thousands of words long. I guess I could make a new one. But it's just not as fun without having someone to read and correct it.

I think it would definitely be fun to do something like that with Japanese as well. I remember when I started my job this time last year that I had just finished that portion of the AV experiment and I was starting to dream in Japanese. Just the little phrases that I knew. And basically, I had this one great dream which was basically all of the key anime phrases that I knew, sewed together into a little story line. Basically, a mech squished some girl's brother to death so she swore to have revenge and demolish the galactic empire, and so became and outlaw and ship captain, and I joined the empire and we were rivals, fighting to the death. Basically, a standard Gundam plotline, if we want to be honest. So it might be fun to try and write something in my poor, poor Japanese. It'll probably sound something like:

あしは田中ひみこです。に十歳です。よろしくね!My name is Tanaka Himiko. I'm 20 years old. It's nice to meet ya!
<猫です。> I'm a cat.
<本当ですか。> Are you really?
<本当!> It's true! (I am!)

And now I've basically run out of things I know how to say in Japanese. But hey, I mean, I already have some plot ideas here. I can have one character that speaks correctly, Himiko who's pretty slang, and who character who talks the way that I always talk Japanese in my head and the other characters can be like "WTF m8".
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby Xenops » Tue May 09, 2017 8:22 pm

SophiaMerlin_II wrote:
Spanish: Literally nothing, not even an article. I feel like I "have" to learn Spanish, because where I live is bilingual, but honestly, I mostly just don't care. I really just don't. It would be like if I tried to learn Tagalog. I have no kind of interest in it really. I can read short articles, I can watch shitty TV, and I can understand simple conversations so I guess I just don't see the point because there's not really much Spanish Language media I find super interesting? Maybe I should just purchase a book I like in English and try to read it in Spanish. IDK. It's just a slog because I have no real interest. It was fun in school because I was constantly writing little stories. In my Junior year, I wrote one chapter in a story for each chapter in our textbook, using each vocabulary words and grammar construction at least once. It was fun and pretty helpful. That's when I went from being super shitty like my peers to being just kinda shitty. Doing something like that again might be fun, honestly.


I know the feeling: I live in southern Idaho, and there's a lot of Mexicans here, and Spanish would be so very useful, but I have no enthusiasm. My church even has a Spanish service. But upon advice from the fine people here, I decided to drop it and focus on French. Picking a language to study that you don't appreciate is like dating a person that bores you. People also told me about the time-sink fallacy.

Actually, here is the original thread: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3672&hilit=learning+a+language+you+don%27t+love%3F
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Wed May 10, 2017 5:04 am

Xenops wrote:
I know the feeling: I live in southern Idaho, and there's a lot of Mexicans here, and Spanish would be so very useful, but I have no enthusiasm. My church even has a Spanish service. But upon advice from the fine people here, I decided to drop it and focus on French. Picking a language to study that you don't appreciate is like dating a person that bores you. People also told me about the time-sink fallacy.

Actually, here is the original thread: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3672&hilit=learning+a+language+you+don%27t+love%3F


Ah, I just read that thread, interesting read. Sadly it's a little bit more complicated for me emotionally. I was gonna save to post this next week but I've already written it up, so I'll just paste this little... depressing rant I guess it is.

I begin to think that some of my feelings towards Spanish and Japanese can be summed up pretty easily.

Japanese
I see Japanese is ethereal, somewhat like a vapor. It is related to things that I consider “exotic” on some level. I associate it with poetry, history, fashion, media, and pop-culture which is interesting to me. It make extensive use of subtle hinting and contextual assumptions. It makes extensive, explicit use of formality/intimacy constructions. I associate it with adventure and victory (overcoming obstacles).

Spanish
I see Spanish as sort of a … dusty? dirty? dry? language mostly for day-to-day things. I’ve only ever read one good poem in Spanish. The only interesting story in Spanish I’ve ever read is one I wrote :/ I also associate Spanish with the members of my family whom I dislike, and who make me feel extremely uncomfortable.

I wish I didn’t have such a depressing view of Spanish. I know there has to be great stuff in Spanish as well, but my childhood thoughts on Spanish are extremely negative, including a lot of bullying and verbal abuse, as well as family members who were born and raised in Peru expecting me to behave like a Peruvian child would, but I was raised by my non-hispanic mother, and had (still have) quite negative feelings towards my Hispanic father. The Peruvian part of my family expected (still expects) a very high level of physical touching and mindless obedience to their stupidity. As a child I would very, very rarely even give my own parents hugs, much less this part of the family who were basically strangers. They would touch my face and hair without a thought and comment on my height and weight, or my complexion.

