Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Fri Dec 30, 2016 1:29 am

Today has been a good day in terms of studying German. By that what I really mean is that I did a bunch of reading. Yesterday I bought Fremdsprachenlernen mit System by Hans Krings which had been suggested in another thread from PaperC. I also bought Uni-Wissen Grundkurs Sprachwissenschaft because I had a 25 euro discount code that was still valid. This was really partially a test of a. whether or not Paypal had properly added my new(ish) debit card to their system correctly (they did - after 45 min of first calling paypal, then my credit union, and then paypal again) and b. whether or not you can download ebooks from PaperC (you can!).

Today is day one of really trying to cut back on pain meds so I can eventually get to no meds other than acetaminophen before 5:30 or 6pm by the time school starts on Jan 9th. Because I only took 5mg of oxycodone in the morning I had a fair amount of energy (for whatever reason I didn't need a nap after my PT exercises which was very surprising) and ended up reading 57 pages of Fremdsprachenlernen mit System. I should note that that is 57 pages according to the ebook app which, after the counting words on a few pages, adds up to about 57 pages as counted by the Super Challenge (I think for the Super Challenge a page is 250 words). I'm tempted to skip to the wortschatz chapter (chapter 13) so I think after I read the rest of the second chapter I'll do that and then go back to the third chapter.

I think what I've really learned is that I read quickly when i'm using my iPad. I still need to do my vocab (Anki) for today and I think I might also watch some TV in German as well.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sat Dec 31, 2016 6:26 am

So again with this being surprised that I read so much. Today I read the equivalent of 124 Super Challenge pages. It's a bit unbelievable to me. I went back and copy and pasted one of the pages (via Calibre) into Libre Office and it was 275 words. I mean I guess there was one point a few years ago when I read a ~300 page book in the span of a few hours (in English) - also on my iPad so 124 pages over the course of several hours isn't so unrealistic I guess.

I also did five new words in Anki after my general review. I am liking the freedom that I have with doing only the reviews every day and then, when I'm feeling up to it, pulling in new words. It's far less overwhelming this way and even though I wish that I was learning 15 new words a day, every day, this is far more sustainable for me (or so I think - we'll see where I'm at on January 30th).

In other exciting but non language related news, I'm making good progress in terms of recovering from my knee surgery. I met my phase 1 goals two weeks post op (I'm two weeks and one day right now) which are supposed to be met by week six. Note that the PDF is nearly identical but for at least the phase one my doctor limits her patients to 60 degrees of flexion - much to my frustration). That said because I'm still limited to 60 degrees of flexion and non weight bearing for 60 weeks we can't actually proceed to phase 2 until I'm 6 weeks post op. Needless to say I scheduled a PT session the day after my 6 week post op ortho appointment. Really I just want this brace off but that hinges on whether or not the bone is healthy.

School starts the second week of January and I am feeling so-so about it. I'm in the process of weaning myself off of pain meds (which is going well) so that I am, at maximum, taking 10mg of oxycodone at night right before bed (so I don't wake up in pain the next morning). Right now I am in pain when I wake up, take 5mg of oxy when I wake up, and that's it for the day. I need to switch that around tonight to taking 10mg this evening and trying to get on with none tomorrow morning.
I'm also frustrated because Amazon doesn't have the book I need for my linguistics class in stock. I'll probably just see if my mom can pick it up from my university's bookstore next week on one of her lunch breaks but it's just frustrating because I'd prefer not to have to have her do that. That said at the same time she'd have to drive me to the bookstore to get it before school starts anyways becuase it isn't logistically possible for me to deal with getting it on the first day of school.
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sun Jan 08, 2017 11:02 pm

I'm nearing the end of my winter break and it's been interesting. I had surgery which was - hellish isn't exactly the right word but it sure as hell wasn't fun. The loneliness plus not having therapy for two and a half weeks...bad bad times and I get to do it all over again in December 2017 if this surgery works out well.
I realized that I don't like Hebrew as mucha s I wish I did. I have become "that person" - the person who takes a language class because they're required to but doesn't really want to. I mean I got an A last term and I'm planning on trying o get an A this upcoming term, but I'm really unenthused.

