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Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
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Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Fri Jan 25, 2019 5:24 am

Now I have a sinus infection on top of everything else, so I'm positively miserable and my depression is rearing its ugly head. Getting anything done has gotten pretty difficult, so I'm cutting myself as much slack as I can.

I still managed to get stuff done for the 365 challenge, if only out of my own sheer stubbornness. I've also manage to keep up with Clozemaster for Welsh (almost finished), Breton and Irish and my Indonesian and French vocab courses on Memrise. I just hope I'm feeling better by the weekend so I can get started in earnest with reading Metro 2033 for the book club.

I've been doing a lot of listening to Japanese while I lay around in bed, feeling awful, exhausted and depressed. My depression is making me feel restless and dissatisfied and that in turn has gotten me yearning to jump back into MMOs, which is really not a good idea for a number of reasons--time, money, my mental well-being, etc. So to distract myself from those impulses, I'm been watching episodes of Polar Bear Cafe on crunchyroll.com and Dragon Pilot on Netflix, and going through the audio for the Cortina Japanese course, as well as completing a few more lessons on the ELer app.

Also it's times like this that I really am glad I've been writing down things in physical notebooks for (most of) my TLs, as sometimes when I need to rest, I like to flip through a random notebook while I lay in bed and read through my past notes and scribblings.

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 24 / 365

  • Day 23 -- Indonesian: Reviewed units 10 and 11 in TY Indonesian and listened to the dialogues. Read the first chapter (9 pages) of Hujan.

  • Day 24 -- Gaelic: Listened to the audio for chapter 3 of "A' Bheinn Òir" and did three sections of exercises in the student packet.
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Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Maiwenn
Orange Belt
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Location: Grand Est, France
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focusing on: MSA & Moroccan Arabic
backburner: German
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Maiwenn » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:14 am

Cèid Donn wrote:Now I have a sinus infection on top of everything else, so I'm positively miserable and my depression is rearing its ugly head. Getting anything done has gotten pretty difficult, so I'm cutting myself as much slack as I can.


Oh goodness! I hope you feel better soon!! Do cut yourself slack.

Cèid Donn wrote:Also it's times like this that I really am glad I've been writing down things in physical notebooks for (most of) my TLs, as sometimes when I need to rest, I like to flip through a random notebook while I lay in bed and read through my past notes and scribblings.


That is really nice. Well done, past Cèid Donn! ;)
1 x
SC reading: 3819 / 10000 AR
SC reading: 3334 / 5000 FR
SC reading: 65 / 2500 DE :?

Corrections are always welcome. :)

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MamaPata
Brown Belt
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Languages: English (N), French (C1*), Russian (B1), Spanish (B1).

Long lost: Arabic and Latin.
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby MamaPata » Fri Jan 25, 2019 9:42 am

Really sorry to hear about all of this. Look after yourself!
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Corrections appreciated.

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Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
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Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Fri Jan 25, 2019 4:54 pm

Thank you, both of you, for the moral support! :)

That is really nice. Well done, past Cèid Donn! ;)


Thanks. Yeah, despite the whole project really testing the limits of my organization skills, I find keeping physical notebooks to be quite a wise investment.
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Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
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Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Sun Jan 27, 2019 3:06 am

I'm feeling much better today, physically, and even the lingering problems relating to my heart condition have improved. Best of all, the last two night I've slept really well. But in terms of my studying, things are complete mess. :lol: For the past few days my 365 challenge work hasn't been particularly organized, I haven't be able to do any shadow-walking and I've completely neglected anything for my SCs, but hopefully things will get back on schedule over the next week.

One thing that I'm really missing, that I haven't been about to do much of due to my physical health problems of late, is music. Tonight I'm listening to some Raphaël--his older recording remain a favorite of mine.



***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 26 / 365

  • Day 25 -- Indonesian: Reviewed unit 12 in TY Indonesian and listened to the dialogues. Read 10 more pages of Hujan--it's going pretty slowly for me because I have look up so much vocabulary. Watched this 4 minutes review of the film Searching. While it's still hard for me to follow native speakers when they speak this quickly (and yes, I know they can speak even faster :P ), I still am able to recognize and understand several words. It's a start. ;)



  • Day 26 -- Breton/French: Read kentelioù A3, A4 and A5 from Yezhadur!; did exercises 41-1, 14-2 and 14-3 in French Sentence Builder. Listened to my Français Avec Pierre playlist (a bunch of MP3 downloads of his videos from his blog).
4 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Tue Jan 29, 2019 5:48 pm

The French translation for Stardew Valley was released for beta testing over the weekend, so guess what I'm doing today. :D Granted, my confidence in proofreading French text isn't very high, but at least I can usually catch more general typographical errors. It is a nice incentive, however, to read the text more attentively--see if I can catch any errors. :twisted:

EDIT: This is nice to see, finally.

