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

[DaveAgain]

Well, we are in December and I haven't done an update since October. A very telling sign I suppose.

Honestly I haven't done much work on any language other than chatting once a week in French. I don't know how much I'm improving by just talking for 30-60 minutes each week. Still that is all I've done. No clozemaster, no anki, no watching TV, nothing. I have watched a couple of YT videos in Mandarin, although that is really just watching and reading subtitles since I don't understand anything.

Did you do the NaNoWriMo.org writing challenge last month?

[rdearman]

I signed up for it. Then blew it off. Since I was in lockdown with the family there wasn't anyway to get away and write. But also I wasn't feeling it. The story I had planned was a little flat and uninteresting.

Also I have 3 books in mid-draft and I felt a bit guilty about starting yet another.

[rdearman]

And now for something totally different!

[[ not really ]]

I'm thinking about doing the Free and Legal Challenge again. (Although I don't know when it starts, or even if it is happening again)

I'm considering doing Korean as a FLC during 2021. The reason is I'm planning to go there at some point (south, not north) and people in my family are currently hooked on Korean dramas. So it would mean I could watch with them, trying to puzzle out the language, while they get star-eyed on the romance.

I don't really want to invest a lot of money into a language which I'm just messing around with and I think with a more mainstream language like Korean I would have more resources than Setswana. I've posted the question if the FLC is happening in 2021, but if not I think I might just have a go in Korean.

What do you think? Should I? Will it be too hard? Not enough resources? Easy?

[Xenops]

What do you think? Should I?

Yes!

Will it be too hard?

Probably.

Not enough resources?

More than Setswana.

Easy?

No, but why should that stop you?

[cjareck]

I fully agree with Xenops! I may only add that it wouldn't be fun to do simple things. It is called a challenge for a reason
Besides, I find FSI/DLI stuff very useful!

[MorkTheFiddle]

What do you think? Should I? Will it be too hard? Not enough resources? Easy?

Yes, it will be hard, but for you, not too hard.
I'm guessing there are lots of resources, but the question is, will there be enough free resources?
At any rate, this is a good challenge from iguanamon, and good luck with it.

[Carmody]

Rick,

A strange request for assistance, if I may.

I am interested in reading old texts in the Chinese language, such as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching

If I study Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese, will that assist me in my efforts?

I am not that interested in developing active Chinese language skills such as speaking or writing, but rather reading.

Thanks for your great work.

Carmody

[rdearman]

Rick,

A strange request for assistance, if I may.

I am interested in reading old texts in the Chinese language, such as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching

If I study Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese, will that assist me in my efforts?

I am not that interested in developing active Chinese language skills such as speaking or writing, but rather reading.

Thanks for your great work.

Carmody

I am far from an expert, but I believe you would need to study Old Chinese. But there are a number of things which I don't know, and you might need more research or someone else might have a better idea.

First thing is the hanzi characters. It probably isn't available in simplified Hanzi, so it is probably in traditional characters. However, even traditional characters changed over time, so older ancient writing might have a different character set. Regardless I think you will need to learn traditional characters.

The Pleco app will help a lot because you can use it to find characters and translation. And it lets you draw the character on the screen and it will find it for you with translation. The free version is fine, you get more function if you pay, but you probably could get away with the free version.

[Carmody]

Thanks so much for your answer; greatly appreciated.

[rdearman]

I'm too lazy to start a new log, so I've tacked on 21 to this one. I'm going to be doing updates on my double Korean challenges (365/FLC)

Did my first 30+ minutes today watching a YT video about Hangul characters. Seems easy enough, a lot easier than Chinese since it is an alphabet not a character system. So the amount of markings to be memorized is very short.

I'm also going to do a little messing about with Polish. I have hours and hours of audiobooks in Polish which were gifted to be by an old colleague. He and his wife travel a lot and drive back and forth to Poland on occasion. So they had a ton of audiobooks sat on a shelf which he gave to me. There is the obligatory Harry Potter (which I'll give a miss) but also he gave me the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings! So, I'll definitely try to use those for some LR.

I would like to stress that I'm only playing with these two languages and have no long term plans to speak them!