Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

[David27]

Por fin terminé de leer "El Sueño del Celta" de Vargas Llosa. Lo empece en abril antes de viajar a Irlanda con la familia de mi esposa. Leí casi la mitad, pero después lo dejo por un rato a causa del trabajo y otras obligaciones. Esta semana tenía vacaciones relajantes y podía terminar el libro. Estoy un poco decepcionado porque estaba escrito el año que Vargas Llosa ganó el premio Nobel de literatura, y pensé que seria uno de sus mejores obras, pero en realidad no se puede compararlo con "La Ciudad y los Perros" que leí hace unos años. "El Sueño del Celta" es una crónica histórica de Roger Casement- un personaje complejo y interesante, pero en realidad los ensayos de Casement fueron escrito con realismo, sin moralización ni metáforas, solo descripciones que hicieron testimonio de los horrores del colonización y explotación que existían en el Congo y en las Amazonias donde Casement trabajaba por la embajada inglesa, y fueron la causa de un gran escandallo en los países occidentales que ponía fin a las empresas colonizadores de Leopoldo II en el Congo y Julio C Arana en las Amazonias de Peru. Pero creo que la historia de Casement seria mejor escrito como pura bibliografía, y no una obra de ficción histórica. Sería mejor examinar el efecto de los Black Diaries y su explotación sexual de jóvenes desfavorecidos (desde su posición de poder como embajador europeo con dinero) en los territorios donde defendía los pueblos desfavorecidos y sumergidos por los colonizadores desde un punto de vista objetivo en una bibliografía, sin tratar de recrear las emociones y pensamientos no documentados de Casement en esta obra de ficción histórica (que no aborda a esta contradicción en su carácter). Los próximos libros de Vargas Llosa que voy a leer son "La Casa Verde" y "La Fiesta del Chivo", pero hay un montón de otros libros en mi lista que quiero leer primero, entonces probablemente no voy a empezarlos por unos años.

[David27]

November was windy and cold here in New York, my walks outside got a lot less pleasant (and shortened), I ran out of downloaded material for Japanese and Mandarin to listen to, work got busy and a bit stressful for me (not overwhelming, but a constant light pressure between day to day work and other research/writing deadlines and responsibilities that added up over consecutive weeks)... and I let language learning slide for the first ~2 weeks... and I was unhappy with that. I wanted to continue making progress, to study languages, and needed to break the 'funk' I was in. Often the best way I find to do that is to fall back on old routines, and my routine of listening whenever walking somewhere is an easy way for me to dive back in and get motivated. I resubscribed to japanesepod101 and downloaded a bunch of lessons, and popupchinese lessons to kickstart again... and it worked! I'm happy with how I picked up. I started to do some Mandarin assimil lessons, going through my old Japanese colloquial series again (second pass through the book to cement knowledge in Colloquial Japanese third time through for Assimil Mandarin).

Then I had a vacation week over Thanksgiving, and decided to finish reading el sueño del celta by Vargas Llosa (I started in April before traveling to Ireland, put it aside for awhile after having read about 250 pages). I put a more detailed review about it above in Spanish, but briefly; I loved "La Ciudad y los Perros" which is "The Time of the Hero" in English, but was a bit disappointed in el sueño del celta. I think Casement's story would simply be better told in a biography, without trying to get into his head and read into his morals, thoughts, fears, etc in a historical fiction novel.

Spanish: 12 hours, 0 minutes
Japanese: 8 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 6 hours, 0 minutes
Russian: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Portuguese: 2 hours, 5 minutes
French: 1 hour, 20 minutes
German: 50 minutes
Italian: 45 minutes
Polish: 20 minutes
Dutch: 10 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 84 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 64 hours, 20 minutes
Spanish: 64 hours, 10 minutes
Russian: 59 hours, 25 minutes
French: 24 hours, 45 minutes
German: 21 hours, 55 minutes
Portuguese: 15 hours, 20 minutes
Italian: 8 hours, 35 minutes
Arabic: 8 hours, 10 minutes
Polish: 4 hours, 40 minutes
Dutch: 4 hours, 30 minutes

[David27]

