Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES) [Now with more LR]

[Cavesa]

Do you know that AS: Brotherhood takes place in Istanbul?

[Yuurei]

Do you know that AS: Brotherhood takes place in Istanbul?

Hah, nice try. XD (You're just trying to get me back for mentioning Duolingo Greek, I know it!)
I think you mean Revelations though - Brotherhood takes place in Rome. ;P
I'm not really that interested in Turkish though (as of now), and even if I were, I'm doubtful that there's a Turkish dub, so it's not comparable to exploring Renaissance Italy in Italian. (Not that I'm saying that the game is the reason I want to learn Italian, it just seems like a fun low-level activity to look forward to.)

[Cavesa]

Do you know that AS: Brotherhood takes place in Istanbul?

Hah, nice try. XD (You're just trying to get me back for mentioning Duolingo Greek, I know it!)
I think you mean Revelations though - Brotherhood takes place in Rome. ;P
I'm not really that interested in Turkish though (as of now), and even if I were, I'm doubtful that there's a Turkish dub, so it's not comparable to exploring Renaissance Italy in Italian. (Not that I'm saying that the game is the reason I want to learn Italian, it just seems like a fun low-level activity to look forward to.)

Sorry, my bad!

You know, I used to play AS and a few other games on my former boyfriend's computer (mine can't run even HoMaM V properly, due to weak and ancient processor). Than the relationship ended, and he moved away, with his computer. And my AS saves. And my Gothic II saves (heh, nope, he had actually accidentally erased them by installing a datadisk without backup), and perhaps something else too. It's been three years. I don't miss him, I've upgraded since (when it comes to boyfriends). But I miss my saves and I never got to getting my own good computer


P.S. Yes, I was trying. How did you know?

P.S.2 Actually, AS was one of my first bits of motivation to learn Italian too! RIP in Italian just sounded so cool!

[Yuurei]

I swear, a week always passes so quickly D:

I'm so unbelievably happy that I managed to get back into my weekly goals rhythm after that one disastrous week. I was pretty afraid that I'd be thrown off and all my plans, order and willpower would just break apart (based on, you know, previous experience ).

Some updates...

Spanish
The Witcher books continue to be challenging (but also deliciously good!), which is probably a good thing - my Spanish isn't at a level where I can allow myself to be complacent. On the watching front, I picked up Supernatural from where I left off in Japanese some months ago. I keep meaning to get into a Spanish TV show again, but right now I really feel like watching Supernatural, so what can you do?

Latin
I feel like my Latin learning is a bit slow and unmotivated right now. This might be because the second Caesar reader which we're reading now is kind of difficult at times, which can take the fun out of reading it, and so my friend and I find ourselves giving in to laziness more often than we should. I do love the reader content-wise, but I feel it's not really fulfilling the conditions of extensive or semi-extensive reading right now. I thus started re-reading Fabulae Syrae, which certainly feels really easy to read this time around, showing that we've come a ways since first reading it a few months ago, but also it's pretty boring. :/
I just really wish there was more interesting easy reading material in Latin - I'm not at all a fan of puzzling out what a sentence means, prefering to lose myself in a good story. *sighs* Well, I'll keep plugging away - at least I know there's a wealth of amazing literature waiting for me at the end.

Japanese
Japanese has slipped back into maintenance mode a bit, I guess - I just can never focus on that many languages at the same time. I started watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which I've somehow managed to never watch until now. Shocking, I know. I do enjoy it quite a bit, and if I wasn't so obsessed with The Witcher in all its forms right now I might be tempted to binge-watch it. XD
I'm considering another round of Tadoku in October, but I haven't decided yet. I guess I still have a couple of days.

Finnish

Just a short update: I did three more Assimil lessons in the last week (by which I mean I crammed all three of them in yesterday, but shhh ), so I've now done 12 lessons overall.

I also watched Megamind in Finnish (with English subs, mind) and was happy to recognize a couple of the words I learned in Assimil. I know, I know, I'm easily satisfied at this stage.

