The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby blaurebell » Sun Mar 26, 2017 9:03 am

Atinkoriko wrote:How do you guys deal with wanderlust? Tips needed


Simple: I never learn 2 new languages at once and a language is "new" as long as I haven't finished a full super challenge in it. But I guess that's super silly advice, since that's just saying that you need to stay focused and disciplined :D On the other hand, this just means that getting wanderlust would make me push even harder, since the quicker I get through my super challenge, the earlier I get to play with a new language. I don't really get that much wanderlust though.

I guess it helps that I have my language learning schedule for the next 5 years in place already and the most pressing wanderlust languages are on it.
1 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
x 17566

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Cavesa » Sun Mar 26, 2017 3:22 pm

Atinkoriko wrote:How do you guys deal with wanderlust? Tips needed :D

I dealt with it (almost) for good not long after joining this community. Of course seeing all those successful learners of so many wonderful languages was too tempting. So, instead of fighting it and failing, I gave in. I spent approximately two months learning much more about languages than learning any particular language trully. I looked up some cultural points, learners' experience, scripts, available resources, examples on youtube, and so on. I went through the first unit of a course of various languages.I was learning about approximately 20 langauges, perhaps more. I also learnt a lot about langauge learning in general.

Results:
Looking such stuff up isn't so much fun anymore! :-D I already know most "how to learn" articles on the internet before reading, since most are so repetitive! :-D
After ingesting all this information, the languages I had been tempted to start naturally feel into one of these categories:
1.I definitely want to learn this, even though I cannot start them all at once. (a rather short list.), such as Italian
2.I would like to learn this, if I have time. But I am in no hurry and not gonna postpone languages from the group 1 for these. (approximately as many as the group 1. And this is the only category that has been changing noticeably since my Wanderlust era),such as Polish
3.Those would be nice to know, but too hard to learn, or too hard to get resources for, or otherwise the efforts/results ratio wouldn't be favorable, such as Welsh
4.Languages I am no longer interested in. Of course they are great, just for other learners than me. For example Hindi.

It is a counterintuitive method perhaps. It is like bringing a child to a chocolate store, and letting it eat huge amounts of everything the child desires. Of course it will get sick. And it will be much more careful and reasonable in future :-D
2 x

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Atinkoriko » Sun Mar 26, 2017 3:45 pm

Great responses :D

I admire your discipline blaurebell.

20 languages at once, Cavesa :shock:

Would be so much fun to do that ie start about 6-8 languages at once ie Sanskrit, Mandarin, Latin, Ancient Greek, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Japanese etc and just absolutely binge on them until I'm sick of them.


But I can't give in now :(

I'll trying to bribe myself with the promise of an all out TAC for Italian where I'd just pretend I'm Italian for the duration of the 6-8 weeks. In fact, I may just pull a Benny and rename this log 'Italian B2 in 2 months'. That would certainly be entertaining :lol:
0 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
x 17566

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Cavesa » Sun Mar 26, 2017 3:50 pm

Atinkoriko wrote:Great responses :D

I admire your discipline blaurebell.

20 languages at once, Cavesa :shock:

Would be so much fun to do that ie start about 6-8 languages at once ie Sanskrit, Mandarin, Latin, Ancient Greek, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Japanese etc and just absolutely binge on them until I'm sick of them.


But I can't give in now :(

I'll trying to bribe myself with the promise of an all out TAC for Italian where I'd just pretend I'm Italian for the duration of the 6-8 weeks. In fact, I may just pull a Benny and rename this log 'Italian B2 in 2 months'. That would certainly be entertaining :lol:


I was learning ABOUT them, not them directly and seriously :-D :-D :-D
If you want people who trully learn many at once, look at Tarvos and Expugnator. (btw Emk is our forum expert on Egyptian Hieroglyphics learning)

A good thing is to give yourself a deadline before giving in. For example a month during the holidays, something like that.
0 x

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Atinkoriko » Sun Mar 26, 2017 4:31 pm

Cavesa wrote:
Atinkoriko wrote:Great responses :D

I admire your discipline blaurebell.

20 languages at once, Cavesa :shock:

Would be so much fun to do that ie start about 6-8 languages at once ie Sanskrit, Mandarin, Latin, Ancient Greek, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Japanese etc and just absolutely binge on them until I'm sick of them.


