Tagalog + Swedish

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timsung207
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Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:15 pm
Languages: Cantonese(Native)
Mandrin(B2-C1)
Eng(B1-B2)
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Re: Cantonese + MIA (Japanese)

Postby timsung207 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:46 pm

廣東話係一個好難嘅語言,有時候母語者講出嚟嘅都會覺得好奇怪,好陌生.所以唔需要為自己講得奇奇怪怪或者戇九九(means very naive or strange)咁而難過.
如果想改善你嘅聽力,可以聽下周星馳嘅電影,尤其係 審死官 同逃學威龍,佢哋好搞笑,雖然會好難,但係學到裡面嘅香港slang會可以幫到你講得冇咁書面.
讀寫就難啦,香港有個名叫文化沙漠,顧名思義係冇咩好嘅廣東話文學作品嘅,都係果句,如果想比較道地嘅話,可以去一啲香港或者澳門嘅fb社團,裡面嘅內容會好有香港或者澳門嘅當地文化,係難睇過正式文章嘅,但你會慢慢睇得明.
我依家學緊西班牙文都好明你嘅感受.....
好老實講,好多好似我哋呢啲香港人,見到鬼佬(foreigners)學我哋嘅語言會覺得好欣慰,加油!
最後送你一句話:祝你事事順利
translate:
Cantonese is a hard language,sometimes even a natives talke weirdly and strange,so there's no reasons for you to be upset for speaking strangely or like an idiot.
if you wanna imporve your listening,consider watching Stephen Chow's movie,they are funny.They may seem hard,but learning the slangs inside will help you speak more native.
reading is a hard one,Hong Kong has a nickname called The Desert of Culture,there's not much great literature.Maybe try consider going to comunities in Facebook,you can learn the culture and how to write slangs inside, its harder(than to read passages in Cantonese),but you will get used to it.
To be honest,i understand your feelings cos i am learning Spanish at the time.And we natives are glad that foreigners learns our language. Keep up the good work!
2 x

crush
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Re: Cantonese + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sun Jan 17, 2021 5:37 pm

timsung207 wrote:廣東話係一個好難嘅語言,有時候母語者講出嚟嘅都會覺得好奇怪,好陌生.所以唔需要為自己講得奇奇怪怪或者戇九九(means very naive or strange)咁而難過.
如果想改善你嘅聽力,可以聽下周星馳嘅電影,尤其係 審死官 同逃學威龍,佢哋好搞笑,雖然會好難,但係學到裡面嘅香港slang會可以幫到你講得冇咁書面.
讀寫就難啦,香港有個名叫文化沙漠,顧名思義係冇咩好嘅廣東話文學作品嘅,都係果句,如果想比較道地嘅話,可以去一啲香港或者澳門嘅fb社團,裡面嘅內容會好有香港或者澳門嘅當地文化,係難睇過正式文章嘅,但你會慢慢睇得明.
我依家學緊西班牙文都好明你嘅感受.....
好老實講,好多好似我哋呢啲香港人,見到鬼佬(foreigners)學我哋嘅語言會覺得好欣慰,加油!
最後送你一句話:祝你事事順利

多谢你个评论!我会试下睇佢啲戏,但系一个大问题就系大部分嘅粤语戏系冇字幕嘅,如果有就系普通话或者英文嘅,好少见到白话嘅字幕。讲粤语同讲普通话嘅时候好唔同,白话一直喺度改变,有好多唔同嘅讲法,而且好多嘢讲得唔清楚。系因为呢啲嘢我就觉得粤语比较有意思,佢系一个好口语化嘅语言。我好想学得好好,但系前面嘅路仲系好长 :cry:

你都系,学西班牙文要加油!我之前都有读过,所以呢如果有咩嘢问题我会好乐意去帮你!
1 x

crush
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Re: Cantonese + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat Aug 21, 2021 5:41 pm

Still chipping away at Japanese. Haven't touched Basque in a while, though i use it just about everyday chatting on Discord.