Image

I've been rather busy with IRL stuff the past couple of days, but hopefully this evening I will have the time to sit down, assess what I need to do to get back on tract with my SCs and Grammar-palooza and pick out a short story for the week, as well as want I want to do next on Duolingo and Clozemaster. I'm already ahead on my own personal schedule for finishing Metro 2033 by the end of February, so I'm good with that. My copy of Les Hirondelles de Kaboul arrived so I'm all set for the book club reading for March--it's only about 140 pages. After Metro 2033, it shouldn't be too difficult for me to complete.

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 29 / 365

  • Day 27 -- French: Wrote an entry in my journal about my near-future plans for Super Bowl Sunday (which do not involve watching the Super Bowl like the rest of my family). Read this article about the Rainbow Challenge by French LGBTQ+ blogger/vlogger Cordélia, and watched her accompanying video. Sadly cannot formally participate in the Rainbow Challenge because I just do not have the time, but I might try to squeeze in a qualifying book in if I can. Although I'm not L, G, B or T, I do find it really important to learn to talk/read/write about LGBTQ+ issues in my TLs because they are very current topics and come up a lot in social media or other media.



  • Day 28 -- Gaelic: Listened to chapters 4-6 of "A' Bheinn Òir" without the text, after which I reread the story up to that point. Worked on the corresponding exercises in the student packet, but didn't complete all of them. Practiced some of the verses of "Òran na Cloiche," my memory of which has severely decayed from not practicing for over a month. :|

  • Day 29 -- Gaelic: Completed the exercises for Chapter 5 and 6 in the student packet. Spend about 25 minutes watching/shadowing videos of Speaking Our Language, Series 4 (episodes 67-70) on LearnGaelic. Went over again the verses of "Òran na Cloiche" that I practiced yesterday.
7 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:42 pm

Thank the cosmos it's Friday because I've had about as much as I can take from this week. :P Suffice to say, it's been a long week and at the moment, I'm cold, cranky and hungry, and i'm only half-way through my SSC short story for this week, so I'm keeping this update short and to-the-point so I can go eat and get back to reading.

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 32 / 365

  • Day 30 -- Indonesian: Started reading through the reading passages in Colloquial Indonesian, which is something I've been meaning to to do for moths. I did the passages for Units 3 and 4 and wrote out answers to the questions in my journal. Read 10 more pages in Hujan, although had some trouble understanding what I had read in a couple of places--I will need to go back and take a closer look at those passages, hopefully on Saturday.

  • Day 31 -- Gaelic: Listened to chapters 7-10 of "A' Bheinn Òir" without the text. Practiced my verses of "Òran na Cloiche" again, was able to remember most without looking at the text.

  • Day 32 (Feb. 1) -- French/Welsh: For French, on Duolingo, I leveled up Verbs: Past Imperfect to 3 crowns and Numbers 2 to 4 crowns, and also reviewed five of 5 crowns skills that had decayed (per Duome.eu). For Welsh, on Clozemaster, I finished up the course, so now I'm free to start reviewing the Duolingo Welsh tree.
3 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Sun Feb 03, 2019 5:19 am

I've been thinking a lot about this touching Food & Wine article by Juan Paul Brammer, "Discovering Chicano Identity Through Tortillas de Harina", because even though it only just touches on the issue of heritage languages and what they mean to those of us who have lost them--or perhapsmore appropriately, had them taken from us--within recent generations, it speaks a lot about that often inarticulable wound that comes with the loss of one's culture and language, and with it, identity. All of this of course borders on political issues, and I know this forum makes a stern frownie face about that (ironic, though, since all language is in its essence political, as it inherently identifies and signifies to which people and to which place we belong, and thus which values and worldview has been passed onto us through our language), so I won't delve too much into that, nor am I inviting a discussion about it here (there are other outlets for that).

But the whole sphere of Chicano and Mexican-American identity and language politics is deeply relevant to me and my own language journey because it is the world I have always lived in. I was born in the Southwest US, in a city with a Spanish name, in a state with a Spanish name, and except for a couple of years in the US state of Hell (colloquially known as "Missouri") as a very young, horrified child, I've lived my life alongside recent Mexican immigrants, people descended from Mexican immigrants and people whose ancestors were here when this region was still Mexico, if not even before then. And while I grew up in a very white-dominant culture that aggressively discouraged me from being conscious of the Chicano and Mexican-American communities and families that lived around me, they have had a very deep influence on me in how I think about the relationship between heritage languages and identity.