German
By contrast, my feelings towards German are extremely positive. My mother speaks kindergarten German which she learned from her grandmother, and worked a little when she spent a year in Germany. My step-father speaks more middle-school German, and does okay with… Bavarian? I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s somewhat like German, and spoken on the German border, and most English speakers think it is German. He learned it from the German exchange students that his mom hosted, and kept it rusty-conversational through working with tourists in museums and parks where he has worked. When I think of German, I think of the exciting stories my mom tells about accidentally buying things that it turned out were NOT toothpaste, rules for their apartment on the economy, throwing condoms full of mayo off the balcony, trading PX white bread for German economy bread, the autobahn, what happens if you hit a chicken, sweeping and washing the street, cutting the lawn with scissors, etc. I’ve heard all these stories maybe a million times, but they’re my favorite stories that I grew up hearing. Especially about this… holiday where men cross dress and dance on the top of the bar and everyone has a great time and gets hellaciously drunk??? Or how women will run around topless and kids will be totally butt-naked if it’s over like… 75F (Or anyway they did when she lived there).

It was actually kind of interesting, because in February I was staying at a hostel in Los Angeles and there was a girl there from Germany, and I was talking to her about this kind of stuff, and I said where my mom had lived (Wiesbaden) and she gave me the most shocked look, so I instantly apologized and said something like, “Oh, I’m sorry, did I say something weird? That’s always how my mom said it. How do you say it?” Then she asked me if I spoke German. She continued to stare at me very, very confusedly/intensely when I said, “no.” before she finally said, “That’s exactly perfectly how you say it.” I guess most English speakers try to say it something like “why’s bad-en” or “why’s bade-en”??? Actually, does English have the “ah” sound like in Wiesbaden? It’s like… a little longer than a normal “ah” in English I think? But it’s not as long as a long “ah” I think??? IDK man. Is there such a thing as a middle a? I mean probably there is.


And I didn't really make this super clear, but I feel like if I turn my back on Spanish then I am a self-hating racist POS because I'm trying to make myself "white"... Which is honestly a stupid way to think about things. I don't feel guilty because I don't know Hebrew or Yiddish yet, even though I qualify under "the right of return". I don't feel guilty because I don't speak Irish, or Scottish Gaelic. I don't feel guilty because I don't speak Russian, or Belarussian. I feel no guilt because I don't speak Siksika or Cherokee. And I certainly feel no shame in admitting that I don't speak French or German. And certainly no shame because I can't read and write Latin.

My Zeda (My maternal grandmother's dad) spoke at least 5 languages, which I know include English, German, French, Russian, but probably also include Hebrew and/or Yiddish seeing as he's Jewish. And it could have been Belarussian instead of Russian, or it could have been both. He could "only" write in 5 languages though.

Gma W (My maternal grandfather's mom) only spoke German. I'm not sure if it was German-German, or Texas-German to be honest. That's something that I've actually considered, it attempting to learn Texas-German, as I think it only has about 20 years left before it goes extinct.

Which is a round about way of saying I have very complex feelings around Spanish. I feel like if I don't learn Spanish I am committing some sort of cultural atrocity. And yet, at the same time, I pretty much hate that side of the family completely.
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SophiaMerlin_II
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Thu May 11, 2017 10:15 pm

I've been keeping a separate log from here because right now I'm really excited about everything and I'm writing too much. I'm writing so much that even I know it's too much to post. I'll save the more statistically oriented stuff for a later post like I had planned. But language learning always stirs up a lot of feelings in me, and these feelings are very important to why I want to learn languages in the first place, but in daily life I have no one who really understands these, as I honestly don't know many multi-linguals who were not raised as bi-lingual English-Spanish speakers. I do have one friend who reads french, german, latin, classical greek, but he can't write or speak any of them, and only knows words related to philosophy.

Interesting things are out of my grasp right now
qeadz wrote:From 24 Aug 16 post in Slow-cooked Korean --

Today is worth a little update. Mostly because recently I've been in a bit of a language-learning slump. In part it is just due to the overwhelming amount of territory to cover before I can start to use interesting content for learning. Or to put it another way: any content which is sufficiently interesting to me is ruined by how poorly I understand it and how slowly I have to work through it.


This is so often something that I struggle with. In English, I am extremely particular about what I read. With Japanese I really just can't afford to be that way. But I am that way. Really bad kids stories really don't interest me at all, but at the same time, I can't really read a dissertation on Japanese Social Phenominon yet... with some work, one day.

