Dabbling in some languages for the time being (mainly Asian languages plus improving my English)
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 9:35 pm
I decided to create this new temporal log. For now I just want to dabble in some languages.
It may take some time before I decide to focus only on one language again. When that time comes I think I’ll properly update my focused languages logs, but for now this will be my main log.
The pandemic brought big changes to many aspects of daily life. The situation is ever changing. New regulations/restrictions/norms are revised every few weeks and updated or modified according to the situation at that point in time.
This year has been really chaotic and full of uncertainty. My anxiety levels have been fluctuating a lot and have spiked to new heights a few times. So much stress has also affected my health, but I’m getting better.
I missed the forum a lot!
I was taking two different Korean language classes before the pandemic started. One was with a volunteer from KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency), but all the volunteers had to go back to Korea when the pandemic started hitting my country. The other class was given by the owner of a Korean restaurant, but all in-person classes were prohibited for the time being, and he was rather busy just trying to keep his restaurant afloat amid the economic crisis, so the classes with him have been on indefinite hiatus ever since. But I’m happy that he has managed to keep the restaurant open and that a lot of people showed support when he was about to close it.
Now that the classes I was taking are no longer available, I want to continue learning/improving languages but in a more casual/relaxed way. That’s why I’ve decided to dabble in different languages instead of focusing in one as I was doing before.
These are the languages I may dabble in for the time being:
ENGLISH
I want to improve my listening and speaking, which are my weakest skills in this language.
KOREAN
I’ve been learning the language for around 3 years and a half now and I’ve experimented a lot with different methods and approaches.
With so much experimentation going on, my learning experience has been non-linear and quite chaotic (even the Korean classes with the restaurant owner were rather “random” in the topic covered each week, and I had only spent around four months with the KOICA volunteer’s class, which was more structured and linear as it was following the book series “Sogang Korean” (서강 한국어)).
JAPANESE
I started learning japanese about a decade ago, but stopped to actively try to learn/improve it around the time I decided to focus on Korean three and a half years ago. Though I’ve never completely lost contact with japanese because I occasionally watch japanese dramas and/or movies either raw or with subs in English or Spanish and I’ve occasionally dabbled in the raw version of japanese manga that I’ve been usually reading in English or Spanish.
I would say my current level is a rusty, weird mix of upper beginner and lower intermediate.
MANDARIN CHINESE
I dedicated to it about three months while I was taking a break from Korean near the end of 2018. My main goal at that time was to learn some written chinese so that I could understand even a bit of the Chinese dramas that I could only find with Chinese subs and not with other kind of subs that I could have understood better (like English or Spanish).
To this day I’ve never studied Pinyin (thus I don’t know how to read/write Pinyin) and I don’t plan to do so in the near future.
If you want to know more about my short but very exciting adventure with written Chinese, you can read this log: A bit of chinese and a novel draft in english
THAI
Some time ago I downloaded a few apps but only dabbled in them for a few days (less than a week, I think) and then stopped.
I like to watch Thai dramas and movies either raw or with English or Spanish subs from time to time.
Besides my very ephemeral interaction with the apps I downloaded I’ve never really actively studied the language.
FILIPINO/TAGALOG
I got interested in it some years ago while watching my first Philippine television drama. It caught my attention because of the peculiar mix of complete English sentences/expressions with some Spanish words sprinkled here and there plus an unkown language (Tagalog) as the main basis. One of the characters in that drama even said a complete Spanish saying/proverb: “Hierba mala nunca muere” and that furthered my interest in why such a distant country would have such a mix of languages integrated in one.
From time to time I like to watch Filipino dramas either raw or with English or Spanish subs.
A year or so ago I found a free Tagalog grammar online and I skimmed through some of it but I never studied it. Besides that, I’ve never actively studied the language.
Over the years I’ve collected a decent amount of resources for learning all these languages (plus some others), so I’ll probably dabble in those resources and/or use the subs in Viki and Netflix.
