A language learners’ forum

Looks like polydog is shutting down, so I'm jumping over here. I don't tend to post much anymore because my techniques are not changing very much. No new languages are on the table for me, which is odd, but I still have quite a few on the back burner.

Currently focusing on improving my Japanese with Tuttle's "Basic Japanese". I think it's a great resource but it seems to fly under the radar. The chapters start with about 15 phrases or so, with a conversation in there somewhere, but most of the book is devoted to explaining the grammar points that are no so obvious in a very plain understandable manner. I tried breaking up the phrases with Work Audio Book and repeating the phrases over and over until I heard them correctly, but I found this counter productive... I just review these every so often.

I noticed that Teach Yourself publishers now have a moblie app, and so I was curious... are their "enhanced" versions available through that? I liked them but they disappeared from the American Amazon store. On the Teach Yourself Library web page All the "complete" courses were marked as "free". Hmmm, maybe this is some sort of first one is free thing? As it turns out you can get all the audio for their courses free online with a free account. No text though. This does mean that I get to buy any future books by themselves though, that's a good price drop I think.

Your log looks interesting. I dream about reading the Holy Bible in original languages, but this is far beyond my possibilities. At least for now. Only because of my studies on Modern Hebrew I can check some suspiciously translated words in Tanach. Are you planing to learn Aramaic also?

Looking forward to your log. Are you still in a Bisaya area? Komusta ang imong bisaya?

I've been using agony (advice) columns for colloquial language eg. https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/43341 and http://kalingawan-collections.blogspot. ... tikyo.html (http://kalingawan-collections.blogspot.com/). I also bought dual language poetry and courses at San Carlos Uni Cebuano Studies Center (Cebu. Take photo ID).

Thanks for your advice and inspiration in the past.

cjareck wrote:Are you planing to learn Aramaic also?

It's not really one the radar, but I'm wondering if I'll get a language discount if I can already read OT Hebrew.

Whodathunkitz wrote:Are you still in a Bisaya area? Komusta ang imong bisaya?

oo, ug akong bisaya morag parehos, pero kong walay practice, walay dakong problema sa akong paminaw kaysa una.

elco2 wrote:It's not really one the radar, but I'm wondering if I'll get a language discount if I can already read OT Hebrew.

I think it should be similar since it is a Semitic language. Nevertheless, if you try, do not forget to report it here. I am following you log

I found out Cortina stuff is now available (legally) online, and I took a look at the Japanese. This consists of words and conversations being spoken, and you doing some translation exercises in the book. As a course it doesn't seem that great because it just dumps these words an phrases on you with little or no explanation, excepting a grammar reference in the back. I'm thinking this could be a way to expand my Japanese "listening vocabulary".

Got distracted because I noticed there is a Jopara course on Duolingo, and curious, I discovered this is an official language of Paraguay, and has many Spanish loan words. I'll probably get tired of this at some point, because there's no audio and because I can't see any way to use it.

btw, I think the option in Duolingo to use a word bank is useless, as there is usually only one way to put together the sentence that makes grammatical sense.

Not much time for languages since my last post. I've lost interest in Jopara, though I am retaining everything so far. I'm going through my Japanese Tuttle book again, little by little, trying to review all the vocab, then the plan is to go back and listen to the recordings again. I'm pretty much ignoring the kanji right now, because so far my experience so far is that if I already know the word, I pick up the kanji quickly.

A focus on Japanese:
Getting a little annoyed with this language.
Having reviewed all the vocabulary sections of tuttle, I went and listened to a dialogue ( I haven't paid attention to them yet). For the most art I was able to make out the sounds (including long vowels), but there was allot of confusion about the words. For example: "koko no tokoro" I had written down as "kokonoto koro". This was because I didn't pick up on the word "tokoro" (not in the vocab section), and it kind of went on like that. When I sorted this all out, I tried to listen again, but found myself trying to hear what I knew was there, instead of being able to just listen to the sounds like the first time around.
So I went back to my Japanese reader and still seem to be stuck in the same place I was before.
Then I found https://nihongoshark.com/learn-kanji/ and decided to try the anki deck of Yoojoo Kanji.