2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun May 03, 2020 10:40 am

jeffers wrote:I'm impressed with your 24in48 challenge! Props for you for even taking that on!


Thanks! I can't at all claim credit for the idea; some lovely people on Twitter run it as a readathon twice a year. They've sort of decided to hold back on it this year though (it's a decent enough deal that it's a lot of work to organise, I think, so they're taking a bit of a break) so I thought I might as well just do my own. Might try it once every couple of months or so to make sure I can boost those page numbers. :lol:

Hope your first three Super Challenge days are going well! :D
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun May 03, 2020 11:52 pm

3rd May 2020 / Day 124

Well, in a turn of events that will come as a shock to no one, I didn't make it to 24 hours of reading. BUT, I did get a sweet, sweet 11 hours in (661 mins total), with a grand total of 267 pages.*

*Actual page count a bit higher but there was a decent amount of manga/children's books involved.

Here's my breakdown:

German
174 pages over 349 mins (5.82 hours); reading speed about 30 pages/hour. Finally finished Das Licht der Phantasie (which I started in 2018! :lol:); also read parts of Der Kastanienmann, Death Note Band 4, and some assorted fanfic. Der Kastanienmann is pretty cool though I'm trying to avoid thinking about how long it is!

Mandarin
13 pages over 81 mins (1.35 hours); reading speed about 10 pages/hour. Consisted of reading two graded readers twice through, which has proved to be kind of useful, actually!

Spanish
68 pages over 196 mins (3.27 hours); reading speed about 21 pages/hour. A lot of this was manga; managed to read all of Fullmetal Alchemist vol. 1 and also the first chapter of Sailor Moon. Also read the first chapter of Artemis Fowl.

Scottish Gaelic
12 pages over 35 mins; reading speed about 21 pages/hour. This was two bilingual children's books; both are on Kindle Unlimited (KU). Nothing staggering in terms of vocabulary (and I read through them both twice) but quite nice for boosting self-esteem and picking up a few new words.

What was the point of this?
So, I did this mostly as a boost for the beginning of the Super Challenge (and technically, I'm now three books down for my German SC, so it's nice to be that far ahead!) but it's helped me work out a kind of method I want to go forward with and also has identified some of my weak spots.

I've been seriously neglecting my German; not to the point where I'm going to have to go back and re-learn everything, but to the point where my reading speed is far slower than it's been for a while and so daily practice should get me back into the swing of things pretty quickly. I don't think my choice of book helped, since I've been chipping away at Das Licht der Phantasie for aaaages (it's not my favourite Pratchett book but I kind of wanted to re-read them all in German, in order), so hopefully that'll also factor into it.

I'm impressed with how well I did with Spanish this weekend! But I did notice, when I switched from Fullmetal Alchemist to Sailor Moon, that the latter was much, much easier for me to understand. I'm definitely going to supplement my extensive reading with some intensive reading here; I looked up the odd word this weekend and saved it to a list on SpanishDict, so that's something to go through later. Maybe 10mins/day of extensive reading will provide a bit of a boost; I'll give it a try this week and see how it goes.

For Mandarin and Scottish Gaelic... characters have (obviously) always been an issue with Mandarin. I'm just not used to reading them! But then, that's why I went through the graded readers twice each and I could probably afford to do that a third time. Even if the Sinolingua site switches to paid tomorrow, I know I can get some readers through KU and that I have a couple around the house, too. For Scottish Gaelic, it's going to be a little difficult, and I might end up reading a few things around the web at first. LearnGaelic sends out a bilingual newsletter every Saturday and I don't think I've really read any of them, so that could be a useful tool. Can't wait to be able to read a full book in it, though!

So, that's that. Also did a few minutes of Korean Memrise and my BSL time for the day, so am just gonna drop my overall times for the day before I go off to bed. I'll probably put a kind of Super Challenge set up post on this log tomorrow too, so I have something centralised here to track my progress! :D

Total: 366 mins (953 mins / 12,370 mins)
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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon May 04, 2020 11:43 pm

4th May 2020 / Day 125

No reading/watching for me today—took a little bit of a break and I'll jump back in tomorrow. Besides, I decided it was probably better to get some Korean in instead, since that's my 6WC target language, after all. And, yay, I'm almost at the end of this second chapter of the Living Language textbook! I just have to make sure I learn the vocab pretty well; it's still tricky for me, but I re-discovered Anki, as I do every six months or so, so I'll make sure to update my deck there and that should help me through it.

