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

[cjareck]

so I might try and work on Arabic a bit!

Good luck! I eagerly wait for your experiences as well with the language as with the DLI course!

[LunaMoonsilver]

21.01.2021

• [ar] Anki reviews.
• [ar] Finally got started on the actual DLI language course (as opposed to all the writing courses). I'm not done with the alphabet, but it seemed time to get started and it went pretty well. More details on what I specifically did below, but post-today, I need to: load all the pattern drills etc., into Anki, keep working consistently on the alphabet, finish off this unit.
• [zh] Reading - 花木兰 (graded reader). Technically I've reached the time goals I gave myself for German and Spanish this month - although I'm obviously very far behind in the SC still. But I'm even further behind on all of it with Mandarin, so it was time to get some reading done!
• [de] Reading - Ein Gutes Omen. Just a little bit.

Good luck! I eagerly wait for your experiences as well with the language as with the DLI course!

Thanks! Did about an hour today, which was a run through the first unit - and I think frontloading the vocabulary via Anki was a good idea, because even if I still get فِنْجان كُرْسِيّ and مِنْدِيل a little mixed up, I understood all the sentences that were being drilled in terms of their grammar, which means I now understand the basics of saying 'this is ...', 'is this ...?' and 'what is this?'

I've still got stuff to work through on it, of course. Somehow I missed that Arabic has cases (???) so that was a fun discovery in the grammar section (and I don't really get it, but I guess that's because we've only covered the nominative so far) and I very much enjoyed the explanation of nunation (because I'd noticed that) which essentially amounted to: this is a thing!!!

So yeah, I'm enjoying it right now. I think it's because I knew I could learn Arabic - like, in theory, most people can learn any other language - but it's so far removed from anything else I've learnt that it's exciting to start from the beginning. Plus, I feel like there's not quite as many pattern drills (I could be wrong!) so a nice variety of exercises, too.

[LunaMoonsilver]

Had a quiet (ish) weekend - with some studying - so didn't update for a few days!

22.01.2021

• [ar] DLI Basic Unit 1 - I finished off some of the exercises and I'd say I'm pretty much finished with Unit 1 now. Still have to sit and put everything into Anki, but hey, I can say some sentences in Arabic!
• [ar] The Writing System - finished off working on ب. I think I've mostly got a grasp on how it's written in all the different places now - and it's awesome, now that I know you have to focus on looking at dot placement and things like that, Arabic does generally seem much more readable. Of course, I've still got plenty of letters left to learn!
• [ar] Anki reviews.
• [es] Started reading Los juegos del hambre. No real reason, I just couldn't get on with any of my other books.

23.01.2021

• [es] Anki reviews.
• [es] Reading - more of Blood Bank. I'm about 11 chapters from the end now, so probably about three more days' worth of reading.

24.01.2021

• [zh] Anki reviews.
• [de] Reading - stern Crime; I'm over halfway through the magazine now.

Important thing this week: decide which language I'm going to focus on for the 6WC next month. It's a choice between Arabic/Korean/Scottish Gaelic - and I'm honestly tempted by all of them (Arabic - will keep up motivation; Korean - to make sure I work on vocabulary; Scottish Gaelic - to push through to A1), so that's what I'm going to be thinking about a lot until Monday

[cjareck]

It's a choice between Arabic/Korean/Scottish Gaelic - and I'm honestly tempted by all of them (Arabic - will keep up motivation; Korean - to make sure I work on vocabulary; Scottish Gaelic - to push through to A1), so that's what I'm going to be thinking about a lot until Monday

I would encourage you to choose Arabic, of course!

[LunaMoonsilver]

I would encourage you to choose Arabic, of course!

I mean, I'm definitely leaning more that way right now... might save Scottish Gaelic for the May one!

25.01.2021

• [gd] Anki reviews.
• [es] Reading - Blood Bank.

26.01.2021

• [ko] TTMIK - reviewed level one, lessons 1-4.
• [ko] Living Language. I've gone back to lesson two; I really, really need to work on adding everything (with audio?) to Anki because my biggest problem so far is that I can't remember a lot of the vocabulary. The stuff from lesson one is starting to stick now, but I basically couldn't even finish lesson three because I didn't remember enough from lesson two. So, back to it and through it - and hopefully I'll remember more this time around.
• [ko] Anki reviews.
• [de] Reading - some of Der Spiegel.
• [es] Reading - another chapter of Blood Bank.

27.01.2021

• [de] Anki reviews.
• [de] Reading - stern Crime 034; the article I finished was about a Rabbi who was helping Orthodox Jewish women out of their marriages in New York (/New Jersey iirc) when their husbands refused to divorce them. His version of help seemed to be a lot of blackmail and assault though, hence why it's all a story in the true crime magazine. Very interesting, really, especially as the consensus seemed to be that he's a sociopath who found an outlet, rather than just a man in this community who wanted to help women. Which I'm not saying is the wrong take (see: all the assaults) but, as ever, people are multi-faceted and it's fascinating to see how these things end up coming together.

The last three days haven't been as bad for language learning as I've been thinking they have been, but I've felt kind of meh about it the whole time. (Plus, we started watching Superstore on Netflix, which I'm having to watch in English, and it is soooo good, therefore very distracting ) Hoping I'm over the hump now though, especially as we're into the last few days of the month. I'm sitting on a total of 3,196 minutes for January (~53 hours), so it'd be nice to get that up to 3,500 or even 4,000. Let's see how the weekend goes!

