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

[jeff_lindqvist]

After reading these posts, I'm so close to dig out my collection of Marvel magazines as well as the Marvel Superheroes RPG, just for pure nostalgic reasons.

[Yuurei]

There are good weeks and bad weeks and last week was, well, just one of those weeks. I wasn't feeling particularly well and work was unnecessarily stressful and my will power and motivation plummeted accordingly. In the end, I spent most of my free time during the week reading fanfiction - probably my ultimate guilty pleasure.

I somehow managed to catch up on my Tadoku reading on the weekend though, because I refused to fail my weekly goals.

Still, I'm gonna make this one another slow week, with just the basic goals plus the reading necessary to reach my tadoku goal, of course (only 127 pages to go! )

Tadoku update:
Despite last week being not very productive, I had a very uplifting experience yesterday, when my friend and I decided to read a couple of pages from our Caesar reader again and noticed that reading it had become a lot easier than before this tadoku. It's one of the things I love about tadoku - if done right, it really always seems to lead to noticeable improvement for me. Unfortunately, doing it right means spending most of my free time reading, reading, reading - and that's not something I have the energy or motivation (or time!) to keep up all the time - even managing 4 times a year sounds like a challenging prospect, to be honest. And looking at last week's motivation low, I fear I'm not even getting all I could out of this tadoku edition. :/

Current stats: 873 pages read
*Finished Harrius Potter et camera secretorum (from page 61)
*Read Ursus nomine Paddington
*Read 36 pages of Carmen ad Festum Nativitatis (still kinda difficult :/ )
*Read 18 pages of the Tirocinium Caesarianum (pretty much put on hold right now)
*Read Superbia et Odium *__*
*Read the Ørberg edition of Plautus' Amphitryo [a very abridged version]
*Read Commentarii de inepto puero
*Read Asterix et Cleopatra [comic]
*Read 17 pages of "The Phormio of Terence" [a simplified version]
*Read 14 pages of "Magus Mirabilis in Oz"

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Weekly Goals for Week 42 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Tadoku: Read 175 pages
*Listen to ep. 11 of Quomodo dicitur (19 min)

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Grimm ep. 1-2]

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Psych S4 ep. 4-5]

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama [FM:B ep. 15-17, Yuri ep. 3]

Other stuff I did:
Spanish: Watched eps. 4-6 of Grimm.
Japanese: Watched eps. 1-3 of Rurouni Kenshin.
Finnish: Learned some vocab on Memrise.

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Weekly Goals for Week 43 (2016)

Latin
*Tadoku: Read 125 pages
*Listen to ep. 12 of Quomodo dicitur

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama

[Elenia]

You're still doing really well, Yuurei! Your language exposure (as well as the amount of languages you're exposed to) is great, and that's just looking at the things you do to hit your goals. I'm cheering for you

[Yuurei]

You're still doing really well, Yuurei! Your language exposure (as well as the amount of languages you're exposed to) is great, and that's just looking at the things you do to hit your goals. I'm cheering for you

Thanks! I do have have this habit of being too hard on myself sometimes, I suppose. Getting consistent exposure to my main languages is something that has been working really well this year thanks to those weekly goals - and since consistency has always been a weakness of mine, that's a pretty cool thing and I should appreciate it more.