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Weekly Goals for Week 37 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Re-read 10 pages of Fabulae Syrae
*Listen to ep. 6 of Quomodo dicitur (18 min.)

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Sobrenatural T2 ep. 2-3]
*Read 150 pages [Finished El último deseo (75), Started La espada del destino (75)]

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Psych S3 ep. 11-12]

Japanese
*Watch 40 minutes of anime/drama [Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood ep. 1-2]

Finnish
*Do units 10-12 of Le Finnois

Other stuff I did:
Latin: Read 5 pages of Tirocinium Caesarianum: liber alter, liber tertius
French: Finished Witcher 2 (yes, I've been playing too much of this XD).
Spanish: Read another 50 pages of La espada del destino.
Finnish: Watched Megamind (with English subs).

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Weekly Goals for Week 38 (2016)

Latin
*Re-read 10 pages of Fabulae Syrae
*Listen to ep. 7 of Quomodo dicitur

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film
*Read 150 pages

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of anime/drama

Finnish
*Do units 13-15 of Le Finnois

[Yuurei]

Tadoku: Latin Edition
So, October is tadoku time and I've decided to try something new - and badly needed - this time around: I shall endeavor to read a lot of Latin in October! 500 pages is the minimum I am planning to reach - which may not seem like a lot, but considering that my total Latin reading since the beginning of May amounts to roughly 600 pages, I believe it shall be challenging enough.

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Weekly Goals for Week 38 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Re-read 10 pages of Fabulae Syrae
*Listen to ep. 7 of Quomodo dicitur (16 min.)

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Sobrenatural T2 ep. 4-5]
*Read 150 pages [La espada del destino]

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Psych S3 ep. 11-12]

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of anime/drama [Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood eps. 5-7]

Finnish
*Do units 13-15 of Le Finnois

Other stuff I did:
Latin: Read Asterix Olympius (45 pages = 9 SC pages) & 5 pages of Tirocinium Caesarianum: liber alter, liber tertius
Spanish: Watched Sobrenatural T2 ep. 6-7.
Japanese: Read 23 pages of 小説名探偵コナン ＣＡＳＥ 2.
Greek: Lesson 3 (I know, I know, I didn't log the first 2 lessons, but I decided to track this here as well - for completion's sake XD).

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Weekly Goals for Week 39 (2016)

Latin
*Re-read 20 pages of Fabulae Syrae
*Listen to ep. 8 of Quomodo dicitur

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film
*Finish reading La espada del destino (58 pages)

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film
*Read 100 pages

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of anime/drama

Finnish
*Do units 16-18 of Le Finnois

[Yuurei]

Weekly Goals for Week 39 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Re-read 20 pages of Fabulae Syrae
*Listen to ep. 8 of Quomodo dicitur

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Sobrenatural T2 ep. 8-9]
*Finish reading La espada del destino (58 pages)

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Psych S3 ep. 15, Person of Interest ep. 1]
*Read 100 pages [Started reading Sang-pitié]

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of anime/drama [Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood eps. 8-10]

Finnish
*Do units 16-18 of Le Finnois

Other stuff I did:
Latin: Read 5 pages of Tirocinium Caesarianum: liber alter, liber tertius & 45 pages of Harrius Potter et camera secretorum.
Spanish: Watched Sobrenatural T2 ep. 10.
French: Watched Person of Interest ep. 2-7 & Kaamelott Livre I, Tome 2, ep. 1-6 and read another 90 pages of Sang-pitié.
Dutch: Did some Duolingo (+2 skills) and L+R*'d 1h 13 mins of Aanpakken!. [*Listened to the audiobook while reading the book]

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Weekly Goals for Week 40 (2016)

Latin
*Tadoku: Read 125 pages
*Listen to ep. 9 of Quomodo dicitur

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film
*Read 100 pages

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of anime/drama

[Yuurei]

