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

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David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Mon May 20, 2019 9:37 am

nooj wrote:Have a wonderful holiday!


Thank you! When I met the woman who spoke Berber I thought, ‘Nooj would be able to actually talk to her in her native language.’ Which I’m sure she would have appreciated.

Also please excuse any errors. I posted from my cell phone, when having trouble sleeping at 4-5 am due to jet lag :shock: (me trying to sleep in the middle of the night)
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David27
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Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Tue May 21, 2019 1:54 pm

For our second full day we got a late start, had a light breakfast and some coffee (which I was hoping the coffee in Spain would be great, but I’d say it’s juat ok) and amazing churros, which I over indulged on, and then we went down to the Alcazar for our booked entry time. I got an audio guide in Spanish, and absolutely loved the visit.

The Alcazar is a palace built over the grounds of the former Muslim governing seat and fortress. King Peter of Spain in the 14th century built the Alcazar in an Islamic style, recreating the riches and beauty of the Alhambra in Grenada to his royal home in Sevilla, where he moved with his mistress, leaving his wife and kids behind. Since then it has been a royal palace and residence. A lot of the stories and additions by future monarchs... which eventually becomes a who’s who of Spanish royalty, which doesn’t interest me too much. I enjoyed the tour, and the architecture made me wish I had budgeted some time to see Cordoba, the old Islamic capital of Al-Andaluz. But I still have Grenada ahead on my itinerary.

Today I went to Cádiz for 1 day, which is more relaxing, walking on a path overlooking the Atlantic, enjoying Paella. It’s definitely has some old charm left, but it’s feel is mostly a southern sea tourist and retirement town. I’m relaxing here now at the hotel, doing some reading while my wife takes a siesta, and hopefully later find a good spot to do some more sherry tasting (I had a fino style Tio Pepe earlier which I didn’t care for, but I’m not going to call it quits just yet on sherry).

As far as Spanish goes, being in Andalusia is very interesting for me as a learner, who lives in New York. Some of the habits of people here were definitely carried to the Caribbean, as swallowing consonants like d, dropping s and z at random are popular in both places. However, there is something more than just this that differentiates Andalusian Spanish, because I don’t struggle with most domicans or Puerto Rican’s (I did for a long time), certain people here with thicker accents I just can’t understand very well. It doesn’t help that here if I ask for repetician once people often will just switch to English, which is frustrating as I want to analyze the language and see why I missed it.

Things I noticed:
Do instead of dos, adio instead of adios etc
Ate lue’o instead of hasta luego
Pa’ga’o for pagado

Then I went to a bookstore and found a book on Andalucian Spanish called: el idioma Andaluz. I flipped through it briefly, and it argues that Andaluz is a separate language from Castilian similar to Gallego, Portuguese, or Catalan, that evolved from Vulgar Latin, but due to Spanish rule and Andalucias important historic role in Spain, the language was more and more replaced with Spanish, with trace elements of the language still alive in the accent and in words and expressions. At least that was my take away from trying to quickly leaf through it, don’t quote me as I haven’t read it. I wanted to buy it, but I have so many projects at work, plus other things I want to read this would be shelved for decades probably. I took a picture of the cover but am having trouble uploading, as the website is saying the file is too large to upload.
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Sparverius
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Location: California, US
Languages: English (N), German (B2-), Mandarin (B1), Spanish (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10525
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Re: My language log

Postby Sparverius » Tue May 21, 2019 3:06 pm

That sounds like a super fascinating trip so far. It's also crazy to think about how the experience would be if you didn't speak the language-- even if you could communicate and get around well, you'd never notice things like subtleties of accent or culture in nearly the same way. Enjoy the traveling!
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David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Mon Jun 17, 2019 1:39 am

The rest of the trip was a lot of fun. In the afternoon (from where I last left off), we got bicycles and rode around the outskirts of old Cadiz (often pronounced Cádi with the z dropped in Cadiz). We then took our bikes about 3-4 miles down the coastal bike lane, and stopped at a beach side restaurant for a snack. We seemed to hit upon a German area, as the majority of the clientele were German, but there were several Spaniards there as well. I sat there and watched some organized beach soccer (teams and official jerseys and all, I’ve only seen pick-up beach soccer before, never as an organized sport).