Spanish
7 mins Duolingo

Korean
13 mins Memrise
15 mins Anki
38 mins Living Language L2

BSL
34 mins online course

Total: 107 mins (1,060 mins / 12,477 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue May 05, 2020 11:32 pm

5th May 2020 / Day 126

Had to attend an online seminar-type thing today for work so got a little Spanish/German listening practice in (haven't counted it here as I was tuning in and out and idk, really, how much it was), which was a nice change. Aside from that, it's been the usual stuff: episode of a sitcom over lunch, some reading and some studying. Didn't get around to much Korean studying today, but I think I should finish the second chapter of the textbook tomorrow.

But, today was my last day with BSL! Well, officially, anyway. I'm going to keep going until I've finished my course and then decide what I want to do from there. I also finished unit 8 today and got 100% on the assessment so there's only unit 9 and then the final assessment left, I think. I start with Cornish tomorrow (today, technically) so that'll be fun!

German
17 mins reading (Der Kastanienmann)

Spanish
13 mins reading (Artemis Fowl)
21 mins TV (Community S01E02)

Korean
6 mins Memrise

Scottish Gaelic
13 mins Duolingo

BSL
31 mins online course

Total: 101 mins (1,161 mins / 12,578 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Wed May 06, 2020 11:47 pm

6th May 2020 / Day 127

Ah, I'm always much more productive on Wednesdays. Definitely had nothing to do this week with the fact there's a bank holiday at the end of it so less time to do everything! ;) But no, anyway, managed to fit language learning in my Pomodoro breaks throughout the day, so got a lot done before I was even finished.

Managed to complete chapter two of the Living Language Ultimate Korean book, too. Between that and working on Memrise, I'm feeling fairly good about my understanding of Hangul (it's not incredible, but I think solid for this stage), though I definitely need to put more time into memorising vocabulary. Also need to go back over all the particles mentioned so far because even though I got like 80% on that part of the final exercises, there was definitely some guessing involved! Still, will move onto chapter three tomorrow.

I started Cornish today as well! It did not look like I was expecting, but then when I realised it's much closer to Welsh/Breton than Scottish Gaelic/Irish, that makes a lot more sense. I'm using this KDL course from kesva.org, which seems to cover a lot.

Oh, and I spent about two hours futzing around with jeffer's spreadsheet to try and add a dashboard to my Super Challenge google sheet (I'd just use Excel but I only have OpenOffice on my work laptop and I like being able to update on the go)—have managed the cute bar charts, have stared at the speedometer until my eyes went square :lol: Instead, I've just compromised with a line chart tracking my progress and where I should be but I know it's a mess but then I'm also sick at looking at charts so what are we gonna do?

(Probably stick to my original dashboard, which is just a bunch of sparkline commands instead. :lol:)

SC-wise, watched a little TV when I had my lunch today and also started listening to Austrian True Crime Duo. It says the hosts are from Vienna in the description but I'm genuinely surprised because I accidentally left Spotify on 1.2x speed and still understood everything? And I don't mean that like, wow, I'm so good at listening—I'm just wondering how measured their normal speaking voices are because I listened to a TTRPG German podcast a few months ago, also accidentally left it on 1.2x speed and could not catch a single word. So 1) I guess it's interesting to see speed changes from genre to genre and 2) I think this podcast is probably fairly understandable at intermediate level, if you're looking for some true crime to listen to!

