A Words Enthusiast

[Axon]

Today I will write in more languages. I welcome corrections. I'm nervous about writing but, what, it's going to be the first time someone made a mistake on this forum? 没事.

Ich finge mit Indonesisch an. Ich habe ein Paar Freunden getroffen um ihren kleinen Sprachtisch teilzunehmen. Einer von denen ist Koreaner, und sein Freundin ist etnisch Koreanin (?) aber in Jakarta geboren. Sie bringen einer Familie Koreaner Indonesisch und Englisch bei. Mein Kollege, der mit mir Indonesisch studiert, hat mir eingeladen weil die Kinder keine Englisch Muttersprachler getroffen hatten. Die Kinder hatten eigentlich vorher lange in China gewohnt, das heisst sie könnten alle Chinesisch verstehen. Am Anfang waren sie echt nervös, aber nach kurzer Zeit konnten wir auf verschiedene Sprachen unterhalten.
Ich habe auch gefunden, dass nur 200 Minuten von Videos mit Untertiteln ein grosses Unterschied macht. Als ich mit den Videos begann, konnte ich etwa die Hälfte verstehen. Jetzt verlasse ich mich noch an die Untertitel, aber ich verstehe fast alles von dem Inhalt.

Ahora voy a escribir en español por la primera vez en muchos años. He continuado a traducir el alemán. No es difícil, solo me aburro. Mi jefe me escribe ayer a decir "ándale."
Me gusto mucho la colección de cuentos cortos de Italo Calvino. No supo que él es relativamente famoso cuando conseguí el libro. Me parece que la mayoridad de los cuentos tienen la tema sexualidad, pero eso no me molesta. El cuento que leí la semana pasada trató de un hombre que se relaja todos los días en la playa con un libro. La literatura ha consumido su vida. Un día el ve una mujer belleza, y la parte principal del cuento fue una batalla entre su deseo por la mujer y su deseo por acabar su libro.

我告诉你， 这个练习不容易。至少写西班牙语没有我希望的难写。那我现在写的是关于那个语言。其实最近我的西班牙学习不太多。就是阅读几张文章。我最喜欢看摄影的网上杂志。我好久没有拍照片。我的那个学西班牙语的朋友真的进步了。听他最近的录音让我开心！跟以前录的有个很大的区别。他分享一个小故事：在一家墨西哥餐厅那个信用卡器有问题，价格太高了。他让老板知道有问题，老板说他可以打包几个小吃，免费！故事的最好的部分就是：他没有说一句英文！(<- note: I received pre-correction on this last clause. It may be the only natural-sounding part of the paragraph.)

Waduh! Sudah lama sejak saya menulis dalam bahasa lain. Sekarang saya mau menulis dalam bahasa Indonesia tapi kata dari bahasa-bahasa lain sedang muncul di otak. Saya masih di Indonesia, berarti saya punya banyak kesempatan untuk latihan bahasa ini. Bagaimana dengan bahasa Cina?
Di posting kemarin, saya bilang bahwa saha harus semangat dengan latihan bahasa Mandarin. Saya berhasil memakai lebih banyak bahasa Cina, tetapi kebanyakkan adalah berbicara tentang hal yang sudah saya terbiasa. Waktu saya membaca buku aksara "HSK 5" saya merasa kalimat contohnya sangat mudah untuk paham. Artinya saya masih perlu mengaktifkan kosakata, tapi sudah menjadi passive vocabulary.

This was a lot of fun, even though it took about five times as long to write. Nothing notable happened with other languages; just continuous slow progress with French and Russian. I promise I'll write something in those two by May.

[Axon]

Not a whole lot to put here, even though mostly everything I do throughout the day has to do with languages in some way.

I said in January or so that I wanted to get fluent in Indonesian by around this time. It was pretty tongue-in-cheek but there was a kernel of truth there. I pulled off some pretty long and academic conversations in March, and there's not very much that I can't express using circumlocutions. I can puzzle my way through translated English novels and native newspapers. These days I'm working on understanding more academic language related to history. However, I rarely push myself to excel in Indonesian, preferring instead to make slower general progress.

