Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Nov 30, 2022 6:22 pm

rdearman wrote:Martin Chuzzlewit (Audiobook) I have to say that I'm not all that impressed with Dickens. Perhaps it is just me, but all this great literature leaves me cold. I know Dickens is trying to be funny in this book, but it isn't funny to me. Still I've managed to get through 6 chapters, so hopefully I'll get this one done by the end of the year. I don't hold out any hope it will get better..

Aside from an abridged version of Great Expectations that my 9th grade English class had to read, and which I liked, I've never got past the first few pages of any Dickens novel I've tried. He just went on and on and on way too much for me.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Nov 30, 2022 10:33 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
rdearman wrote:Martin Chuzzlewit (Audiobook) I have to say that I'm not all that impressed with Dickens. Perhaps it is just me, but all this great literature leaves me cold. I know Dickens is trying to be funny in this book, but it isn't funny to me. Still I've managed to get through 6 chapters, so hopefully I'll get this one done by the end of the year. I don't hold out any hope it will get better..

Aside from an abridged version of Great Expectations that my 9th grade English class had to read, and which I liked, I've never got past the first few pages of any Dickens novel I've tried. He just went on and on and on way too much for me.
I liked A Tale of Two Cities, and I'm sure I'll watch and enjoy A Christmas Carol again in December :-)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby Le Baron » Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:01 pm

When I was a young teenager A Christmas Carol was one of the best books I'd read! Also Bleak House and Oliver Twist are masterly. There are also lots of interesting things to find in Dickens from a linguistic point of view; his uses of words in their original sense which have by now altered. I mentioned one before: 'several', which used to mean 'separate' (fairly clear from 'sever').

I read Russell's History Of Western Philosophy in my last year of school and thought it was great, but then a college tutor took me to task because I used the chapter on Nietzsche as a critique of the philosopher. It was a mistake. It made me look at an actual Nietzsche book and I realised that Russell's chapter is a hatchet job aggravated by contemporary events (WW2 and the wholly mistaken association of the Nazis and Nietzsche) and Russell's dislike of 'continental philosophy' trends. He also chooses to omit Martin Heidegger, and if I remember correctly because I haven't looked at it in ages, none of the phenomenologists at all!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby IronMike » Thu Dec 01, 2022 12:47 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
rdearman wrote:Martin Chuzzlewit (Audiobook) I have to say that I'm not all that impressed with Dickens. Perhaps it is just me, but all this great literature leaves me cold. I know Dickens is trying to be funny in this book, but it isn't funny to me. Still I've managed to get through 6 chapters, so hopefully I'll get this one done by the end of the year. I don't hold out any hope it will get better..

Aside from an abridged version of Great Expectations that my 9th grade English class had to read, and which I liked, I've never got past the first few pages of any Dickens novel I've tried. He just went on and on and on way too much for me.

My goal in the new year is to read a Dickens. We were assigned Great Expectations in 9th grade, the full book (!!) and I didn't read a bit of it (thank you Cliff Notes). But now I want to read maybe the Old Curiosity Shop or maybe The Pickwick Papers. But I'm going to do it like I did War & Peace a couple years ago: one chapter a day. (I ended up reading W&P at 2 chapters a day.)

Rich, there are other funny books out there. Read anything from Evelyn Waugh (except Brideshead, which isn't meant to be funny): Decline and Fall is hilarious, as is Scoop. Don't even get me started on Tom Sharpe (Wilt...holy crap).
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Fri Dec 09, 2022 11:47 pm

I have been working on Korean and forcing myself to spend at least 30 minutes with the Teach Yourself Korean book. I don't like it. They have this made up romanisation of Korean, which they then try to say things like, You can add "yo" to "ka", or try to teach you some grammar rule about past tense. But they do everything in this made up romanisation, and it is driving me crazy. I actually sit there trying to mentally convert this stupidity into Hangul. It wouldn't be so bad if they put the actual Korean characters into parenthesis or something, rather than make me try to figure it out. So I'm finding it very frustrating. It is actually a pretty well-thought-out explanation of Korean grammar and usage, but why not just use the bloody Korean!

They do have some decent dialogues written in Hangul at the start of each chapter, so I spend a lot of time reading these out loud.

Meanwhile, I'm also reading a full on Korean grammar book, which does have everything in Hangul. I'm just trying to approach things using multiple resources.

I have pretty much given up on anki decks. This happens to me all the time, I use anki for a couple of months, then get burned out on it and stop for a couple of months, rinse, lather, repeat. I've switched over to listening to Pimsleur and DLI audio for a change. I'm also practicing numbers a lot. I think I have mentioned this site before, but there is a website which says the numbers, and you have to type in the correct numbers. It is called LangPractice and they do many languages. I used to use it for French because French numbers have always been a nightmare for me! They do ranges of numbers like:
  • 1-10
  • 1-100
  • 1-1000
  • 1-10000
    Or "Large Numbers"
  • 10k-1million
  • 10k-10m
  • 10k-100m
  • 10ki-1B

I do wish they had pure Korean numbers to practice as well as the Sino-Korean numbers.