I took a "break" from Japanese study to focus on more fun things, namely reading, playing video games, and watching shows (all in Japanese of course) and stopped adding new Anki cards for several months, just kept up with reviews. This was probably around April, when i started my new job. The past month or so i've started adding new words again as i found i really wasn't immersing enough for it to make much difference, i was actually immersing less than before, though that was also due to the new job and environment. Should be able to get things back to normal when my fiancée gets here (been waiting on the visa for about a year now :( ) but for now i've just been trying to slowly push forward.

For podcasts, i've been listening mostly to Noriko (+ her "Extra" podcast), Kotsu Kotsu Nihongo, and 4989 American Life. I was listening to IGN's しゃべりすぎGAMER but the recording quality is pretty low (some speakers are really loud, others are quiet) and i just found it too hard to follow so i've recently unsubscribed from their podcasts. This single person monolog format seems to suit me well. Rebuild podcasts are also good, but they're so long it's hard to get through an entire episode. I really wish i could find something more aligned with my interests that i can actually understand. 4989AL is interesting to listen to, it's fun to hear the English words she confuses (like "first food" and "fast food") and other cultural tidbits, but it's not something i'd normally listen to in English. Still haven't found that perfect balance between comprehensibility and interest.
4 x

crush
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Re: Cantonese + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Mon Sep 26, 2022 11:36 am

What's up?

It's been over a year since the last update. Japanese has gotten me a bit down, being stuck in the intermediate plateau, the unforgiving nature of the Japanese writing system, and several life events (getting married, buying our first house, etc.) left me with less time than i was used to for language learning.

Tagalog

The past few months i've been focusing on Tagalog, there's a large Filipino community here and it's always been on my bucket list. I used the learningtagalog.com site which was fantastic and have since been using the reader at tagalog.com and leosmith's Tagalog Conversations at Oplingo (another amazing resource).

Quechua

I also played around with Quechua (chanka/Ayacucho dialect) for several months and got a decent base, but i've kinda slacked in that regard and put most of my attention into Tagalog as it'll be the most immediately useful for me. We have family friends who are native speakers, i'd love to just break out in my broken Tagalog one day and surprise them. I really do love Quechua though and would like to reach a basic conversational level some day.

Japanese

My Japanese study the past year or two has mostly consisted of listening to podcasts. 4989 American Life is probably 90-95% comprehensible for me, the podcasts aimed at learners (mostly Noriko, Miku, and Tomo from "Let's Talk in Japanese") are generally closer to that 95-100% range. But when i stray from those into more natural Japanese, my comprehension drops dramatically to the point where it's tough to follow along with the general gist of the conversation. I haven't watched any anime in probably a year or more. I was getting frustrated with Japanese but i really want to learn it and be able to use it, so i've been slowly working up the motivation to give it a serious try again, watching some of Game Gengo's videos has been getting me a little excited about hitting Japanese hard again.

Natibo

I've also been hard at work rewriting Natibo (https://github.com/chickendude/Natibo), my hope is to use that for Tagalog and Japanese for a few months and then start taking regular lessons, i was thinking M-F, 3x Tagalog 2x Japanese, and trying that out for a couple months to see how my progress feels. I've been getting up early, ~6am, and using that time for productive things (study, projects, and working on Natibo), my hope is to be able to spend an hour on Tagalog and Japanese each before work and leave more relaxing/immersion activities for after work.

Tagalog pt2

Btw, if anyone has any suggestions for some relatively easy Tagalog podcasts or Youtube channels, i would love to hear about them.
7 x

crush
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Re: Tagalog + Japanese

Postby crush » Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:18 pm

Tagalog
I'm still sticking with Tagalog, i studied the first 30 or so conversations of leosmith's Tagalog Conversations and am nearing 1000 sentences in the Glossika course. Last month the Refold Tagalog server started a book club and i read a series of [short horror stories](https://www.wattpad.com/story/307351402 ... or-stories), my first foray into literature. This month we're reading the [first book](https://www.wattpad.com/story/13238443- ... -completed) in the Moymoy Lulumboy series.

