2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

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LunaMoonsilver
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2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Fri Jan 01, 2021 2:48 pm

New year, new log!

And I've moved onto a new film series for the title because as we all know, there are only three Die Hard movies so I'm done with that now. :lol: Also, I'm not 100% sure I would necessarily call myself learned or loquacious but I can be, so there we go.

Anyway...

Time for a new set of goals and a plan for this year! My 2020 log is here and uh it turns out I did set myself goals and reached a grand total of one (1) of them, in that I finished the Duolingo Scottish Gaelic tree.

So, I'm still looking at progress-orientated goals this year (as I assume a lot of people are) and I'll worry about the result of that progress if and when it arises.

I'm also adding a new language this year, Arabic, for which I'm going to attempt iguanamon's FLC - I've tried this twice now and flaked out both times :? but am hopeful that I'll at least make it through a year. After spending time with all those endangered languages last year, I'm feeling a lot more sure of what I can do in a set timeframe - and it helps that there seems to be plenty of free Arabic resources around!

In 2021, then:

German

Goals: Finish the Super Challenge; finish the Output Challenge.

My 365-day challenge is encompassing three languages: German, Mandarin, Spanish, but one skill: reading. If I read for 30 mins a day, then at least I should be able to get through the German part of the SC, minimum. The Output Challenge - I've tried this a couple of times and got nowhere but after looking at the time I spent last year, I definitely need to pivot more toward active skills, so this seems the best way.

Mandarin

Goals: Finish the Super Challenge (films minimum); NPCR 4-6.

The textbooks were part of my goal last year but I didn't really get anywhere with them. HOWEVER, I've spent some time finally figuring out how to use Anki in a way that works for me, which should take care of a lot of the vocabulary work. Time to power through!

Spanish

Goals: Finish the Super Challenge; finish the Output Challenge (or half of one?); finish Living Language Ultimate Spanish.

This textbook is really to plug gaps, so I've just got to get through it to cement some of the grammar/vocab I'm missing from basic stages.

Korean

Goals: Complete Living Language textbook; finish the (half) Super Challenge (films).

I mean, there's only 15 lessons in this textbook (and I'm on the third), so I should get through it - hopefully - pretty early in the year. I'll re-evaluate then. Korean films/TV should be easy, just have to make sure I'm learning!

Scottish Gaelic

Goal: Complete Teach Yourself Complete Gaelic.

Currently: 5/23.

Arabic

Goal: Finish DLI Arabic Basic volumes 1-5.

That's about 40 lessons, and I want to get through 'The Writing System' and 'Arabic Sound and Script'; honestly, at this point, I have no idea how long it'll take, so if this seems wildly off base (either way), that's why.

Happy New Year!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Fri Jan 01, 2021 2:49 pm

Useful posts

reserved for later~
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby Fortheo » Fri Jan 01, 2021 3:56 pm

Good luck. I've always been tempted to study Arabic, specifically the dialect spoken in Tunisia, but I've talked myself out of it numerous times now for various reasons. It really seems like a deeply rich language, though, and I'm looking forward to following your journey with the language.

What's your thoughts on the DLI course thus far?
Last edited by Fortheo on Sun Jan 03, 2021 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:47 am

Fortheo wrote:Good luck. I've always been tempted to study Arabic, specifically the dialect spoken in Tunisia, but I've talked myself out of it numerous times now for various reasons. It really seems like a deeply rich language, though, and I'm looking forward to following your journey with the language.

What's your thoughts on the DLI course this far?


Thanks! I'm really excited to get into it - and yeah, I did kind of look at Moroccan (mostly because I've been there and would love to go again with some understanding of the language) but the consensus for that dialect does seem to be to start with MSA first, plus there are just a whole load more resources (including my one love, TV :lol:). I hope you get around to it when you can!

So far, I've not explored the DLI course much - I'm enjoying 'The Writing System' because it takes you through letter by letter (and, it seems, form by form), which is giving me a really in-depth look. (I have covered four whole letters but I know their individual forms really well lmao.) I've had a brief look at the first unit of volume one and it looks pretty standard as far as FSI/DLI courses go - lots of pattern drills - but I know I'm gonna have to get to grips with putting vocab into Anki very quickly because that is 100% going to be my first hurdle.