German wise - I am probably going to do the study abroad thing in July/Aug. The only part of my application that's left is my transcripts being received by the University of Oregon - they're in the mail and I expect they'll be processed by the end of the week. I'm thinking of the study abroad not only as a time to re-up my German but also as a test to see how I do without having therapy for a few months (I'll probably stay an extra month in Austria and/or Germany). If I do well then the likelyhood of me being confident about me doing grad school outside of Portland will sky rocket.

I have rekindled my love for Lingvist. It's not that the fire ever went out rather it's that when I last used it there wasn't a German course and I realized that I really needed to focus only on German. My brain doesn't do well with working on two languages intensively. Related to that, I was inspired by the German Group and I'm creating an English-German wordlist for Mittelpunkt C1. WalkingAlone13 created a Memrise group so maybe that will help keep me focused. Klett, the publisher, already has a German wordlist in a word document for each of the chapters. I might (will probably) buy the Mittelpunkt C1.1 text/workbook and potentially the C1.2 one as well. For whatever reason they're cheaper to buy in that format on the International Book Import Service website than buying the individual textbook and individual workbook. It's odd. Looking through the preview on Klett's website - the way that it's broken up plus the fact that there's the wordlist will make it easier to work through while also doing school. Each chapter has really defined sections and the vocab list is also organized that way. I still wish there was more reading but there are obviously other ways to get that.

Needless to say - I like courses though really it's that I like books. I also really like watching TV in German which I've been doing a lot of. I got a Chromecast last week after becoming fed up with my old and ailing Roku. It would restart randomly and it wasn't uncommon for it to crash when playing Youtube videos. Yesterday I watched Street Food Teil 2 on ZDF. Teil 1 focused on street food in Asia and teil 2 focused on North and South America. Turns out they decided to spend the first 10 minutes in Portland including spending some time at the food cart pod that is at my old high school. I've never actually been to any of the carts that they went to but there was one that I'm near fairly frequently (I tend to go to the one that's right next to it but really only once every few years) that was featured. I might have to stop by, buy a burrito, and tell the owner that I saw her on the show. I don't think they said it in the show but it turns out the food cart has been around for over 24 years.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby gsbod » Sat Jan 14, 2017 9:52 pm

Thank you for the tip about the Chromecast. I invested in one today and now I can watch Tatort on TV in bed. It's a dream come true! Also I have downloaded the ORF app so I can start exploring the world of Austrian TV too...
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Sun Jan 15, 2017 1:18 am

It's amazing isn't it! ORF also looks significantly better on TV than it does on my computer.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby Xenops » Wed Jan 18, 2017 1:30 am

Sorry to read about the knee surgery! When I was a pre-med I shadowed an orthopedic surgeon specializing in knee and hip replacements, and it looked like the knee surgeries were the worst.

I'm assuming you picked Hebrew out of a selection of courses for your linguistics major? I also have a linguistics question: it sounds like a lot of different languages had noun declensions in the past, or other types of declensions, but the languages lost them. Was this due to efforts making the language simpler, to having influences from other languages? I'm researching for my conlang. I'm currently reading through this book: https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Linguistics-Introduction-Lyle-Campbell/dp/0262532670/ref=la_B001IQWF62_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484702983&sr=1-2
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aokoye
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Tue Jan 24, 2017 12:07 am

Xenops wrote:Sorry to read about the knee surgery! When I was a pre-med I shadowed an orthopedic surgeon specializing in knee and hip replacements, and it looked like the knee surgeries were the worst.

I'm assuming you picked Hebrew out of a selection of courses for your linguistics major? I also have a linguistics question: it sounds like a lot of different languages had noun declensions in the past, or other types of declensions, but the languages lost them. Was this due to efforts making the language simpler, to having influences from other languages? I'm researching for my conlang. I'm currently reading through this book: https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Linguistics-Introduction-Lyle-Campbell/dp/0262532670/ref=la_B001IQWF62_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484702983&sr=1-2


I just saw this post (woops!). I have a feeling hip surgeries are worse than knees because of all of the muscles that have to be cut through as well as the difficulty in bracing hips. I have a good friend who had hip surgery at the same clinic and her recovery sounds like it was much worse than mine.

