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Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 5:54 am
by Bilingual_monoglot
Well, it's been a while since I have last posted here. Let's just say that life got busy, and I had some personal issues to deal with. But now, I'm back.
In spite of my absence from this forum, I had not been absent from my languages, which I still tried to work on when I could.

As for what I'm going to do now, my main priority is to work on my Esperanto since Retoso 2021 will be tomorrow, and I've already signed up for it.After that, I'm going to continue to work on my Chinese and Malay until they reach a similar level to my Esperanto. Afterwards, I'll look into my next few languages, probably either Japanese (because anime = lots of content for immersion), Vietnamese (because of its rising importance in Southeast Asia), Spanish (because of FOMO), Irish (because of the exotic factor) or Swahili (because I need an African language represented).

Anyway, I'm currently doing some extensive reading for Esperanto with the help of Lingq, and for Chinese, I'm going to attempt to finish the Assimil book, and I'm going to mainly try and add some new vocabulary for Malay (as that's what I'm weakest at right now), in addition to immersing myself in content.

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 2:08 am
by IronMike
Bilingual_monoglot wrote:As for what I'm going to do now, my main priority is to work on my Esperanto since Retoso 2021 will be tomorrow, and I've already signed up for it.After that, I'm going to continue to work on my Chinese and Malay until they reach a similar level to my Esperanto. Afterwards, I'll look into my next few languages, probably either Japanese (because anime = lots of content for immersion), Vietnamese (because of its rising importance in Southeast Asia), Spanish (because of FOMO), Irish (because of the exotic factor) or Swahili (because I need an African language represented).

Some of the languages you list are in the Special Giveaway. Hint, hint!

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 12:36 pm
by Bilingual_monoglot
So yesterday, I took an impromptu trip to the library and found some interesting things. First, I found a Malay textbook apparently written in 1882. I'm thinking of incorporating it into my studies just because I think it would be interesting to see how the language has changed in the past 139 years.
I also noticed a Hindi phrasebook, including some vocabulary that I wasn't familiar with. Since I haven't had much chance to use it due to not going to India anytime in the past year, I decided to put the new vocabulary, and a few interesting phrase, into anki to memorise.
In any case, the opening ceremony of Retoso will be starting in less than half an hour, so hopefully I can get some speaking practice for Esperanto there. If I do, it will be my first time having an oral conversation with other people in Esperanto.

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2021 6:50 am
by Bilingual_monoglot
So, I just finished attending Retoso, and it was fun. It's actually the first time that I've ever actually used Esperanto to actually talk to people live, which was an interesting experience. In addition, it really stretched my speaking ability, and I learned some new vocabulary as well. Unfortunately, I ended up neglecting my anki decks and my assimil Chinese. However, I really feel energised by how well I faired at the event, so I feel quite motivated to work onmy other languages now.

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 2:49 pm
by Bilingual_monoglot
So, here's what I did yesterday.

Chinese
I did the first couple of Assimil lessons. Since I started and never really finished, the beginning stuff is actually quite familiar after going through it once, which makes it a great refresher for anything that might have atrophied. I also watched a couple of death note episodes in the Chinese dub.

Malay
I had to get a haircut yesterday in order to ensure my hair was in line with army uniform regulations (I'm serving 2 years mandatory service now), which meant that I didn't have time to do my anki deck, but which did mean that I got to go to my normal barbers, with whom I speak mostly in Malay.

Today, it looked like I was going to do nothing, as I'm too tired from army drills to do grammar drills. However, I think I at least have enough in me to do some immersion, either Chinese with death note, or Malay with Upin & Ipin. I will inform you next post, so stay tuned. Although it looks like this will be the situation until at least Friday, because after that I will be taking a week of block leave, and we have to do some intense drill practice before then.

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 2:26 pm
by Bilingual_monoglot
So, I decided to watch Upin & Ipin, because
1) episodes are shorter, at 10 rather than 30 minutes, and
2) I didn't want to risk giving myself nightmares

In any case, today was another day that was big on immersion.
In Esperanto, I read several articles from libera folio with the help of Lingq. In Chinese I watched an episode of the Chinese dub of death note, and for Malay, I watched a few episodes of Upin & Ipin. I would also like to add that since the national anthem (which I had to sing today) and drills (which we also had to do) are in Malay, I also had some army mandated listening and speaking practice for the language.