Tadoku update: Goal reached! \o/
The week started out badly, first I was ill in the beginning of the week and I didn't manage to stop reading fan fiction either , but I managed to pick myself back up on Friday and reached my 1000 page goal early yesterday morning. I decided to read on to the end of "The Wizard of Oz" afterwards, which was a pretty easy read compared to a lot of stuff I went through this month - not to mention I can now finally catch all those references to The Wizard of Oz that are pervading pop culture, 'cause I'd never actually read the book before. XD
I am so insanely happy that I managed to read 1000 pages of Latin this month - even just a month ago that seemed like a close to impossible undertaking, but here I am. I found this Tadoku more difficult than previous editions, because it was very difficult to find Latin reading material that was at more or less the right level and interesting. And while reading something difficult or boring is doable for a certain amount of time, it's hard to sustain and saps away my motivation. Harry Potter was interesting enough and at the right level; Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books, which helped cover for the fact that it was a bit more difficult than I would have liked; Ørberg's edition of Plauto was interesting, but exhausting to read; the Commentarii de inepto puero were fun enough and not too difficult; Magus Mirabilis in Oz was quite easy (especially so late in the month), but it's not exactly interesting; Paddington was quite difficult and also not really my kind of story; The Phormio and Carmen ad Festum Nativitatis were so difficult that I didn't even finish them. Still, overall it was a fun and exhilarating experience and I literally felt my understanding of Latin jump up in the span of a month.
There's technically still today and tomorrow left, but I'm kind of out of things I want to read. Maybe I'll give the Phormio and/or the Christmas Carol another chance though...

Current stats: 1038 pages read
*Finished Harrius Potter et camera secretorum (from page 61)
*Read Ursus nomine Paddington
*Read 36 pages of Carmen ad Festum Nativitatis (still kinda difficult :/ )
*Read 26 pages of the Tirocinium Caesarianum
*Read Superbia et Odium *__*
*Read the Ørberg edition of Plautus' Amphitryo [a very abridged version]
*Read Commentarii de inepto puero
*Read Asterix et Cleopatra [comic]
*Read 17 pages of "The Phormio of Terence" [a simplified version]
*Read "Magus Mirabilis in Oz"

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Weekly Goals for Week 43 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Tadoku: Read 125 pages [Read 165 pages]
*Listen to ep. 12 of Quomodo dicitur (17 min.)

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Grimm ep. 7-8]

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Psych S4 ep. 6-7]

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama [FMA:B eps. 18-20, Yuri on Ice ep. 4]

Other stuff I did:
Spanish: Watched eps. 9-13 of Grimm.
Japanese: Read Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun Vol. 5 & 42 pages of 小説名探偵コナン ＣＡＳＥ 2; Watched るろうに剣心 (実写映画) & Rurouni Kenshin ep. 4-5.
Finnish: Learned some vocab on Memrise.
Greek: Lesson 6 (& a tiny bit of cramming to make up for missing lessons 4-5).

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Weekly Goals for Week 44 (2016)

Latin
*Read 50 pages
*Listen to ep. 12 of Quomodo dicitur

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

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama

[Yuurei]

I was on holiday last week and thus found a lot of time for immersing myself in my languages - especially on the reading side.
I managed to read the 2 books needed to reach my French reading goal during the week - and then read an extra volume for good measure, since the 2 had been so short, it almost felt like cheating.
That only leaves 2 Spanish books for my reading goals, and with almost 2 months left in the year, I'm rather confident that that will work out.

Latin
Last Monday, just in time for the end of Tadoku, I actually managed to read (not decipher!) Cicero's first oration against Catiline! *__* I mean, yes, it was kind of difficult and exhausting, but I just sat down and read it, extensively, and could follow pretty well! I'm still kind of dumbstruck by the whole thing, to be honest - never in a million years would I have dared to hope to be able to read Cicero this soon. I should probably mention (since I don't think I've done so yet) that reading Cicero's speeches in the original is one of my main motivations for learning Latin. I mean, there's lots of other Latin authors that I also want to read, of course, but Cicero is probably the thing I've most been looking forward to, so you can imagine my excitement at actually managing to read one of his speeches like that. It was still a bit too exhausting for me to say that I can comfortably read Cicero - there's definitely still some way to go, and since I prefer my reading to be extensive and comprehensible and don't enjoy intensive reading very much, I'll still be sticking to some other texts before tackling (much) more Cicero, but it's exhilarating to know that my ultimate goal of being able to kick back and relax with a Cicero volume is not actually that far off anymore.

