日本語 + Русский + norsk (part 1, CLOSED)

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brilliantyears
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19020
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Re: brilliantyears' language log: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby brilliantyears » Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:22 pm

Sooooo the first week of the 6 Week Challenge is over and I'm quite pleased. I'm trying to get in one hour of studying every day.

6WCweek1.png

Memrise
I easily spent the most time on Memrise. I studied 149 new words in the past week. Most of that was fairly easy Duolingo vocab, but I also studied ahead for next semester's classes. I used all my downtime for reviews and stayed on top of them.

Grammar
Grammar was a mix between Duolingo (121 minutes) and Paspoort voor Rusland (8 minutes). Starting Duolingo again was a last minute decision, but it's excellent grammar practice so I decided to stick with it. I particularly enjoy how it forces my brain to work just a little bit faster on deciphering and creating sentences.

Reading
92 minutes! I finished Котёнок, the short story we picked for Russian study group. I also finished the last two stories and exercises in the A2 level book (which I think was just the right level, bordering on being a little too easy). I've now started one of the books I bought in Berlin, Книга для первого чтения. I'm reading it extensively the first time around, and plan to reread it intensively when I've finished. The level is alright - a bunch of vocab I don't know yet, and a few new grammatical constructions, but on the whole it's doable.

Listening
So far a musical and a movie (Elisabeth and the Lion King) - I counted them both for 50% (64 minutes). I want to find material more at my level.

Speaking:
Got to speak a little Russian on Saturday with friends. But my shyness got the better of me and since one of them speaks English it was too easy to switch back :? When I don't have a choice though (when he left, or back when I was in Ukraine) I do alright. Guess I'm going to have to dump myself in the middle of nowhere in Russia to actually start speaking it :roll:

I still have to find balance in my studying. I want to allocate more time to listening, speaking and grammar.
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brilliantyears
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Joined: Mon Aug 17, 2015 11:52 am
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Active: Japanese (JLPT N2~N1), Russian (B1)
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Low-key: Ainu, Mandarin (A2?)
Dropped: Arabic, Korean, French, Latin, classical Manchu, Norwegian, SLN
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19020
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Re: brilliantyears' language log: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby brilliantyears » Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:18 am

A small milestone last night! I didn't have much faith in it, but: I watched episode 8 of Кухня with help of the interlinear transcript :D

Essentially this meant reading half a page, then watching the matching minute(s) of the episode while reading along with the transcript. I focused on reading the Russian transcript and only used the word-for-word translation when I needed it, which to be fair was still quite often. However, it wasn't as difficult as I had anticipated. The Russian in Кухня is fairly straightforward (although there were a few occasions where I had to look up specific expressions). Listening was a bit more of a challenge, but after reading the transcript I was able to follow along alright.

All in all, watching this one 24 minute long episode took me a little over an hour :lol: But who knows, with enough practice I might level up to just reading the transcript (instead of the interlinear text) in the not-too-far-away-future ;)
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brilliantyears
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Dropped: Arabic, Korean, French, Latin, classical Manchu, Norwegian, SLN
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19020
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby brilliantyears » Mon Aug 13, 2018 7:26 am

SC update:

Japanese (half challenge)
Reading: 7 books, 349 pages (total)

Watching: 34.4 films, 3,095 minutes (total)
06 Aug 2018 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン s1e10 24 minutes
08 Aug 2018 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン s1e11 24 minutes
10 Aug 2018 ユーリ!!! on ice s1e8 24 minutes
10 Aug 2018 ユーリ!!! on ice s1e9 24 minutes
10 Aug 2018 ユーリ!!! on ice s1e10 24 minutes
10 Aug 2018 ユーリ!!! on ice s1e11 24 minutes
10 Aug 2018 ユーリ!!! on ice s1e12 24 minutes

--

Russian (half challenge)
Reading: 1.4 books, 71 pages (total)
06 Aug 2018 Книга для первого чтения 3 pages
07 Aug 2018 Книга для первого чтения 5 pages
09 Aug 2018 Кухня s1e8 7 pages
11 Aug 2018 Кухня s1e9 7 pages

Watching: 30.9 films, 2,779 minutes (total)
08 Aug 2018 Ночные Ласточки s1e1 50 minutes
09 Aug 2018 Кухня s1e8 25 minutes
11 Aug 2018 Я люблю тебя 87 minutes
12 Aug 2018 Кухня s1e9 25 minutes

My highlight of the past week was watching those two non-subbed episodes of Кухня with the help of the interlinear transcripts :D Episode 9 also took me over an hour to watch, but I'm not struggling as much as I anticipated and most of all I'm just glad I can finally continue Кухня.
Also: I really enjoyed the 2004 movie Я люблю тебя. More of that please.
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tarvos
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby tarvos » Mon Aug 13, 2018 9:07 pm

Holy hell, I wish I had your diligence. I would feel so much better about myself if I could watch even part of the amount you do. But I am finding that I just can't keep my attention focused for long enough on stuff right now, so I'll have to make do with admiring you from the sidelines. Keep it up, you'll improve super fast!
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brilliantyears
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Dropped: Arabic, Korean, French, Latin, classical Manchu, Norwegian, SLN
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19020
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby brilliantyears » Tue Aug 14, 2018 10:29 am

Eh, I have to say I'm hyperfocused on/obsessed with Russian these days. I tend to easily get obsessed over stuff, but also eventually lose interest, so I'll hold onto this while it lasts.
Watching a lot of stuff doesn't mean much to me though. I watch a lot, all the time (movies, series, anything - usually not in any of my TLs so most of it doesn't even end up in my log). Actually when I watch extreme amounts that's usually an indication that I'm not feeling fantastic...