I'm also considering puting up some videos of me speaking my target languages, so that you guys (I know some of you speak the languages I'm learning) can help point out where I'm making mistakes. Though any developments on that front will have to wait until I have free time next week.

I've also been working on having a written list of exactly which languages I want to work on, and the order in which I want to work on them, for after my current priority languages are at a decent level.

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:32 pm
by Bilingual_monoglot
So life update, today I've officially graduated from my vocational course, meaning that I'm now a fully fledged soldier. I'm not sure how it will affect my languages though.

So far, I've continued immersing with Upin & Ipin and death note. Though I must say, I might switch death note out for something else that has a Chinese dub, such Kuroko no Basket (Heizi de lanqiu in Chinese) or Hunter x Hunter. The reasons are first, I find the protagonist Light (yue in the Chinese dub) to be quite unlikeable, and second, because working on understanding both the plot and the language is not working well for me at my level.

An interesting thing i find about how names from anime are translated into Chinese. They take advantage of the fact that both languages share the same writing system and just use the Chinese reading of the written form of the name, which can make it take a while to figure out who's who.

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 5:50 am
by Bilingual_monoglot
Yesterday was mostly setting up my learning for the week off. I got another Malay grammar book and the Chineasy book from the library, and alsogotten my anki decks updated and ready.

Here's what I'm currently working on.

Malay
I have 2 anki decks. 1 is for vocabulary, which I have taken from a list of most frequent words (my original deck from the start of the log), ad is bidirectional as I also want to be able to use the words in conversation. The second deck is all the example sentences from the grammar books that I'm reading. The plan is to improve vocabulary through the vocab deck, and get grammatical knowledge by reading through the books on grammar, and by doing the sentence decks. In addition, I will also continue immersio, with a view to finishing all the episodes of Upin & Ipin, and then moving on to either newspaper articles, mediacorp dramas, Malysian parliamentary debates, warna broadcasts, or back to P Ramlee films, depending on how I'm feeling.

Chinese
Now that I'm no longer always tired, I'm resuming my Assimil. In addition, I'll be watching anime dubbed into Chinese, at the moment. I'll also be reading through Chineasy to improve my mostly non-existent hanzi recognition. Hopefully, this should get me to a level where I can understand original Chinese content.

Russian
This new addition to my language studies came this morning, as my sister will be going for Russian classes in a few months time and has invited me to come along for the ride. Naturally, I accepted. After going through an existential crisis when I realised that as a soldier who's learning Esperanto and Russian, as well as getting into fitness, among other things, that I'm slowly turning into IronMike, I decided to start off by gathering all the materials (learning + immersion) that I currently have access to. I'll probably compile a list of everything I have, and everything I'll need to get in my next post in this log.

Irrelevant fitness tangent
As I'm now a full soldier, I feel that I have a responsibility to maintain a certain level of fitness, even if I'm just a clerk. I should probably sign up for the polyglot fitness challenge (if it's still open for sign ups). Anyway, my current plan is to do some walking daily, and come up with a routine that I'm comfortable maintaining for a long time in my current fitness (in)abilities.

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:27 am
by IronMike
Learning laguages like the universal translator


Is it just me, did I just now notice this, or did you just recently change the title of your log and purposefully misspell languages? ;)

Re: Learning laguages like the universal translator

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:59 am
by Bilingual_monoglot
IronMike wrote:
Learning laguages like the universal translator


Is it just me, did I just now notice this, or did you just recently change the title of your log and purposefully misspell languages? ;)


No, that was just a typo. But now, I think I'll just keep it like that as a sort of gag.

In any case, my language studies are going fairly well. I've somehow managed to do everything I wanted to do, which is massive progress. Even though I've watched knb before, I still find myself flailing around somewhat in the Chinese dub, which I guess just shows how horrible my level of Chinese currently is.


As for Russian, as far free resources go, I have the fsi, dli, and cortina courses to work with. I also have duolingo, in caseI get really desperate, which is unlikely, since I'll be going to classes anyway. And as for content to immerse with, there's a movie about Trotsky on Netflix. Star Trek is also available in Russian, but it's an overlay dub, which I'm not too enthusiastic about.

Wanderlust has started to kick in again, as I'm seriously considering learning Latin, because it has a good amount of decent quality free resources (important as the army only gives me $630 a month) and it has, like Esperanto, a strong community to speak with.