Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
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Ani
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Re: Morgana's log

Postby Ani » Thu Jun 21, 2018 3:37 am

Oh don't leave just because you don't think you're accomplishing enough or fast enough. Logs arent about that. Have you ever read Brun Ugle's log? Or Elania's? Not all of us are Systematiker, and plenty of us just post here to maintain some contact with like mind people.
Don't let the forum be stress to you.. post when you feel like it, don't if you don't, regardless of what you've accomplished. What's the saying.. comparison is the thief of joy (& contentment)?

Most of the time when I post "advice", it is really meant just as chit chat... You don't need to be in desperate need of advice to share frustrations or feel like talking things out.

Hope your cold gets better soon!
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Xenops
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Re: Swedish & Icelandic in pomodoros

Postby Xenops » Thu Jun 21, 2018 6:16 am

Morgana wrote:So what am I going to do that's going to actually change anything? Well that's the thing, isn't it. I don't feel the same motivation other people might by posting plans or goals because they've made them public and now feel they'd better achieve them. I'm doing the opposite. I'm not posting what my plans are. What's the fun in that? Well, I'm retiring this log. At least until I've done something. Finished a whole book in Swedish, for example. This might actually be motivation for me, since I tend to update even when there's no reason to. Now I won't be updating unless and until I do something significant. I'm still reading all your logs though! This isn't leaving, just getting to work.
;)


What Ani and ロータス said: please don't go, and please don't be discouraged. For what it's worth, I'm also terrible about maintaining motivation after announcing plans and goals. It's like as soon as I make a goal, it becomes homework, and I dread homework, and instead of something I want to achieve it becomes something I feel I am forced to do. Burn out is very common for me. I'm not sure if it's because of college or my depression or both, but I have a hard time forcing myself to do things at this point in my life.

I don't only visit this forum to talk about languages and how to be a successful learner: I also come here to connect with people that are life-long learners. This forum has a good mix of people: I enjoy connecting with most everyone here. I really enjoy reading your posts because your kind and fun personality shows through. I was sad the last time you left, and I was relieved when you returned. Of course I would like you to progress--I want everyone here to progress in their goals--but I would like you to progress if you enjoy the journey. I appreciate both the ambitious people and the people that struggle, because I struggle as well, and the ambitious people show what can be done.
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smallwhite
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Re: Swedish & Icelandic in pomodoros

Postby smallwhite » Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:13 am

Contrary to the others, I feel that it is appropriate or reasonable for you to only reward yourself (eg. write in log) when you have done something good (eg. studied as planned). Except that if you write less here, you'd be punishing us, and we didn't do anything...
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Neurotip
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Re: Swedish & Icelandic in pomodoros

Postby Neurotip » Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:00 pm

Morgana wrote:I’m not going anywhere!

Yay! And thanks for pointing me towards ISLEX - I hadn't even noticed that one :oops: Yes, my Icelandic has probably overtaken my Swedish by now but the examples for koma fyrir are self-explanatory, you can just 'hear' in your mind's ear that af hverju er sjúkrabíll hér, hvað kom fyrir? has stress on fyrir while það kemur stundum fyrir mig að gleyma lyklunum doesn't. Flott, takk!
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Systematiker
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7332
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Re: Morgana's log

Postby Systematiker » Tue Jun 26, 2018 12:14 am

Of course, I support whatever is best for you and your decision, but I thought I’d belatedly mention that I’ve always enjoyed reading your log (both of them!), and I’ll be glad when you’re updating again.
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Ani
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Re: Morgana's log

Postby Ani » Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:11 am

í noticed the same thing with the Alaric Hall course. Waaay too many mistakes. Out of curiosity I had to dig up a MT course for comparison and I think that's why Michel Thomas scolds his students for answering too quickly and being incomplete or wrong. Jumping in so fast with wrong answers ruins it for the "third student in the room". Probably would have been better pedagogically to fake the course with intermediate level students.

You can do slightly different things with cloze cards than just coming from English translation, btw. You can
a.) Choose something you want to know by heart or almost know and don't put any hint.
b.) close out a partial word so just the first few letters are your hint
c.) cloze out verbs and leave the infinitive as the hint
d.) Cloze out other words and leave the part of speech as the hint ex: preposition
e.) Put a sentence and its English translation on the front and cloze out part of the English.
f.) Enter grammar points in any language and cloze out the important bits.
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Ani
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Re: Morgana's log

Postby Ani » Mon Jul 09, 2018 4:51 am

Morgana wrote:[

Btw, have you continued with the course or left it aside?

(I noticed your Icelandic í at the start of your message, my phone does this all the time to me!! :P )


I left it for now. I was considering going back to it more as a review as I learn different topics. The sections of did do were much better if I already knew what I was doing. If you think Colloquial is good I might just try that.

Yah my keyboard is a mess.. it's French, English, and Icelandic all at once so it's always auto correcting into the wrong language :) At least the Russian is well behaved.
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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smallwhite
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Re: Morgana's log

Postby smallwhite » Fri Jul 13, 2018 4:23 am

Wikipedia > Swedish phonology > Vowels
Notice how the similar-sounding vowel pairs often have 2 differences between the 2 members: higher-and-longer vs lower-and-shorter, eg. /øː/ vs /œ/ (different symbol + presence of colon or not).
Last edited by smallwhite on Fri Jul 13, 2018 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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smallwhite
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Re: Morgana's log

Postby smallwhite » Fri Jul 13, 2018 4:57 am

Morgana wrote:
smallwhite wrote:Wikipedia > Swedish phonology > Vowels
Notice how the similar-sounding vowel pairs often have 2 differences between the 2 members: higher-and-longer vs lower-and-shorter, eg. /o:/ vs /ɔ/.

I'm glad you brought this up. This is my go-to page for the Swedish vowels. I haven't spent enough time with phonemes because I don't know how to study them. As a result, I'm not so good at "feeling" where my tongue is in my mouth nor perceiving the length of vowels in normal speech (unless I'm putting a lot of effort into it). More practice would solve this I'm sure, but I lack a real idea of what that should look like. Do you have advice? How do you approach pronunciation?

(And thank you.)

I changed my example to "/øː/ vs /œ/" because I think "/o:/ vs /ɔ/" is a bit more complicated.

I don't work on hearing minimal pairs / on contrasting by listening. I do pronunciation work with the aim of knowing how to pronounce a word by seeing its spelling. So on the first day of learning a language, I'd go to that Wikipedia phonology page to get an overview and then memorise all the easier bits (80:20 rule). Would need another book (eg. TY) or website as well as that Wikipedia page does not mean to teach you spelling-pronunciation correspondance; TY and websites do but they often don't use IPA symbols properly. Then over the next few days or as needed, I'd come back to Wikipedia/TY/website to memorise the remaining bits. All that work is for my pronunciation. As for my listening, I don't work on individual sounds or words, I just do that Ari's Chinesepod routine with clips from TY, LingQ, news, etc.

Also, I usually start with Teach Yourself, which pronounces words clearly enough for me to hear and imitate. Colloquial I often can't hear nor imitate.
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eido
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Re: Morgana's log

Postby eido » Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:28 pm



This reminded me of you, because of how you worded the beginning of the last post.
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