I actually read that book for my historical comparative ling class last Spring! I hope you have the hardcopy of it because the ebook is really poorly edited. The simplification (not the right word but I don't have the book in front of me right now) of things like case and declensions and really all language change was never anything to do with one person or a group of people saying "let's make this easier". It's a function of a lot of things - sometimes it's language contact (which you mentioned), people slowly saying one thing as opposed another, people unconsciously realizing that it's easier to pronounce X phoneme and not Y phoneme or X consonant cluster and not Y consonant cluster, and so on.

In English for instance one of the reason we don't mark case (save for a tiny bit of genitive) is because over time it became redundant. That's one way you can distinguish and Old English text from a Middle English text.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Tue Jan 24, 2017 12:58 am

The too long didn't read version of this post is: I'm exausted all the time because a. I had major surgery almost six weeks ago, be getting around on crutches is tiring, and c. Doing school six weeks post op and on crutches is a joke.

I'm still dragging myself along with Hebrew. I sill don't care as much as I wished I did but I'm also still very committed to doing well. Right now my main weakness is that I'm not taking the time to study vocab primarily because I'm too tired. I also have other homework that matters more.

German is ok, I'm mainly watching ZDF. Turns out I really like the consumer show ZDFZeit. I'll watch an episode or two most weekends. I also love 37 grad but I've waxed poetically about that a lot.
I'm slowly worming through the vocab from Mittelpunkt C1. By slowly I mean a sub chapter every week or so? It's not an issue of there being a lot of words rather that I'm really tired and short for time. Ling comes first, Hebrew homework second, German third. Oh I also like that the vocab list for this textbook includes the words from both the textbook and the workbook. I'm using Memrise for this which is fine so far. I still don't like the fact that my data is their data but this works and has worked well in the past so forcing myself to use Anki is a bit foolish (I do like Anki for Hebrew though - with that I'm only testing recognition though). I need to read further in Mittelpunkt which I think might be my goal for this evening.

It also looks like I'm definite going to Germany this summer. I'm waiting for one more acceptance letter from the partner institution (the one that grants credit so I can use the program towards my degree) and then I can make plans with my friend in Vienna and book my flight.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Tue Jan 24, 2017 4:10 am

Oh also, i want to restart French. I need to really wait until after I'm done with this term though. It would be really stupid for to try restart french at the moment. I just want to very very badly. I do think that french is the logical next language for me to really work hard on given that it's a useful language for linguistics and unless I do an MA in the Netherlands (likely not happening) it'll be a hell of a lot more useful for what I want to do in general than Dutch.
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Re: Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

Postby aokoye » Tue Feb 07, 2017 6:07 am

Stressed Adam is stressed but not severely so which is not horrible I suppose. School is a bit overwhelming but I'm getting things done and I'm doing well academically. Hebrew is less than enjoyable at this point but oh well. The discrimination case that I filed against the disability resource center at my university is going really quickly now that it's been ruled I was discriminated against. The school is taking 14 classes from the time they discriminated against me off of my transcript which is a big deal and fantastic. They're also refunding me around $3,230.

I've fallen off the wagon with German because of how distracted I've been with life. My goal for right now is to spend 10 min a day give or take going over vocabulary. I'm also going against perhaps any sort of logic and have decided to give in to my desire to study Dutch again. I am thinking about taking the A1 > A2 online Dutch class via the University of Groningen. My reasoning? A. I'm seriously thinking about applying to one of the masters programs at the University of Groningen and B. I need to see how well I do with the structure of one more class while in school. This is a very low stakes way of seeing if I can increase my workload which is something I need to be able to do before I graduate. I think the structure of having a class will also be helpful.

The goal for now is to learn the words for the first 8 chapters of the textbook used in the class (I have the ebook which includes access to the audio and online exercises) and hopefully work through the book as well. Given my background in German and the fact that English is my native language this shouldn't be a major issue. I also have toyed around with Dutch a few times in the past three years. I'm looking through the vocab right now and there are only a few words that I can't puzzle out in most chapters and then I know a third to half of the words in the 7th and 8th chapters.

A good goal for Dutch for the next few weeks is probably reading through the chapters and spending 10 min on vocab each day.
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