Bookworm's adventures in the exile

[WalkingAlone13]

"Today, I've moved from 65447th place to 62750th, which is not bad. My memrise goal, to keep me going, is getting among the first 50000 for now. As the ranks go higher, there will be larger and larger gaps and more points needed for each step of the ladder."

I used to refer back to the leader board each week to see how high I could climb and hopefully better it each week, and after noticing how well the "regulars" were doing, it gave me a huge motivational boost. You are welcome to follow me on Memrise, if you wish, I think I'm roughly around the 9000th mark, if that helps at all (Same username as here). I have also actually been following Radioclaire without realising it...I wonder if I have any other HTALers without knowing it

All the best with your goals, and regarding the "true polyglot" goal you said you no longer believe you'll attain, I think you can do it. Obviously it depends on whether you have set a particular amount of time in which you'd like to meet that, but if we are talking, say, over a lifetime. Just look at how well you've already done. There's plenty of time to do that with the rest of your languages. You are actually amongst my idols here on HTAL, and have given me huge amounts of motivation at times, without actually saying anything, just seeing how well you're doing whilst studying a very demanding subject. So yeah, keep up the awesome effort and don't lose hope!

[Elenia]

I agree with arthaey: for me, having fun on the journey is extremely important! Also, don't be down on yourself on not using your German when you feel you should. I have a German friend who I usually see at least once a week, and I never speak German with her, the odd, ungrammatical sentence aside. I'm sure if I made more of an effort with her my German would be amazing right now! Practicing our languages in real time is important, but not making friends and those around us feel like they are nothing more than a person to test our skills out on is also important. Maybe if you mention to her that you're studied German/very interested in German, she might make space for you to practice with her of her own free will

And, to add my voice to WalkingAlone13: you're a massive source of inspiration for me, too!

[Cavesa]

Thanks for all the words of wisdom and encouragement, guys!
I hope it doesn't look like I was fishing for compliments, I wasn't.

It might seem like too much complaining. If I manage to complete the full list of my eight planned languages during the years and decades to come, that will be no less awesome for my purposes than twenty languages, true. But it is funny to remember the times of my infatuation with Welsh for exemple (I still love the sound and look of the langauge though). That list is all "low hanging fruit", all european. En, Fr mostly completed, Es,De already serious projects, Ru now a toy, Po,It,Sv waiting. I believe I won't in reality be able to add fancy Mandarin, Japanese, Finnish or Arabic on top of it all actually. I think adding Russian to the mix has (hopefully) cured the wonderlust virus still latently hiding inside my brain

Back to learning activities log:
1.I did a bit of writing practice of the cyrillics
http://www.russianforeveryone.com/RufeA ... phabet.htm
a nice page with animations of words being writen in cursive. One word beginning with each letter of the "alphabet".
This is still mostly a game. I am in no rush and getting the cursive in hand before actual learning will only be an asset once I trully get started.

2.Memrise- 57455th now, with some more German reviewed and learnt
The course overlaps are not being solved well. The auto-ignore function is not that reliable I'm afraid, especially when you learn in several base languages (There are really nice French and Czech based German courses btw).
Walkingalone13: Thanks! Of course I'lll be excited to follow you. Most people I follow have at least ten times as many points as I've got That's one of the key problems of my character. I take too awesome people and compare myself to them, instead of being happy doing fine in my league.

3.
(German) word of the day: schwarzfahren
(French (Tolkien)) sentence of the day: La tête qu'il a épargnée n'est pas privée de cervelle!
song of the day: (Italian) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXPZPLxs0c8

[Expugnator]

I do think you could add Turkish or Modern Greek.

[arthaey]

I hope it doesn't look like I was fishing for compliments, I wasn't.

Not at all! And anyway, compliments can be deserved, you know.

[Cavesa]

Expug, how do you know which languages have been tempting me lately? (But you forgot to mention Persian and Hungarian)
Thanks, Arthaey.