Culture / Missing it
AndyMeg wrote:21 Mar 17 in Slow Cooked Korean ---
Learning a language is not only about directly learning the language (grammar, vocab, etc.). It is a much more complex and richer process because you are learning how other culture thinks and perceive the world.

If you have questions, you can find native speakers over the internet and ask them: Why is it like this and not like that? Would it be wrong if I said it like this? Would it sound unnatural or rude? Why?

You don't need to be in Korea to notice certain things: if you watch a k-drama, for example, you may pay attention not only to the words but also to the cultural context and non-verbal communication (the key here is being actively looking for those things instead of expecting to assimilate them just with passive interaction). You could also follow Korean youtubers, bloggers or podcasts.


I just want to make a point here, basically that a lot of time when you are reading / watching / listening, one of the most important things is not to know -what- you are missing, but to actually realize that you -are- missing something. My mother has a lot of difficulty watching anime on her own (she doesn’t find it enjoyable at all) because she misses cultural references, but don’t realize where or when exactly. If I can watch with her, I pause the show and explain what she just missed, and then she enjoys this much, much more. If you don't know when you are missing something, it's basically impossible to learn it. Because you don't even know it's there.

Pronunciation
I begin to wonder if I speak with the same accent in Spanish and Japanese, and this worries me. I’m not really sure how to check because my grasp of Japanese is so poor that I don’t even really have a solid pattern yet :/

I signed up for hiNative. I leave lots of pronunciation helps for other people, but it is very difficult. I think that they don't understand that I want them to record what it should sound like.

I had someone help me translate a phrase to ask for people to help, but it doesn't seem to work very well. I still have to ask again.「私にこの発音の方法を教えてください。」Maybe this phrase doesn't make sense to people, or I should ask in some other way :(

After some begging and explaining I have gotten a few pointers, but I'll post those together as a roundup. I've made copies of the audio files and arranged them so that you can hear them also. It's frustrating. I would get a tutor, but really all I want is help pronouncing things. I just want someone who I can send an audio file to and they can make suggestions, and they will send me back audio clips as well.
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby reineke » Fri May 12, 2017 4:16 pm

Xenops wrote:
SophiaMerlin_II wrote:
Spanish: Literally nothing, not even an article. I feel like I "have" to learn Spanish, because where I live is bilingual, but honestly, I mostly just don't care. I really just don't. It would be like if I tried to learn Tagalog. I have no kind of interest in it really. I can read short articles, I can watch shitty TV, and I can understand simple conversations so I guess I just don't see the point because there's not really much Spanish Language media I find super interesting? Maybe I should just purchase a book I like in English and try to read it in Spanish. IDK. It's just a slog because I have no real interest. It was fun in school because I was constantly writing little stories. In my Junior year, I wrote one chapter in a story for each chapter in our textbook, using each vocabulary words and grammar construction at least once. It was fun and pretty helpful. That's when I went from being super shitty like my peers to being just kinda shitty. Doing something like that again might be fun, honestly.


I know the feeling: I live in southern Idaho, and there's a lot of Mexicans here, and Spanish would be so very useful, but I have no enthusiasm. My church even has a Spanish service. But upon advice from the fine people here, I decided to drop it and focus on French. Picking a language to study that you don't appreciate is like dating a person that bores you. People also told me about the time-sink fallacy.

Actually, here is the original thread: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3672&hilit=learning+a+language+you+don%27t+love%3F


It's up to you to research Spanish literature. A few years ago I met a Ukrainian lady at the German cultural center here in the US whose family was nearly eradicated in WWII . Her German was quite good. I am definitely not arguing for people to study a language they don't like but people have successfully learned languages under all sorts of circumstances.

Regarding the "sunk cost fallacy" I think it's inappropriate to apply this line of reasoning to language learning. The idea is that you shouldn't let irrecoverable costs affect your future decisions. A "sunk cost" can be compared with future cost. In language learning your time and effort are rewarded with a "soft" capacity to understand and learn more .Unlike movie tickets, food, or the Concorde knowledge does not expire or get obsolete. No need to feel sorry about Spanish. You can pick it up whenever you want and if you get really good at other Romance languages you will see your future cost of learning Spanish decrease significantly.
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Fri May 12, 2017 9:53 pm

reineke wrote: It's up to you to research Spanish literature.

Well of course it is :lol: I’ve looked into it somewhat already, and the common genres are not appealing to me. That’s not a surprise as I should probably have some sort of hand-made, vegan, non-gmo, fair-trade, artisan-produced, one-of-a-kind Hypster Identification Card.