Hope you'll feel better soon! :(
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tarvos
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Passive: AF, DK, LAT
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby tarvos » Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:18 pm

Stop being modest, you. ;) My psychologists tell me it's good for nothing.
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brilliantyears
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Dropped: Arabic, Korean, French, Latin, classical Manchu, Norwegian, SLN
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19020
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby brilliantyears » Thu Aug 16, 2018 2:55 pm

What's modest about wasting your life watching too much shit :lol: 2 days, 9 hours and 15 minutes in the past 30 days alone :oops:




6WC Update
6WCweek2.jpg

Memrise
Again, much of my time was spent on Memrise. 3 and a half hours! During which I kept up with my reviews and studied 126 new words.

Reading
I spent 2:13 on reading: Two episodes of Кухня of a little over an hour each.

Listening
Nearly four hours of listening, consisting of the aforementioned episodes of Кухня that I listened to closely and with a few repeats and thus counted for 35 minutes each, and a few things that I cut in half timewise (an episode of another series, a movie, and a musical).

Grammar
Just Duolingo this time.

I'm doing quite well. I'm averaging an hour and a half a day. I'm making my Duolingo and Memrise streaks every day, and fill the rest of the time with assorted Russian, basically whatever I feel like doing at the moment. I'm even quite happy with the balance between reading and listening, but I really need to start speaking asap... Someone make me?!

Dedicating time to studying Russian every day is nice! It's too early to say I'm really noticing progress, BUT last night I had the opportunity to speak a lot of Japanese and I really needed a moment to force my brain to switch from спасибо to ありがとう :lol:

(Side note: sometimes my mind is still blown when I realise Japanese is a language I actually speak now and it's pretty darn awesome. Last night speaking was so easy and comfortable, and afterwards two of my non-Japanese speaking friends commented "wow, it's so weird and cool to hear you speak Japanese" and I realised: yes, yes it is!)
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Last edited by brilliantyears on Tue Aug 21, 2018 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tarvos
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Speak reasonably: IT, ZH, PT, NO, EL, CZ
Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI
Passive: AF, DK, LAT
Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby tarvos » Thu Aug 16, 2018 8:15 pm

Did you enjoy it? I mean, there's not much higher purpose to our miserable existence on this pale blue dot anyway. Can't blame ya!

I think time to unwind is underrated. And if it occasionally is in Japanese or Russian, so much the better. 8-)
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brilliantyears
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Low-key: Ainu, Mandarin (A2?)
Dropped: Arabic, Korean, French, Latin, classical Manchu, Norwegian, SLN
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19020
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby brilliantyears » Sat Aug 18, 2018 8:53 pm

Ah, today was a good day for my Russian studies. I've been listening a lot to the Slow Russian podcast over the past few days and I'm really enjoying it, even if I only understand about half of it the first time around. I should probably study the transcripts too, but right now that's not the point for me. The content of the podcast is pretty interesting and it's really useful to practice listening.

Also studied vocab and did a little Duolingo. And wrote a diary entry. Oh man, I have to start writing more, because I'm getting rusty and this piece is just downright embarrassing :? (but I posted it to Lang-8 anyway).

I spent some time intensively studying grammar and realised once again it's ridiculous to try and study Russian from English. But it's giving me some insight into English as well. Having been fluent in English for such a long time, I never really realised English doesn't use more specific words to say "there is", i.e. "there is a book on the table". Whereas in Russian, Dutch and German (and probably more languages) you usually don't just say "there is a book on the table" but you have to specify that "a book is lying on the table". All this time I've been getting it right in English but it never clicked that there was a difference :lol:
(Yes, I know out of these three languages Russian is probably the one where you don't necessarily have to use that construction, but it happens regularly anyway and that's why the explanation showed up in my grammar exercises).
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Re: 日本語 + Русский focus

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Aug 19, 2018 8:23 am

brilliantyears wrote:(Yes, I know out of these three languages Russian is probably the one where you don't necessarily have to use that construction, but it happens regularly anyway and that's why the explanation showed up in my grammar exercises).

True, and if I were feeling pedantic I would argue there are subtle differences in nuance between constructions like "на столе есть книга", "на столе книга" "книга на столе", "книга лежит на столе", etc. :D

This also reminds me of a story my grandmother told me from back when she was teaching at a Russian-medium school in Uzbekistan. A fellow teacher, who wasn't a native speaker of Russian, gave a student who had just finished wiping the blackboard the instruction "поставь тряпку у доски". After seeing the boy struggle to make the wet cloth stand on its end against the blackboard she changed her instruction to "посади её" :lol:
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