zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Mar 10, 2017 5:49 pm

I took the Telc Deutsch A2-B1 DTZ (Deutschtest für Zuwanderer) today. It's a long 3.5 hr test for German which gives access to the immigrant process. It's a B1 test - I should have aced it. Sigh. I'm going to sign up for a B2 to force myself to work on this more.

I think I passed - parts are very easy (listening and reading), a little harder (speaking), rough (writing) for me.
I'll find out in 4 weeks. Once again the observation I can make on this is that my weakness remains production: writing and speaking, to a lesser extent, are difficult processes. And I just need to integrate that part more. More time and more exercises on writing.

So that's my German focus if I want to move the needle to C1...

Hebrew continues -- mostly by the force of italki tutoring, I really wish I had started that earlier.

And I am planning to attend Bratislava. 8-)
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I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Mar 12, 2017 4:47 pm

Friday evening / Saturday were full German immersion days.

Current material is various TV shows (Netflix in German, yay!), Pons - 250 Grammatik Übungen (pg 11) and Arto Paasilinna - Adams Pech, die Welt zu Retten (book and audio book), duolingo (soon done with the German branch) and ASSIMIL.

And I just ordered a study book for the Telc B2. Depending on my results in the next weeks, I'll sign up for that test. Objective is to prepare for the C1 by the end of the year.

My third daughter is choosing her Lycée and is now considering selective Abi-Bac (French/German) or Int. Bad - Section Britannique (French/English) - she'll be studying 4 languages in either program. We'll see.
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Apr 11, 2017 10:25 pm

Finally got the results from my German B1 placement back - 92% average, so I passed. Signed up for the B2 for next month and will mostly try to work from the test prep and a German book on language learning. Should probably write about that too, as a general interest for this audience.

And I've got two italki tutors for Hebrew - that a great find and keeping me motivated.

The other low level languages are on hold.

(and my 14 year old passed her English written entrance exam !!! YAY !!! She has an oral exam this month.)
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zenmonkey
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Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Apr 14, 2017 8:45 am

So here is my current plan for passing the B2 exam on the 16th of next month.
I'll be using the Klett "Mit Erfolg zu telc Deustch B2" exercise and test books.

Since the exercise book is divided into 2 sections (Grammar and Vocab) with about 30 sections, I'll be doing one of each per day. Just a check list and I can get this done.

I am allowing myself to be passive about this and allowing the workbook to define what I should focus on. This is sort of a copout but given that the material has good depth and width for this exam and that I find it sufficiently hard that it makes me learn - I'm ok with that choice. I do have some days at the end of my study cycle to focus on standard letters/e-mails that are part of this exam.

For vocab that I find in the lessons, I'm writing the words in a notebook, reviewing them and their translation and then putting them in Anki.

I am also reading "Fremdsprachlernen mit System" by Hans Krings as both an area of interest and German material. It is suprisingly readable - I don't know that I'm actually learning how to learn, but I'm only into the first chapters.
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Yiddish Resource

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Apr 15, 2017 9:12 pm

Discovered a new Yiddish resource:

Reported as made by two 'natives' and a fluent speaker (Shoda Fayez)
www.memrise.com/…/11205…/modern-yiddish-complete-with-audio/
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User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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LWT and current work

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:03 pm

So after reading a bit around here - I discovered the tool LWT (Learning with Text) that many here seem to use and decided to install it. Took me all of 10 minutes on a Mac following the instructions here: http://lwt.sourceforge.net and with MAMP as my web server.

Have I used this before? It seems very familiar and I think I used something exactly like it somewhere. Hmm, my mind is going. Definitely useful after about 15/20 minutes of fiddling about. It might be part of my future basics, it does require some use for the database to fill up with standard words you don't want to be checking.

I used it for a good hour on Alice in Wonderland in German and found it excellent. Have not exported my terms to Anki yet. It might be much better than the current list I create by hand.

Although I have to say, importing text into LWT is a bit clunky. Maybe I am not doing it right. Will continue to fiddle with it.

___

German telc B2 test prep - going forward nicely - I caught up with my lessons and Anki cards yesterday and just have today's lesson to do today.

