Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French and a pinch of Mandarin)
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 10:08 pm
Trying to get a work visa during a pandemic? 1/10 would not recommend. BUT I have permission from China to go now, so now all the paperwork is now on their end. I suspect I'll be in China maybe by the first week of October? The Houston consulate is closed, so my stuff has to go D.C. now. From the papers I have already sent to D.C., they are not the quickest...
Teacher orientation has begun, and my workday is currently from 6pm - 11pm. It's kinda sad that I didn't have to change my sleeping schedule at all.
Finnish
Conversation Practice!
Y'all, I did it! I had my first Conversation Practice in Finnish through iTalki! For the first time I spent an entire half hour speaking in Finnish with an actual person (and not a pretend partner that Suomen Mestari assumes I have). I talked about what I did last summer in Helsinki, some things about my family, and about my upcoming job in China. I surprised myself by incorporating the partitive plural in there. (And my tutor was surprised how much I could express, with this being my first conversation.) Next time I'm going to talk about my day-to-day life as a teacher in China (or at least what I expect I'll be doing). I'm going to include some apartment-hunting vocabulary in there.
But I feel like I passed a significant hurdle in my Finnish journey.
I'm considering getting a community teacher on iTalki specifically for writing. I want to be able to write more fiction instead of just random sentences here and there in my journal.
Book Stuff
Finished Chapter 8 of Suomen Mestari. It was mostly about the dreaded Partitive Plural. I've been drilling some partitive plural practice with sentences while on my online school meetings, and really, it's the long word rules and the words that end in consonants that are tripping me up. The rest of the rules, I feel, are pretty straightforward. (Thank you, Uusi Kielemme, for the kissa/koira rule!) What I usually do is write one sentence with the partitive plural and then a second sentence with the partitive singular to get the hang of switching back and forth with the rules. It also increases my word count, and that's always good!
I've been reviewing Assimil, and I have been writing down phrases and words that I haven't used so far in my writing or that I need a refresher on. I try to use these when I'm writing sentences with my Anki vocabulary.
I also went to reddit and asked for clarification with mennä and käydä when it comes to doing actions. What is the difference? From the answers I got, it seems mennä means I can go and do an action without an exact time frame in mind about when I'm coming back. With käydä, barring some bathroom specific phrases, it implies that I'm going with a defined purpose and a timely manner.
Next step: Start and finish Chapter 9 of Suomen Mestari and go back to working on the past tense with verbs. I'll still be practicing the partitive plural when I write Anki sentences.
Mandarin
I have done Pimsleur Lesson 6 (Level 1). I can't deny that it's helping my pronunciation with all the repetition. I can see where the "picking up dates" angle is coming from. I'm not sure how much I can use: "Where do you want to eat?" "At your place." when it comes to meeting people in China. I'm going to keep at it and see how the rest of the lessons develop in terms of vocabulary and phrases.
So I caved and got Assimil: Le Chinois. (Man, Assimil got it to me, here in the US, within 3 days of ordering. Money well spent.) I did the first three lessons, and boy did I miss Assimil's dialogues. Audio is good quality, and I see the beginnings of useful vocabulary cropping up. I know I'm going to need to use an outside grammar reference to keep up. I have Chinese Grammar Wiki on hand, which I found useful so far.
(My principal mentioned that at the school, the Chinese Teachers have once a week Mandarin lessons for staff. You bet your bottom dollar I'll be taking part!)
Teacher orientation has begun, and my workday is currently from 6pm - 11pm. It's kinda sad that I didn't have to change my sleeping schedule at all.
Finnish
Conversation Practice!
Y'all, I did it! I had my first Conversation Practice in Finnish through iTalki! For the first time I spent an entire half hour speaking in Finnish with an actual person (and not a pretend partner that Suomen Mestari assumes I have). I talked about what I did last summer in Helsinki, some things about my family, and about my upcoming job in China. I surprised myself by incorporating the partitive plural in there. (And my tutor was surprised how much I could express, with this being my first conversation.) Next time I'm going to talk about my day-to-day life as a teacher in China (or at least what I expect I'll be doing). I'm going to include some apartment-hunting vocabulary in there.
But I feel like I passed a significant hurdle in my Finnish journey.
I'm considering getting a community teacher on iTalki specifically for writing. I want to be able to write more fiction instead of just random sentences here and there in my journal.
Book Stuff
Finished Chapter 8 of Suomen Mestari. It was mostly about the dreaded Partitive Plural. I've been drilling some partitive plural practice with sentences while on my online school meetings, and really, it's the long word rules and the words that end in consonants that are tripping me up. The rest of the rules, I feel, are pretty straightforward. (Thank you, Uusi Kielemme, for the kissa/koira rule!) What I usually do is write one sentence with the partitive plural and then a second sentence with the partitive singular to get the hang of switching back and forth with the rules. It also increases my word count, and that's always good!
I've been reviewing Assimil, and I have been writing down phrases and words that I haven't used so far in my writing or that I need a refresher on. I try to use these when I'm writing sentences with my Anki vocabulary.
I also went to reddit and asked for clarification with mennä and käydä when it comes to doing actions. What is the difference? From the answers I got, it seems mennä means I can go and do an action without an exact time frame in mind about when I'm coming back. With käydä, barring some bathroom specific phrases, it implies that I'm going with a defined purpose and a timely manner.
Next step: Start and finish Chapter 9 of Suomen Mestari and go back to working on the past tense with verbs. I'll still be practicing the partitive plural when I write Anki sentences.
Mandarin
I have done Pimsleur Lesson 6 (Level 1). I can't deny that it's helping my pronunciation with all the repetition. I can see where the "picking up dates" angle is coming from. I'm not sure how much I can use: "Where do you want to eat?" "At your place." when it comes to meeting people in China. I'm going to keep at it and see how the rest of the lessons develop in terms of vocabulary and phrases.
So I caved and got Assimil: Le Chinois. (Man, Assimil got it to me, here in the US, within 3 days of ordering. Money well spent.) I did the first three lessons, and boy did I miss Assimil's dialogues. Audio is good quality, and I see the beginnings of useful vocabulary cropping up. I know I'm going to need to use an outside grammar reference to keep up. I have Chinese Grammar Wiki on hand, which I found useful so far.
(My principal mentioned that at the school, the Chinese Teachers have once a week Mandarin lessons for staff. You bet your bottom dollar I'll be taking part!)