A Words Enthusiast

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AndyMeg
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby AndyMeg » Thu May 16, 2019 9:30 pm

Thanks for sharing the video. It was very interesting.
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Axon
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Fri May 24, 2019 3:22 am

Ich verstehe warum Leute iTalki-Nachrichten oft nicht antworten. Warum aber ist es so, dass manche Leute entusiastisch antworten, und dann keine Nachrichten mehr senden?
I understand why people don't often respond to iTalki messages. But why is it the case that some people reply enthusiastically and *then* send no more messages?

Recently I have done three main language things.

First, I've spoken more Russian with my friend and slightly reduced my declension error rate through sheer force of will (and lots of shadowing). Reading Russian silently or aloud is easier than ever before. I did not run into the Vietnamese soccer players but instead found some Thais, but the weather has been so hot recently that not as many people are playing in general. Here, you just show up to the fields around six PM and start choosing teams whether or not anybody knows each other. Lots of Chinese players shout "Hai!" to get your attention during play.

Second, I've signed up for my first private lessons ever in Mandarin. It turns out the best language school in Kunming is minutes away from where I work, and I'd like to take the HSK6 sometime in August. So I dropped the astonishing amount of $45 on a two-hour private lesson scheduled for next week to help me with reading. We'll see how it goes. The school seems great, with big "No English" signs all around and tons of different textbooks.

Third, since I put my money where my mouth is, I found a language exchange partner from Taiwan who I immediately got along with. He's a smart guy and his English is about as good as my Chinese, so in the English and Chinese portions of the LE we can both challenge each other and speak freely about different things from language policy to education to city planning and religion. He, saintlike, also helped me through my reading of a long passage from an HSK exam book. I also TRIED to find partners for Spanish and German, and THOUGHT I had some leads, but then after a few messages on Skype it's just been radio silence. I guess that's just par for the course with iTalki.

Found a good Memrise course for HSK6. These words are mostly coming easily to me as I've either heard them before, seen them before, or know their constituent parts. Trying to cram about 500 new words before I have that lesson, and also trying to read more of the stuff on the HSK test. It's challenging because of the vocabulary, but HSK6 has been judged to be about the same level as B2, and I agree with that. The reading passages are mostly moralistic fables, and all you have to do for writing is summarize a 500-word passage into ~250 words.
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Sat Jun 15, 2019 5:04 am

Mengapa saya pikir saya bisa mengingat 100 kosakata setiap hari? Saya sudah belajar bahasa-bahasa lebih dari tujuh tahun...
Why did I think I could study 100 vocabulary words every day? I've been studying languages for more than seven years...

Okay well even though I only crammed about 100 words in total before my sample lesson, it didn't make a whole lot of difference because my Chinese reading is way below HSK 6 anyway. I have a feeling, though, that my vocabulary can be brought up to speed without a ton of trouble, just regular review. I really need to just do more reading, and to that end I bought a book of sample tests. The teacher tried to gently dissuade me from trying it, but I feel I'm improving rapidly and I think I might be able to get a passing grade before September. I won't sign up for it until I can regularly get good scores on the grammar section.

I took a quick long-weekend trip to Hainan province, where the beaches are nice and the weather is sultry. A couple of observations:

- my taxi driver mentioned that he had been to the provinces of Myanmar where Han Chinese are an ethnic minority. He said he could simply speak his own Yunnan dialect and communicate perfectly with everyone - which makes sense geographically but was still a little surprising.

- large group of men and women aged 30-50 in the Kunming airport speaking Dai with each other, with several of the men sporting large tattoos in traditional Dai script. I thought they might have been from Myanmar (the Dai script resembles the Myanmar script to my untrained eye) but when I asked where they were from they answered in flawless Mandarin. Even though there are lots of people fluent in minority languages, I actually don't hear these languages much out and about. Sometimes my coworkers call home and speak Yi, and there's a Bai restaurant not too far away where they speak Bai, but in the vast majority of places you just hear Standard or Southwest Mandarin.

- Some parts of Hainan cater very extensively to Russian tourists. Lots of Russian families walking around, lots of Russian signage, and in some restaurants people just directly order in Russian and expect to be understood (they often are). Spoke with one waitress who said she had studied Russian in high school in some northern province. Hopefully Russian speaking service staff get paid more - it's frightfully difficult for Chinese speakers to learn.

- I halfheartedly looked for Hainan dialect resources before I arrived, but forgot that searching in Chinese would be better than English. So I ended up just studying a few phrases, and the only one I actually used was [tia55 tia55] - "thank you." Rather divergent from the mishmash of other Southern Min languages I've picked up. Although the cities have lots of immigrants from all over, I still heard at least some Hainan dialect every day.