My own relationship with my heritage languages is not stained with memories of racism aimed at me personally, like Juan Paul's, but there were plenty of cues in the US culture I grew up in that discouraged me from really embracing them. Irish was "bad" because of the Troubles (which were still ongoing when I was born), which Americans condescendingly scuffed at as if the Irish were just being hopelessly belligerent about nothing important, and from the way my dad would avoid talking about my grandmother left me feeling that there most be something very shameful about the language and culture my grandmother inherited from her Ireland-born father. French was either mercilessly mocked as foppish and pretentious or elevated to a cultural stratosphere beyond anything that I could relate it to within the more down-to-earth world that my New England francophone grandfather, descended from a long line of woodworkers and shipwrights, had lived in, and that left me feeling alienated from the heritage language I had come closest to having passed down to me, had things in my father's own life been different. As for German, my half-Alsatian grandmother spoke some, probably a strongly Alemannic variety, but I never heard anyone in my mom's family ever talk about German as anything more than a relic of a bygone time, when recently immigrated German settlers still spoke it among themselves, but no one did that anymore because we had all "assimilated" like good Americans. It's no surprise that even though I had worked hard at learning German and really enjoyed it, once I left grad school, and thus school altogether, I stopped using it, thinking it was time to just focus on what skills were relevant for my adult life.

Scottish Gaelic was a slightly different story. It had been lost in my family tree so far back that no one alive in my lifetime has been certain when the last speaker died or why people in my very proudly Scottish side of the family stopped using it. I estimate the last speaker in my family probably died about 100 years before I started learning it, in the least. This strangely made Gaelic the most foreign yet most approachable for me, of all my heritage languages, because it was just so unknown. I had always been very curious about it, since I was very young. But no one in my family knew anything about it, and before good Internet resources for it existed, I had no idea how to even go about learning it. I had tried a couple time working through the old TY Gaelic text and would give up about as quickly as I started.

What ended up motivating me to take another shot it, 10 or so years ago, was really seeing how the Mexican-American community where I presently live has been dealing with the issue of language and cultural loss, and with the hostility toward them that so often uses Spanish vs English as a point of aggressive contention, which helped me begin to understand how language is core to identity and belonging and how it is our human right to inherit and use the languages of our parents, grandparents and ancestors. And it helped me begin to understand my own feelings about my heritage languages that I never really examined because US culture doesn't encourage us to do that. Yeah, sure, Americans are OK with you wearing a "Póg Mo Thóin" t-shirt on St Paddy's or learning how to make some French recipes because your last name is French, but don't go crazy. And definitely don't take it to the point where you start asking tough questions about history, culture, and identity, for yourself or for others. But the problem with that, for me personally, is as I said--this is where I was born and where I have lived my life, surrounded by people who have been here much longer than I have yet other Americans, like Tom Brokaw did recently, continue to smugly accuse of not "assimilating." Something about all that has rubbed off on me after a few decades. For me to casually study my heritage languages like the way my dad used to do crossword puzzles in the evening, to just pass the time, would require me to pretend I don't live in the world I do, where the people in my community right now are facing similar processes of culture and language loss to the ones to cheated me out of my own heritage languages. It's not always comfortable to be aware of these kinds of thing---for me, I find it requires a much broader mind and a much broader heart than the dominant US culture deems tactful--but the alternative seems hardly worth the effort.

***

The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 33 / 365


  • Day 33 (Feb. 2) -- Welsh: I did a few review sessions for my Duolingo Welsh tree, while taking notes in my notebook. But I am a bit of a klutz at time and manages tospill my cup of water all over my open notebook, effectively ruining it for future use. Fortunately, I write my notes in pencil, so the notes didn't smear. If anyone of you who are old enough to remember high school or college before everything was digital, you probably remember those annoying nerds who'd happily copy their own notes for other students who missed class or did't bother to take notes, going "Oh, copying my own notes helps me study anyways, so win-win!" Yeah, I was one of those nerds. :lol: So while I as annoyed about ruining a partially filled notebook, I just used it as an opportunity to study my notes via copying them into a fresh, new notebook.
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IronMike
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
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Russian, 3/3 (DLPT5, 2022) 2+ (OPI, 2022)
German, 2L/1+R (DLPT5, 2021)
Italian, 1L/2R (DLPT IV, 2019)
Esperanto, C1 (KER skriba ekzameno, 2017)
Slovene, 2+L/3R (DLPT II in, yes, 1999)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5189
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby IronMike » Sun Feb 03, 2019 4:12 pm

Cèid Donn wrote:...heritage languages and what they mean to those of us who have lost them--or perhaps more appropriately, had them taken from us--within recent generations...

Damn! Nail head...meet hammer. You've said what I've felt perfectly. I used to think of it occasionally, but now much more often since I'm studying the language, but I am so angry that I didn't get the chance to learn Italian from my grandparents. Grandparents with whom I spent every day during the summer, and every day before and after school (well into evening) during the formative years (ages 5-10). My God, how easily it would have come to me. Instead, all I know are some swear words.