December hours
Russian: 11 hour, 0 minutes
Japanese: 10 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin 8 hours, 25 minutes
Spanish: 4 hours, 50 minutes
French: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Italian: 2 hours, 25 minutes
Portuguese: 2 hours, 0 minutes
German: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Dutch: 30 minutes
Polish: 25 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 94 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 72 hours, 45 minutes
Russian: 70 hours, 25 minutes
Spanish: 69 hours, 0 minutes
French: 28 hours, 0 minutes
German: 22 hours, 15 minutes
Portuguese: 17 hours, 20 minutes
Italian: 11 hours, 0 minutes
Arabic: 8 hours, 10 minutes
Polish: 5 hours, 5 minutes
Dutch: 5 hours, 0 minutes

Total hours: 403 hours, 0 minutes

I'm going to keep this recap brief since I'm tired today. This is a big improvement over last year total of 324 hours, but still off from my best year since I started recording (566). Biggest changes are just that I increased my general use of languages, but my Japanese dropped to below goal (last year was at 118.5 hours). I attribute this to moving to New York, where I have more exposure to a variety of languages in general, and have more motivation to spend time on language maintenance, which overall is a positive change.

Goals for next year: Improve my free reading (only read one book in Spanish and a nonfiction book in English this year), I would like to read 6 books. Over 100 hours in Mandarin and Japanese. I want to finish re going through colloquial Japanese, and go through Genki books I and II. I also want to complete going through the intermediate japanesepod 101 lessons studying the audio AND pdf (which will help with my reading as well). On the side will do some LingQ. By the end of the year, I would like to feel confident to move onto graded readers and start watching TV and start collecting Japanese music.

For Mandarin I want to finish going through Assimil again, and get through at least a quarter of John DeFrancis' book.I also plan on doing plenty of LingQ. Less goals for Mandarin than Japanese, and for that reason I can see Mandarin potentially falling a bit short unless I revamp my goals.

Maintenance languages: Mainly want to continue to focus on Russian. I understand it very well, I have a good vocabulary and know the grammar rules well, can read novels (albeit my reading is quite slow and I want to work on this), and can communicate well.... but my communication is still full of errors when I actually produce it and it comes across as unnatural still. I spent yesterday evening at a NYE party with good Russian friends and we spent the whole evening speaking Russian without problem, but I hear the errors and my hesitation. I love the language and want to continue to improve and focus on Russian. The others I'm happy with my current maintenance except for Italian. I have really let Italian go, when it was once my third strongest language. I found a complete LOTR book series in Italian and bought it and am looking forward to reading it. I have a few other italian books on my shelf that I may get to... someday. radioitalia also put out a podcast series similar to serial and I listened to the first 3 episodes and plan on finishing that and finding other podcasts to maintain my italian.

Other: I really want to get to a comfortable B1 level in Mandarin and Japanese before moving on to other projects. Now I'm very tempted by Bangla (a large number of people I work with and meet in New York are Bengali), Arabic, and Farsi. I love the Arabic script, and I want to learn more about these cultures. But those are future projects... not for 2019.

[David27]

Instead of New Year, new me, it's new year, same me. Same goals, same plans, same slow progress. And to all those celebration:，新年快乐！I want to do something special on Tuesday for it, but probably will just end up eating Chinese food and study some Mandarin or something basic and not culturally relevant in any meaningful way. 再见 狗年，歡迎猪年！

For the last month, I didn't have a great start to the year, but it was decently balanced between multiple languages. I finished a short italian podcast called Veleno put out by Repubblica.it. It's inspired by Sarah Koenig's Serial podcast and has a similar format. It investigates a small town that was shocked by a series of accusations of sexual abuse of children by their own parents. Of course if the discussion of this material would be possibly disturbing to you, it's best to avoid.

Other than that I've been using a lot of the same materials for other languages. 

Attenzione per cui possono essere affettato emozialmente di racconti di abuse sessuale... se si, meglio evitare il podcast. Veleno è un podcast di 6 episodi (se ricordo bene) che indaga le accuse di un parecchi di bambini fra ~3-12 anni negli anni 90 che lavorano con un assistente sociale, e accusano i loro propri genitori di essere pedofili satanici, e le famiglie non vedono mai più i suoi ragazzi... ma tutti negano di fa parte di nessun gruppo satanico e che non hanno mai abusato di loro figli... e sembra che non c'e evidenza fissa contra di loro. Non era così ben fatto come il primo podcast di serial, ma per praticare l'italiano era utile.

