Tea With Tarvos - Tarvos' Log 2019

[tarvos]

funny shit about snobism in Czech

[tarvos]

The Korean Project

Unlike some people here, I tend to work with a more revolving door-like scheme in order to learn and maintain my languages. I've done so because, for a first, I get bored with stuff after a while and need a break, and for a second, because I have 300303030 languages to maintain and they all need their day in the sun. So my projects are always timed such that I can give one language my undivided attention but the others don't have to suffer while I am doing so. (I also have something called maintenance mode in which I don't focus on any particular language but just try to maintain all my languages at a level more or less similar to what they were before. This is a very common state of mine).

But I've decided to do a Korean project, and here's why; I'm interested in Asian languages and I've already studied Korean in the past, making it easier to revive it. I'm giving myself three months (!) to reach a conversational B1 level. I don't have any high academic aspirations for Korean since I am not travelling there in the near future, but a nice conversational B1 would be nice and eventually I want to get to upper intermediate B2 in the long run so I can maintain it without too much trouble.

Three months is the timeframe so I have a concrete timeline which isn't too far in the future, and my Korean is good enough that I think I can pull it off in three months (don't forget, I'm a false beginner and have been to Korea before, so I am not starting from scratch; I can read Hangeul, I know some basic grammar principles, and I have serviceable pronunciation). I also speak Chinese, so many hanja words will be easy for me to remember. (This is an advantage I didn't have when I started out).

My goal is to be conversational, so my classes are going to focus on the spoken language and listening (reading books is secondary). Because I can read hangeul, doing some grammar classes and learning some vocab wouldn't go amiss at all. I am expecting vocabulary to be the biggest barrier. Doing some grammar review of rules I've learned but never internalized won't hurt either - I'll need this to speed up to conversational ability.

Should I manage to get to B1, the next step would be to engage with informal register, reading and writing in order to get to B2. At B2 I would like to be able to enjoy simple Korean detectives or similar.

[tarvos]

By the way, I also want this log to be a little more active, so every week, I'm going to post a weekly Q&A here in my log. You can ask general or specific language learning questions you have to me in this thread or by PM and every week I'll collect them and respond the best I can.

[tarvos]

Korean Listening

I've noticed a couple things. Most of my recent Korean work has been involved with listening. The reason for this is the following: I find it quite hard to follow people when speaking and can't make heads nor tails of what they are saying. There are three main reasons for this:

- Korean grammar is backwards (in the sense of syntax, not in the sense of stupid), so I am expecting information when it's not coming. Furthermore they don't really use relative clauses but adjectivize them instead.
- Koreans slur sounds so much it hurts, so I'm always left wondering what that sound they just produced was
- my vocabulary isn't very big. OK, I am regaining lost ground very quickly here. The reason I know this is true is because once I have the words I can hear the sentences much more clearly.

This means a couple things.

1) I need to do a lot of intensive listening (which is what we do in class).
2) I need to get those grammar structures and verb endings down pat (beyond the simple markers I already know and the simple tense formations).
3) I need to practice speaking to get a feel for the type of vocabulary I need (grammar words, conjunctions, and so on; nouns are easier to remember because so many of them are Konglish or Sino-Korean)
4) I might need to do reading at some point; I bought a book online called My Korean Husband which is a bilingual Korean-English reader. It will arrive in a few weeks. It's coming all the way from KOREA.

I find this much harder than the honorifics or politeness verb endings (which are easy to recognise anyway; two of them aren't so commonly used, one is informal, and two have the ubiquitos -yo and -pnida endings. The other two are in textbooks and there's another one I forget).

[brilliantyears]

Korean Listening

I've noticed a couple things. Most of my recent Korean work has been involved with listening. The reason for this is the following: I find it quite hard to follow people when speaking and can't make heads nor tails of what they are saying. There are three main reasons for this:

- Korean grammar is backwards (in the sense of syntax, not in the sense of stupid), so I am expecting information when it's not coming. Furthermore they don't really use relative clauses but adjectivize them instead.