I actually remember some Javanese sometimes! Focusing on only the colloquial register lets me internalize it more, and the few cashiers I've used it with don't mind. I've stalled out making progress with the alphabet while my classmates have zoomed ahead.

I end up speaking a healthy amount of Mandarin and in March I also found, in general, that better words were coming to me on the spot. I have a couple of fossilized vocabulary errors though, and probably more that I'm not aware of. Stuff like thinking 拜访 means "visit" in a general sense when it's only used for dignitaries etc.

Nothing to say really about Spanish and French, just still listening to radio and doing some reading. Russian has its own thing going on.

During this month I'd like to keep things balanced if possible between Spanish, French, and Russian. We'll see how it goes!

[Axon]

Quelque chose en français: Je suis d'accord avec Tristano, qui dit que n'est pas tres bien quand une novice écrit en une nouvelle langue. Je n'ai jamais écrit en français.

Когда я писаю, мой русский язык тоже плохо. Во последнее времене я только читаю.

Well that was hard, and I kept wanting to write in Indonesian.

Today I had a pretty intensive Javanese class, and my head was spinning afterward. Very little is automatic for me in Javanese but at least I have something of a passive vocabulary.

It feels like most of my energy is being spent on Russian, though when I think about it that's not really true. I'm still doing the same amount of radio listening at the gym in Spanish and French, as well as regularly reading fiction in German. Plus Indonesian classes and occasional leisure reading.

Still kind of keeping up with Glossika in Vietnamese and Mandarin. I think my next project is going to be a short sprint of focusing on Chinese reading. But I also have a Polish experiment in mind too - maybe for the two weeks after that.

[Glossy]

Когда я писаю

Когда я пишу.

мой русский язык тоже плохо.

Язык is masculine, so you'd use плох with it. Плоха would be feminine and плохо would be neuter. But this whole construction feels wrong. Instead I'd say "Я пишу по-русски плохо".

Во последнее

This should be "В последнее". Can't think of any rule of thumb for the в/во difference, though maybe there is one. Во дворе, во всём, but в доме, в оффисе, в последнее время.

[MamaPata]

I was always taught that it is во when the next word starts with two consonants.

[Axon]

I never thought language challenges would be so much fun. Especially considering most of my waking hours are spent thinking about, studying, or using different languages anyway. But just like when I made a log for the first time, trying out public challenges has a way of breathing new life into this hobby.

I've been speaking more conversational Indonesian lately. Indonesian, like many Asian languages, has formal and informal first person pronouns. I'm so used to using the formal one that even when chatting it's hard to use Aku instead of Saya. Our class watched a film recently (Kartini [2017]) that we'd actually tried watching first semester but gave up since nobody understood anything. Now, though, not only did I follow the story easily, but some of my classmates were actually moved to tears during the viewing!
It had an interesting way of using subtitles. It was set in Java in the late 19th century, before independence and unification. The characters effortlessly switched between Indonesian and Javanese, and the Javanese lines were all subtitled in Indonesian. But they'd subtitle the full line even if only one word in the sentence was Javanese! So about 75 percent of the dialogue had Indonesian subtitles, which definitely contributed to my comprehension.

I've been swimming more instead of going to the gym, which is good for my health but removes the possibility of listening to world radio at that time. I usually alternate days now. I listened to Spanish radio recently for a while and was pleased that my comprehension was around 100 percent when listening to a Mexican program on mosquito control.
The only vocabulary I was missing was household objects: "Keep the [something that can hold water] free of water, because mosquitoes like to gather in [a place where that thing can be found]." Context is everything. (I then switched to Indonesian, and after my brain took a few seconds to change gears I enjoyed similar comprehension for a police bulletin. "[crime that happens to a motorcycle] can happen to your motorcycle if you don't lock it when you go to the store.")