January hours:
Japanese: 9 hours, 50 minutes (I can't believe I was too lazy to push to the even 10!)
Mandarin: 6 hour, 55 minutes
Rusian: 5 hours, 20 minutes
Spanish: 4 hours, 50 minutes
Italian: 2 hours, 50 minutes
French: 1 hour, 5 minutes
German: 40 minutes
Portuguese: 40 minutes
Polish: 10 minutes
Dutch: 5 minutes

[David27]

Work has been very busy lately, which has been hard on my separate language studies but I have used a lot of Spanish at the hospital, one encounter in Portuguese, and working with interpreters for patient visits in Mandarin, Bengali, Cantonese, and, polish! (Several actually in Mandarin and Bengali). Then a Russian speaking woman was admitted to the hospital and I was consulted. Her family was present and also spoke little English, so I spoke to them all for awhile in Russian, and after about 5 minutes of conversation and questioning, I ask one question that they were unsure of the answer and started discussing amongst themselves, and all of a sudden I go from virtually understanding everything to nothing. I ask what language they’re speaking, and it’s таджикский or Tajik. They switch back to Russian and we finish the conversation in Russian. I leave with a real strong desire to go home and study Persian.... I get home, and of course Langfocus released a great video on Persian (20 minutes so on the long side, but worth it). Luckily for me I don’t have time to even study the languages I’m currently learning to sufficiency, never mind hunt down courses for Persian/Farsi. But someday...

[Don9434]

Welcome to the Forum! You have a great list of languages, which largely coincides with my own.
It is very cool!

[David27]

For those who don't know about Langfocus, it's one of my favorite language youtube channels (up there with the Russian channel recently discovered энциклоп). Below is the link to the Persian video he posted about a week and a half ago, to get a flavor for what he's about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYLxjL27Q5w

[David27]

I had the weekend off, and did a good amount of relaxing and catching up on housework, haircut, errands etc. but also had a pretty productive weekend language wise. I read for about 3 hours metro 2033 (I’m a slow reader in Russian so that amounts to ~50 pages), I’ve been enjoying the book so far. I also studied a decent bit of Mandarin and Japanese, and watched “in this corner of the world” in Japanese with English subtitles. It’s actually the second time I’ve seen it. It’s a beautifully animated movie about a simple town girl from Hiroshima during WW2. I recommend it.

When I went to the grocery store the cashier and a coworker of hers spoke a language that I didn’t recognize. It lead with asalaam alaikum, wailakum assalam (or something close to that), but after that I didn’t understand any other words. I asked the language and where they were from, and she informed me they speak Mandinka. She was from Mali and he from Gabon. Fascinating to hear, as I’ve never heard that spoke before, and I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never even heard of it before!

Speaking of languages I don’t know, there was an event this weekend in NYC put on by an organization to promote endangered world languages that are spoken in NYC. I was planning on going... but then lost motivation right before the event (rainy, I had cleaning to do). While I’m interested in the languages intellectually, the organization’s mission (from what I gathered about them) is to preserve and record the languages. I personally don’t see how this helps truly preserve the languages. As people move to the USA, in order to function and interact, they learn English. Then their children learn English and use minimal to no amounts of the language and it seems to die out there. Having recordings may be useful for linguists and academics, but for a language to thrive and survive, it’s kind of like the saying for child-rearing: “it takes a village”. The language needs to maintain social and economic benefits for individuals to keep it thriving. Large languages have enough immigrants to form enclaves of communities where the language is still used and thrives with shops/businesses, social groups, and even after school language schools for children that all function in the native language (but even there, there seems to be a 1-2 generation lifespan in the US, then the ability to speak the language drops off). I don’t see how we can realistically help keep or support the endangered languages here in New York. To preserve them, I’m convinced the local communities need to thrive, have education and economic opportunities, libraries and media in their place of origin. I also don’t feel like me learning an endangered language personally is helping the language. For me to help, I would have to move to the community, live there, and plan to spend my life working with people that use the language and becoming an integral part of the community, with my children also learning it. Me just learning it even to a good B2 level would still make me just a language tourist... and not be helpful in a meaningful way.

[David27]

Very delayed entry. February wasn't my best month. I read a good bit for me in Russian. I was reading Metro 2033 (some of my thoughts in the book club forum) and hoping to read the whole book in one month, but I really underestimated the time it would take to read over 600 pages in Russian.... So I've continued into March, but I've slowed my pace significantly now that I'm no longer 'racing' (in a similar sense that the tortoise was racing the hare) to finish, and also started watching the Russian Netflix show Trotsky, which... unless you need practice with Russian I wouldn't recommend. I'm not sure if I'll finish it. It was entertaining enough for me to watch 4 or 5 episodes, but I've fizzled out. It's overly dramatized and "hollywoodized" in the worst way, excessive sex, explosions, and glamour during the communist bolshevik Russian in 1917 Russia. The portrayals of Lenin and Stalin are laughable, but I found the actor for Trotsky to be good.

