A Words Enthusiast

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Axon
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Fri Aug 30, 2019 7:00 am

Das erste Mal, dass ich von Asien nach Amerika umgezogen bin, habe ich extrem Kulturschock erfahren. Jetzt ist es wirklich anders - dieses Mal es scheint mir gewöhnlich, meine Umgebung vollkommen zu ändern.
The first time that I moved to America from Asia (after living in Asia), I experienced extreme culture shock. Now it's very different -this time it feels normal to me to change my environment completely.

Well, I'm here in Monterey. I hear so many languages here! All I have to do to hear tons of European languages is to go down to the tourist district. I've been very busy looking for work, but here are a few things I've noticed:

It took me a couple of long conversations to get back into Mandarin comfort. My girlfriend has already made friends with many other Chinese exchange students, and most of them are actually from Dongbei so I get to learn to understand another regional accent. Since they're all studying to be interpreters, I feel upon meeting new Chinese students that I have to make a good impression with my Chinese. So far I've done a decent job, as they keep telling me I'm better than the American students in the Chinese program. Nice try - I've heard them and they're astonishingly good.

Here's a relatively rare find - a male YouTuber creating lots of content in Mandarin with a Mainland accent. I've mentioned Kevin in Shanghai before too. He's my main source of Mandarin shadowing content, because I've noticed when I shadow women I start speaking in a higher register unconsciously. Maybe that's different now, actually.

I'm pleased to note that my Spanish is coming back in a big way. I'm still very shy about speaking it, but I've done a lot of reading and self-talk and also took a couple of textbooks out of the library. I created a Spanish WhatsApp group and although it's not super active, it gets me writing Spanish pretty much every day. Turns out my friends are pretty good at writing Spanish, certainly more than they let on.

I got another German translation job online. Mechanical engineering product releases, exciting stuff.

The Monterey library doesn't have a language section to write home about, but in the nearby town of Seaside there's a surprisingly large Vietnamese section, including many dozens of bilingual children's books.

Once I can get into a work routine I'll get into a language routine, but at this point my studying is kind of sporadic.
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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:33 pm

Welcome back to PST! How are you planning to keep busy in Monterey?
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Axon
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:25 am

上了台湾老师带的中文课,我明白台湾口音. 长期住在中国西南部分了,我明白西南口音. 几次呆在中国西北方了,我大概明白西北口音. 跟读了中国南方Youtuber的视频,我明白南方口音. 东北口音呢? 幸好在蒙特雷学习的中国人大多数来自中国北方!

I took Chinese classes from a Taiwanese teacher, so I understand a Taiwanese accent. I lived for a long time in Southwest China, so I understand a southwestern accent. I went many times to the northwestern part of China, so I kind of understand a northwestern accent. I shadowed YouTubers from Southern China, so I understand a Southern accent. How about the northeast? Fortunately most of the Chinese people studying in Monterey have a northeastern accent!

That was my attempt, and here it is corrected by a native, with corrections in bold:

上了台湾老师带的中文课,我懂了台湾口音. 长期住在中国西南地区,我懂了西南口音. 几次呆在中国西北地区,我大概听得懂西北口音. 跟读中国南方Youtuber的视频,我懂了南方口音. 东北口音呢? 幸好在蒙特雷学习的中国人大多数来自中国北方!

Changes: 明白 -> (听得)懂, 部分 -> 地区, moving the perfective aspect marker 了 to the second part of the phrase, adding 后 to the YouTuber section (why? probably because "shadowing" is a shorter activity than the others I mentioned).

So that was Mandarin, which I still use most days socially. Still looking for work, waiting to hear back from a couple of places and still applying to new jobs often. Not a lot of time recently to do serious study, but I shadow Spanish and Mandarin in the car, read German aloud to stay fresh, and read articles in Indonesian. I'm focusing on those four languages right now because they're my most comfortable and I'm emphasizing my language ability in job applications. I had one interview with a woman who had been born in Bali, and I studied graphic design terminology in Indonesian to prepare, but languages never came up in the interview.

Lawyer&Mom wrote:Welcome back to PST! How are you planning to keep busy in Monterey?


Thank you! Writing, localization, and media production are my strong points and that's what I'm aiming at.
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IronMike
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby IronMike » Mon Sep 16, 2019 4:18 pm

What are you doing in Monterey? I was stationed there three times, and that still wasn't enough. ;)
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Axon
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Mon Oct 14, 2019 6:56 am

Im Moment lege ich immer mehr wert auf Deutsch, weil ich nächstes Jahr endlich eine Zertifikat erhalten.
At the moment I'm putting more and more effort into German because I want to finally get a certificate next year.