German
7 mins Memrise
21 min podcast (Austrian True Crime Duo, ep. 1)

Mandarin
2 mins Clozemaster

Spanish
4 mins Duolingo
6 mins Memrise
21 mins Community S01E03

Korean
12 mins Memrise
57 mins Living Language chapter two

Scottish Gaelic
5 mins Glossika

Cornish
32 mins KDL course, lesson one

Total: 167 mins (1,328 mins / 12,745 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby IronMike » Thu May 07, 2020 12:42 am

LunaMoonsilver wrote:I started Cornish today as well! It did not look like I was expecting, but then when I realised it's much closer to Welsh/Breton than Scottish Gaelic/Irish, that makes a lot more sense. I'm using this KDL course from kesva.org, which seems to cover a lot.

I love the KDL course. I did it with an instructor about 15 years ago. Very nice.

I also like the Skeul an Yeth series.
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu May 07, 2020 9:41 pm

I once bumped into one of the voice actors from Skeul an Yeth - at a martial arts seminar in Duisburg, Germany of all places. :shock:
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Thu May 07, 2020 11:26 pm

IronMike wrote:I love the KDL course. I did it with an instructor about 15 years ago. Very nice.

I also like the Skeul an Yeth series.


Ah, awesome! I'm going in blind on a lot of these materials so any recommendations/reassurance are always welcome! :lol:

jeff_lindqvist wrote:I once bumped into one of the voice actors from Skeul an Yeth - at a martial arts seminar in Duisburg, Germany of all places. :shock:


Ha, definitely an unlikely spot!
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Thu May 07, 2020 11:39 pm

7th May 2020 / Day 128

Short and sweet update today, since I didn't get much done! Teeny bit of Korean, teeny bit of Spanish and my usual allotted amount of (for now) Cornish. There's a nice Memrise deck that goes with the KDL course and it seems to have audio so I did a bit of that too. :D

Tomorrow's a bank holiday though so I'm sure I'll get a lot done! (Since it's not like I can go out and do much else... :lol:)

Spanish
3 mins Duolingo

Korean
4 mins Memrise

Cornish
10 mins Memrise
21 mins KDL

Total: 38 mins (1,366 mins / 12,783 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue May 12, 2020 11:30 pm

Took a little weekend break (from the forum; honestly, I played a lot of Sims :lol:) so mainly going to drop a load of numbers here.

Some highlights, though:

  • I finally started watching La casa de papel. It's pretty fun so far though I'm not sure, at this point, how it's going to sustain momentum for the four seasons there are? But people seem to enjoy it and I've enjoyed it so hopefully I'll watch some more this week.
  • The aforementioned Sims playing—I didn't count the time I spent but it was all in German and backfired a little when I had my sim stamp on a holiday gnome instead of offering it a present and it got real mad and started smashing things up. :lol:
  • Started using Evita's Anki decks again for Korean—and I actually understand some of the sentences/know some of the words already this time around! Amazing what happens when you sit down and learn things.
  • Finally finished the first KDL Cornish lesson! Yay!

8th May 2020 / Day 129

Spanish
210 mins TV (Community S01E04 / La casa de papel S01E01-04)

Korean
5 mins Memrise

Scottish Gaelic
15 mins Duolingo

Cornish
27 mins Memrise
7 mins KDL lessons

Total: 264 mins (1,630 mins / 13,047 mins)

9th May 2020 / Day 130

Spanish
4 mins Duolingo

Cornish
10 mins Memrise
20 mins KDL lessons

Total: 34 mins (1,664 mins / 13,081 mins)

10th May 2020 / Day 131

Spanish
7 mins Duolingo

Cornish
8 mins Memrise
28 mins KDL lessons

Total: 43 mins (1,707 mins / 13,124 mins)

11th May 2020 / Day 132

Spanish
5 mins Duolingo

Korean
19 mins Anki

Cornish
1 min Memrise
33 mins KDL lessons

Total: 58 mins (1,765 mins / 13,182 mins)

12th May 2020 / Day 133

German
44 mins TV (Avatar - Der Herr der Elemente S01E07-08)

Spanish
21 mins TV (Community S01E05)

Korean
17 mins Anki

Scottish Gaelic
19 mins Duolingo

Cornish
5 mins Memrise
26 mins KDL lessons

Total: 132 mins (1,897 mins / 13,314 mins)
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: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es


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