I’m not sure how often I’ll update this log. I think I’ll just update it whenever I feel like it.
I’m happy to be back!
It may take some time before I decide to focus only on one language again. When that time comes I think I’ll properly update my focused languages logs, but for now this will be my main log.
The pandemic brought big changes to many aspects of daily life. The situation is ever changing. New regulations/restrictions/norms are revised every few weeks and updated or modified according to the situation at that point in time.
This year has been really chaotic and full of uncertainty. My anxiety levels have been fluctuating a lot and have spiked to new heights a few times. So much stress has also affected my health, but I’m getting better.
I missed the forum a lot!
I was taking two different Korean language classes before the pandemic started. One was with a volunteer from KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency), but all the volunteers had to go back to Korea when the pandemic started hitting my country. The other class was given by the owner of a Korean restaurant, but all in-person classes were prohibited for the time being, and he was rather busy just trying to keep his restaurant afloat amid the economic crisis, so the classes with him have been on indefinite hiatus ever since. But I’m happy that he has managed to keep the restaurant open and that a lot of people showed support when he was about to close it.
Now that the classes I was taking are no longer available, I want to continue learning/improving languages but in a more casual/relaxed way. That’s why I’ve decided to dabble in different languages instead of focusing in one as I was doing before.
These are the languages I may dabble in for the time being:
ENGLISH
I want to improve my listening and speaking, which are my weakest skills in this language.
KOREAN
I’ve been learning the language for around 3 years and a half now and I’ve experimented a lot with different methods and approaches.
With so much experimentation going on, my learning experience has been non-linear and quite chaotic (even the Korean classes with the restaurant owner were rather “random” in the topic covered each week, and I had only spent around four months with the KOICA volunteer’s class, which was more structured and linear as it was following the book series “Sogang Korean” (서강 한국어)).
JAPANESE
I started learning japanese about a decade ago, but stopped to actively try to learn/improve it around the time I decided to focus on Korean three and a half years ago. Though I’ve never completely lost contact with japanese because I occasionally watch japanese dramas and/or movies either raw or with subs in English or Spanish and I’ve occasionally dabbled in the raw version of japanese manga that I’ve been usually reading in English or Spanish.
I would say my current level is a rusty, weird mix of upper beginner and lower intermediate.
MANDARIN CHINESE
I dedicated to it about three months while I was taking a break from Korean near the end of 2018. My main goal at that time was to learn some written chinese so that I could understand even a bit of the Chinese dramas that I could only find with Chinese subs and not with other kind of subs that I could have understood better (like English or Spanish).
To this day I’ve never studied Pinyin (thus I don’t know how to read/write Pinyin) and I don’t plan to do so in the near future.
If you want to know more about my short but very exciting adventure with written Chinese, you can read this log: A bit of chinese and a novel draft in english
THAI
Some time ago I downloaded a few apps but only dabbled in them for a few days (less than a week, I think) and then stopped.
I like to watch Thai dramas and movies either raw or with English or Spanish subs from time to time.
Besides my very ephemeral interaction with the apps I downloaded I’ve never really actively studied the language.
FILIPINO/TAGALOG
I got interested in it some years ago while watching my first Philippine television drama. It caught my attention because of the peculiar mix of complete English sentences/expressions with some Spanish words sprinkled here and there plus an unkown language (Tagalog) as the main basis. One of the characters in that drama even said a complete Spanish saying/proverb: “Hierba mala nunca muere” and that furthered my interest in why such a distant country would have such a mix of languages integrated in one.
From time to time I like to watch Filipino dramas either raw or with English or Spanish subs.
A year or so ago I found a free Tagalog grammar online and I skimmed through some of it but I never studied it. Besides that, I’ve never actively studied the language.
Over the years I’ve collected a decent amount of resources for learning all these languages (plus some others), so I’ll probably dabble in those resources and/or use the subs in Viki and Netflix.
I’m not sure how often I’ll update this log. I think I’ll just update it whenever I feel like it.
I’m happy to be back!