IronMike wrote:What are you doing in Monterey? I was stationed there three times, and that still wasn't enough. ;)


Neither writing, nor localization, nor media production, it turns out! I ended up getting a job at a very small local company, and though it's not hard to identify me based on other things I've posted, I'd prefer not to say what I do. Suffice it to say that I'm learning a lot of new things about Excel, and I'm also sometimes tasked with translating things into and out of Spanish.

I have my eye on the TestDaF, since I'm considering going back to school for a Master's in Computational Linguistics in Germany. I want to do it properly and take bachelor-level courses first, which are all in German and so require a TestDaF score of 4/4/4/4. Although I'm improving day by day, I have a lot to learn by February. If I end up making a great deal of progress and feeling very comfortable with the language at that point, I'll also sit the C2 exam in March. Let me be clear, I am in no way a C2 in German right now, and it's likely that I'm drastically overestimating my abilities in all four skill areas. And yet, I still feel that I'm able to understand rapid native speech on a variety of topics, plus I have a very solid background in grammar, plus I can express myself with ease about many things. We'll see how this develops. I know one Chinese guy here who lived in Germany and has a B2 certificate, and we enjoy hanging out with each other and speaking German and Mandarin.

Speaking of Mandarin, it goes away so fast if I don't speak it! Way faster than German. It also comes back faster though too, so if I stay active during a social gathering and power through difficult things, I feel back up near the top of my ability after a couple of hours. I still learn new words and usages every couple of days, and of course I hear it all the time. I'm more or less comfortable with all the northeast accents I hear around me, though one guy in particular seems to take a certain pleasure in speaking to me as quickly and quietly as he can. Today I learned a new word that's not coming to mind, but I also learned that you can use 感觉 to describe tastes or hints of flavor: 这个有蜂蜜的感觉 - this has a hint of honey, this kind of tastes like honey. Recently, too, the slang word 吃瓜 - to gossip.

It looks like the stars are never aligned for Spanish. I spend time at work studying the vocabulary and usage that I need for the translations, and then spend the rest of my time either learning academic German or socializing in Chinese. Maybe I'll speak fluent Spanish at some point!

I did listen to Lao again today, just for a few minutes to remember what it was like. It was nice. :)
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IronMike
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby IronMike » Mon Oct 14, 2019 12:36 pm

Axon wrote:
IronMike wrote:What are you doing in Monterey? I was stationed there three times, and that still wasn't enough. ;)


Neither writing, nor localization, nor media production, it turns out! I ended up getting a job at a very small local company, and though it's not hard to identify me based on other things I've posted, I'd prefer not to say what I do. Suffice it to say that I'm learning a lot of new things about Excel, and I'm also sometimes tasked with translating things into and out of Spanish.

Absolutely and totally understand! Enjoy Monterey. Love that place.
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You're not a C1 (or B1 or whatever) if you haven't tested.
CEFR --> ILR/DLPT equivalencies
My swimming life.
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Axon
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:13 am

Na, ich werde nun mein Log mal aktualisieren. Ich erinnere mich aber an die Zeit, in der ich in Indonesien war. Damals hatte ich das Gefühl, dass ich nichts Interessantes gemacht habe, obwohl ich immer noch Fortschritt gemacht habe.
Well, I suppose I'll update my log. But I'm remembering the time when I was in Indonesia. At that time I had the feeling that I wasn't doing anything interesting, even though I was still making progress.

Work takes a lot of time away from language study, even though I got to use work time to study a lot of Spanish for a presentation. Then no Spanish speakers showed up! So I just ended up taking notes in Spanish as my boss talked. I feel relatively comfortable with the specialized vocabulary (I'm in the insurance field) because it's mostly cognate with English. I predict that if I end up having to do a Spanish presentation at some point, I'll be nervous and halting at the start, make some grammatical mistakes, but still get my point across. And I think that's fine! I don't want to put pressure on myself to suddenly have to be a native-like Spanish speaker in a particular field.

As part of that preparation, I did some sight-translations into English of insurance-related documents. This was a great exercise because it forced me to make sure I knew the meaning of each word I was reading. As you read silently, or even aloud, it's easy to grasp the general meaning of a particular sentence. But trying to translate line-by-line into natural-sounding English made me realize that there were usually a couple of words per page that I didn't have a ready mental definition for.

Since the last update I've certainly spoken a decent amount of Mandarin, but not quite as much in the last few weeks. I notice now it takes me longer to warm up into listening or reading comprehension. I'm a little more on top of my schedule now, and I hope I can balance a quick 10-15 minutes of vocab study or something into most days to compensate for the perceived lack of ability.

