Team Me: Foxing Around

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Learn Chinese with Teresa Teng!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNwJBg ... txQw4HlU8w

I sort of got inspired. I also went to a nice Chinese restaurant. There I received the following ancient Chinese wisdom:

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius. - 乔希·比林斯; possibly 蕭伯纳.

To make things more interesting, behind me was a Chinese couple and further away a couple of Russians. The Chinese lady was speaking in a beautiful, clear Mandarin. I could clearly hear the "ch" sounds, the hot potato r's etc. "Yao" = jao, kuku meni.

"The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided."
Sun Tzu

No worries there.

RU Stephen King novels are great. I'm learning low register/versatile vocabulary (Трахнуть), modern vocabulary (унитаз ) and higher-level stuff that should prove useful when listening to classic literature. The low register vocabulary should help with TV series. The idea is to go from pulp/TV>lesser classics>great classics.

ESP Don Quixote is easier in Russian, Italian and German. This is rather irritating to say the least. Normally I find Spanish easier than Russian.

POR I can follow audio books better than some TV shows.

FRA French likes me. I don't deserve it. I have put everything from Conan the Barbarian to Zola on my phone. I can do what I want to do with French. Maybe that's a "problem".

ITA The abused housewife. I'll never be rid of her. She does have some good attributes and pretty sisters to boot.

GER I am getting bored writing this. I read some news stories yesterday. This one's ready for bigger and better things.

Latin. I studied this language in high school and at university. Recently I tried Assimil Latin. Hardly worth mentioning.

Japanese. Another walled city. I am not sure the siege can be avoided here. However, since I can only afford a lone catapult for the task, I don't need to mention this again for a while. Is this pointless though? Yes and no. I can recognize vocabulary I learned 10 years ago. The uptake is poor and I will likely not accomplish much if I play with this language from time to time, but I will still make progress. Another upside, sorry, danger is that I may bore myself out of it.

Polish. I figured out "bo" through context a few days ago. It took me a while to make the connection with jer(bo). Is this my new language? Too early to tell. Hitting Polish hard for a couple of months would make sense. Every time I listen to Polish to sort of convince myself to drop it, I discover new vocabulary. Where there's a will there's a way.

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I am grinding my Polish glasses.The vocabulary is sticking.

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Stuck thoughts.

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RU

Švejk - several hours.
Cicero De Amicitia
Some TV

ESP

TV. Lum. Very relaxing and instructional. I rarely run into new words. It's all about word chunks. And fun.

FRA
Marcus Aurelius Pensées pour moi-même

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Polish: Music. I don't care to make a decision here.

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Dutch: HP and Tom Sawyer. One of the first things I heard was "waarom niet?" I looked up the spelling. Why not, indeed.

Polish. My total listening time is probably less than 5 good hours. I can follow the Little Prince. At times I feel like I'm chipping away at a block of ice and at times I feel like I'm eating soft serve ice cream.

I also watched some Peppa Pig in Polish, and Dutch and Ukrainian.

I've installed a not so smart multilingual keyboard. I will probably miss some spelling mishaps.

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Ukrainian - I wink, she winks back.
Polish - audiobooks
Jpn>Ru audio phrasebook for native Japanese speakers. You'll learn stuff like:
I am mortified.
Apply yourself better next time.
Let's go drink...

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[Ani]

It's amazing the cultural insights we get from phrasebooks. I have a WW2 Japanese phrase book that was used by the US Navy and it is always amusing to look through. "Don't try any tricks" is a favorite.

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Dutch random listening
Russian Геродот
Czech The Dark Tower I, Malý Princ - finished
Ukrainian random stuff
Polish shopping for my first audiobook
German Die Blechtrommel (1 hr)

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Finished my first Polish book: "Najciekawsze mity greckie" read by Jerzy Sztur. Looked up tarcza. It's a good first book. I will listen to it a couple of times.
Japanese: stuff.
Nihongo Yomu Yomu Bunko
Ru: stuff. The Iliad (excerpts).

[Teango]

Finished my first Polish book: "Najciekawsze mity greckie" read by Jerzy Sztur.

Looks like good fun!