Seriously...Italian was taken from me.
4 x
You're not a C1 (or B1 or whatever) if you haven't tested.
CEFR --> ILR/DLPT equivalencies
My swimming life.
My reading life.

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Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
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Re: Cèid's Super Happy Fun Language Log

Postby Cèid Donn » Mon Feb 04, 2019 4:29 pm

Yeah, I get that, IronMike, and best success with your Italian studies. I unfortunately did not get to spend any time with my francophone grandfather, who died before I was born, and barely knew either of my grandmothers, before we lived so far away from where they were living then. But my father grew up in a francophone community--you would think he would have been able to be fluent in French, at least enough to pass some on to his kids, but he grew up in a time when that was very discouraged, because it was seen as an obstacle to assimilating and being able to go to college or get a job. Even having a French accent was a stigma. French wasn't even a topic I could talk to him about. Like with a lot of more sensitive things about his childhood, he just wouldn't talk about it. He even taught us to pronounce our last name in an Anglicized way, which has been a sore point for me my entire life here in the US, where no one can pronounce it either way (Canada is a different story :D ). As a kid, I didn't understand way my father was like this, but now I think I do, somewhat.

Somewhat tangentially related, as a guitarist, I'm naturally quite an admirer of Leo Kottke. There is a piece of his, "Gewerbegebiet" (German for "industrial park"), that he introduces during his shows with telling stories about his German-speaking grandparents. He says that he never learned German, and his grandparents never spoke it with anyone besides one another. But as a kid, he was fascinated by the sounds of German and he noticed cues his grandparents would give one another when they wanted to go away and talk in German to one another, so he would often eavesdrop on them just to listen to them as they spoke German. He titled this piece "Gewerbegebiet" because it's his favorite German word, just for the sound of it, and I find the piece a pretty fascinating example of how those of us who grew up with some memory or awareness of our heritage languages are still very much influenced by them, aesthetically, unconsciously, inarticulately, even if we never learned them on ghlùn--"from the knee (of our mothers)" as we say in Gaelic.

(Kottke also tells a story about how once a German fan, who didn't realize that the name was more impressionistic than literal, sent him a bunch of photographs of industrial parks from around Germany. :lol: )




I forgot to update this last time:

Short Story challenge

  • Week 1: Gaelic -- "Top Twenties" by Michael Klevenhaus, from An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst, Leabhar 1
  • Week 2: French -- "Les révoltés de la Bounty" by Jules Verne
  • Week 3: Welsh -- "Côt Ruby" by Sarah Reynold, from Cawl: a Straeon Eraill
  • Week 4: Gaelic -- "A' Bhein Òir" by Iain Mac a' Ghobhainn
  • Week 5: German - "Vogelfrei" from Der Schädel von Damien Hirst. Band 1/An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst, Leabhar 1

    I'll add the author's name once I find my copy of the book, which I seem to have misplaced at the moment and I can't remember it off the top of my head.



The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 35 / 365

  • Day 34 (Feb. 3) -- French: Did 14-4 and 14-5 in French Sentence Builder. Leveled up Feelings 2 on the Duolingo French course from 2 to 3 crowns--this kind of unit showcases one thing that irks the living heck out of me, because the topic is suppose toe feelings, yet it contains sentences that don't relate to that topic because they contain words that in other contexts could be used to describe feelings. This has long been a problem with Duolingo, with many of its courses. Oh well. Wrote down these words from my Memrise course that are continuing to give me fits--désormais, dorénavant, naguère--and wrote 3 sentences for each word. In going back through past units in that course, I found this phrase, je ne saurais trancher ni même définir l'un ou l'autre de ces notions, that I had set to ignore because I think I was just annoyed with getting it always wrong from not being able to type out a long phrase like that correctly while being timed. :lol: This course is weird--it's just a learner's random collection of more advanced or informal words and phrases to know, which the course creator still occasionally updates and adds more, and so it can be anything.

  • Day 35 (Feb. 4) -- Indonesian: Re-read the last 10 pages I read in Hujan. I think I get the harder bits now. I wrote them down in my journal to have as reference if I come across anything later to help clarify it. Indonesian grammar and syntax can be a bit, um, nebulous at times--while Indonesian isn't prone to the degrees of vagueness that Japanese is, I am getting more and more how a lot is conferred from context like with Japanese. And I just don't have the experience with the language to be that confident in these cases, so I think it's just best to keep plugging along despite my sense of discombobulation. I reviewed some grammar notes and grammar discussion in the Duolingo Indonesian course and forum and made more notes. Because I need all the notes! I also decided I should push myself this month to finish one of the two Indonesian Memrise courses I've started, and of course I picked the longer one, because way make this easier for myself?
5 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.


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