Yes, I finally go to bed, I just HAD TO review my Spanish conjugations on Memrise (I had to avoid bad concience nightmares ). 54934th now, btw. Walkingalone13, could you send me a link to your profile or something please? There doesn't appear to be any way to search for a user. Or I might be too tired to see it.

I really want to try out a new toy added by emk! (Who is btw on the list of people I totally love! Don't tell his wife though ) Really, it is so awesome to have a team of dedicated programmers on this forum! And he has as well been a huge source of inspiration and a book/movie/website recommendation source!

Let's see:

ASCR French films: 177 / 200
ASCR French pages read: 13630 / 20000
ASCR English pages read: 12250 / 20000

[garyb]

I feel your pain, I keep asking myself whether it's even possible to reach a high level in one foreign language, never mind eight! Seems like there's always so much more to learn even just to handle basic conversations well. I try to keep in mind a few things: that plenty others have already done what I'm trying to do, that a perfect level and knowledge isn't necessary and it's more important to make good use of what you do know, and as others have said, to enjoy the process.

[Cavesa]

Yes, you are right, Garyb. I am fortunately not a fool to want to learn 8 totally new langauges in a year or something crazy like that, my goals are still within reason.

Not that many news today.

1: Finally finished reading that Tolkien, at least the first volume! Now I am in Le Second Âge. Started reading Brown's Inferno in English as it is probably among the longest dust catching books on my "to read" shelf.

2: Grammar had been planned today, no energy left.

3.Memrise: I really love those Spanish conjugation courses and some more as well. What drives me crazy is my favourite French verb list as some of the differences between reflexive and not reflexive forms of the same verb are sometimes near impossible to guess from the translation .
It takes me quite a lot of time sometimes to get through the conjugations, especially when I am tired (and then all those subjuntivo de imperfecto, imperativo y condicional thingies start dancing raggaeton and carneval samba in my head). But, I got the rank of "Membrain" today, reached 1mil points and I moved today the 55020th to the 50647th place.

[Expugnator]

I think that if you want to learn more languages, ease them into a rutine, instead of going like dropping very different ones all at once like Mandarin, Arabic, Finnish, Vietnamese, and Sanskrit all in one go. I did Mandarin at age 13 with Spanish and it was slightly new in terms of everything, but soon I got accustomed to it. If I did Arabic and Vietnamese with Mandarin that would be a bit of a "shock" in terms of difficulty, for example.

About Hungarian, I started few days ago. It is very different and if I understand correctly has quite a bit of cases . A lot of details and complications, but fun anyway, kind of like enzymatic reactions in biochemistry or dilution in analytical chemistry. Or something like that. But it looks fun and Budapest is probably only a few hours train ride from Prague, so I think that Hungarian would be a good choice for a brand "new" language.

I also started Russian at more or less the same time as you, and I am still getting accustomed to a bunch of stuff there. The "shock" stage is just about ending now, so I think that is when it is time to accelerate.

I know the feeling. Started Mandarin, Georgian, Norwegian and Russian close to each other and had to struggle for a long time with 4 totally unrelated weak languages. Only now about 3 years later I can enjoy each of them as they are almost all at the B1 level and don't demand long textbook sessions with almost full opacity.

[Suzie]

Hi Cavesa,

It is great to see the new site being populated by familiar people! I haven't been an active forum member lately, but am happy to read your log (either here or wherever the future will take us).

Might I ask how you find Terry Pratchett in Spanish? My recent experience with a Discworld novel in French was very disappointing....even after 50 pages I couldn't get a grip on what was actually going on (even though I am aware that in most of those novels, the story arc is secondary ). I believe the reason was the massive amount of word inventions (which I found problematic to identify and to "decode"), and one of the main characters having some sort of weird accent. I finally gave up. I remember back in high school I found Terry Pratchett in English to be quite challenging, too. Anyway, my experience might not match yours. So I am really curious about your impressions....

All the best

Suzie