------

Just yesterday I went to the South and Southeast Asia Trade Fair here in Kunming. Pretended I was Moses McCormick and spoke French, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, and Hokkien to different vendors over the course of a few hours. I chickened out of speaking Tamil, seeing as everyone present from Sri Lanka was a wealthy gem trader and probably too busy to listen to miserable Tamil from someone who had no intention of buying gems.

If you're a language student you can make some quick cash by interpreting for the foreign vendors, about $20-30 per day. But that's only if they can't speak Mandarin! Thais in particular are broadly assumed to have at least some knowledge of Mandarin, and I saw lots of older people from India and Pakistan closing deals in wonderful Mandarin.
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Expugnator » Sat Jun 15, 2019 9:28 pm

Axon, reading your log usually throws cold water in my multilingual pretentions, but this last one was even worse! Switching through so many Asian languages, access to speakers of all of them at the same place... And I'm still waiting for the day I could use some Mandarin at a stone trade Fair that happens yearly in a city 800 km away. Really, I'm a desktop language learner and that multilingual life seems far away.

I'm always inspired by how you get to use your languages. I can't wait to reach an A2 in Indonesian so I can enjoy speaking the language as well. With Asian languages I'm more interested in active skills than with IE languages.
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Sun Jun 16, 2019 12:23 am

I appreciate the kind words! And yet I often feel that I'm just pretending sometimes, or that I'm really not learning much at all. It was a big leap out of my comfort zone to actively seek out opportunities to use these languages I'm not as familiar with, and I also found (as is only natural) that people were much more interested in my pocketbook than my conversation skills.

Let me throw a little cold water on myself:

French - I asked simple questions about some necklaces at two different booths from West Africa. My questions were understood but the replies came in English.

Cantonese - I couldn't remember how to say "America" at first even though I understood the speaker pretty well.

Hokkien - Bought Penang noodles in Mandarin, then as I was leaving asked "Li si Pi-nang lang?" (Are you from Penang?) The answer was immediate and natural: "Wa m si Pi-nang lang, wa si i-poh lang." (I'm not from Penang, I'm from Ipoh.) I felt a huge rush of success at this point, but alas that was the end of my Hokkien and the conversation had nowhere to go but "kamsia" (Thank you).

Vietnamese - Mispronounced the word for "soap" but it didn't matter because it turned out those employees didn't speak Vietnamese. Later, ran into a guy I recognized from soccer, understood what he said, but failed to speak coherently in response. I managed a couple of simple sentences about what he was selling but nothing that can count as "real Vietnamese." Actually out of all the languages on my profile my listening is probably worst with Vietnamese. The Chinese people working at that booth spoke excellent Vietnamese and the Vietnamese people spoke amazing Mandarin. :oops:

Still, the trade fair was interesting in its own right and I had a great time speaking as much as I did. Two sides of the same coin, I suppose.

I read your log regularly but can't recall at the moment, do you have much opportunity to use Asian languages in your environment?
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Expugnator » Sun Jun 16, 2019 2:08 am

No, I don't have much opportunity to use foreign languages at all. I can find Chinese speakers if I try hard but the environment is not the best, popular commerce and the likes. I've never met anyone from Southeast Asia around here.
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Tue Jul 02, 2019 3:52 pm

No hay mucho que puedo decir aquí. Pienso que todos mis posts tienen que compartir algún inteligente o interesante, pero la verdad es que... no.
There's not a lot I can say here. I think that all my posts have to share something intelligent or interesting, but the truth is... no (they don't).

I'm going to Vietnam and probably Laos in two weeks, and so I'm pivoting slightly to Vietnamese and Lao. For some reason Lao is coming to me extremely easily. I think my extremely lazy strategy of "download amateur parallel sentence videos from YouTube and listen to them a zillion times" is a killer for languages that are similar to languages I know. It hasn't worked particularly well with Tamil because Tamil's structure is so different from what I'm used to, but Lao fits very neatly in my framework of Southeast Asian languages. After a week I knew how to make simple tourist and self-introduction sentences, and I'm moving on to learning what I can of the script. I'd like to have the ability to decipher signs if necessary, and after that I'll focus on gaining vocabulary and practicing pronunciation. I'm only planning to go to Laos for a couple of days, but why waste the opportunity to learn a new language?

Vietnamese slips in and out of my grasp. I know I'm better at it now than last time (2016) I was in Vietnam, and I "functioned as a tourist" then. And yet native content is utterly incomprehensible, even with VN subs, because my knowledge is so limited. I'm hoping I can push my vocabulary a little more in these two weeks and make myself understood when I need to be in Vietnam.