That evening, walking around we happened upon an old sherry bar, with giant old barrels of Manzanilla that are directly tapped for the sherry, and an old, no-nonsense, heavily accented grumpy Spaniard as the bartender. He really fit the ambiance well. I told him I didn’t know sherry well, but that I wanted something not very dry, but that I don’t like syrupy sweet either. He just said ‘medium’ in English and then without further ado, turned around, poured some Manzanilla from a tap, took a dark bottle of cream sherry, mixed some of it in, swirled it, and served without saying another word. He did a good job, and it was exactly what I was hoping for.

At this point, from conversations I either had or had that I had overheard, I started to realize that the vosotros verb conjugation does slow down my understanding, as I have to pause to process it, and in that time while my mind is thinking about the verb form, I miss the end of the sentence. I get lost here with it especially because 1. I’m not used to it, and then 2. because the final -s is left off, making it a bit harder for me to recognize the tense (and vosotros isn’t said, just the verb, so my mind didn’t have that pre warning of what is coming). On the next 3 days of the trip, I was more aware of this and it helped.

I spoke with our hotel desk in Cadiz for a bit, and also talked to some Dutch tourists I met in Sevilla who were living in Malaga for the past 20 years (but visiting Sevilla since some of their old friends from the Netherlands were visiting). They talked about their communities and clubs along the costa del sol, and that for instance the Dutch people live in a Dutch area, and speak largely Dutch or English. However, their daughter, who is 18 years old, grew up in the area and went through Spanish schooling, so she feels more comfortable in Spanish than Dutch. In Cadiz, there were international clubs. It seems that along the costa del sol, there are a lot of expatriate pockets where even the grocery store, and certain clubs or social meet ups could be in different languages (English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian) for the retirement community that lives there.

After our day in Cadiz, we went to Ronda, which is an old “white hills” city, where the old town was a Muslim fortification, connected to another hill by the “new bridge” (which is now 3-4 centuries old) which is a giant, beautiful stone bridge overlaying the gorge. It was mobbed with tourists that came on buses during the day, but in the evening it got quieter, and was lovely. We stayed the night there. It made me want to read “For whom the Bells Toll”. Hemingway spent a lot of time in Ronda, and the bridge in the book is based off of the one in Ronda I hear. I like “The Old Man and the Sea” and “A Farewell to Arms”, so I should pick up “For whom the Bells Toll” someday.

After a day in Ronday, we then stopped for 3 nights in Granada, which had the friendliest people I had yet to meet. In several stores, at the bus station, the hotel, restaurants, people seemed not rushed, and genuinely friendly and occasionally wanted to have a bit longer conversation outside of the generic, essential language for travel/tourism/consumerism… which is not fun or exciting foreign language use. We had a free tour (paid in tips) that was fantastic of the old Albayzín neighborhood and beyond that, the large hill overlooking Grenada with an assortment of people living in these cave homes, without electricity or running water to them. People had been living in these hills since the Christian monarchs took the city over in 1492. Many outcasts were forced to live outside the city gates, and moved out there, which included people hiding from forced conversion, African slaves who were freed, but excluded from society, and anyone socially ostracized. Later, Roma came into Spain and some settled here, and mixed in and people in this community made flamenco music, shows, and dancing part of what it is. Washington Irving was fascinated with Granada, actually lived in the Alhambra (where there were a lot of ‘squatters’ living at that time as well), and wrote a book on it, which really helped put Grenada on the Romantics European tourist map. He met many of the (honestly, mixed race) Roma called gitanos (or gypsies in English, but due to the derogatory offense taken by the word, I prefer to not use it here). They put on shows, told stories, and became an essential part of the tourist industry and culture in Grenada, and they would preform in their cave homes as flamenco ‘clubs’ called peñas. In the 1960’s, a landslide occurred and killed 2 people living in these hill caves, and the government used that as an excuse to evict all the people who had been living in these hills. Later, after the dictatorship ended, a few people started to move back into some of the caves, and in the 2000’s there can be legal status obtained to live on these properties. Some of the people are descendants from the original people who had lived in the caves, but according to our guide (who lived in Grenada his whole life, studies art history, and had a long term girlfriend who was a descendant of people who did live there, and she lived for sometime in a cave home) a lot of the people who now come to live in the cave homes on the hills are bohemian types from all over Europe, who form small communities.