I didn't really feel like writing anything yesterday when I posted my update, so I'll make up for it today:

Latin
Tadoku started on Saturday and I think Latin Tadoku is just the right thing for me right now. I ended up reading 171 pages in the first three days - though I should mention that Monday was a bank holiday in Germany, so we're talking about 3 work-free days here. Nonetheless, I wouldn't have thought myself capable of such sustained reading in Latin (yet). Suffice to say that I've decided to increase my goal for this Tadoku edition to 1000 pages (Tadoku should be a challenge, after all!)
Since those 20 pages of the Fabulae Syrae last week bored me to tears though, I'll be sticking almost exclusively to modern(-ish) literature: Ursus Nomine Paddington, Superbia et Odium, Carmen ad Festum Nativitatis, Captivus Zendae and Vinnetu are all likely contenders - half of them already grace my shelves, waiting to be picked up, in any case XD.

Dutch
Ah Dutch! I was wondering what to do about my Dutch side-project and, as is so often the case, the answer came to me while I wasn't looking. Sometime last week I decided to check out Storytel - that Swedish (audio-)book streaming service which Elenia keeps mentioning - to see what it was all about and - lo and behold! - it turns out there's a Dutch version of the service. I thus decided to give it a spin and started listening to a chick lit novel in Dutch while reading along in the book at the same time. I'm about 2 hours in and find that I can follow the story just fine, so that'll probably be my Dutch program for now.

Greek
I couldn't go to my Greek course last week because we had an important work project on Friday night. :/ I usually never work in the evening so it's unlikely that my work will interfere with the course again, but sometimes things like that happen. What's worse though, is that I only remembered this weekend that I won't be able to go this week either, because I'm going to see a Welcome to Night Vale show for which we got tickets months ago. D: D:
Talk about bad timing. And afterwards there's a 2-week break in the course schedule, naturally. XD Well, I'll probably use the usual Greek course time slot in those 2 weeks to make up for the classes I missed - even though I've no idea what exactly they will have covered...

Finnish
So, Finnish. I'm kind of thinking of dropping Finnish. Not because I dislike the language - quite the opposite, I've grown very fond of the language - but because I am effectively trying to juggle too many languages here. Not counting Greek (which, as mentioned before, really does not make a difference), I'm still trying to actively improve 6 languages here, of which 3 are at a level where I can't just kick back, relax with a good book, and call it studying. XD
And maybe that would be fine if I had more free time, but I don't. I work full-time and I'm honestly often exhausted after work - meaning not only is my free time limited, but my high-quality free time (time where I actually have the energy to do exhausting things) is even more so.
And, accepting that 6 languages - or 3 not-yet-advanced-enough languages - is too much for me at the moment, there's no reason for me to choose Finnish over any of my other languages. And so here I am, thinking of dropping Finnish. For the time being, at least. </3 *sighs*
I'd feel kind of bad letting down the other members of the group learning project - but then, I'm not learning languages for the sake of others, so that shouldn't be the reason to keep going, should it?
I haven't yet made up my mind - this is mostly just me thinking aloud, so to speak. XD

[Brun Ugle]

I fully understand your thinking about dropping Finnish. And don't worry. We won't be upset. We'll still talk to you at the Gathering. Just not in Finnish. To be honest, I feel like I probably should have waited with Finnish until my other languages were stronger, and if it weren't for the group thing, I'd probably be doing it at a much more relaxed pace or possibly leaving it be altogether until next year.

[rdearman]

I still want my cookies!!!

[Yuurei]

I fully understand your thinking about dropping Finnish. And don't worry. We won't be upset. We'll still talk to you at the Gathering. Just not in Finnish. To be honest, I feel like I probably should have waited with Finnish until my other languages were stronger, and if it weren't for the group thing, I'd probably be doing it at a much more relaxed pace or possibly leaving it be altogether until next year.

Thanks, your words are much appreciated.

I still want my cookies!!!

Not to worry, there will still be cookies, in any case.