On a completely unrelated note, I've recently become interested in (watching) figure skating - I totally blame Yuri on Ice. XD

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Weekly Goals for Week 44 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Read 50 pages [Platonis Apologia Socratis (25 pages), Ciceronis In Catilinam I (18 pages), 7 pages of Sallustii De Catalinae Coniuratione]
*Listen to ep. 13 of Quomodo dicitur (20 min.)

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Grimm ep. 14-15]
*Read 150 pages [El falso príncipe]

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Psych S4 ep. 8-9]

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama [Rurouni Kenshin eps. 6-8; Yuri ep. 5]

Other stuff I did:
Spanish: Finished reading El falso príncipe (107 pages).
Japanese: Watched Rurouni Kenshin eps. 9-11, 15-16, 18-24; Read Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun Vol. 6 & 10 pages of フルメタル・パニック! 3.
Greek: Lesson 7.
Latin: Read 10 pages of Tirocinium Caesarianum.
French: Read Prince Captif 1-3 (664 pages).

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Weekly Goals for Week 45 (2016)

Latin
*Read 30 pages

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama
*Read 100 pages

[Yuurei]

Last week was rather on the slow side - since I unexpectedly made pretty good progress on my reading goals in the last few weeks, I decided to cut myself some slack and started the week off with some more fanfiction, and afterwards I actually went and got myself an English novel (Prince of Fools, by Mark Lawrence), which I immediately started reading. My first English novel of the year, if you'll believe it. It's not that I set out not to read any English novels this year, it's just that all my TL reading goals kept me so busy that I never felt like I had the time and leisure to just up and read a novel that wouldn't count towards those goals. But, of course, it is a sort of travesty not to read anything in English and thus, now that I only have 2 books left to read and more than enough time to read them, I decided to remedy that. I'd almost forgotten the sheer pleasure of reading English. I mean, it's not usually exhausting for me to read in Japanese/French/Spanish, but I haven't yet reached that point where I can truly appreciate the finer points of an exquisite writing style as I can in English. It almost makes me understand why most people prefer to read in their native language. Almost.

In the end I had to force myself to read those 100 pages of Japanese that I said I would read, because I was much more in the mood to read my English novel. I thus decided not to set any reading goals for this week (except for a bit of Latin, naturally), to leave myself time to just kick back and relax with my fantasy novel (plus maybe the sequel as well). Gotta have weeks like that as well.

Moving on to other matters, I read this comment by Jeff on his log the other day and found that it really resonated with me:

In one of the above posts, I wrote about my lack of motivation for some recent languages. With a little help from my friend Tarvos, it turned out that those are the ones I don't "need", but am curious about. It is perfectly OK to have a quick (and shallow) look at languages as long as I don't expect the same enthusiasm and diligence. And if it turns out that I really (REALLY) want to study those languages, I should find a way to increase my curiosity (or find some kind of "need").

I think that, when it comes down to it, that is pretty much my situation with both Dutch and Finnish - I like the languages for themselves, but I have no deeper motivation to learn them and that keeps me from actually buckling down and making progress. And that's probably something I need to learn to accept, because my will power only goes so far. For all that I find these languages pretty, for all that I want to know them 'just because', I have no goal and no deep passion for them - even though I'd like that to be the case. And I suppose deep down I always knew that, which is why I only ever gave those languages the 'dabbling' status. But while it is okay, I guess, to dabble, in the long run it just leaves me dissatisfied. At some point, sooner rather than later, I want to pick up a language for real again, but I'm not convinced that Dutch or Finnish are good candidates for that. Of course, I'm also not convinced that I have the time to pick up a language for real, so yeah.