That first night in Grenada, I got recommendations for Moroccan food, and had a delicious babaganoush and a meatball-vegetable Tajine with tea. The owner came out at about 9:45 or 10 PM, spoke briefly with all the customers at the tables (was very polite and friendly), then sat down with his 3 daughters for dinner at a reserved table in part of the restaurant. It was nice to see the owner and his family enjoying a meal together there in the restaurant with us!

Day 2 in Grenada we had a booked tour of the Alhambra, which I loved for the history, but it was in English, we enjoyed shopping and had a nice slow day, day 3 we spent the morning in Grenada, had a coffee, relaxed, then via RENFE took the “train” (in quotes because even though it was a train, it was really 2 buses then a train) to get back to Sevilla. It is our bad luck and poor planning, but the Copa del Rey final was on this day, so staying in the city was extremely expensive, so we stayed far outside the center in a place we could afford in the outskirts (about 45 minute bus ride to the city center). During the day we went to the city center, the city was full of fans wearing Barcelona and Valencia shirts, drinking, carrying on and parading with flags and chanting. Police were out in full force, and with the elections the following day, some of the chants and comments were political in nature, and the police came in and pulled several people out of a terrace by where we were having a meal. I had no idea what they were in trouble for, all the were doing was occasionally chanting, but nothing that I noticed that I thought was against the law. In the end the police decided so too and let them go, but held them there for about 20 minutes. Before the game started we headed back to our suburb, went to a neighborhood bar to watch the match, which was moderately busy that night. They definitely don’t typically get tourists. I had a few beers and watched the game, then after about 10 PM, a parade of children of different ages came through to the back, where they had a birthday party dinner for a girl who got a guitar as a gift. I’m still shocked by how late people stay up and how late they eat meals… its definitely not good for people with GERD to eat that close to bedtime.



During this month, I read La Sombra del Viento (see the bookclub post for more of my thoughts on this). I last read it 8-9 years ago, and enjoyed it just as much on the second reading, but never got around to read the other 2 in his ‘cemetery of forgotten books’ series. I also finished reading a mystery book I started earlier in the year in Russian by Boris Akunin in his Fandorin series (I had read an abridged version of book 1 for foreigners, read book 2, and this is book 4… I’m not a super fan of them, but for some reason I’ve picked up book 2, book 4, and another one which is one of the last ones if not the last one he wrote in the series (I believe) and haven’t read.. definitely not essential to read them in any particular order).


May Hours
Spanish: 29 hours, 40 minutes
Japanese: 10 hours, 40 minutes
Russian: 6 hours, 35 minutes
Mandarin: 6 hours, 30 minutes
Dutch: 2 hours, 30 minutes (I did more Dutch because I packed my Teach Yourself Dutch on vacation, and would do 10-15 minutes here and there on buses. No particular reason, I just felt like doing a bit more Dutch this month).
French: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Italian: 1 hour, 5 minutes
German: 45 minutes
Polish: 40 minutes
Bengali: 30 minutes (should have done more, but I had been busy, and studying off of an old internet site is not convenient so it’s hard for me to think to do it and keep motivation. I should buy a more formal paper course soon if I want to take Bengali seriously)
Portuguese: 15 minutes :(

Running 2019 total:
Spanish: 59 hours, 30 minutes
Japanese: 56 hours, 10 minutes
Mandarin: 39 hours, 0 minutes
Russian: 37 hours, 10 minutes
French: 12 hours, 35 minutes
Italian: 5 hours, 40 minutes
German: 5 hours, 30 minutes
Portuguese: 5 hour, 15 minutes
Dutch: 4 hours, 15 minutes
Bengali: 4 hours, 0 minutes
Polish: 2 hours, 30 minutes
4 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:40 am