But I can't give in now :(

I'll trying to bribe myself with the promise of an all out TAC for Italian where I'd just pretend I'm Italian for the duration of the 6-8 weeks. In fact, I may just pull a Benny and rename this log 'Italian B2 in 2 months'. That would certainly be entertaining :lol:


I was learning ABOUT them, not them directly and seriously :-D :-D :-D
If you want people who trully learn many at once, look at Tarvos and Expugnator. (btw Emk is our forum expert on Egyptian Hieroglyphics learning)

A good thing is to give yourself a deadline before giving in. For example a month during the holidays, something like that.



Yeah, I read emk's log, both on HTLAL and here. Very informative and the prime reason for this particular wanderlust :)

Yeah, I've done some calculations and my last passive wave lesson ends in 69 days. The active waves end in 82 and 103 days but meh, I think 70 days is a good deadline.

70 days to TAC Italian!!!

Whooo!!

Maybe this log should be 'Overly Ambitious and Overly Enthusiastic'
0 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Atinkoriko » Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:43 pm

Wading through Patrick Süskind's Das Parfüm right now. For me, this is as intensive as it gets.

I like the story so far so I will stick with it, for this SC at least since I'm so far behind. A few pages a day adds up to a lot
0 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Atinkoriko » Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:37 pm

Just dusted off the old FSI French Phonology and did part 1 of Unit 4.



Never going to stop being impressed by the sheer thoroughness with which the FSI courses were made.

Sadly, an FSI course is like Tolstoy's War and Peace.
Much praised but rarely opened.
2 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Atinkoriko » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:25 am

Not an update but just a little rant.

I have done some reflection over my [still rather short] journey so far over all the years and I've come to realise that there are certain things which I have come to dislike rather intensely.

It's already bad enough that we have myths about language acquisition like 'You can't learn past a certain age' or 'you can't learn without going to live in the country' etc, but we have these things I will highlight below. All opinions mine, of course.

- Monolingual dictionaries/NEVER EVER TRANSLATE
'Keep your mind in the language, avoid translation at all costs. Use monolingual dictionaries. Don't worry if you dont understand fully.'
Even with a cognate discount from about two languages, I really can't imagine how frustrating it would be to seek to use an Italian/Spanish monolingual dictionary at A1/A2. Suddenly, a simple search for the word 'cat' has turned into an endeavour as frustrating as trying to find the elusive half of a pair of socks. Now with my measly vocabulary of about 1000 words, I must now attempt to understand a definition which would likely include other words I don't know. How do I find out what those other words mean? Use a bilingual dictionary? Wouldn't that defeat the point of 'keeping your mind in the moment?

I wonder if this monolingual dictionary hardcorers ever use Google translate or Readlang or some other service which gives you the definition in your native or stronger language?

I wonder whether it is possibly to learn a language without ever ever translating in and out of your own language? Don't you wonder first 'I wish I knew how to say X', then you set around trying to find that out?



-The Duolingo die hards
Now, I like this app, don't get me wrong. It's certainly what got me on this journey in the first place, despite the fact that I failed rather badly at 15 when I tried to use it to learn Italian. It certainly got me past the aforementioned myth that second language acquisition is impossible without actually moving to the country, and lit a small fire in me that I'm feeding right now.
Despite the shiny new tires on it, it really is just gamified grammar translation and I do like grammar translation in moderation.

However, what I dislike is the subset of the community that has taken to proclaiming it as the One True God.
'Don't worry man, just do the reverse tree and keep all your skills golden. You'll be B2 in no time'
Of course after spending about 2 years keeping the skills golden and doing multiple reverse trees, they slap B2s on their Reddit flairs and strut out into the world, only to turn to native material and find that sentences like 'The elephant is with my father' was no preparation for the barrage of content not designed specifically for language learners.
Of course, this form of criticism is strictly forbidden on their Reddit sub.
It's a nice app, can't say the same about


-Lingq
As an absolute beginner, I spent a lot of time 'learning how to learn' per se. One of my influences was of course Benny, who I've come to doubt rather seriously over the years but he will be addressed later. This excellent forum and its predecessor HTLAL was another. Steve Kaufmann's videos used to be rather inspirational and helpful, until at least the endless references to LingQ and the One True God of Reading/Listening [On LingQ]

Now, I'm not going to criticise the commercialisation of his site. He provides a service, a good one, and deserves to be paid for it. Neither am I going to criticise his promotion of R/L as a method of learning a language, as it is undoubtedly a good method as many on this forum and the old HTLAL have written about.
His criticism of Benny was rather spot with regards to the 'Fluent in 3 months' marketing spiel.

