SGP wrote:I have been pondering on the log's title for a while, but I still don't really seem to understand it. Could you tell me what it is about?
It is basically a joke.
Yes it is, but I wasn't sure about what exactly. As we know, people differ on what makes them laugh. Some sometimes have got their own Inside Non-Jokes even (--> S**e****G**kyP**y**ot).
The problem with jokes is that if you have to explain them, they aren't funny.
Now this brings back some memories. A long time ago, I was watching cartoons because of language purposes (personally wouldn't recommend it, but still...). The Batman was captured by Harley Quinn. She could have killed him. But he made her call the Joker. And she "ruined his joke" by explaining it. So he freed the Batman whom he otherwise would have wanted to kill because "it is not funny any more".
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Previously known as SGP. But my mental username now is langmon.
I have had a pretty big snag with my language learning. Yesterday while doing the dishes I broke a bowl and cut two of my fingers. One of the cuts was extremely deep and I had to go to A&E. After a 4 hour wait while cleaning the wound the nurse could see the tendons of my finger. This meant that I had to be scheduled to see a surgeon today to make sure that I hadn't done any damage to the tendon that might make my finger inoperative. The good news is that after a consultation with a surgeon today it appears that I haven't injured any tendons or nerves in my finger.
The problem however is that because of all of the bandages and the fact that the injury is on my dominant hand I can't actually write or type. At this moment I'm actually dictating this message into my phone. Thank you Google!
So this has required some modification of my 20 minutes of study each day per language plus maths. I have mainly stuck to apps on the phone since I can do them one handed. So I'm going to have to postpone any textbook work or exercises that require writing or typing until such time as my finger healed sufficiently. This should only be a week or so I'm told.
I have been enjoying these 20 minute exercises, however, I only seem to manage to do about 60 minutes per day. So I have been getting about 3 of the 5 study periods in each day. Some days I do better and manage to complete all 5. Yesterday and today I have managed to complete all 5 of my 20 minute sessions. Yesterday it was because I spent 4 hours in A&E looking at my phone. And today was because I spent an extra hour and a half in the waiting room waiting to see the surgeon.
Unfortunately I also had to cancel to language exchanges one yesterday and one today just because I was at medical appointments.
rdearman wrote:I have had a pretty big snag with my language learning. Yesterday while doing the dishes I broke a bowl and cut two of my fingers. One of the cuts was extremely deep and I had to go to A&E. After a 4 hour wait while cleaning the wound the nurse could see the tendons of my finger. This meant that I had to be scheduled to see a surgeon today to make sure that I hadn't done any damage to the tendon that might make my finger inoperative. The good news is that after a consultation with a surgeon today it appears that I haven't injured any tendons or nerves in my finger.
Wishing you all the best, especially because of this new current challenge, and that it will fully heal soon.
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Previously known as SGP. But my mental username now is langmon.
Another weekend with not a lot of language learning done. However, my fingers are unbandaged and I can type again. Although I'm going to have a couple of very bad scars on my knuckles. I don't mind scars, I have a number of them collected over the years from various accidents or while working on planes, etc. I just tell everyone that I got them in a knife fight. This explanation tends to make my daughters suitors pause for a moment of reflection.
But my little 20 minute study periods, even though inconsistently completed, have scored me 900 minutes of study or 15 hours over the last couple of weeks. Certainly more than I was doing before, and easier to accomplish. So what have I been doing?
French - Using "French grammar in context book" - Lot's of anki sentences. I managed to whittle it down from a backlog of over a 1000 reviews to a backlog of zero.
Italian - Using the text book "Cresendo" - Doing exercises my tutor has given me, and she is helping me with corrections.
Mandarin - HelloChinese App - Calligraphy practice - I'm trying to write my own sentences and getting corrections from my tutor. But mostly just working on writing out the basic HSK level 1 characters.
Setswana - Memrise
My Mandarin sentences are very basic. 我是不他是。 我是Rick。
So I'm thinking I might try transcription of a Chinese reader I have using the "Scriptorium Method". This would help me with vocabulary and with writing I think. I'm also having two sessions a week (when possible) with Dandelion Ma (another forum member). The HelloCHinese app is very helpful because the reviews are allowing me to ask questions about sentence construction. I highly recommend it for Chinese beginners. I do like to just write the characters, it is very relaxing and I'm happy my hand is free to write now. The one sentence I wanted to memorise I asked 老师， was this one: 怎样用中文说“<INSERT ENGLISH WORD HERE>”？ This is "How do you say <> in Chinese?" so that should help me to build some vocabulary.
For the French and Italian I also did a few language exchanges, and tomorrow I have a French session with my most difficult partner. To say her English is A1 would be a compliment. So basically I'm going to spend a full hour speaking in French to someone trying to translate English into French. My Italian exchanges seem to be there just to show me how much I've forgotten and how much French has invaded my brain.
On a side note my maths book has slowed down considerably. I promised myself that I would complete every exercise and I was flying through the first part of the book, but midway the problems have become both harder and more numerous. So it will take me longer to complete than I estimated. But still it is a good mental workout. I have 15 more maths books I want to complete, then I want to start on the four Knuth programming books I have.