June was a good month for me language wise, I felt rejuvenated and excited to be studying. Most of my studying was Japanese, working almost daily on it. It helps that I found a Japanese show that my wife enjoys! Terrace House is a Netflix reality TV show, with 3 men and women living in the house à la real world... but the pacing is much slower, with no scandals, and more showing friendships/relationships forming, taking dating verrrry slowly, and showing a once a week summary, and has a panel of commentators/comedians who analyze and make fun of them (although 90% of the time they seem to be poor judges of character, labeling people as 'good' or 'bad' and judging their actions with their preconceptions throughout). I find it to be a good way to get natural Japanese language, everyday language input, and have a small window to Japanese culture, which I get a bit of in japanesepod101, but not as much, and I don't get any of that in my testbooks/Lingq reading (too basic for cultural input). I also have shopped around a bit to try an anime show... and found I like the show Naruto, its a kids coming of age story. Since it's for children, there are plot holes that are forgiveable, but all of the same recurring themes and flashbacks are already getting old, and it seems there are hundreds of episodes, so I'll probably get tired of it. Language wise it's not the best source for learning, they are very rude and informal, often insulting one another or fighting (not the kind of language that I hope to be high yield in my life lol), but anything is good to help listening comprehension, prosody of the language, vocabulary, etc. For textbook studying, I am on the last chapter of Colloquial Japanese again. I'm just going through and trying to make sure I am learning more of the grammar details, pick up more vocabulary and solidify it with another pass through the book. After I finish it, I have the Genki books and plan to start on them.

For Russian, I did a lot more reading, and went out with my good friend/former roommate's Russian parent and spent the whole evening (maybe 3+ hours, I only counted it as one hour below though since it's not really studying) speaking Russian. I also went to a Russian barber and decided to speak just Russian throughout the experience. I find that while I'm understanding everything, my actual output feels awkward searching for words and with more grammatical mistakes. I need to get myself into more speaking situations to get my comfort level speaking back up. I've let it slip a bit with mostly input and too little output practice in the past year. 

For the other languages, nothing too different from prior months. Today I watched episode one of Casa de Papel on Netflix and liked it, I may keep it up. I also watched in German episode one of a German show called Charité at War, which isn't necessarily bad but honestly I'd rather just rewatch Babylon Berlin than put too much time into charité. I'll give it one more episode but if I don't love it by the end of episode 2 I'll drop it.

June language hours
Japanese: 18 hours, 25 minutes
Russian: 10 hours, 40 minutes
Mandarin: 7 hours, 30 minutes
Spanish: 6 hours, 20 minutes
German: 3 hours, 5 minutes
Portuguese: 2 hours, 0 minutes
French: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Italian: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 0 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 74 hours, 35 minutes
Spanish: 65 hours, 50 minutes
Russian: 47 hours, 50 minutes
Mandarin: 46 hours, 30 minutes
French: 14 hours, 0 minutes
German: 8 hours, 35 minutes
Portuguese: 7 hour, 15 minutes
Italian: 6 hours, 40 minutes
Dutch: 5 hours, 15 minutes
Bengali: 4 hours, 0 minutes
Polish: 3 hours, 30 minutes
5 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Sun Jul 07, 2019 2:58 am

In the last few months, I have been thinking more and more about what languages I would like to know, and to what level would I be satisfied maintaining languages. Time on a new language is time away from languages I know and need to improve/maintain. On the other hand, for a more global understanding of language and culture, I think it would be more fun over time to have a large spread of languages originating from all over the globe. I also want to be able to use the languages from time to time, and if there is less written material, multimedia, internet content, and little contact with native speakers, I will loose motivation and not be able to maintain. I know motivation can change and new things/acquaintances/life events come up every year which changes my motivation, so all is subject to my fickle mood.

Today I sat down and organized my lifetime wish list, I’ll organize by language families or geography (no strict criteria for my groupings). Unsure means it is unlikely to happen, but i do have some motivation or interest, likely not are languages I have studied a bit or have wanted to study, but I realistically don’t think will happen.

