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

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

Postby Carmody » Mon Sep 19, 2022 12:52 pm

rdearman
I have asked my Korean LE partners to do 10 minutes with me only in Korean. Basically force myself to use what little I know. At the moment they ask me a question in Korean and I try to a) understand what they said b) make a simple reply. I would like to say this is going well, but honestly I don't know squat. Almost a year of learning, and I'm still useless. I should have picked an easier hobby, something a little more fun like... oh.. I don't know... Marathon des sables, or the Desert Ultra. Or just train for something cool.
It goes without saying that your frank and honest portrayal of your Korean journey is of immense help to some of us who try valiantly to carry on in the face of real adversity....

Thank you; you truly are very encouraging.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:17 pm

Carmody wrote:
rdearman
I have asked my Korean LE partners to do 10 minutes with me only in Korean. Basically force myself to use what little I know. At the moment they ask me a question in Korean and I try to a) understand what they said b) make a simple reply. I would like to say this is going well, but honestly I don't know squat. Almost a year of learning, and I'm still useless. I should have picked an easier hobby, something a little more fun like... oh.. I don't know... Marathon des sables, or the Desert Ultra. Or just train for something cool.
It goes without saying that your frank and honest portrayal of your Korean journey is of immense help to some of us who try valiantly to carry on in the face of real adversity....

Thank you; your truly are very encouraging.

We can't all be super-duper, polyglot wizards who learn the language in 15 minutes while in an airport layover. Some of us have to do things the hard way, and I suspect there are a lot more of us doing it the hard way. This is one of the reasons I spoke up in that whole Krashen thread, because people seem to honestly believe that if they just read enough children's books they are going to puzzle out grammar and learn native level vocabulary. Perhaps they are all smarter than me and can do that, but I ain't wired that way. So although I'm not as smart as most of the people here, or as diligent, or goal-driven, responsible, resourceful, competitive, patience, attentive, optimistic, or organised, I'll get there in the end just through dogged perseverance. :oops:

Oddly, in this case the fact I have learned other languages works against me. I know how hard it is and how long it takes, so I don't have the "ignorance is bliss" attitude of my younger days. I've also resigned myself to the fact that I'm probably never going to get to a level in any 2nd language where I'll feel as comfortable operating in as my native language.

It's funny you find all this encouraging, because I would have thought it would have the opposite effect.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby alaart » Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:19 pm

Yes, it can be motivating. For me, when I don't study and won't meet my goals I don't post in the log often, and I really have to force myself to log at least a bit. So it is a kind of a commitment, because you do it even when it is not going well.

I think people are prone to only talk about success: How they continuously learn or improve and less about how they don't, and this creates this bias that everybody else is better. It's like Facebook, and other social Media, but instead of polished pictures - we show polished bits of study.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby Carmody » Mon Sep 19, 2022 4:18 pm

rdearnan
We can't all be super-duper, polyglot wizards who learn the language in 15 minutes while in an airport layover. Some of us have to do things the hard way, and I suspect there are a lot more of us doing it the hard way. This is one of the reasons I spoke up in that whole Krashen thread, because people seem to honestly believe that if they just read enough children's books they are going to puzzle out grammar and learn native level vocabulary. Perhaps they are all smarter than me and can do that, but I ain't wired that way. So although I'm not as smart as most of the people here, or as diligent, or goal-driven, responsible, resourceful, competitive, patience, attentive, optimistic, or organised, I'll get there in the end just through dogged perseverance. :oops:

Oddly, in this case the fact I have learned other languages works against me. I know how hard it is and how long it takes, so I don't have the "ignorance is bliss" attitude of my younger days. I've also resigned myself to the fact that I'm probably never going to get to a level in any 2nd language where I'll feel as comfortable operating in as my native language.

It's funny you find all this encouraging, because I would have thought it would have the opposite effect.
I truly believe the sentiments you expressed should be carved on the archway over the entrance to this Forum. For one thing it would save a whole lot of people a whole lot of self-abuse. And in the process, they would be able to just get on with the language learning.

Also,

rdearman
It's funny you find all this encouraging, because I would have thought it would have the opposite effect.


I know I have suggested this before but one way of looking at it is that all learning takes a greater or lesser amount of struggle. The fact that you struggle more just means that you are struggling up your own particular mountain terrain before getting to where you want to be on the mountain. Some people never get where they want to go on that mountain but it doesn't mean the journey was not worthwhile.

Your commentaries of your Korean trip were brilliant and should be read as an encouragement for everyone planning to follow similar endeavors. Everyone wants pie in the sky results and for Most People that is not going to happen. Your honest commentaries encourage people on the other hand to relax and focus on the ground where your feet stand and appreciate the experience from that perspective instead.

Though we stand on the same balcony the view of the mountain top is different.


or so it seems to me.......
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Thu Sep 22, 2022 10:31 am

DONE!



I really don't know why everyone raves about this book. It is just meh.....

So onward and upward. The next book is: Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio



I'm told it is good, and was made into a film. So we'll see.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Sep 22, 2022 5:00 pm

rdearman wrote:DONE!
I really don't know why everyone raves about this book. It is just meh.....

