Postby peter » Sat Dec 16, 2017 11:40 pm
Progress
Today marks 12 weeks of this log, and I've managed (almost) daily language learning over the whole period.
Today I spent the evening in some intensive reading. I have a series of five school books for Bangla-speaking children learning how to read, which range from learning the script up to historical essays, stories and poems. I discovered today I can more-or-less read the stories and essays in the third book. I understand all the grammar being used, but still have to look up around a word a sentence, so around 10% of new vocabulary. The part I read today is an essay on fire and its discovery by 'ancient people living in caves'. The writing picks up on several of the grammar topics I had covered in the latter part of my book, so is excellent practise.
I found some videos on Youtube teaching children words for different situations: colours, vehicles, shapes etc. These are at least short, and not too bad to watch: I understand most of what the 'teacher' is saying.
Ongoing
I plan to continue with reading for now as a way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary I know and try to pick up some new words. I have these school books and the Tailor Bird book, which is first in line in my TY course book. These should keep me busy for a bit.
I'm not sure what to do with the new vocabulary. I am continuing to review the 1000 words I have in Anki, just because they are there. But many of these words are coming up in my reading, and at some point there won't be a need to review them. I'm not going to add the new words in to Anki for now, but rely on rereading the books and finding new material to look at.
I want to get back to some writing, some output to go with all the input. The school books I'm reading have "comprehension exercises" - questions at the end of the written material - which can be good prompts for writing out a summary and try out all the new vocabulary.
Ramble
I had been doing a few courses on Memrise - I even wrote one to master the language conjuncts. However Memrise changed their web interface - I hate changes - my Memrise account is now deleted! I did get a few useful things out of it, but it could become a 'thing' in itself. So far, I'm not missing it.
There is a surprisingly wide range of spellings permitted in Bengali, and some key words have a range of alternatives in my dictionary, sometimes marked as archaic or colloquial. So looking things up can mean moving back and forth (there seem to be differences in using -i- or -e- with the latter often preferred colloquially). Then again, I'm getting used to some of the building blocks of words, and what earlier looked like random endings such as -পক or -তিক seem to have some semantic sense, as I see them in similar kinds of words - e.g. economics and politics have the same ending, as do economical and political.
I've reached a point I recognise in my learning where things are 'dangerous'! I have reached my first destination, a natural stopping point of finishing all the grammar in my book, I've been doing this for 3 months, and there will be various home/work disturbances over the next few weeks. Often I come out of these periods with a new obsession ... I've long since learnt to forgive myself these constant changes of interest, it's all for fun really, but I'm hoping Bengali will become a lifetime skill. I've reached a point now where I can think about touching the literature of Bengal - Part III of my book gives a guided tour to several authors, so I just need to stick to the path. The coming months will tell.
3 x
"strange accents do not mar fair speech" - Beregond, Return of the King.