I also started taking some lessons on italki feeling pretty confident about my abilities after getting through a bunch of those conversations + short stories only to be very humbled by my inability to make coherent sentences. I can parse Tagalog decently enough in my head, but i don't have a good active knowledge of the affixes. I think i'll need to hit the grammar books again to really wrap my head around them. Thinking that the new Routledge Tagalog grammar will be on my holiday wishlist.

Japanese
Not much focus on actual studying of Japanese, but i bought an Elgato capture card and currently have it connected up to my Switch and have been using it (alongside game2text) to look up new words while playing through Pokemon Scarlet. I'm looking forward to setting it up with my SNES (actually a Super NT) and PS1 to start tackling some of my favorite childhood games in Japanese. I also have continued my habit of listening to podcasts in the morning, mostly Noriko sensei, Miku sensei, and Utaco san.
5 x

crush
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Re: Tagalog + Japanese

Postby crush » Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:09 pm

There have been some exciting updates in my language learning schedule/life recently!

Russian
I started working on Russian after getting in touch with an old Russian penpal again. Iʻve been using a mix of LingQ and Assimil. Just finished lesson 42 today (review lesson) in Assimil and have read a few of the beginner stories on LingQ. Iʻve also been listening to Russian With Max on my runs, which previously was being used for Spanish audiobooks. It feels comfortable being in an Indo-European language again, i always considered Russian tough when i first tried to tackle it for about a year maybe 10 years back, but now it feels close to home after the past few (10!) years focused on Basque, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and most recently Tagalog.

Tagalog
I have been reading a lot in Tagalog and going to tutor sessions twice a week. According to Tagalog.com, iʻve read just under 2000 pages (1905). They mark a page as 250 words, so thatʻs about 476k words. Iʻve read a thousand pages so far this year. Iʻm slowly ramping up my vocabulary in these Wattpad novels, the current book iʻm reading (The Last Immortal) has 4% unknown words, so about 96% known vocabulary. I still struggle a bit with some verb forms but iʻm looking forward to reaching that 98% mark. Iʻve started splitting my time between reading and grammar study to try to fill in my gaps in the verb forms and the affixes in general. Iʻve also watched about all of the dubbed cartoons in Tagalog that are available on Netflix and a few live action Tagalog movies, mostly love stories but there have been a few iʻve really enjoyed, like Doll House. My goal is to reach 5000 pages read this year, probably wonʻt make it at my current reading pace (been reading about 9-10 pages a day now that my timeʻs split between reading and grammar study), but i think 4000 pages will be doable. 4000 pages would also be a million words, which is a nice number :D

Hawaiian
My familyʻs going to be going on a trip to Hawaiʻi which i was a bit hesitant to join as i donʻt really want to be the reason for all that pollution, but my wife convinced me by feeding my wanderlust and so iʻve decided to spend time this year learning some Hawaiian before we get there. I ordered some books and am still sorting out resources, currently just going through Duolingo + Drops while waiting for books iʻve ordered to come in and while organizing/gathering resources. I found some kind soul uploaded the Kulāwai vignettes with subtitles to Youtube, which looks to be a decent initial source of both reading and listening practice. My initial plan is to read them in leosmithʻs languagecrush site. Iʻm unsure how much if any inflection there is in Hawaiian, assuming words donʻt vary much iʻve also considered working on a tool/pop-up reader of my own inspired by Tagalog.com.
9 x

crush
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Re: Tagalog + 6 Months of Hawaiian

Postby crush » Fri Nov 10, 2023 5:53 pm

So a bit of an update, our trip to Hawaii got canceled. After six-seven months of studying i felt a bit bummed, a mix of feeling guilty about devoting a lot of time to a new language (Hawaiian) that should've been spent on my focus languages and feeling like i'd "wasted" that time. After about 6-7 months i was at the point where i could read literature (i read quite a few biographies, some translations like Alice in Wonderland and The Little Prince, and a lot of interviews) pretty comfortably (~95% comprehension for interviews/biographies, maybe 80-90% for standard literature with ʻokina/kahakō) with a pop-up dictionary to fall back on.