[LunaMoonsilver]

28.01.2021

• [gd] Anki reviews.
• [de] Reading - more of stern Crime.

29.01.2021

• [ar] Anki reviews.
• [es] Reading - finished Blood Bank! I forgot how it ended, so it was a really fun one to revisit.

30.01.2021

• [es] Anki reviews.
• [es] Reading - some of Los juegos del hambre, and then some time trying out different manga to find a new series (I didn't settle on one).

31.01.2021

• [ar] Anki reviews.
• [zh] Anki reviews.
• [de] Reading - even more of stern Crime (I've got to be close to the end of this magazine issue by now, surely? )

Gonna do an end-of-month round-up post in the next couple of hours - but it's been an overall good start to the year, I think!

[LunaMoonsilver]

January Review

Target hours: 86
Actual hours: 56 (right on the nose!)

German: 16h10m
Mandarin: 5h46m
Spanish: 16h32m
Korean: 4h22m
Scottish Gaelic: 4h10m
Arabic: 9h

Time spent on activities across languages:



(Top three activities: Reading, studying, apps... The 'apps' category is still higher than I'd like, especially since I've only been using Anki (23.18% vs 10% I wanted), but that's because I've done a lot of set-up this month. It should even out over time.)

My 365-day goal is to read in German/Mandarin/Spanish every day - so this month, I've read:

• 445 pages in German.
• 36 pages in Mandarin.
• 695 pages in Spanish.

I'm still behind on all of my Super Challenge stuff, but I'm definitely getting there!

I've also written 491 words for the Output Challenge in German (so gotta step that up and work out what I'm going to do re: the spoken portion).

Plan for February 2021

I've been setting my language time targets on an ideal number of minutes per day... I'm going to round it to a specific number of hours instead, so that it's a little clearer and allows for my varied schedule.

I'm also going to take part in the 6WC with Arabic! Working with the DLI course has left me feeling really confident about the letters I've learnt (and the content from the first lesson, tbh) but I definitely want to be able to write in the alphabet by the end of the month; it'd be a bonus to have finished a couple more lessons, too.

Obviously, I plan to keep up with my reading, making sure to choose Mandarin at least twice a week.

And so that I don't fall behind on the listening portion - it's a bit more difficult because I'm still back at my mum's house (still locked down), so I'm going to try and watch a film in German at least three times a week. (My German listening is behind my Spanish, numbers-wise.) I did this a bit in English in December: I went through the Resident Evil series over the course of about a week, and then re-watched the Matrix trilogy (which is sooo much better than I remember it being) over three nights after that. This does mean I'm going to have to get through my reading earlier in the day, because I keep leaving it late, but that shouldn't be a problem!

Oh, and, the fitness challenge... I definitely fell off the wagon with this , but it's back to strength workouts + stretching tomorrow.

Happy February everyone!

[LunaMoonsilver]

01.02.2021

• [ar] Anki reviews.
• [de] Anki reviews.
• [zh] Reading - finally finished the 花木兰 graded reader. Going to revisit this later in the week and mine all the words I don't know - sometimes I knew the words the book had provided definitions for but didn't know other words they thought I should!
• [ar] The Writing System. Covered ت, which is obviously a lot like ب. Kind of sad that you draw a line over the top of ت when handwriting because it looks like a cute smiley face with the dots!
• [de] Reading - Ein Gutes Omen.
• [de] Watched Batman Begins. (Until... uh, 3am, when it was snowing!)

Fitness Challenge

• Strength workout (Darebee Xpress Tone.)

Today: do have to spend some time with Anki; I need to add the pattern drills from DLI Unit One and the vocab from Unit Two so that I can go into that lesson with some knowledge of what the words mean. Going to try and watch The Dark Knight as well.

[LunaMoonsilver]

02.02.2021

• [ar] Anki. Reviews and adding the conversation sentences. This is slow-going for two reasons: 1) I still can't type in Arabic (and I already have Korean stickers on my keyboard, so not sure how I'm going to add other ones ) and 2) sorting out the audio is taking tiiiiime. Not much I can do about 1) right now, but I was reading about Audacity, labelling, and splitting into tracks, so am going to investigate that further this evening and see if that speeds up the process.
• [es] Reading - both Los juegos del hambre and chapter five of Fullmetal Alchemist. Both are fun!
• [de] Watched The Dark Knight.

I've started my daily German film watching with the Dark Knight Trilogy for a reason - it's because the dub and the voice acting are, imo, really, really good. I saw The Dark Knight Rises in the cinema in Germany (after having seen it in the UK a couple of weeks before) and I remember just being blown away by the voice actor who plays Bane, because he got the cadence and everything so right. So, yeah, I'm having fun with this so far!

[jeffers]

02.02.2021

1) I still can't type in Arabic (and I already have Korean stickers on my keyboard, so not sure how I'm going to add other ones )

Have you tried an on-screen keyboard? If you're using Windows you can swtich it on using the control panel and going to keyboard settings, or simply press Windows key + ctrl + o

It hovers over whatever else you are doing. You can click on it with the mouse, or simply carry on using your physical keyboard to type while using the on-screen keyboard as a reference. The pic below is what it looks like when I switch to Hindi.

On screen keyboard Hindi w context.png