European Indo-European
Germanic
English- native
German-B2-C1 lifetime goal
Dutch-B1
Unsure: maybe take 1 Northern Germanic language to B1, and/or Yiddish... or neither

Romance so far over the years I have put the most cumulative time into this family group, already hit my goals, there are other Romance languages that interest me but I prefer to branch out (for now). I first spent years learning French and immersing myself, then other languages were a bit easier given all the work I put into French.
French-C1
Spanish-C1
Italian-B2
Portuguese-B2
Likely not (but have considered seriously in the past)- Latin, Catalan and Romanian

Slavic I developed a deep love for Russian, for which I passed a B1 test in the past, I would like to believe I’m a solid B2. I plan to use this as a base to make it easier to study others in the group.
Russian-C1
Polish: A2-B1 (depending on how much I fall for the language)
Unsure: Ukrainian, Czech, Serbo-Croat (likely will pick one of these and get to an A2 knowledge of at some point, won’t have time for all 3. If I love Polish and want to spend more time on it, I may cut myself off from other Slavic languages so I can spend time on other languages.

Indo-Iranian If I go into a South Asian life/study detour, I could see myself spending a decade easily on these languages. The will is there, the time is not.
B1-A2: For now, Bengali/Persian. I could change my mind pick just one, or a different one.
Unsure: Hindi
Likely not: unless I go on a prolonged South Asian detour: Panjabi, Sanskrit and a Dravidian language (of which I would study Tamil)

Other Indo-European languages that I’ve studied or have considered but likely won’t take further than what I’ve done or random daydreams:
Greek- except if I have a good reason to get to go back to Greece, then I would revive it a bit
Esperanto
Armenian (I would love to travel to the Caucasus, and I think I would choose between Armenian and Georgian (Kvartelian)... but with so many other plans I am axing this wish... for now)
Irish
Finnish, Hungarian, Basque are outside of the IE family, so structurally I’m interested (as it seems many language enthusiasts are). Of them I’m most interested in Finnish since my best friend from 3rd-5th grade was Finnish (after his family moved back to Finland, we kept some contact, but very irregular). For European polyglots it’s easier to travel and get immersion in these ‘exotic’ European languages, but more expensive and tiring for me to get there, so they’re likely just going to stay in the wistful wish list.

East Asian
Japanese-B2. I promoted Japanese over Mandarin due to more interest in it over the past 2-3 years
Mandarin-B1

Likely not but have considered: Vietnamese (retire in 30+ years and live a year in Vietnam? These are the kind of daydreams I have), Tibetan (written-spoken diglossia and lack of content a turn off. If I spent significantly more time to get Mandarin to a B2-C1, I would also spend time to get Tibetan up for comparative reasons in the Sino-Tibetan family, on top of cultural interest, for now the investment is too great for me), Korean (interest to compare with Mandarin and Japanese, lots of learning materials and plentiful media).

Afro-Asiatic
Arabic-B1. I’ve wanted to learn Arabic since I was in high-school, and despite several false beginnings, I still haven’t really started (I know the alphabet but am bad af reading it, know some basic phrases/words). It was the second foreign language I wanted to learn, after French (I had once thought I would learn French, then use French and visit North Africa to learn Arabic as well... as I got older fear of not understanding the many dialects, other life plans and languages all got in the way of this). I hope I don’t just keep kicking this can down the road forever... but at this rate I might.

Likely not, but have seriously wished for:
Hebrew- I thought it would be easier after Arabic, and I could visit Israel, also learn Yiddish in the Germanic group, which is very common in Brooklyn.. no time and none of this has come to fruition, likely won’t get this far in this lifetime.
Amharic (I find beautiful)
Hausa-widely spoken Chadic Language
Somali-Cushitic branch, also likely not but I’m interested
Turkish is Altaic, but I don’t want to make a group just to say I’ve really been interested in the past but don’t think I’m going to have time to dive into it. At least some of the grammatical concepts I’m getting with Japanese.

Niger-Congo
Africa has the most languages of any continent, but I have not yet spent any time learning any in these language families. I strongly want to learn one African language at least to be comfortable having a A2-B1 level conversation, the difficulty will be choosing one. I think I prefer learning one from the Niger-Congo family since I already have studied the structure of a Afro-Asiatic language with Arabic (and hopefully will someday learn more Arabic as described above). But the Niger-Congo family is very large. Some possible candidates:
Swahili: most spoken language, but often as a second language, also with a good bit of vocabulary from Arabic, but with a much easier grammar.
Zulu/Xhosa: if I want to focus on a South Africa. Language, also has different clicks which is interesting...
Yoruba or Igbo: both spoken in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa
Soninke/Maninka: if I were to choose now, I would strongly consider one of these, I met 4 native speakers of these in the last months.
Lingala: interest in the Congo, if I wanted to learn a language from there

Obviously I’m far from choosing, and need to do more research on these. If I have a really good excuse to start one, I will dive into it.