Hope you have a great language learning year!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:58 am

01/01/2021

  • [de] Reading - Ein Gutes Omen by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (~5 pages; a re-read of my favourite book); Absolution by Sloane Kennedy (24 pages; another re-read in that I've read it in English, but I'm sure that was about three-five years ago now).
  • [ar] The Writing System (DLI course) - finished up with د and ذ, went through ر and ز (and the fatHa, kasra, sukuun).
  • [ar] Anki - I downloaded a pretty good premade deck for the Arabic alphabet and have filtered out everything I haven't already covered, so I'm just working on the letters I've seen.
  • [gd] Anki - Still working on my own deck (currently: words/sentences from TY Gaelic L5).
  • [de] Podcast - Trek am Dienstag E001; I started watching Star Trek TOS in Spanish, so have started this podcast (they go through episode by episode) in German. Still in the preamble bit, though (~20").
  • [ar] DLI Basic Unit 1 - About 10 mins, vocabulary, conversation, pattern drills. Need to work on putting vocab in Anki (with audio - I'm pretty sure there's a way to bulk add, thank God) because otherwise, it's not going to stick for a while.

Never mentioned in my first post, but basically I'm cycling through languages in the week, so tomorrow's 'main' focus will be Spanish, for instance. Just means I should look at them all.

However, Saturday/Sunday this week should be a lot of reading as I'm doing a mini-readathon (aiming for 16/48 hours) to try and bump those SC numbers up. Very glad the new year fell on a Friday - it's back to work on Monday!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun Jan 03, 2021 2:21 am

02/01/2021

  • [de] Reading - Absolution by Sloane Kennedy. Got through 101 pages, almost at 70% done. Looks good to get it finished tomorrow, actually!
  • [es] Reading - Blood Bank (a manhwa that has been translated; again, I've read it in English before); parts 1-15. Over 100 pages with SC rules (total/5), which brings my Spanish books up to a nice healthy uh... four. :lol:
  • [ar] Anki - alphabet. Still know the four letters I've learnt, success!
  • [gd] Anki - my deck.

Doesn't look like a lot, but I've been reading for almost four hours today - maybe I'll hit that 16-hour goal, probably not, but I should get at least one German book finished out of it, possibly two. Mandarin is tomorrow's focus so I'll work on getting through a couple of graded readers as well. :D
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon Jan 04, 2021 12:46 am

03/01/2021

LunaMoonsilver wrote:Doesn't look like a lot, but I've been reading for almost four hours today - maybe I'll hit that 16-hour goal, probably not, but I should get at least one German book finished out of it, possibly two.


:lol: Ah, so optimistic, past-me!


As for reading... I read 768 pages over 4.8 hours. They don't all count 1-for-1, of course, so for my SC, I've added a total of 101 for German, 123 for Spanish, and 16 for Mandarin. I've now read one whole 'book' for Mandarin, too!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby Chmury » Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:35 am

Hallo Luna, Wie geht's dir alles heute? Ich wollte dir nur eine Frage stellen, nämlich, arbeitest du mit Sprachen als Übersetzerin oder so was? Ich kann mich nicht gut erinnern, ob ich das einst in deinen alten Beiträgen gelesen habe, aber du hast etwas mit Sprachen oder Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität studiert oder? Ich bin interessiert, wenn das alles richtig ist, wie die Arbeitswelt läuft nach dem Studium (da ich zurzeit darüber nachdenke, ob ich vielleicht etwas mit Übersetzung machen möchte). Allerdings wenn das völlig falsch ist und ich habe mir das alles irgendwie ausgedacht, ich wünsche dir noch alles Gute zu diesem neuen Jahr, und ich hoffe, dass du viel Fortschritt in aller deinen Sprachen machst!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon Jan 04, 2021 3:09 pm