I have found one author who seems pretty interesting, and looking at the book prices I would imagine that he wrote originally in Spanish. That would be Pablo Daniel Rodriguez Sanchez. His titles and book descriptions have all the keywords I’m looking for, and the cover art is what I would expect from the genre. But the book is only ~150 pages long :evil: which probably means it’s not a Space Opera like I would hope. Ivy Bass suffers again from a similar problem, being even shorter actually (though cheaper). Then again, they’re about 1/3 of the price of translations of authors I know I like. But they’re also about 1/6 or 1/10 of the length that I’m expecting.

However in Japanese, finding Space Opera, or related type media, is basically trivial. Battleship Yamato, Harlock, The Irresponsible Captain Taylor (Space Opera written as comedy rather than drama, think of Douglas Adams writing Star Wars), and most obviously and pointedly Gundam.

Another interesting genre to me is Nanopunk, which I think is pretty small in English. A good example would be Kathleen Ann Goonan’s Light Music Quartet. Some of Alastair Reynolds stuff could fit in this genre, but I’d normally put him up in Space Opera. It’s not very well established, and I haven’t been able to find what it might be called in Spanish.

There’s also works heavily involving robots, androids, and the internet. A good Japanese example would be Ghost in the Shell. In Spanish I believe it is still called cyberpunk. The main issue with this is they often are both gritty and depressing.

My interest in fantasy is honestly even more minute, consisting of about 3 authors.

A few years ago I met a Ukrainian lady at the German cultural center here in the US whose family was nearly eradicated in WWII . Her German was quite good.


Ah, I feel for her. Of course my situation is nothing like hers. She had a very real and urgent reason to learn German. I (very thankfully) have no such reason to learn Spanish. I just feel like a horrible person for not knowing it, which is honestly not great motivation.

I am definitely not arguing for people to study a language they don't like


It’s not even that I actually dislike Spanish, because I actually don’t have any feelings one way or the other about the language itself . It’s not like I look at Spanish and I think, “wow, what a stupid way to deal with object pronouns” or “stem-changing verbs are an eyesore”. It’s the peripheral things that kill me. If I learned Spanish, part of my family would be extremely proud of me, but I basically hate all of them. :lol: And I associate not knowing Spanish with a lot of bullying that happened to me when I was younger.

people have successfully learned languages under all sorts of circumstances.


I’m not suggesting that Spanish is some monolithic beast that is impossible to conquer. Spanish, obviously is inside FIGS and as such, there is tonnes and tonnes of material available both in Spanish and about it as well. There is no limit to the websites and resources devoted to learning Spansh.

It’s not as if I am facing any shortage of actual Spanish materials (I could literally walk 0.25 miles to the gas station and buy a Spanish language romance), I just have a shortage of Spanish language fiction that I find interesting.

Now non-fiction on the other hand is pretty trivial. I enjoy basically everything I read which is pop-science (Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku) and I enjoy most textbooks (I read an college-level anatomy textbook in middle school, just for fun).

As far as my frustrations go, I imagine that me learning to read in Spanish will probably mirror my learning to read comfortably in English. By my own opinion, I struggled with reading much more than my peers through to the beginning of 2nd grade, starting the year at a low level. Maybe a Kindergarten level. I could sound out words, but couldn’t understand them in simple sentences. And it’s not as if I my parents didn’t read to me, or with me every night, because they did. When I finally found something that interested me in the library, my reading ability shot straight up. By the end of the school year I was at a high school level, and by the beginning of 3rd grade I was at a college level. In English I struggle with very few texts, mainly philosophy such as Marx.

So why should I be surprised (and why am I surprised) that I’m hitting my head against the wall at this point? Probably because it’s been a long time since I have struggled with an intellectual activity. The other day I was writing a theology paper and it was so hard I started crying :lol:

Regarding the "sunk cost fallacy" I think it's inappropriate to apply this line of reasoning to language learning. The idea is that you shouldn't let irrecoverable costs affect your future decisions. A "sunk cost" can be compared with future cost. In language learning your time and effort are rewarded with a "soft" capacity to understand and learn more. Unlike movie tickets, food, or the Concorde knowledge does not expire or get obsolete. No need to feel sorry about Spanish. You can pick it up whenever you want and if you get really good at other Romance languages you will see your future cost of learning Spanish decrease significantly.

I actually really agree with you here. I can sort of fake my way through a lot of written Spanish material to be honest. I think maybe I should just limit myself to improving my reading in Spanish, and I think that will probably resolve a lot of the issue I’m facing psychologically. If I can get good at reading, I can just worry about writing later.

Thank you reineke <3
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby reineke » Fri May 12, 2017 10:34 pm

The young Ukrainian lady was studying German in the US. When the tanks started rolling there was little time for language learning. She was also not around at the time.