This is because most of my very limited study time has been spent on German. My commutes to and from work usually have German YouTube rips playing over the car stereo. I've done several iTalki notebooks and usually gotten good feedback (sometimes they're just ignored), and also done a lot of recordings with Speechling. I like Speechling a lot, and if I'm going to take the TestDaF I need to get better at just speaking to a microphone. The only problem is that you're limited to 25 seconds for both recording and feedback, so my teacher sometimes skips smaller errors to focus on larger ones. I understand the limitation though. I actually provide that service in English, where students send me recordings to analyze, and I always kind of sigh when I see that I have a new one that's several minutes long.
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Axon
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:33 am

Sedikit berbahaya menulis dalam bahasa Indonesia. Saya tidak yakin sebabnya, tapi walaupun saya belajar bahasa Spanyol hampir setiap hari, hanya pikir beberapa menit dalam bahasa Indonesia mengorbankan kualitas bahasa Spanyolku - maksudnya, kata-kata Indonesia muncul di otakku waktu saya mau pikir dalam Spanyol. Sudah 18 bulan saya tidak di Indonesia!
It's a little dangerous to write in Indonesian. I'm not sure why, but even though I study Spanish almost every day, just thinking for a few minutes in Indonesian lowers the quality of my Spanish - in other words, Indonesian words appear in my head when I think in Spanish. It's been 18 months already that I haven't been in Indonesia!

There is not a big Indonesian community in California. I've looked. Thankfully, I found some! I had Thanksgiving dinner at the house of an Indonesian professor at the DLI, and a few weeks after that I overheard some folks speaking Indonesian at Macy's so I struck up a conversation. I was definitely less fluent than before, but it was so nice to hear very clearly spoken Indonesian and still understand most of it! I probably give Indonesian ten to fifteen minutes a week on average. Yesterday I actually watched some Easy Malay videos, and whatever comprehension I ever had of casually-spoken Malay is all gone. It's a totally different rhythm and I bet it would take some serious concentration to make sense of rapid-fire Malay in a conversation.

I was spot-on with my prediction of how my first Spanish presentation would go. Slow speech as I searched for words and I kept switching between usted and tu, but the message was communicated. We are in talks with a new client who will also require a Spanish presentation, and so I wrote out a whole script in English, translated it with DeepL, and went over it a bunch of times to tweak it for the terminology that we tend to use. No idea if that client will come on board, but I know I'll be much better prepared if it does happen.

I still do about an hour of German every day, sometimes binging much more. I have a TestDAF lesson on Sunday. I do well enough on the practice listening and reading tests and I've written several sample writing pieces on iTalki that got the usual amount of corrections. I'm just worried I'll freeze up talking into the microphone, which is why I'm going to try out some online teachers and see what they can do to reassure me.

I haven't spoken much Mandarin in a while, not since the Chinese master's students I know went back to China for winter break. I did order some food in Cantonese today but when I got the standard "you can speak Chinese?" kind of question, I didn't have an answer on the tip of my tongue and ended up just reverting to Mandarin. In the restaurant there was a family with young children all speaking in what I think was Shanghainese (guessing by process of elimination based on what it wasn't). Shanghainese is losing ground fast in Shanghai, so if my guess is right it's cool to see it being passed on around the world.

----

Back in 2018 I thought I'd do a one-year experiment to stop adding new languages, and by 2019 I was anxious to try out new ones. With the exception of a handful of Lao phrases and a groundwork in Tamil prosody, I pretty much stayed with the same ones I had before!

In 2019, I:
Continued to use Mandarin in some capacity virtually every day. Improved my literacy, my understanding of Southern Mandarin, my knowledge of earlier forms of Mandarin, and my general Chinese cultural knowledge.
Started seriously resurrecting my Spanish and learned a great deal of new vocabulary related to healthcare.
Made an earnest effort to improve my Russian and indeed had several conversations with a patient interlocutor.
Shifted into high gear with German for the first time since university and made a plan to sit the TestDaF in February of 2020.
Kept Indonesian mentally active through reading and music.
Used Vietnamese, Lao, and Cantonese to great effect while traveling around Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.
Dabbled in Japanese, Tamil, and Korean.
Came across the occasional word and phrase in French and Polish, making me glad that I have at least some knowledge of those languages if not any real ability.
Improved my singing voice, avoided getting worse at guitar, and learned to play simple tunes on the piano.

Who knows what 2020 might have in store?
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Expugnator
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Expugnator » Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:02 am

I have severe Indonesian-Papiamento interference as they share a similar syllable structure (though more open in Papiamento), both have the odd Portuguese and Dutch words and replace their c's with k's.
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Adrianslont
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Adrianslont » Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:24 am

In 2018 I got off a plane in Paris after a long flight - maybe 25 hours, and after getting through immigration etc, the first thing I wanted to do was get a SIM card for my phone.

I saw an information desk and approached it, thinking to myself, “I must speak French”. My request came out completely in Indonesian! The expression on the guys face was interesting - I don’t think he’d heard that before, at least not from a white guy. He did what he must do repeatedly every day and asked. “Do you speak English?”

It really is a long flight from Australia to Europe. I really should have rehearsed the wording, not just told myself to speak French.

Good luck not speaking Indonesian with your clients!
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