For Japanese and Mandarin, something is starting to click. After years of toil and anguish (not really... but it has been a long time), I'm finally started to understand people when they speak here and there, and being able to give a sensible answer and short back and forth. I'm starting to be able to read simple things. Chinese characters are easier to memorize as I know the radicals and have enough familiarity for them to come a bit quicker. This is also helping with reading with Japanese, and my Japanese vocabulary I believe is passing my Mandarin. While I'm patting myself on the back now, I'm sure I'll hit a wall in the near future. If I had to rate my abilities now, I'd say they fall in A2 for both languages. Looking at the wikipedia definitions of A2 below, I feel comfortable saying I can do that and have been able to, but I don't feel like I'm able to use the language in a flexible enough manner and to be B1 (maybe in another year?? hopefully??).

A2:
Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).
Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters.
Can describe in simple terms aspects of their background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need.
In French I watched the final episodes of Au service de la France, now I'm ready to move on to another show, but haven't started one. I've heard some good things about Dix pourcent (call my agent), so maybe since I'm likely dropping Trotsky I can pick that up in the coming weeks. 

Russian: 11 hours, 0 minutes
Japanese 9 hours, 5 minutes
Mandarin: 5 hours, 0 minutes
Spanish: 4 hours, 35 minutes
French: 3 hours, 35 minutes
Portuguese: 55 minutes
German: 35 minutes
Italian 35 minutes
Polish: 10 minutes
Dutch: 5 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 18 hours, 55 minutes
Russian: 16 hours, 20 minutes
Mandarin: 11 hour, 55 minutes
Spanish: 9 hours, 25 minutes
French: 4 hours, 40 minutes
Italian: 3 hours, 25 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 35 minutes
German: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Polish: 20 minutes
Dutch: 10 minutes

[David27]

I've got a lot on my mind tonight, so I thought I'd unload it here. I've actually been thinking a lot about the difference between dabbling in numerous languages vs. mastering fewer languages since I started my second foreign language. I always have wanted to learn languages that I study to a practical level of fluency, being able to integrate the culture and language with my life. I didn't even consider learning second foreign language (in my case Spanish), until after I was already pretty good at French (had read some literature, had a French girlfriend, multiple French speaking friends). I had polyglot role models such as Luca Lampariello, Richard Simcott, Alexander Arguelles, and Steve Kauffman who appeared to have very high levels of proficiency in multiple languages, and they seemed to be united in recommending learning one language at a time. Luca Lampariello recently had a guest blog writer recommending against language dabbling: https://www.lucalampariello.com/dont-da ... languages/. I remember a great video by Anthony Lauder aka fluentczech on how to become a polyglot: learn one foreign language, then learn another one. I was ready to be a good disciple, and I more or less followed this model. I first started with Spanish, got to a ~B1-B2 level (regular conversations on Skype all in Spanish), then started Russian, which I really dove into more than I have ever done with any other language. Once I was at a ~B1 level, I started Italian (easier). Once my Russian and Italian were ~B2, I started German, and again when my German hit ~B1 I added Portuguese. I had a pattern that worked for me, and it was fun! I was younger with fewer commitments so I was able to travel and I got a scholarship to study in Moscow, I travelled on a shoestring budget to Italy and Germany. I made some Brazilian friends... Then I heard a call from the far east.... it beckoned me with mysterious writing systems, tones, a completely new foreign vocabulary set unrelated to any languages I've studied, along with a culture full of delicious cuisine that I already appreciated, and rich histories and philosophies that I could spend a lifetime studying. I was in medical school at this point living in New York City, and there is a massive Mandarin speaking community here, many of them with little to no English speaking ability. I watched youtube videos and blogs for tips on how to learn the writing system and tones, bought Assimil books, pimsleur courses, downloaded apps to help me learn radicals, and got after it, but being in medical school, I had far less time then I had previously when I studied Russian, and progress was a slow process. 2 years later, I could read basic things, make an introduction pretty well, and I had a basic understanding of the language... then my roommate wanted to learn Japanese, so naturally I offered my assistance. As I was helping him, we bought materials, went through the pimsleur courses, colloquial learn Japanese book, I read about the language and learned hiragana and katakana, and before you know it, I passed the point of no return, and I made it a regular on my study schedule, even though both Japanese and Mandarin were FSI level 5 difficulty languages, and my better judgement told me that my Mandarin was no where near good enough for me to be dividing my time like this.

