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

[daveprine]

Actually I'm sick of you already.

I'm going to punch you in the porridge...

[Brun Ugle]

Actually I'm sick of you already.

I'm going to punch you in the porridge...

[daveprine]

I'm going to punch you in the porridge...

Sorry, was that the wrong "tone"?

Ha ha ha ha!!!!!

[rdearman]

I'm going to punch you in the porridge...
Sorry, was that the wrong "tone"?

This was a rather oblique reference to the fact Setswana is a tonal language and depending on the tone you use with one word it could mean breast or porridge.

Setswana & Czech:
Added a couple more links to the Setswana resources, but didn't bother with an update in that log. Since all I've done is Anki and some reading. Czech I'm still doing the online course and should be done with it soon, so I'll need to do something else.

Mandarin:
I have been trying to find a suitable time to reboot the Mandarin tutor, but never seem to find a time other than the weekend, but I'm booked up for things for the next couple of weekends. I'm still working with my apps, but haven't been consistently doing them on the commute. I've really just been sleeping in the mornings on the train. But I do try to get work done on the ride home.

French:
Working on my presentation, and listening to a recording of the first version which Zenmonkey kindly recorded for me in French. I've since made changes so I need to get it rerecorded. I've slowed down but not stopped using Kwiziq and LRing the 3 musketeers. It is crawling forward, but not a lot of time being invested. Need to get back to this.

Italian:
I read a page of the grammar book. I've started using the Clozemaster Italian grammar thing to reinforce the things I'm seeing in the grammar book.

General:
This has been a bad week for languages. Only sporadically working on things. Some of this is to do with just being tired and sleeping on the train. I think I need to get some kind of written plan or at least a checkbox system which I can us to tick off each 20 minutes as I do them. Sometimes I just can't remember if I did my 20 minutes of Setswana in the morning, etc..

I was looking at iTalki and I have a lot of money on account, so I need to start scheduling some lessons. The main problem is at the moment I have a house full of people, so no quiet place to speak. No excuse really, so I'm planning on booking three lessons a week, French, Italian and Mandarin. I figure if I actually pick some firm times and get them into the schedule it will not be a problem. Unfortunately, I am going to have to do one stupid-o-clock in the morning one for Mandarin I think.

[rdearman]

This week can best be summed up with the phrase: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." I had intended to study on the train, didn't happen most days. I had intended to continue to LR, didn't happen. I had intended to book some lessons on iTalki, didn't happen. I had a lot of good intentions, but they didn't happen.

I've decided I'm only going to do one language in the Super Challenge, and it will not be French. I'm going to concentrate on the reading part of it instead of the videos. Might do reading only.

They announced my talk at the Polyglot gathering so no backing out now. I've had a lot of help and support, and I hope to get through it with minimum of bloodshed.

[rdearman]

This week I have done nothing with my languages. I've been trying to memorise my speech for the gathering. I'm not holding out much hope and I'm probably going to be doing a lot of reading from the notes. Which will make for a very boring presentation indeed. But I have almost a month to try and get my act together. What little bit I have been doing is all apps.

I've got clozemaster going for Czech, Mandarin and Italian. I'm trying to always use text input for Mandarin, but it is getting much harder as the number of sentences is increasing. The HelloChinese app I'm still doing, but because I'm not spending so much time what little time I get is used up doing reviews rather than progressing forward.

I have decided that this Super Challenge I am only doing one language and that language will be Italian. I'm also going to try to read 100 books. By this I mean 100 actual books not "reading units" of 50 pages. I've done the maths and based on an average novel being 75-100k then I need to be reading 50 pages a day. So the way the SC books are defined I need to read a book every day for all 610 days of the challenge.

This isn't as daunting as it first appears since with an average reading speed this should only take 1-2 hours per day. I can do that without to much difficulty especially if I try to get ahead on the weekends.

Another crazy plan full of good intentions which I'll probably not accomplish, but even if only manage to do a quarter of that then I'll still have completed a double challenge in reading.

[rdearman]

This weekend was a complete loss for studying languages. However, it was a great weekend for using languages. My wife works at a wine import company, and I got roped in to helping with a trade-show. Basically they had their suppliers come over and then invited lots of restaurants, hotels, etc. to participate in a wine-tasting. I was put on a table pouring some wine where the suppliers hadn't showed. I swatted up on the wines I had to pour and answered whatever questions I could. I know nothing about wine, I don't even drink it much, but could just about manage. Stood all day and my feet hurt, but the really good thing was my table had the Italian wine selection to my right, and the French wine selection to my left. There were 6-8 Italians and 3-4 French people crowded around me all day long!