Hebrew: Well, did not do much this week. Will likely do a full lesson today.
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Re: LWT and current work

Postby rdearman » Mon Apr 17, 2017 7:39 pm

zenmonkey wrote:Although I have to say, importing text into LWT is a bit clunky. Maybe I am not doing it right. Will continue to fiddle with it.

I found the latest version not to be bad at importing. Used to have to chunk up the text into small pieces yourself, now it will chop it up for you. :) I still don't use it much. I found the problem was the dictionaries, although that is perhaps because online Finnish dictionaries are a bit crap.
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Re: LWT and current work

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Apr 17, 2017 8:20 pm

rdearman wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:Although I have to say, importing text into LWT is a bit clunky. Maybe I am not doing it right. Will continue to fiddle with it.

I found the latest version not to be bad at importing. Used to have to chunk up the text into small pieces yourself, now it will chop it up for you. :) I still don't use it much. I found the problem was the dictionaries, although that is perhaps because online Finnish dictionaries are a bit crap.


I'm finding that the online dictionary for German isn't any good but the fact that I can pop the entire sentence into Google translate on one click is nice and fast (as bad as that is sometimes). There are good online dictionaries for German (dict.cc and leo) and I may try to configure that but for now it works well enough.
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zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Anki and Hebrew cursive.

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:50 pm

LWT is a little on hold while I work on my German lessons and Hebrew speeds up a bit. Finally dug into the insides on Anki and set it up so that in can present cards either in Hebrew print or Hebrew cursive. This involved setting up the right font on the Mac ... after digging around for a cursive font that actually worked properly. Now I have cards with Hebrew print or cursive or both. And it transfers quite nicely across platforms.

I will do a short write-up later in the week.

I still would like to create a solitreo font... time, time, time...
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zenmonkey
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Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
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Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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London and languages

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Apr 29, 2017 9:02 am

Good language week.

I was in London last weekend with my father and two youngest daughters. That in itself was an adventure - my father's planning resulted in us getting kicked out of a hotel early, lost/stolen passports that were actually in his pocket (I even watched the security video from the hotel lobby to see that the front desk had given them back to him.) Late buses and planes - oh, I could write several paragraphs about that, but I'm going to focus on the language stuff.

Since one of my daughters (let's call her 'L') had a planned entrance exam later in the week for an English high school program in France we spent a lot of time in English (her L1 is French, my fathers L1 is Spanish but he lives in the US) or because her younger sister isn't as fluid in English translating to French. We took a graffiti tour (highly recommend) where L listened almost only in English and asked a few questions. And a visit to the National Gallery was the background for an exercise to describe this Vermeer painting:

Image

L spent a good 30 minutes describing it as object, the content, style and possible symbolic meaning. It was cute and a few visitors eavesdropped on L's description - she was fastidiously writing down any word she struggled with.

A quick trip to a used book store and I picked up a small Italian conversation guide from the 18th Century. London has some great bookstores for languages!! I stumbled across Waterstones Piccadilly - Russian Room when I was looking for the European Bookstore (alas gone? I certainly didn't find it where I thought it was) and Foyles (where I went twice!). Other purchases included "How Language Works" (D. Crystal) and "Second Language Learning Theories" (R. Mitchell et al.). I might do a book review later on these. Definitely worth the trip for the bookstores alone.

--- Rest of the week ---

Hebrew: In my session on italki each week, the teacher has a google document open and writes down everything we work on. At the end of lesson, I have a full transcript of what has been said. This is excellent source of input for my Anki cards. In fact I might have a card glut. Having someone else write out the content for Anki cards is a plus, I just work on the translations and in they go.

Also, since I got the cursive font working, most of these cards have been set to cursive only - still struggling with one or two characters but my reading speed is improving.

German: Reading a textbook in German - well, not much done this week on that, but working on exercises for my upcoming test, doing cards and a bit of Internet reading. I find I tend to skip less on reading in places where I would just tend to gloss over. Maybe it is the practice, maybe it is a crossover effect of having to slow down for Hebrew (German seems easy now!)

Also picked up Lingvist - I'm playing with the app and find it well done (the stats are a bit of a fantasy). Wish I had seen it before.

Weekend will be spent catching up a bit on German.
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I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar


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