Chmury wrote:Hallo Luna, Wie geht's dir alles heute? Ich wollte dir nur eine Frage stellen, nämlich, arbeitest du mit Sprachen als Übersetzerin oder so was? Ich kann mich nicht gut erinnern, ob ich das einst in deinen alten Beiträgen gelesen habe, aber du hast etwas mit Sprachen oder Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität studiert oder? Ich bin interessiert, wenn das alles richtig ist, wie die Arbeitswelt läuft nach dem Studium (da ich zurzeit darüber nachdenke, ob ich vielleicht etwas mit Übersetzung machen möchte). Allerdings wenn das völlig falsch ist und ich habe mir das alles irgendwie ausgedacht, ich wünsche dir noch alles Gute zu diesem neuen Jahr, und ich hoffe, dass du viel Fortschritt in aller deinen Sprachen machst!


Hey! Also arbeite ich eigentlich in Marketing für eine Firma, die eine App produziert, die Sprachen lehrt. Mein Bachelor war Deutsch und Chinesisch, dann studierte ich Übersetzung für meinen Magister, aber es war sehr spezifisch (Audiovisual Translation and Popular Culture), also wusste ich schon, dass es nicht leicht wäre, einen Job als Übersetzerin zu finden. (Ich wollte nur Bücher und so übersetzen und tue ich das manchmal, aber ich verdiene nicht viel Geld davon; ich wollte auch nicht in London wohnen :lol: aber wenn ich in meine Nähe für einen Job in Übersetzung suchte, fand ich, dass man schon zwei oder drei Jahre Erfahrungen brauchte.)

Ich hatte eventuell Glück - ich mag schreiben und jetzt mache ich das (Blog-Einträge, Emails, Social Media usw.) jeden Tag - aber es dauert ein paar Jahre, bis ich einen Job fand, wo ich einen Abschluss brauchte. Jetzt ist es aber anders, glaube ich. Es gibt natürlich viele Leute, die ihren Jobs verloren haben, aber viele Arbeitgeber sind jetzt mit dem Arbeit auf Distanz ein bissel glücklicher...

Wenn du etwas mit Übersetzung machen möchtest, dann würde ich sagen, dass du jetzt versuchen solltest, ein bissel Arbeit zu machen. Dann kannst du sehen, ob du es magst (so so wichtig) und einige Erfahrung hinzugewinnen. Berufspraktikum ist eine andere Weg, leider könnte ich das nicht tun, weil sie so wenig bezahlen (wenn sie das tun! :x), aber viele meine Kommilitonen haben das gemacht und dann Jobs bekamen. Ist wichtig, auch, ich möchte nicht 'vernetzen' sagen :roll:... wenn du Freunde machen kannst, die auch übersetzen, ist es hilfreich - sie können dir Arbeit schicken, wenn sie zu viel haben oder kennen die Sprachen nicht oder so.

Ich hoffe, das hilft! Und danke sehr - viel Glück auch mit deinem 2021!
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Re: 2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue Jan 05, 2021 2:11 am

04/01/2021

  • [es] Watched The Office S01E01-06. Not, like, all in one go... but yeah, it still happened. (But hey, that's almost 1.5 more Super Challenge films!) The show's moved from Amazon Prime in the UK to Netflix, so I finally have language options! Only seems like Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, but hey, it gives me an excuse to re-watch the whole thing, right?
  • [gd] Started Teach Yourself Aonad 6, worked through the dialogue and questions that followed, though I'll try and revisit that this week.
  • [gd] Also batch-added a bunch of cards to Anki, from unit 6 of the book but also checked I'd added everything from unit 2 and started going through unit 3. I can already tell the units where I've made and started reviewing cards (1 and 5) because I can remember most of the vocabulary and structure sentences a little better. Finally am getting to a place where Anki works for me!
  • [ar] Anki reviews - need to carve out some time for working on the alphabet at least, or I'm gonna get nowhere fast.
  • [de] Read another 36 pages of Absolution; I'm getting wayyy close to the end now and am astonished to find my reading speed is getting to about one page/minute. There's a whole bunch of books in this series too and it looks like a couple of others have been translated into German, so I think I'm going to work through those when I'm done with this, if only to keep that reading bug going!
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