Semi-regular reading in German, little to nothing in French and Russian. No more German translation. Glossika almost daily in Mandarin and Vietnamese. Sporadic speaking in Mandarin.

More Glossika recently the last few days as I've entered the 6WC for Cantonese. Even more so than with Russian, I've got a solid base in Cantonese and I've had long enough for the foundation to really cement itself into my memory. What that means is that now I'm working on activating it with Glossika and Olle Kjellin chorusing, and those memories are so happy to be used again that Cantonese is always on the tip of my tongue. I find myself whispering "Have you seen it?" and "Not bad!" and "I don't like waiting for people" under my breath in the shower.

[Axon]

I forgot to mention that I've been watching a significant amount of the Mandarin Chinese drama 北京女子图鉴. Just Chinese subtitles, no English. A number of the characters are from Sichuan and so they speak Sichuanese to each other. Some of it is very clear to me because it's the same conversational language I'm used to hearing, but other parts go over my head even with the subtitles.

Also, my other "experiment" with Javanese has been going well. The experiment this time is to never study outside of my 90-minutes-a-week class. Even though there's tons of new vocabulary to learn, somehow in just 20 hours spread over this semester I've learned to understand a surprising amount. Production is still hard but easier than I expected. This is probably because the sentence structure at this basic level is virtually identical to Indonesian, so once I got the hang of the pronunciation I could just keep using my mental model of Indonesian to make sentences.

[Axon]

Today I realized that I've done more public speaking in Indonesian than probably all my other languages combined, besides English. I was part of a small event to train future Indonesian teachers and I had to pretend to not know a single word. Then afterward we presented about the experience. This last week there was a big cultural performance where I spoke little bits of several different languages and also played guitar in front of a huge audience. Because of the performance there wasn't any class time, but I still spoke Indonesian out and about and did some reading at home.

The lack of class time has meant more time for me to enjoy my Cantonese for the 6WC. Mostly I've been doing Glossika, intensive video watching, adding to my tone pairs list, and chorusing. I have the feeling that chorusing is working extremely well and by now I've probably done six or seven sessions. It's a very small number but it's amazing in terms of benefit per minute. That said...
Here's a short voice message I sent to a native speaker friend. He replied "Cantonese!" instead of responding to the question, which makes me wonder if he maybe didn't understand at all. These are some of the first sentences I've ever actually constructed instead of parroted. I can definitely hear my mistakes but I'm not sure if they're big enough to hinder comprehension.

I finished watching the Mandarin drama 北京女子图鉴, totaling something like 11 hours over 20 episodes. I prefer 欢乐颂.

No Javanese class but some Javanese speaking out and about. I met this guy randomly in a mall in Surabaya and surprised him with a few words in Javanese, then got a photo.

A little bit of reading in German, a little bit of listening in Spanish, and that's about that. I'm looking forward to more 6WCs in the future - although my numbers aren't the highest, I really like logging and publishing my study time to keep me focused!

[Kat]

I welcome corrections.

Since you are an advanced learner, I was pretty picky and I wrote my comments in German. Please let me know if you prefer a different approach.


Ich fiange mit Indonesisch an. Ich habe ein Paar Freunden ein paar Freunde/ein befreundetes Paar* getroffen, um an ihrenm kleinen Sprachtisch teilzunehmen. Einer von denenihnen ist Koreaner, und seine Freundin ist etnisch Koreanin** (?) stammt aus einer koreanischen Familie, ist aber in Jakarta geboren. Sie bringen einer koreanischen Familie Koreaner Indonesisch und Englisch bei. Mein Kollege, der mit mir Indonesisch studiert***, hat mir mich eingeladen, weil die Kinder keine Englische Muttersprachler noch nie einen englischen Muttersprachler getroffen hatten. Die Kinder haben eigentlich vorher lange in China gewohnt, das heisst, alle könnten Chinesisch verstehen. Am Anfang waren sie echt nervös, aber nach kurzer Zeit konnten wir uns auf verschiedenen Sprachen unterhalten.
Ich habe auch gefundenfestgestellt, dass nur schon 200 Minuten von Videos mit Untertiteln einen grossesn Unterschied machten. Als ich mit den Videos begann, konnte ich etwa die Hälfte verstehen. Jetzt verlasse ich mich noch an benutze ich die Untertitel noch zur Unterstützung, aber ich verstehe fast alles von dem Inhalt/fast den gesamten Inhalt.