In the following years, I visited used book stores on occasions, and started picking up a collection of resources on other languages, that I would study a bit on and off. I had picked up an old Assimil le polonais sans peine, a used Teach yourself Greek course prior to a trip for a friends wedding in Greece, used teach yourself Dutch and Czech book (they were only 5 dollars each!). I got an Arabic grammar book, a cheap Assimil Arabic and pimsleur course, I dabbled briefly in Esperanto. All of these languages I spent very little time on, just collected materials, spent a few hours on them for a couple months in a row, enough to learn some pleasantries and things about the languages, then shelved them for a later time.

In short, I became a language dabbler.

Oh the shame! I told myself, I need to refocus, I kept trying to double down on Mandarin and Japanese, but my attention span does not seem to last very long. Part of the problem being that I want to maintain my other languages which takes time as well, I have other hobbies, and I dot want to miss opportunities that are right under my nose (great book sales, acquaintances or friends who speak another language). When moving from Texas back to NYC, I got rid of a lot of books that I read before (mostly fiction or medical books) at a used book store, and I returned the Teach Yourself Greek book. I had read and studied the first 5 chapters, I could read, was able to say very basic tourist phrases in Greece when I visited Athens and Santorini for the wedding. I could say it was a waste, since I could have just learned a few phrases in a phrase book and done just as well, but I think having more study and more of a framework around these basic phrases helped me retain more, as I still can read the Greek alphabet and retained ~2/3 of what I learned. Which is pretty good considering I'm now 3 years out from that trip and haven't touched Greek since.

Now I'm back in NYC, and my language wanderlust is in overdrive, but this month, for the first time in my life, I've embraced my desire to be a dabbler, and I've had a lot of fun, and even had more motivation to study languages I already know well and work on Japanese and Chinese. It helped me have fun and just enjoy learning, which is really for me what it's all about at this point. It all started when I stumbled across the blog of Kevin Sun, a fellow New Yorker. I actually met him around 2014 at polyglot bar meet ups in New York before I moved away (although I doubt he would remember me). He is an accomplished polyglot, who speaks English and Mandarin natively, speaks Russian and Spanish well, and I remember his French, Portuguese, and German being passable (it was a long time ago, but I think those were the languages we spoke.. don't quote me on his levels as memory can be fickle). But the impressive thing to me is that he also had studied ~20 other languages to some extent and could turn around and converse with others in many of these, even if in some it was basic. He wasn't afraid of using whatever knowledge he had in any language! He just follows his passion, and picks up and drops languages depending on how opportunities come and where his interest takes him. Its spontaneous, and he has a lot of fun! Here is his blog's first post: https://medium.com/bahasantara/learning ... 4fdc52ff4e.

So with my newfound more relaxed view on limiting myself, I followed his link for Bengali in the post above, and started using online texts from the University of Chicago Southern Asia library, and have so far studied chapter 1 of a textbook and audio (a bit over 2 hours of study). I picked Bengali because every month I have at least 1-2 patients who speak Bengali and no English, and now I can welcome them and say a few basic phrases before calling the interpreter, and so far with the 1 Bengali woman I met since starting, she smiled and responded, and it seemed to help break the ice to make her feel comfortable (which is hard for anyone in a doctor office, never mind when you don't speak the doctors language!).

So that's what I've been up to.

On a separate note, I turned on Netflix and wanted to watch a Japanese movie tonight. I ended up on a really strange horror movie, which is really not my genre, called Tag. It was recommended on a website as "number one Japanese to watch on Netflix now". Ok, I'll turn it on, I thought, not knowing yet that it was a horror film. I couldn't get through more than 15 minutes, but the final straw wasn't due to blood or killing (although that was rough in the beginning too), but rather when the wind started blowing high school girls skirts up is when I gave up completely on the movie. Another highly recommended Japanese movie is "Battle Royale, which a few people and multiple websites have recommended. Just from the description I think it will be too gory for me. I need to be careful with Japanese media as they are famous for their horror movies, and I have 0 interest in exploring that!