Thanks to shifting work schedules and this surprise vacation I'm abandoning all hope of sitting the HSK 6 in China. I will not be renewing my teaching contract, instead, I'll be heading to Monterey, California in the fall, where my girlfriend will be studying at Middlebury and I will be breaking into the DLI to get at their new courses. Just kidding! I'll miss China, but I'm looking forward to living in my home country again and starting a new chapter.
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Thu Jul 18, 2019 7:22 am

山有木兮... 吻我!
现在每一个电梯都有一个小屏幕, 一直都有广告. 广告屏幕刚安装的时候,我什么都不懂.后来,我几乎都明白卖什么产品,服务等. 这就是一个住在中国的好处 ----- 虽然你很累,什么都不想学,广告还在!

"The mountains have trees..." "Kiss me!" (this is a rough translation of a great Chinese commercial that requires too much explanation to make sense in English)
Every elevator now has a small screen that always plays advertisements. When these ad screens were new, I didn't understand anything. Afterwards, I can just about understand everything, such as what products or services are being sold. This is one of the advantages of living in China - even if you're tired and don't want to study, the ads are still there!


I keep starting log entry drafts and then abandoning them. A "quick" update:

I finished my teaching contract and ended with what's considered one of the hardest things to do in a foreign language: a group dinner in a crowded restaurant. And I had a great time. Yes, there were things I had to ask for repetition on, and I was even corrected directly (somehow I got it into my head that you can say *我经常不... but the correct word order is 我不经常...) but I could follow the topic changes, respond quickly, and make people laugh. My Mandarin progress throughout this year in China has been slow and steady, including a series of "I think reading is getting easier" moments that are pretty funny to see in retrospect.

Then I went to Laos. For six hours, to change planes. As I've hinted, there aren't many good Lao resources out there.

YouTube course: "Hey guys, today we're gonna learn about Lao. It has five tones..."
me: okay
YouTube course: "Sorry guys, in my last video I said Lao has five tones, but it actually has six..."
me: chillin
University course: "Lao has six tones."
me: finally an answer
Chinese course: "The eight tones of Lao are as follows..."
me: :shock:

Anyway, in the airport I still managed to have some brief yet memorable interactions in Lao, including being misled by Google Translate's transliteration of ນ້ໍາ (water) as "noa" instead of [nam53] and being met with confusion. After that I studied Lao for an hour (there is nothing to do in the Luang Prabang airport but change money and study Lao), returned to the restaurant and successfully ordered a salad and noodles in Lao. On the plane to Hanoi I chatted with a guy my age who wants to move to France, and I amused him by fumbling through reading the safety warnings aloud. He said that Lao people would be happy to meet a foreigner who could speak Thai or Lao, which surprised me because I expected it to be a bit of a Catalan situation, where Laotians might resent people who used the language of their neighbor. Not at all, apparently.

Now I'm in Vietnam, and my Vietnamese definitely clears the bar I set during my last trip three years ago. This is good, because my hotel is in an area with almost zero English signage, way less than even in China. Unfortunately, having spoken no Vietnamese in three years, I still find it quite hard to produce the language I need for tourist purposes even if I can understand more than I thought I would be able to. I remember from last time I was picking things up quickly, and I think that'll be the case here as I remember forgotten words and learn new ones from context.

It's been 18 months since the time I started being quite comfortable in Indonesian, and I'd gotten used to being in a foreign country and yet using the language with confidence. Even in Hong Kong, using Cantonese was more of a personal challenge since I knew I could probably fall back on English or Mandarin if needed. Now I'm in a place that strongly resembles Indonesia, but I'm occasionally having to resort to gestures and translation apps. On the one hand, this is a fun challenge that I had missed. On the other, well, I can sympathize more when people say they don't want to travel to a place where they don't know the language.

One quick example of what I mean by comfort in using a language. Minutes ago I was at a cafe, enjoying my food. The waitress came up and asked me something, and after a second my brain realized "hey, you know these words!" and parsed it as "Are you hot? I can turn up the AC." The heat wasn't too bad actually, but I didn't quite know how to say it. In Indonesia I would have said "Oh, terima kasih, tidak apa-apa. Tidak terlalu panas." In China, "没事, 谢谢, 我不热." Now, I'm not saying that these are totally idiomatic and native-like; they're probably not. But they're fast, polite, and easy answers. So I settled for "It's nothing," and then a moment later stumbled through saying "Not hot." I just don't have either the speed or the situational knowledge to be able to produce the fast, polite, and easy answers I want to.

Is this entry too negative? I hope not. I'm diving into this challenge!
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:46 am

Ich werde versuchen, diesen Eintrag kurz zu schreiben. Ich mache ab jetzt kein Versprechen.
I will try to make this entry short. At this point I make no promises.