* Die Groß- bzw. Kleinschreibung von „Paar“ hat Einfluss auf die Bedeutung.
> ein paar Freunde = einige Freunde
> ein befreundetes Paar = zwei Freunde von dir, die in einer Beziehung sind

** Die weibliche Form ist Koreanerin. „Ethische Koreanerin“ ist grammatikalisch richtig, klingt aber sehr ungewöhnlich. Man drückt das auf Deutsch normalerweise anders aus.

*** Studiert ihr die Sprache an einer Universität? Dann ist die Formulierung richtig. Wenn ihr eine Sprachschule oder einen Sprachkurs besucht, ist es besser, nicht „studieren“, sondern „lernen“ zu schreiben.

[Axon]

Danke Kat! Deine Kommentare sind echt hilfreich. Ja, wir studieren Indonesisch an einer Universität. Es gibt auch viele Leute aus Europa oder Australien, die hier Sprachschulen besuchen, also die Unterschied ist wichtig.

Ich habe noch zwei Fragen, nämlich:

"alle können Chinesisch verstehen." -> Ich wollte betonen, dass während des Sprachtisches spezifisch gab es keine Probleme bei Unterhaltung. Auf Englisch wird es "They lived in China before, so they could all understand Chinese (my Chinese particularly, while we were practicing)" sein. Klingt das noch ungewöhnlich auf Deutsch?

Und warum kein "eigentlich" in diesem Satz?

Thanks again!

Actually this really makes me want to kick my German into gear since I've been enjoying the fiction I've been reading. This forum doesn't yet have a great way to do text corrections for others, and I've heard Lang-8 isn't that active anymore. I'll look around.

A small amount of speaking, watching, and listening, some reading, and one single Glossika session is all I've got for Mandarin recently. Lots more for Cantonese as the 6WC is still going strong. Often the Cantonese videos are subtitled in Standard Chinese, so I tend to pronounce the characters in Mandarin in my head - kind of confusing to be honest. I prefer videos that are subtitled in Cantonese, and I've found a few but they're very rare. I hear you can find them on some DVDs still.

I haven't had as much class recently and I've been really enjoying Cantonese study, so honestly I think my Indonesian has backslid a bit. I can still use the language without problems expressing myself, but I know it's not as automatic as a few weeks ago. I've done a bit more nonfiction reading and today I wrote a short film review for class. My finals are tomorrow and the next day and I'm not worried in the least.

I read a single NHK article in Russian and a few sentences of something or other in French. A bit more in Spanish, since I found a copy of a book called Aqui y Ahora on my Kindle and have read a few pages. It's about as hard as reading German fiction was for me two years ago. Optimistically, that means I just have to read five or six books and a bunch of websites - but realistically that kind of improvement won't happen without more actual vocabulary and grammar study.

I still like the sprint feeling of the 6WC and at the moment I want to do a sprint with German input and output. Then I'm thinking my next 6WC might be either Vietnamese or Polish, because as much as I neglect these languages I am serious about keeping them in some rotation. Playing the long game here.

Of course, a big priority for me is going to be Chinese literacy. It's better now than it was a year ago just because I've kept Chinese close in my life. I'm visiting China for two weeks soon, then visiting the US for a little more than a month, then moving to China to be an English teacher. So Mandarin will replace Indonesian as my everyday language, and I'm really excited for that. Indonesian won't even be that far away since my girlfriend still has one more year of studying that language in China - she's just finishing her year abroad now.