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Weekly Goals for Week 45 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Read 30 pages [Finished Tirocinium Caesarianum (17 pages), 13 pages of Caesaris Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Liber I]

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Grimm ep. 16-17]

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [The Amazing Spiderman]

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama [Rurouni Kenshin S2 ep. 1-3, Yuri ep. 6]
*Read 100 pages [40 pages of Full Metal Panic 3; 60 pages of 小説名探偵コナン ＣＡＳＥ 2]

Other stuff I did:
French: Watched eps. 1-2 of Designated Survivor.

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Weekly Goals for Week 46 (2016)

Latin
*Read 30 pages

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama

[Yuurei]

So, this week's status report is kinda late because I've been fighting with a bad case of the flu since Friday, which is also the reason for which I failed to complete last week's (embarrassingly low amount of) goals. :/
But well, these things happen.

In other news, before I fell ill I decided to start studying Chinese. I know what you'll be thinking: But Yuurei, another new language? Haven't you learned? And the short answer is, nope, I clearly haven't. XD The somewhat longer answer is this: Last week's reflection on why I clearly wasn't getting anywhere with Dutch and Finnish lead me to the surprising conclusion that there was at least one language where I'd be pretty sure not to have that problem - a language that I am certainly sufficiently motivated to learn and that I mostly kept pushing off because I wanted to have enough time available to do it right. On the one hand, that meant waiting till my current languages were at a high enough level that they could survive being pushed back a bit (especially Japanese and Latin), on the other hand that meant actually having this elusive thing called time. For the first part, I would argue that with my recent advances in Latin I've finally reached that stage, and for the second part it's time to accept that this is most likely it - I probably won't have more time than this before retirement (and what a depressing thought that is). So really, what reason is there not to pick up Chinese? Loads, I know, but none that seem to make a difference for me.
Of course, when I was thinking these things through, I didn't mean to actually pick Chinese up right there and then, but I guess after trying to curb my interest in the language for so long, once I really allowed myself to be excited about Chinese, there was no holding myself back anymore. It probably didn't help that I already have quite a few Chinese learning resources at my fingertips and had a pretty good idea of how I want to go about it (a plan that will probably be discarded way too soon, but what can you do?), since I let myself read up on learning Chinese way too much. XD
So here we are then: Finnish and Dutch are indefinitely on hold (and I don't even feel bad about that) and I'll be studying Chinese for real. (For real means that it'll get the privilege of one one of my weekly goal slots, which means I'll feel obligated to something for Chinese each and every week. It didn't get one for this week yet, since the week is already half over and I'm still somewhat ill, but it'll be there next week.) In exchange, my other languages will probably get a bit less attention. For this year, the only goal I'm still aiming for is completing my reading goals, in any case, so it probably won't even be noticeable. I'll still keep doing my weekly minimum for all my languages, naturally, and probably more than that as well.
But yes, all in all, this feels right.

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Weekly Goals for Week 46 (2016) - Incomplete (╯°▽°)╯ ┻━┻

Latin
*Read 30 pages [8 pages of Roma Aeterna]

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Grimm ep. 18]

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Psych S4 ep. 10-11]

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama [Rurouni Kenshin S2 ep. 4-7]

Other stuff I did:
French: Watched ep. 3 of Designated Survivor.
Japanese: Watched Yuri ep. 7 & Rurouni Kenshin S2 ep. 8-11.
Chinese: NPCR lesson 1; HelloChinese; Skritter; Watched ep. 1-9 of Les Interprètes (with Eng. subs, obviously).

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Weekly Goals for Week 47 (2016)

Latin
*Read 30 pages

Spanish
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film

Japanese
*Watch 80 minutes of anime/drama

[rdearman]

Good Luck with Chinese!
我会说一点儿中文同你。

[jeff_lindqvist]

太好了！我们都会说中文。:)

[Yuurei]

Good Luck with Chinese!
我会说一点儿中文同你。

太好了！我们都会说中文。:)

谢谢!

I totally needed to refer to a dictionary to get what the two of you were saying, but I could get parts of it on my own, so that's something, right?
For now I'm still stuck on simpler stuff, like 我是你的爸爸。