As always I watch a show in Chinese once a week if I can either on Viki or Singapore TV or a YouTube cooking show. I am still working my way through another Italian novel. I'm going to try to listen to some Botswana radio or watch a Soap Opera on YouTube once a week if I can.
rdearman wrote:I have 15 more maths books I want to complete, then I want to start on the four Knuth programming books I have.
Sounds good for me, if they weren't in English (I did find them in Russian, but that'd be a stretch. Something like German or French would be acceptable).
As always I watch a show in Chinese once a week if I can either on Viki or Singapore TV or a YouTube cooking show. I am still working my way through another Italian novel. I'm going to try to listen to some Botswana radio or watch a Soap Opera on YouTube once a week if I can.
You might have mentioned it before, but have you subscribed to Viki?
Expugnator wrote:You might have mentioned it before, but have you subscribed to Viki?
No I haven't. Actually I was only using it recently for the ability to "learn" with the subtitles. Because I haven't subscribed I get the minute delay, which is frustrating. Have you subscribed? If so is it worth it?
rdearman wrote:So I'm thinking I might try transcription of a Chinese reader I have using the "Scriptorium Method". This would help me with vocabulary and with writing I think.
I started doing this today. It seems useful but it is very hard for me to write small and compact enough to look right. I suppose that will just have to come with time.
Chinese Transcription.jpg
I'm doing word for word translations below, I realise it sounds unnatural. Obviously it is only a few characters and I'm still having to look up stroke order and there is a lot of erasing going on. Which I why I'm doing this scriptorium thing in pencil. Some characters look better than others, but that is because I have been doing the "traceover" thing for some of them previously. I believe I'll still continue to use Smallwhites excel sheets and practice the writing. I almost always carry a pen and notepad, so if I fold up one of the printed excel sheets and slip it into my notebook I'll always have something around if I want to practice.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I did have my French LE with the lady I mentioned and yes I spent an hour and half speaking French and even when I tried to encourage her to use English she refused, or did one sentence then stopped. So we fell back to French all the time. She never corrects me, and we just chat, so I don't know if I should be happy or sad about these types of LE's?
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Back for another boring update! I figure they are boring because I am just repeating myself all the time. I'm still plugging away 20 minutes at a time for study, although I am doing other things like reading and watching some YouTube or Netflix or whatever. I did 4 language exchanges this week, all in Italian. Most of the French people seem to be busy. I'm doing a lot of the scriptorium stuff with Mandarin, however copying the book is taking me longer than I thought it would. For example today I did ONE sentence and it took the entire 20 minutes to do it. It was the longest sentence so far with 16 characters. Basically it is taking me a minute per character to look it up, check the stroke order then write it (possibly erase and redo). It has taken me 60 minutes to copy one half of one paragraph. So this 100 page book could take awhile to get done.
I have a 2 French language exchanges scheduled for this week, but that is it until January. I've told everyone I'm unavailable because of the holidays and I'm going to take a break. There would be too much noise and hustle and bustle in the house anyway to have a conversation.
Resources I used this week:
French - Anki Deck, Clozemaster, "French grammar in context"
Italian - Cresendo Textbook, Clozemaster, exercises from my tutor.
I did an hour with my French tutor yesterday and I've watched a couple of news programs in French also.
As dedicated readers of my log might know I like to do bookbinding as a small hobby. Last week I decided that I wanted a pocket sized version (15cm x 11cm) of The Enchiridion by Epictetus a stoic philosopher. It came out pretty well. I used an old t-shirt which someone gave me (and I wasn't ever going to wear) to make the red striped book cloth. Got a nice rounded edge effect from a recent papercutter purchase I made. I have already done a lot of scripts which will convert PDF, text, Epub documents into printable "signatures" for books, so it was a simple edit to get an A5 signature. I bought some A5 printer paper especially to try making small pocket sized books. I filled the back with 10 extra blank pages for notes. I think I might give this away as a gift because I know someone who might like it. I'm impressed with how it came out. It is a hardback book, BTW.
Epictetus_Book_resize.png
Tomorrow I'm going to try to complete one more portion of the Subs2SRS YouTue series I've been doing. I should get one hour of quiet in order to do it. I should have already done it, but the next set needs a Windows machine and my Virtual Machine guest has crashed so I'm going to have to do it on an actual Windows machine and then move everything over to the Linux machine for video editing. BTW, I'm trying to do demonstrations of language learning related software so if anyone has any suggestions for videos they might want to see let me know. Also Dave and I are still doing the Podcast although he is behind the powercurve for publishing the files. There should be another episode out shortly.
I can't remember if I put the links to the subs2srs videos, so they are below. I am never sure if anyone is interested in the YouTube stuff, so let me know if you want me to stop putting in the videos.
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Obviously it is only a few characters and I'm still having to look up stroke order and there is a lot of erasing going on. Which I why I'm doing this scriptorium thing in pencil. Some characters look better than others, but that is because I have been doing the "traceover" thing for some of them previously. I believe I'll still continue to use Smallwhites excel sheets and practice the writing. I almost always carry a pen and notepad, so if I fold up one of the printed excel sheets and slip it into my notebook I'll always have something around if I want to practice. 