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

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Carmody
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby Carmody » Wed Jan 25, 2023 4:08 pm

Thank you; thank you.

Your comments remain unique in their honest encouragement to the learner that although the way is not always easy and yes often grueling and frustrating but that honest effort makes the fruits of that effort all the sweeter.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby daveprine » Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:02 pm

rdearman wrote:Screw languages! Why did I ever start this crap to begin with? I should just throw all this crap in the rubbish bin and just be like everyone else and sit around watching porn and eating pizza in my underwear. ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

How the pizza got in your underwear in the first place, I'll never know....and don't want to know.....
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby IronMike » Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:29 am

rdearman wrote:<RANT>
I am officially sick and tired of being sick and tired. I've not done much of anything other than listen to Pimsleur, and I'm frequently switching between feelings of homicide and suicide. I remember now why I hated FSI French drills and Pimsleur. I have listened to over 9 hours of some creepy git hassling co-workers for lunch. Everytime creepy man says: "Do you remember how to say ... "

</RANT>

I'll take all your Italian books. I'll PM you my address and Venmo you for shipping.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:49 pm

So rather than going off on one, I figured I should do an actual update.

I've dropped Pimsleur for the moment. I cannot take doing so many hours of it. I've switched back to reviewing what, in theory, I already know. I had previously generated a PDF file with all the screenshots from all my lessons in Korean. This amounted to 23 pages with 184 images. I printed out all 23 pages and I trim out the screenshot and then glue it on to a piece of graph paper. (example in image below) I translate all the Korean in the screenshot (my teacher only writes in Korea, very rarely an English word) and rewrite the Korean. So all the English in that image is what I've translated in order to use them as notes.
korean_shot.png

This forces me to review all the Korean words and sentences I've been given. It also forces me to review the verbs and grammar that I was taught. So far, I have managed to rewrite 17 screenshots (about 3 pages. Only 20 to go!). This exercise is taking me about one or two hours per 8–10 images. I am remembering a lot of stuff I had forgotten. I'm also trying to use the words, grammar, and sentences I'm reviewing by speaking out loud.

Is this going to help me with speaking? No, probably not. Is it helpful? Seems to be for me. Doing this is a low stress activity, and it means that I haven't just thrown out all the books, deleted all the electronic files and stopped even attempting to learn Korean. Winding it all back to a simple desk exercise is helpful.

I've got a couple of new language exchange partners for Italian and French. I spoke for some time this week in French, and I've got a few hours scheduled for next week in both languages. I've also been working with my Korean LE partner. Basically, she is talking to me only in Korean for 5–10 minutes. She writes in the chat window what she is saying if I don't understand, and later when we switch to English she explains it and I copy it down. This seems to work OK.

===== DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ME PISSING AND MOANING AGAIN =====
Carmody wrote:Your comments remain unique in their honest encouragement to the learner that although the way is not always easy and yes often grueling and frustrating but that honest effort makes the fruits of that effort all the sweeter.

Sometimes I think I'm the poster boy for "How NOT to learn a language."

As you can probably tell from the last "update" I'm pretty frustrated with language learning at the moment. I'm not making any progress, and I am beginning to think Korean is impossible for me to learn. This week, I had another conversation where people make crazy assumptions.

My daughter sent me a photo of a sign in Japanese and asked me what language it was and what it said.
I said it is Japanese, but I have no idea what it says.
She asked, but if you can't read it, how do you know it is Japanese?
I replied, I did spend 2 years in Okinawa, so I recognise the script, but can't read it.
But if you spent 2 years there, why don't you speak it?
Err... because I was 21 single and spent every weekend and most weekdays partying and drinking with my military buddies. We never learned anything other than how to make mixed drinks.
So my other daughter says, "But you learned French in a couple of years, and you weren't even in France."
Sigh... I couldn't be bothered to explain all the hard work, listening to CD's and French radio during my 3-hour commute, reading, speaking. And it took way more than 2 years. More like 6 before I could hold a decent conversation, and I'm even losing that now.

Language learning is tedious, boring, and difficult. But for some people it is easy.

I realise I shouldn't compare myself to others, and should only compare myself to my past self. But this is a difficult thing to do. I have spent 15–20 years to get to what is B2 at best in Italian and French (No I have never taken a test, so it is probably worse than that). Some people do C1 in a year, and C2 in 2 years, then moan about it taking too long because they want to move on to something else like German or Spanish.

Now, there is a good chance that I'm doing it wrong. I'm probably not using the best methods, or courses. I'm certainly more lazy than most people on this forum. I'm definitely not the smartest person on the planet, and I'm not willing to sit at a desk and study for 7–9 hours per day. But in areas outside of languages, I learn lots of stuff very quickly. Which is what leads to my frustration. If it took me ages to learn everything, then I wouldn't be so annoyed.

I don't like learning languages, I only like having learned a language. And even then I do a half-assed job of it, I never write in any language other than English. Oddly, I have probably written more in Korean than I ever have in French or Italian.

So for now, I'm going to ratchet everything back and do low stress stuff like language exchanges in FR & IT and just review my Korean. :|
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:50 pm

daveprine wrote:
rdearman wrote:Screw languages! Why did I ever start this crap to begin with? I should just throw all this crap in the rubbish bin and just be like everyone else and sit around watching porn and eating pizza in my underwear. ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

How the pizza got in your underwear in the first place, I'll never know....and don't want to know.....