Return to Tagalog
The canceling of our trip was a big blow to my motivation and i've started to set it aside to bring my focus back on Tagalog. I was also hired on to work on a retro RPG for the Game Boy Color which has taken up a good bit of my free time, my plan is to do another intensive 6-9 months of Tagalog, probably next year when things are closer to completion. I plan on using the (supposedly amazing) course "Pilipino through Self-Instruction", which uses the audiolingual method i've had such great success with using the FSI courses. The course is very expensive (probably around ~$600 with books + audio), so i've been buying it piecemeal, a little bit each month. But i love the FSI/audiolingual method, so i can't wait to start this experiment. Currently, my comprehension of Tagalog, especially written, is very good (probably around B2 level), but my ability to output is awful (probably ~A2). I'm looking to even them up a bit.

Swedish - A Team Effort
My mom also asked about learning Swedish a month or so ago and she, my wife, and I have started following a simple plan for learning Swedish together. It's been a nice excuse to finally use my LingQ subscription (and our HypLern books). Disney+ seems to have some selection, otherwise it seems like a lot of the Swedish content is geo-restricted to Sweden, some things i can get around with a VPN, but none of the subscription services are accepting my US card. It feels nice being back in a closely related language and having high comprehension from the get go. Learning Swedish has been pretty relaxing so far.

As a side note, there were some Swedish series available on Netflix, but as they've started cracking down on sharing accounts, Netflix just isn't worth the price tag to us anymore so we've dropped it. For now, i've been happy with the content on Disney+ (and SVT Play with a VPN). There are quite a few Swedish dubs of some of my favorite cartoons.
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Tagalog + 6 Months of Hawaiian

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Nov 10, 2023 8:40 pm

crush wrote:As a side note, there were some Swedish series available on Netflix, but as they've started cracking down on sharing accounts, Netflix just isn't worth the price tag to us anymore so we've dropped it. For now, i've been happy with the content on Disney+ (and SVT Play with a VPN). There are quite a few Swedish dubs of some of my favorite cartoons.


Can you access SVT Play?

If you're using SVT Play in a browser, you can use a filter to show programmes available outside Sweden. On https://www.svtplay.se/program there's a checkbox with the text "Kan ses utomlands" ("Can be viewed abroad").
3 x
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crush
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Re: Tagalog + 6 Months of Hawaiian

Postby crush » Mon Nov 13, 2023 8:58 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:Can you access SVT Play?

Hi Jeff! Yeah, i'm able to access SVT Play via a VPN, most things have Swedish subtitles there as well which is a huge bonus! My mom and my wife haven't used it as much as they're less comfortable watching things without native language subtitles, but i think in a few months' time we'll all be able to enjoy the shows there.
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crush
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Re: Tagalog + Swedish

Postby crush » Mon Dec 04, 2023 6:31 pm

A couple small updates.

Swedish
I found out that Swedish has an FSI course and after reading some reviews of it (including tarvos' old post on HTLAL) decided to give that a try. I love the audiolingual method and have really enjoyed it so far. I spent a few days going through the pronunciation unit, same with unit one, and today i started unit two. This also seems to be a relatively new one (i believe it was made in the 1980s) which is a bit of a change from the Spanish/French/German/Mandarin courses i've done.

Tagalog
I got a lot of reading in over the Thanksgiving vacation, i think i averaged around 30 pages a day. I'm currently reading a Wattpad novel called The Saga of Aryana. The plot's a bit disjointed at times but i've grown to enjoy it more as i've gotten further along. It's a bit similar to several of the other Tagalog books i've read where people can have "powers". I've also been putting more effort into vocabulary, i want to really round out my vocab over the next few months. I've also picked up all the books/audio to Pilipino Through Self-Instruction, another audiolingual course, which will be my plan of attack for activating my Tagalog next year.

Japanese
I recently rediscovered the Japanese: The Spoken Language course in my enthusiasm for getting back to FSI-style courses and will probably be kicking things off with this three-part course when i get back to Japanese, probably the second half of next year some time. When i get back to Japanese, it'll probably be my main focus again so i want to make sure my Tagalog is strong and i'm feeling conversational in it before fully switching over, so Japanese may need to wait another year.
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