I have been working on Korean and forcing myself to spend at least 30 minutes with the Teach Yourself Korean book. I don't like it. They have this made up romanisation of Korean, which they then try to say things like, You can add "yo" to "ka", or try to teach you some grammar rule about past tense. But they do everything in this made up romanisation, and it is driving me crazy. I actually sit there trying to mentally convert this stupidity into Hangul. It wouldn't be so bad if they put the actual Korean characters into parenthesis or something, rather than make me try to figure it out. So I'm finding it very frustrating. It is actually a pretty well-thought-out explanation of Korean grammar and usage, but why not just use the bloody Korean!
They do have some decent dialogues written in Hangul at the start of each chapter, so I spend a lot of time reading these out loud.
Meanwhile, I'm also reading a full on Korean grammar book, which does have everything in Hangul. I'm just trying to approach things using multiple resources.
I have pretty much given up on anki decks. This happens to me all the time, I use anki for a couple of months, then get burned out on it and stop for a couple of months, rinse, lather, repeat. I've switched over to listening to Pimsleur and DLI audio for a change. I'm also practicing numbers a lot. I think I have mentioned this site before, but there is a website which says the numbers, and you have to type in the correct numbers. It is called
LangPractice and they do many languages. I used to use it for French because French numbers have always been a nightmare for me! They do ranges of numbers like:
- 1-10
- 1-100
- 1-1000
- 1-10000
Or "Large Numbers" - 10k-1million
- 10k-10m
- 10k-100m
- 10ki-1B
I do wish they had pure Korean numbers to practice as well as the Sino-Korean numbers.
I had a conversation with my French friend today for the first time in a few of months, and it is tragic how much my French has deteriorated in that time. I kinda need to either use it or lose it. I've done ok with Italian, since I recently returned from Milan, and I have regular conversations in Italian (weekly). So I think I need to just plug in some more conversations in French. Or add this latest French book and some films into the cycle.
I have a lot of books on the go at the moment, and I'll probably complete 3-4 before the end of the year, so I will not read 100 books this year (since I only started end of September) but should have around 34-35 books read at the end of the year. Then I'm going to bin off all the books from this list I am not going to read, I'm going to throw away all the books I don't have any interest in and start the New Year with a new list. I think I will try to read 1-2 books in Korean, 1 book in Mandarin, and 10 French and 10 Italian books next year. Which would leave ~78 books in English for next year. Although, plans change and I might be back to doing a lot of commuting via car soon. So that would mean a flip over to audiobooks, which means a lot of classic literature from
Librivox. But if I can continue at a rate of ~30 books per quarter, then I'll be doing 120 books a year, and so easily hit my targets.
Working and commuting shouldn't cramp my reading style too much, since I mostly read at night. I don't watch TV, although K-Dramas and the World Cup have started to eat into reading time.
I have now taken to putting a timer on my phone to make sure I do 30 minutes of a maths book, 30 minutes of Korean, 30 minutes of Italian book, then I get to read something in English as a treat for myself. Although in reality, "The History of Western Philosophy", isn't really much of a treat.
I have started to try and get my rhythm going again regarding YT videos and perhaps starting the next season of the podcast. I got a bit burned out before, so it all lapsed. I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew, as anyone who reads this log, or knows me can attest to! But I'm happy that I'm going to complete 3 maths books in as many months, after having them languish on the shelves for 5-6 years.