I’m leaving out Nilo-Saharan, because other languages are more widespread, and I’m stretched far too thin with my wanderlust as is.

Native American languages:
I don’t want to start a Native American language yet, until I know where I’m settling to live with my family for more long term. I’d also like to have a bit more financial resources to be able to donate to and support building a community and resources to try to help support building up or reviving a language. I would hope it would be a local effort, and I don’t plan on living in the Southwest so Navajo is out even though it’s the most spoken native language in the US. If I live in Dallas again, I am close to Oklahoma and could see myself getting into this. For now, it’s another idea of interest that I think about from time to time, but actively pursuing.
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MamaPata
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Languages: English (N), French (C1*), Russian (B1), Spanish (B1).

Long lost: Arabic and Latin.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3004
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Re: My language log

Postby MamaPata » Sun Jul 07, 2019 10:48 am

Exciting plans!
1 x
Corrections appreciated.

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:30 am

I’ve worked through my colloquial Japanese book again. Now I feel like I’ve exhausted everything I can from that book, and I can set it aside to collect dust in good faith. I like to do a second pass through a book I like to help solidify topics, basic vocabulary, and quiz my knowledge, and then dive more into more intermediate and native materials (and re looking at grammar points usually online). However for Mandarin and Japanese I need a lot more time going over concepts and vocubulary to let them sink in. I’m still using Assimil’s Chinese part 2!

I’m happy with my slow progress though. I’m now reading basic texts in Lingq in Japanese, picking up more kanji, and going through Japanese 101 lessons and reading transcripts to try to get more cultural tips, and grammatical nuances (there are plenty in Japanese).

Because Japanese is so foreign to me, next I have the genki books lined up and I plan to go through them. This goes against my usual practice of just learning one beginners course, but I feel the colloquial book just taught me all of the real basic language structures, but I’m already seeing and learning a lot outside of that from Japanesepod101, and I’ve heard so many good things about genki that I want to check it out for myself.

On a side note, with my light occasional studies I’ve already made decent progress in Dutch, to be able to read children’s stories like Grimm’s fairy tales. Dutch being quite closely related to German, and also being close to English helps. My Russian is helping with my Polish, but not to the same extent. Since I’m able to get to more interesting material, I’ve been studying Dutch a bit more than Polish when I rotate to another language (besides my main Mandarin/Japanese).

I also started working Bengali back in a bit. I worked on my verb conjugations and days of the week, some basic conversation reading (romanized script still). I see days of the week are very close to Hindi as expected, but different from Farsi. I’m also not wanting Bengali to eat into Japanese/Mandarin time yet, so it goes with Polish/Dutch in my off rotators only for when I’m tired of/craving a break from The East Asian languages.

I’ve also done a good deal of reading and listening to podcasts in Russian in the last few weeks. Time wise Russian is number one, but again, it’s easier for me to relax when walking around and just listen to Russian radio, or read for a half hour to an hour in Russian, and not as tiring as memorizing vocabulary and grammar.
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MamaPata
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Languages: English (N), French (C1*), Russian (B1), Spanish (B1).

Long lost: Arabic and Latin.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3004
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Re: My language log

Postby MamaPata » Fri Jul 19, 2019 3:46 pm

What podcasts do you listen to in Russian? I'm always on the lookout for recommendations!
0 x
Corrections appreciated.

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:35 pm

Nothing I recommend too enthusiastically. Arzamas has lots of mini series, some more interesting than others. Sputnik I see as a propaganda mouthpiece, but I still occasionally see what they’re writing and listen to their podcast теория заблуждение which takes a look at historical figures from the Soviet Union and evaluates their lives’ work. Also listening to Азазель audiobook which I found for free online... not sure about the legality of the site (or anything when searching in Russian) so I won’t share a link but easily google-able
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