Tea With Tarvos - Tarvos' Log 2019

[tarvos]

I have finally started the second part of The Hunger Games, in Chinese of course. Just to take a break from Spanish. I read only a few pages an hour, but after a while my speed picks up as I start to remember some of the characters again. I still suck at them though, so reading is laborious. Gale and Katniss are hunting now. But only on Sunday do they hunt together if I read correctly.

And Katniss needs to be shown off after her victory or some shit. Some holdover from the previous book.

Don't spoil it, I am actually new to the series and never read the English originals. So my only contact with Katniss and co is in Mandarin. Prim is still her Chinese transliteration to me.

You must cheer me on here, or I shall never finish. I am hard core. I read novels in Mandarin for funsies.

[tarvos]

Today on Tea with Tarvos: Korean!

I've been finishing up the last few episodes of the K-drama I remember you. It's not the best drama I've ever seen, but fortunately it's not all romance-focused (those storylines often bore me) so I'm enjoying learning a bit of Korean with it. I did notice I was terrible at deciphering handwritten notes in Korean, though, so Christi's latest post was an eye-opener and I'm happy I saw that.

Other than that, I took a few Spanish classes but my Spanish is in order, so the coming week I'll focus more on interpreting techniques for my placement exam. I haven't really been doing much else because my sleep schedule is REDACTED (partly of my own doing - don't stay up until 4 am to play bughouse chess after your tournaments, kids) and because my fatigue is horrible, so I need to sleep a lot.

There's not much more than that left in my body, I haven't yet continued with 燃烧的女孩 for that reason.

[tarvos]

I binge-watched an entire Russian series called Sparta last night, and so once again I didn't sleep until the ripe old time of 3 am, which means that I am still in fatigue mode. Fortunately I didn't have anywhere to be today, so I could sleep off everything while I continue my trudge through the world of Panem with Katniss and her friends. It takes me ages to get through one chapter, because with fatigue and my err... limited ability in Mandarin I'm not as quick as I would like when it comes to reading. That said, I have started noticing that I am already speeding up a little bit again, and that my misunderstanding is limited to longer descriptions - often for words that I actually do recognize in speech. I've gotten through the first chapter, but there's some twenty-odd more to go, so so much for fifty books this year... with my fatigue, I should actually be aiming for 30 rather than 50. I think I am lowering my Goodreads goals for next year, I just don't have the time or energy for 50+ books, especially when the majority of the stuff I read is not in English or Dutch.

However I can't really read Chinese without looking up words yet, which makes reading Chinese a frustrating exercise. Sometimes I look a word up just for the pronunciation (often the characters clue me in to what should be going on, but I don't know how to pronounce a particular word). I also mix up a few similar characters here and there. I would say, though, that I definitely have the basics of the character system going on, and that I can recognize about 1500-2000 characters (that's a guess, but I don't think that it's an awkward guess). But for reading a book, this is really on the low side, and I will need to continue reading in order to gain more fluency and vocabulary. It's the only way to do this without losing the pace.

In fact, after I finish the entrance exam, I should be going back to studying Asian languages more in depth, as they're the languages that give me the most trouble right now. I've found out that for the most part, I can easily get through all the Germanic languages (with the possible exception of Icelandic), I do very well with Romance languages, and I'm at a decent level in most of my Slavic languages too. However, on the Asian side, only my Chinese is really worth something, and even my Chinese is not that fantastic. My Korean and Japanese are even worse. So that's how it works.

Now, of course there are whole families of languages I have barely touched, and maybe I will touch them in the future, or maybe my life will change and I'll suddenly develop a love for Gulf Arabic. Who knows. What I do know is that I'm not really in the mood to start any new languages from scratch right now. I'm too tired for that kind of stuff, and I have so many languages to maintain and improve that I'm focusing on what I have for the time being. I may still return to dabbling, or moving into uncharted territory, but with my illness and health taking a toll on my future and life plans, I don't think that I will have many opportunities to travel as much as I used to. It's a shame, but it is what it is.

Unless you all goad me into learning Tetswana for some reason.

[rdearman]

You can find some resources here:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 737#p99043

[tarvos]

Oh no you didn't

[Christi]

Are you planning on picking up Korean again? I've been feeling a little lonely

What happened to all those interesting Korean learning logs on this forum?

[tarvos]

Are you planning on picking up Korean again? I've been feeling a little lonely

What happened to all those interesting Korean learning logs on this forum?

I don't really know whether I am doing Korean or Japanese first, or completely telling them both to go away because I have to figure out my studies if I pass the exam this Saturday, because that probably implies more Spanish

I've only figured out my Spanish should be more than sufficient, now I just have to figure out what they actually want from me in Utrecht

[tarvos]

I'm currently watching Rita, which is a Danish drama-comedy series. With Danish subtitles, of course (that's enough for me to understand anyhow).

The one thing that boggles my mind about Danish is that they manage to make every positive word sound like it's being forced through a very narrow tube. It's like they speak while someone is strangling them. Weird, and it makes it really hard for me to imitate the accent or actually speak Danish because the phonology is... challenging to say the least. I'm going to stick with pronouncing things the Swedish way, or if I want to make sure that nobody ever knows whether I'm certain about anything, Norwegian.

Why am I not doing anything else, you ask? Because I have no energy for active study. Depression sucks the big one.

[tarvos]

I sat my placement test in Utrecht this weekend, but no result as of yet. We will have to see what happens, as I really have no prognosis on how I did. Hopefully I make it through, fingers crossed. I don't think I did too badly, but we will see.

Which means that I am free again to turn my mind to other things, but since I have to spend Wednesday at the hospital, I don't think next week will be that much fun, especially as there are some other personal issues going on that need taking care of.

[Lawyer&Mom]

I really enjoyed Rita. (Turns out all I need to understand Danish is English subtitles! Transparent languages are fun.)

What was your placement test for?