I keep forgetting this can be really problematic. Japanese completely rewired my brain to be able to make sense of syntax like this...

- Koreans slur sounds so much it hurts, so I'm always left wondering what that sound they just produced was

Yep...

1) I need to do a lot of intensive listening (which is what we do in class).

So you're taking classes? How are they?

[tarvos]

They're exhausting and leave my brain melting, which is exactly what I am looking for at this point in time. My teachers seem to think I find everything easy (I don't), but we're discussing kids' material in which we take apart every phrase and cover certain grammar points. It really helps because I do listen to the material again after class and then I understand a lot more. Turns out vocabulary is very important to make sense of listening, and considering I'm still in the A range when it comes to amassing vocabulary and more complex sentence structures in Korean, it's taking some time. I am watching TTMIK videos on the side, but they are mostly on small grammar or vocabulary points.

This is all okay, though. I would really hate it if the material I got was not challenging, and I think they have figured out that I need the challenge to get better, because my improvization of most languages right off the bat is quite good.

One teacher also speaks Chinese, so all my translations of new vocabulary are into Mandarin (often that makes sense, because many words are Hanja words). Basically, when I don't speak Korean I have to revert to Mandarin to get the point across. My Mandarin is upper intermediate, and in terms of speaking Mandarin I'm not horrible at all, so it's quite doable. (I find it interesting they have such faith in my Chinese skills, though... clearly I'm doing SOMETHING right).

I don't speak Japanese though, which doesn't help with the syntax. Very few of my languages are mainly SOV. Well, Latin, I guess, but I don't use that one much.

[tarvos]

sofferenze in italiano

[tarvos]

Ok, I should actually write this in Korean, but since my Korean is a little iffy and not up to scratch for the task yet, I'll substitute it with Mandarin (a language which is used in instruction for me):

ZH： 最近我很忙，我学习很多韩语。汉语还不好，很难理解这个语言的语法。最难的也折听人说；他们的发音不清楚，说话说得很快。有时候有新词，汉字的话没有问题，但是如果真的是韩语的词，我真的没注意他们在说什么。我的水平提高了一点点，所以现在信心更多，但是我还觉得不舒服说韩语。 另外，我学了西班牙语，但是这种语言不难。一定会很多次，也会看书，也花写故事。

РУ: Кроме того, после чтения на итальянском, теперь перешла на русский. Читаю Светлану Алексеевича, которая у нас беларусская авторка (но пишет на русском). Она выграла премию Нобеля два года назад, особенно для ее книги об историях Советского союза - которые не являются фикционными. Первое знакомство у нас - Время секонд хэнд, где речь идет о развале Союза. Интереснее то, что она почти сама не делится с нами своим мнением, а больше всего показывает нам истории со точки зрения опросанных - книга полна интервью с людьми, которые пережили комминусткую эпоху и отличаются к разным политичическим убеждениям - коммунисты, не коммунисты, все.

Я о подробностях тут не буду писать - это уже бы была политика, и тема строго запрещена - будем уважать приказы наших модераторов. Но на следующих неделях я собираюсь писать статью на блоге о впечатлениях, которые мне дала Алексеевич. Коммунистская жизнь - особенная, и заслуживает тонкую дискуссию о том, как его воспринимать с исторической перспективы, а еще, что из истории надо взять, чтобы современная политика, либо в России либо за границей, стала лучше функционировать. И это уже без саркастических намеков на Путина - это уже другая тема, хотя бы в реальности, его влияние замечать - неизбежно.

[tarvos]

Everything is a little slow because I am a little tired, but that is everything that's going on at the moment. Some more Korean and some more Russian that I am reading. And otherwise, a lot of work and a lot of sleeping.

[tarvos]

Still continuing with Second-Hand Time. Almost on three-quarters or so now. I've started some correspondence in Korean. Apparently my Korean is cute. I don't know what to make of that. I must be doing something wrong.