All the Japanese anime shows you mentioned are available in Italian. You can also watch a lot of anime in Spanish and French. I am not a believer that the originals are always the best in the case of anime.

Dyslexics find it easier to read in Italian and Spanish than in English or French. I don't mean to imply that you are dyslexic but simply that it is easier to learn how to read in languages with phonemic orthographies.

Spanish-language poetry.... Lorca and Neruda? It's a start.
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Fri May 12, 2017 11:26 pm

reineke wrote:The young Ukrainian lady was studying German in the US. When the tanks started rolling there was little time for language learning. She was also not around at the time.

All the Japanese anime shows you mentioned are available in Italian. You can also watch a lot of anime in Spanish and French. I am not a believer that the originals are always the best in the case of anime.

Dyslexics find it easier to read in Italian and Spanish than in English or French. I don't mean to imply that you are dyslexic but simply that it is easier to learn how to read in languages with phonemic orthographies.

Spanish-language poetry.... Lorca and Neruda? It's a start.


Ah, I missed that she was young. I was imagining a very, very old lady.

Watching again in Spanish or French might be interesting (if the voice acting isn't super horrible like it always seems to be in English) but I mostly pointed anime out because a lot of them are based on manga or LNs or have these as spin-off products. Battleship Yamato was basically concurrently produced as an anime and manga. Harlock was either a book, LN, or manga. The Irresponsible Captian Taylor as definitely an LN adaptation. Gundam has manga and novels, though I believe it is an animated original. Macross is in a similar situation with having LNs and manga, but originally being animated.

Similarly: YuuYuu Hakusho, Initial D, and Yowamushi Pedal were first manga. Log Horizon, Haruhi Suzumiya, No Game No Life, and Saiunkoku Monogatari were first LNs. I was mainly pointing out the anime as representative of the genre, and of the fact that their production points to the fact that there is a widespread production and consumption of these genres in Japan.

One could maybe argue that I had/have a mild form of dyslexia. I struggled with (and still at times struggle with) the following groups of letters:

qgydbp (ol, lo, olo, ollo, in handwriting also "a")<-- mostly these, but y less than the others. Why do we have so many stone and rope letters??? or circle and stick, whatevef we like to call them
tf
mnr (w not as much)
5s
yz <-- in traditional cursive

This of course doesn't change in Spanish, and is honestly somewhat worse.

But regardless of that, my reading issues as a kid had nothing to do with sounding out words or pronouncing them. I could read "the cat ran up the tree" word for word. But I couldn't put it together. I would end up in my mind with 4 unrelated ideas: cats, a forest, people jogging, and stairs (up=stairs). That's basically the issue I have in Spanish. I can understand all the words just fine, but my brain refuses to put them together, more or less. If something is phonetic or not doesn't have much to do with it.

Ah poetry :/ I'll look at it a little bit (I'm looking at it now) but it's something I actively avoid in English, for better or worse.

And I do want to be clear, when I said "thank you" I wasn't being sarcastic. I feel pretty content to just read some non-fiction for a while. I can save reading fiction for some other time, and listening/speaking/writing can wait.

EDIT: To clarify about poetry, which I talked about up in the things that interest me about Japanese. When I'm talking about Japanese poetry, I'm not talking about poetry proper (which interests me basically not at all) but rather Haibun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haibun which is a mixture of prose and poetry frequently covering travel.
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Systematiker
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Languages: ENG (N); DEU (C2+) // SWG (~C1); BAR (~C1); SPA (4/3); FRA (~C1); SCO (~C1); NLD (~B2*); LAT (Latinum Bavaricum); GRC (Graecum Bavaricum); CAT (~B2*); POR (~B2*); SWE (~B2*); HBO (Hebraicum); DAN (~B1*); RUS (~A2); KOR (~A1); FAS (still a raw beginner)
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7332
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Re: One Step at a Time

Postby Systematiker » Sat May 13, 2017 12:18 am

I would have recommended Lorca as well. He's real.

The stuff "around" a language can be pretty powerful. Dealing with Spanish may be dealing with some stuff about your identity and past that you don't want to mess with - and you should give yourself permission to do what you feel comfortable with. Some of what you've seen in the cultural information in and around Japanese and Korean is happening in Spanish, too, and since you've got a lot wrapped up in prior experiences with a culture, it makes sense that it's a tough thing.

Oh, and yeah, Bavarian is distinct from German, even though it sometimes gets called a dialect. It's pretty fun, but I can't imagine messing with it without having had a foundation in German first.

Anyway, hope you're having fun!
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