I put it there to keep it warm.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:51 pm

IronMike wrote:
rdearman wrote:<RANT>
I am officially sick and tired of being sick and tired. I've not done much of anything other than listen to Pimsleur, and I'm frequently switching between feelings of homicide and suicide. I remember now why I hated FSI French drills and Pimsleur. I have listened to over 9 hours of some creepy git hassling co-workers for lunch. Everytime creepy man says: "Do you remember how to say ... "

</RANT>

I'll take all your Italian books. I'll PM you my address and Venmo you for shipping.

Venmo don't work in the UK. :lol:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jan 29, 2023 1:05 am

<Not a rant, but possibly boring>

You know, I understand the frustration and despising language learning. I'm guessing though that it can't have been all misery all the time (also known as AJATT) or I doubt you'd have punished yourself for this many years...er decades!

I have actually thrown away, or at least given away, books and some complete courses because I grew frustrated and burnt-out on languages. When I stopped Cantonese I felt very hard-done-by and actually as though I was being hampered by unfair circumstances.. Such as 'why the footling HELL can't I get to Hong Kong for a year? Why?!!' I realise now that I was experiencing the pain of a sunk cost (though maybe reality rather than 'fallacy'). And also feeling like a twerp because I'd poured in a few years; admittedly on the strength of trying to get Mary Pang to go out with me and then 'Dorothea' to not stop going out with me. These are good reasons for starting, but perhaps not ones with longevity behind them. Luckily I like Chinese culture, but probably chose the wrong variety of Chinese.

I failed to even get started on Japanese and by that time I was "wise" enough to tell myself to back away now before it turned into a fiasco. How the hell could I learn Japanese anyway when I was trying to reinvigorate my Russian? These are big demands and back then one could hide it away better. I was studying in my bedroom mostly or the library and really I didn't tell that many people. So I didn't have those people saying: 'well, can you speak any Russian then? Come on say something!' and putting on Russian films and demanding that I translate it in real time. Here on the internet you have to not only expose yourself, but also face competition from people who are (or say they are) absolutely whizzing through Japanese/Russian/Korean/Arabic while we are doing a Stan Laurel face at A1.

I think it might be even worse the more facility you have in one or more extra languages. I got to thinking at the start of last year, how come I'm having such a hard time with Spanish, a notoriously "easy" language, when I've battled "hard" ones? And when I know another romance language? Suspecting cognitive decline. I know people these days, or any days perhaps, don't like saying to themselves that they probably should not do certain things they desire so so badly, but don't seem to be doing so well with. This is strangely seen as failure, rather than astute self-knowledge.

I can talk like this now because I'm currently not actively learning anything and thus feeling no immediate pain. You know yourself though, as Carmody said, that it's what makes the fruit sweeter when it comes. I have to agree about the fellow in Pimsleur though, he's a stalker and mildly irritating.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:25 am

I always have learned the word for "something" first when I learn a language just so when someone says: Say something in Italian, I say, qualcosa. :lol: :lol:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jan 29, 2023 1:40 pm

rdearman wrote:I always have learned the word for "something" first when I learn a language just so when someone says: Say something in Italian, I say, qualcosa. :lol: :lol:

Ah, good move! I should learn the word(s) for 'something' in as many languages as possible for this purpose. And perhaps even make a YT video about my new-found hyper-pottyglollery.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-23 I’m not superstitious, just a little stitious.

Postby rdearman » Sun Jan 29, 2023 2:06 pm

Seems I have a history of ranting. Someone reminded me of one I'd done about Italian TV during a Super Challenge on the old HTLAL back in 2012. I copied it here because it takes forever to load the old site.

OK, I got to have a rant. I cannot stand it anymore. IMHO, Italian TV sucks! It sucks beyond a level of everyday suckyness. It sucks so much there are galactic black holes which suffer from envy, black holes which take notes on the suckyness of Italian TV to try and learn how to suck.

Some hints for Italian TV producers and directors:
- The size of a woman’s breasts are not an indicator of acting ability.
- Not every scene should be shot in bright sunshine with smiling people.
- People who have their children kidnapped aren't going to give smouldering sex looks to the policeman. If they do, they are suspects.
- Ugly people can be police too! Ugly people can be actors, some are really good at it.
- Does the dark mood music really go with the bright sunlit scene with happy smiling people?
- It is generally frowned upon for a policeman to take his ex-girlfriend to a fecking crime scene! Please, please, please get a consultant for your script writers so they stop making shite up!
- I am sure there are more than 10 actors in Italy, let some of the others have a go. Just about any bloke on the street could do a better job than some of those pretty boys. (remember ugly people can act too)
- I'm fairly sure it doesn't just rain because two women are wearing t-shirts and running on a beach. Unless God really does have a sense of humour.
- Gritty police drama should be done with moody lighting, See the point above about bright sunshine. (I realise you are in a country cursed with sunlight, but it gets dark and rains there too)
- Send these (same 10) people to ACTING SCHOOL!!!! Teach them how to ACT!
- Move the fecking camera around! Don't have everyone standing still while they deliver their lines. (I realise some of these women can't walk and chew gum at the same time, but at least the blokes can walk around!)
- Women showering are rarely pertinent to the plot outside of a Hitchcock horror film. Just because the police-woman will get a phone call after her shower, doesn't mean you have to film a 10 minute shower scene.
- Please GOD find someone else to write the music! Have a 2 year old bang on pots and pans, anything but that god-awful orchestra music.

I'm going to complete my Super Challenge in Italian with podcasts, I cannot watch any more of this drivel.
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