When introduced I managed to start conversations in either Italian or French, and managed to speak to a large number of people (mostly Italians) throughout the day. I had a couple conversations in French, but it had started to get busy when they'd arrived and never got a chance to speak afterwards. Because there was a lot of Italians, they could take more breaks from their table and wander around looking at the competition. One fellow made a point of tasting all the wine from the competition and stopped at my table. I managed to answer questions about the wines I was pouring to him in Italian!

This had some really tricky hurtles my brain had to jump over. I was describing French wines in Italian. So the names of the wines, the regions they are from etc. are all French, and it tripped up my brain a couple of times to include them into an Italian conversation. It was really cool to be able to speak and welcome people in their own language.

I think the Spanish couple were a little disappointed I couldn't manage anything over than "Hola" after they heard me speaking to the French and Italians. So he complemented me on my French, and asked if I was going to learn Spanish.

I did get some offers to visit a couple of vineyards next time I'm in Italy to see how the wine is made and bottled, which actually sounds really cool.

[rdearman]

Updates for Setswana & Czech.

Mandarin:
Working Clozemaster using text input, which is really difficult. One thing that annoys me is when you answer the question wrong they highlight the characters you missed. But what I really need is for them to highlight the Pinyin also so I don't have to count the characters and work out which ones are which. Still using the HelloChinese app as well. Had a huge number of stale words to review when I went back in.

French:
I'm not really doing anything with French other than practising my speech and working on pronunciation. I've been hitting Kwiziq and doing a couple of tests each day. I've paid for it and I'm slowly clawing my way up the scale. I've decided near the end of May that French is going so far back on the back burner it will actually be in the neighbours house.

Italian:
I've decided this is going to be my SC language. I've been collecting books in every format I can find, electronic, paper, fiction, non-fiction, anything! I think I said before I'm going to try to do the original challenge which is 100 actually books. I'll still record the reading units, but the plan is to read actually books. This will suck up all my available time from May, so cutbacks will be happening. French will be parked, the others relegated to 15-20 minutes each per day.

General:
Seems to be a lot of love for French on the forum at the moment. Personally I'm happy to drop it. I've still got a weekly French lesson which I manage to get to three out of four weeks so I'll still be keeping the hand in. I'll keep at the Kwiziq because it is something I can do in 15 minutes. I'll probably not drop French but put it on rotation with the others.

Reading 100 books in Italian by my calculations means I'll probably need to average about 50 pages per day. This is actually a doddle for me in English, since I could do that in about an hour. Hopefully, by the end of the SC it will be the same speed in Italian.

[rdearman]

Setswana: Found a newspaper to get more text from and I will add some articles to my list of things to read.

Czech: I'm going to park Czech. Although there is a ton of free and legal resources available, there isn't enough Free time in my life to continue. So I'm dropping this from the schedule and remove it from the anki rotation, etc..

French: French is being put on the back-burner now. I'm still doing my review for the presentation in Bratislava and 15 minutes of Kwiziq each day. I still have a weekly tutoring session scheduled. So this isn't stopped, but moved right to the bottom of the list of things to do.

Mandarin: I plan to put this on a slow rotation of 15 minutes of apps and perhaps one lesson a week if I can find a tutor who is available around my timeframe.

Italian:Reading 100 books is going to be a real time-sink along with watching 100 films. But this is where the focus will be for the foreseeable future. My reading speed isn't too bad in Italian, I've already read about 40% of a star trek book although technically I should completed it in order to stay on track. I'm hoping my reading speed will increase enough for me to catch up near the end of the challenge and my pages-per-minute will increase enough to cover my slower speed now.

General: Work, the forum and lots of other things are completing for my time right now and I just can't keep 5 languages on rotation. But I'm still on 4, the only one I'm dropping completely is Czech. Setswana is an interesting exercise and I'm not putting pressure on myself to learn it quickly. I'll do what I can with what I got. So the plan is to spend 45 minutes per day with 3 languages and another hour or two with Italian. We'll see.

[iguanamon]

...Czech: I'm going to park Czech. Although there is a ton of free and legal resources available, there isn't enough Free time in my life to continue. So I'm dropping this from the schedule and remove it from the anki rotation, etc.. ...

...until you come back from Slovakia and decide that you wish you could speak Czech to get along in Slovak! Really, the major limiting factor we have in our language-learning lives is limited time. This makes what Expugnator does every day even more amazing and admirable.