Done and well done. Totally agree about The Little Prince, though in truth never finished it because too meh.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby rdearman » Thu Sep 29, 2022 2:52 pm

Mandarin
I have spoken to a couple of Chinese people in English for a couple of hours. I'm not really learning the language, I've basically parked it. I suppose I shouldn't really call these language exchanges, since I'm not actually using any Mandarin. We'll see how it goes next week. The nice Taiwanese grandmother I speak to is interesting, and I don't mind helping her out, but I really need to at least try if I'm going to burn up an hour.

Korean
Again, most of my time is spent here. I downloaded another anki deck for Korean, since the one I made for myself didn't seem to be sinking in. This deck, Korean Vocabulary by Evita, was suggested in someone's log, (I can't find the link to the log, but you know who you are! :D ). It is very useful, and I'm working through it as well. Although having used it for a few days I can see that my other anki deck was working, since most of the beginner words at the start of the Evita deck I knew and are buried deep in my other deck. Which goes to prove that with SRS systems you're not falling behind or stupid, the algorithm just isn't showing you all the stuff you know, because, well, you know it!

I continue to do a class per week, and it is useful, but I just don't know how to cram all this stuff into my tired old brain cells. I'm getting more vocabulary each week than I can remember, and so the pressure mounts. I'm seriously considering parking the lessons for a couple of months to cram the vocabulary, but I do know that I'm lazy and probably wouldn't, so it is better to do the lessons just to keep me motivated to attempt to remember words.

Reading is a long, hard slog, and I have not even managed to complete one full page.

One thing which has improved noticeably is my ability to type in Korean. It is becoming more and more rare for me to need to reference my Korean keyboard image when typing. For the most part, I can type without looking at the keys. Still some hesitation around the keys ( ㅖㅒ ㅔㅐ ), but otherwise I can mostly just type without looking.

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Italian
I've done a couple of Italian language exchanges now, with a lady who is studying for an English certification. She is very strict about doing Italian, and diligent in her corrections of me. But generally it is a fairly smooth conversation. She tries to get me out of the comfort zone by thinking up various scenarios and forcing me to play act out the scenario in Italian. I spoke with another partner for a couple of hours about the state of the Italian political scene in both English and Italian. These conversations are fairly effortless, although I do run into times when I've forgotten a word, or don't know it. I'm doing a trip to Milan soon, and I don't anticipate any problems.

I'm reading an Italian book, but I've honestly not been very diligent in my studies, and I'm only averaging a couple of pages per day. I'm not going to complete my little Italian book reading challenge at this rate. I've just got a little burned out on everything lately and not interested in putting in the effort.

French
Nice long conversation with my French friend. Her daughter signed up on a couple of sites to try and find a language exchange partner, but it was getting too creepy, so she is looking for women only. I couldn't actually help. I had a couple of other French people lined up, but they cancelled on me.

I have glanced at my 3-5 French grammar books, and I've been considering putting them on the "to read" list that I'm currently burning my way through, but I will probably leave that for a little while since I have 60+ books on the list already.

General Stuff
I'm trying to polish off as many books as I can in both Italian and English. English obviously being easier to do. I have managed to clear a small corner of one bookshelf, so progress is being made here.

I've set myself some tasks related to memorisation which I've logged on the memory forum, but some of those are mentally taxing, which might be why I've not got a lot of mental energy to spread around. I was trying to find a Korean poem to memorise, but most of the suggestions I had or things I found weren't really all that great.

On top of all this, I should have started another season of my podcast, but I need to either expand the range of topics on the podcast, or just pack it in. Don't know which. My YT channel hasn't had an update in ages. All of which just points to my general laziness, and I feel lethargic with a sort of "brain fog". It is a little strange because I'm not normally like this. I have been hearing about "brain fog" after people get Covid-19. It is more likely that I'm just getting old. :geek: My wife says that I have a habit of taking on more than I can chew, this might have something to do with it. But I don't think that is the case.

Right, I'm off to listen to a Korean podcast while mentally memorising the 20-times multiplication table and building a wind turbine charge controller. (Surely there is something I could do with my feet at the same time?)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby badger » Thu Sep 29, 2022 4:24 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
rdearman wrote:DONE!
I really don't know why everyone raves about this book. It is just meh.....

Done and well done. Totally agree about The Little Prince, though in truth never finished it because too meh.

same. I'm mystified why it's so popular. :shock:

I read one of his aviation books too - Courrier Sud - & that was pretty meh as well. :(
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Sep 29, 2022 4:54 pm

badger wrote:[I read one of his aviation books too - Courrier Sud - & that was pretty meh as well. :(

FWIW, I did enjoy Pilote de Guerre.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Sep 29, 2022 4:59 pm

rdearman wrote:Right, I'm off to listen to a Korean podcast while mentally memorising the 20-times multiplication table and building a wind turbine charge controller. (Surely there is something I could do with my feet at the same time?)

Do you memorize passwords with your methods? Surely you have scads of them like I do, and so I use a password manager.
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