What I will criticise is his criticism of other methods of language acquisition, criticism which invariably always leads to the conclusion that reading and listening is the One True God and ends with a product placement to LingQ. Product placements are welcome in your own video, I have used LingQ Premium for a month and found it to be rather useful but dropped it later.

Shadowing? Too stressful - I use LingQ
L /R ? I prefer to read in L2 - I use LingQ
Wordlists? You can't learn vocab out of context - I review my LingQs
Old school grammar translation? I don't study grammar - I use LingQ

Now, note that he has revised the 'I don't study grammar' to 'I hardly study grammar'.
Of course, many polyglots here place varying levels of emphasis on grammar but it's rather agreed on that some knowledge of grammar is needed. As a beginner, one got the impression that all I needed to learn a language like this very accomplished polyglot was to go get myself a LingQ premium membership.

No one takes into account the fact that he has an immense wealth of experience from studying languages for almost the entirety of his life, thus making it easier for him to deemphasize grammar studies because he simply has gotten quite good at language learning. He has experience that most beginners are not privy to. I'm sure most of you here, upon being handed a few samples of an unknown language ie a bilingual story with the L1 being your native language etc, would be able to figure quite a few things out by observing patterns ie word order, verb endings for the Romance languages, etc

Compared to a completely clueless beginner who wouldn't know a conjunction from a conjugation, a person who just types in 'How do I learn a language' into Google, this is some of the worst advice that could be given.
'Dont worry youngling, just read and listen to L2 and everything will eventually rearrange itself in your head'

I was browsing the LingQ forum and came upon a post of a lad lamenting that he'd been on LingQ for months yet couldn't make head nor tail of the German case system. Apparently, he had read and understood quite a bit of German but if he tried to write anything or speak, he'd freeze up because he had no idea why the 'eine's later turned into 'einer' and 'einem' in the same paragraph.

Perhaps a spot of dogmatism less and a 30 minute video on youtube would help to give some clarification, other than hoping for painless assimilation. Hell even Assimil gives grammar notes.

LingQ's forums are great though, helpful people.


- The program peddlers

Here's how you can learn 200 words a day.
I have discovered the secrets to language hacking. Buy my reasonably priced program which will take you to fluency.
Learn a language in hours not months! [Babbel's ads range from the amusing - like the accent videos, to obnoxious clickbait - Twin Polyglots attempt to learn a language in 1 HOUR]

You've got PC Mag essentially writing a product placement for Rosetta Stone, proclaiming it as the best program for languages on the market.


I could go on but my central point is that as a beginner there's such a barrage of bad information, that it's remarkable how some still wade through that and actually successfully learn a language to some degree of proficiency.


I'll just end this here and go to sleep. Please do feel free to criticise and make suggestions
5 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

User avatar
Ani
Brown Belt
Posts: 1433
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:58 am
Location: Alaska
Languages: English (N), speaks French, Russian & Icelandic (beginner)
x 3840
Contact:

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Ani » Mon Mar 27, 2017 3:18 am

I think the only one of those you find on this forum might be the monolingual dictionary thing. I agree with you on that point. Plants and animals are the most aggravating thing, no matter how high your level gets, to try and find without translation. Google Image search is great but that means I need to actually go to a web browser and hope I know the name of the plant or animal in my native language or can figure it out from the picture. Aspen or Birch? Pine or Spruce? And obviously if you want to go the other direction you'd be making complete guesses? I don't even know how that would work :lol: Wastes too much time for zero benefit.

Belated welcome to the forum btw. I've been following your log wishing I were a student again with some actual quantity of schedule-able free time. :lol: Your plans seem like a lot of fun. I wish you the best :)
3 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: The Chronicles of An Overly Ambitious Soon To Be 20 year old.

Postby Atinkoriko » Mon Mar 27, 2017 7:06 am

Ani wrote:I think the only one of those you find on this forum might be the monolingual dictionary thing. I agree with you on that point. Plants and animals are the most aggravating thing, no matter how high your level gets, to try and find without translation. Google Image search is great but that means I need to actually go to a web browser and hope I know the name of the plant or animal in my native language or can figure it out from the picture. Aspen or Birch? Pine or Spruce? And obviously if you want to go the other direction you'd be making complete guesses? I don't even know how that would work :lol: Wastes too much time for zero benefit.

Belated welcome to the forum btw. I've been following your log wishing I were a student again with some actual quantity of schedule-able free time. :lol: Your plans seem like a lot of fun. I wish you the best :)





Thank you :)
1 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: guyome and 2 guests