In Hanoi I met up with my travel partner and we went to a beach town called Sầm Sơn, which was extremely hot (Accuweather had the "effective temperature" at 47 C/115 F). One advantage for me was that there were virtually no foreigners there, even though it's not a long way from Hanoi. I suppose foreigners looking for beaches usually head up to Hai Phong. This meant that I had to speak Vietnamese if I wanted to accomplish anything. In other words, an ideal vacation spot for LLORG members.

I continued to improve slowly during two days there and one in Thanh Hóa, quickly surpassing my previous level of tourist fluency. I still don't have a lot of vocabulary, but I know a lot more sentence patterns as well as more connectors. I could also rattle off phrases lifted wholesale from Elementary Vietnamese or Glossika. I also spoke Mandarin at a bus station to confirm the correct time of the bus to Laos.

Studying at home, Lao never seemed like a high priority. That changed once in Laos, and I wish I had followed through with my ideas to adapt the audio resources I had into audiolingual mp3s for drilling. At this point I can handle Tarzan-like language in shops, but there's a whole lot I don't know. What surprised me, though it shouldn't have, is how useful Vietnamese remains. I'm in a town called Sam Nuea (ຊຳເໜືອ), which gets two buses a day from Vietnam and also has a small Vietnamese immigrant population. If it turns out a bus driver speaks Vietnamese, I suddenly feel relaxed and confident in communication - how different from the frequent struggles I felt in Vietnam!

To close out this entry, I was walking today on a very deserted rural path, passing through villages of around 50 people that don't appear on Google Maps. I stopped a passing monk and asked which was the road back to Sam Nuea, and he said something I didn't follow. Sounded like "pe-skam." Could have meant anything. I shook my head and asked again. He said the same thing and this time mimed walking.

It clicked: he was speaking Russian.

"Пешком?" "On foot?" Yes, I replied incredulously, on foot. He dragged his Russian up from near-forgotten depths and we managed to have a brief conversation amid the jungles and rice paddies. He was shy about speaking it and embarrassed about not knowing English, but for the first time I got a sense of what it feels like to meet someone with your language in an unexpected place. English is a lost cause, taken for granted all over; even in rural Laos many people can tell you prices in English if nothing else. But when he said a single word of Russian, my heart soared.
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Re: A Words Enthusiast

Postby Axon » Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:32 pm

Semuanya tahu bahwa orang yang tidak menggunakan bahasa asing akan mengalami pengurangan tingkat.
Everyone knows that people who don't use their foreign languages will experience a decrease in level.

Ever since I left Hong Kong, almost a year ago, I have wanted to come back. So here I am, and it is as if a thirst has been slaked. I'm not disappointed, but no longer ravenous for these streets. Instead I'm simply glad I'm here.

Somehow my above statement in Indonesian is true for everything I speak except Cantonese. Pretty much the only thing I've done in Cantonese this last year is listen to a lot of Cantonese pop music and learn to sing a few songs. So maybe this is the longest bow-wave effect ever, because I can understand and speak it noticeably better with no effort. I'd like that effect with my other languages please!

Aside from my travel partner from the Laos portion of the trip, we've also picked up a friend of his who is a heritage speaker of Mandarin. Nothing to report here except that I used the word 味道 (flavor) to ask about face masks, and learned that the real word is 香料 (scent). In contrast to my Cantonese, I notice no improvement in my ability to read traditional characters, simply that I know more words and can make better guesses.

I finally, finally got to "use" Tamil. Hong Kong seems to be a great place to practice any language. The language of the owners at the first restaurant I went to was unmistakably Tamil, and so upon leaving I hit him with nandri (thank you). This very busy man stopped what he was doing, turned around in delight, and shook my hand because of a single word. (Hilariously, my friend was right next to me and was totally snubbed for a handshake of his own. I told him to learn more languages.)

I went to an Indonesian restaurant and spoke Indonesian there. Noticeably rustier than the last occasion I used Indonesian, back in January or February. Still not too bad yet but I would like to get more speaking opportunities. It being Sunday, the restaurant was absolutely packed and it was a good feeling to hear the language all around me.

The final report is that I was nodding off on the subway and heard Spanish spoken in a very familiar accent. I offered my seat and asked where they were from in Spanish, and it was of course Mexico as I had surmised. Actually, in Laos I had shared a minibus with four girls from Spain, but they were speaking something not quite Castillian and wrapped up in their own conversation so I never got to ask. That encounter made met think of nooj and that he would have been able to instantly identify and respond in that language. I, in contrast, realized with horror as I was speaking on the subway in Hong Kong that I was terrible at Spanish. Obviously, reading my book aloud is not the same as having a real conversation, and I have resolved to do more Spanish speaking in the future as well.
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