I had a conversation with my French friend today for the first time in a few of months, and it is tragic how much my French has deteriorated in that time. I kinda need to either use it or lose it. I've done ok with Italian, since I recently returned from Milan, and I have regular conversations in Italian (weekly). So I think I need to just plug in some more conversations in French. Or add this latest French book and some films into the cycle.

I have a lot of books on the go at the moment, and I'll probably complete 3-4 before the end of the year, so I will not read 100 books this year (since I only started end of September) but should have around 34-35 books read at the end of the year. Then I'm going to bin off all the books from this list I am not going to read, I'm going to throw away all the books I don't have any interest in and start the New Year with a new list. I think I will try to read 1-2 books in Korean, 1 book in Mandarin, and 10 French and 10 Italian books next year. Which would leave ~78 books in English for next year. Although, plans change and I might be back to doing a lot of commuting via car soon. So that would mean a flip over to audiobooks, which means a lot of classic literature from Librivox. But if I can continue at a rate of ~30 books per quarter, then I'll be doing 120 books a year, and so easily hit my targets.

Working and commuting shouldn't cramp my reading style too much, since I mostly read at night. I don't watch TV, although K-Dramas and the World Cup have started to eat into reading time. :) I have now taken to putting a timer on my phone to make sure I do 30 minutes of a maths book, 30 minutes of Korean, 30 minutes of Italian book, then I get to read something in English as a treat for myself. Although in reality, "The History of Western Philosophy", isn't really much of a treat.

I have started to try and get my rhythm going again regarding YT videos and perhaps starting the next season of the podcast. I got a bit burned out before, so it all lapsed. I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew, as anyone who reads this log, or knows me can attest to! But I'm happy that I'm going to complete 3 maths books in as many months, after having them languish on the shelves for 5-6 years.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby Carmody » Sat Dec 10, 2022 1:17 am

A question if I may: since your Korean studies are obviously causing you extreme anguish (and I am sure they would cause many of the rest of us the same anguish), why not just drop them?

As you often say: "Life is too short for Proust and learning German." I thought that a good suggestion and stopped reading Proust. I never regretted it for a moment.

Maybe it would be good to drop the Korean.

Also since those studies have resulted in the fact that cause you say:
"my French has deteriorated."

Is it that hard to walk away from it and why not?
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Dec 10, 2022 3:59 am

rdearman wrote: I'm also practicing numbers a lot. I think I have mentioned this site before, but there is a website which says the numbers, and you have to type in the correct numbers. It is called LangPractice and they do many languages. I used to use it for French because French numbers have always been a nightmare for me! They do ranges of numbers like:
  • 1-10
  • 1-100
  • 1-1000
  • 1-10000
    Or "Large Numbers"
  • 10k-1million
  • 10k-10m
  • 10k-100m
  • 10ki-1B

I do wish they had pure Korean numbers to practice as well as the Sino-Korean numbers.
I used practise counting to 100 in French every time I had a shower, for some reason. :-)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Sat Dec 10, 2022 8:59 am

Carmody wrote:A question if I may: since your Korean studies are obviously causing you extreme anguish (and I am sure they would cause many of the rest of us the same anguish), why not just drop them?

As you often say: "Life is too short for Proust and learning German." I thought that a good suggestion and stopped reading Proust. I never regretted it for a moment.

Maybe it would be good to drop the Korean.

Also since those studies have resulted in the fact that cause you say:
"my French has deteriorated."

Is it that hard to walk away from it and why not?

I think it isn't anguish just the frustration of being a beginner and doing all the beginner stuff. The huge mountain of vocabulary to learn. The fact I can't string together sentences, etc. So while I moan about the work, in the back of my head I know it will eventually be worth it. Also I have plans to return to South Korea in 2023, so I will need the language. Especially since we plan to go even further off the beaten track. Korean is harder than any other language I have learned but it is obvious that I am complaining too much! ;)

You might remember that I am not all that keen on French so if I lost it completely I would be ok with that. But the fact is if I spend a little time knocking the rust off the French it will come back. I just need to allocate time to it.

Also for me, both Prost and German are boring!

I would need about 6 lifetimes to do all the stuff I want, and so have a tendency to get overloaded. I need to remember to bring some maintenance time into my language skills. But since I have never considered myself a polygot doing language maintenance has not seriously been thought about. I guess this deterioration in French has sort of highlighted it to me.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Sat Dec 10, 2022 10:34 pm

Yay, I went over 200,000 views of my log. To celebrate I am going to...

Take a nap. ;)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sun Dec 11, 2022 5:11 pm

In re: getting rid of books you won't read, I had success selling German fiction via one of the UK's sell your old books online sites. I didn't get much, but they paid me to recycle stuff for me so I thought it was worthwhile. After the books had sat in a pile by my bed for two years, I figured I might as well accept I was never going to read them.
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