CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

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CarlyD
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Re: CarlyD's 2018 German log

Postby CarlyD » Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:01 pm

So if not for the firm habit I'd made during my 175-day challenge, I wouldn't have done any German at all yesterday or today. Trauma/drama going on in my hobby group that spilled over and was being played out over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and probably a few other places. Since I'm an Admin in the hobby group, I spent way more time putting out fires and convincing people that calling the media wouldn't actually solve anything than I did learning German. Did my minimum, though.

I'm hoping it dies down soon, but this is looking more like a war than a fight, so I don't know.

I was reading a listing today of all the new laws that were passed and took effect in California on the 1st. Amazing number of laws. Including this gem:

The State of California has deemed that the phrase "Foreign Language" can no longer be used as the word "foreign" is apparently mean. Or racist. Hard to say.

Starting January 1st, only the term "World Language" can be used here--in schools, colleges or wherever.

They were unable to find the time to discuss the need for additional homeless services, but thank God we're now protected from bad words. :P
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Re: CarlyD's 2018 German log

Postby CarlyD » Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:09 pm

I just finished watching a livestream seminar by Idahosa Ness called The Ideal Language Learning Schedule. He is the founder of the Mimic Method, a site to help you improve your pronunciation, and I've been working (slowly) on the German module since the 1st of December.

He says he's going to start doing livestreams once a week, so I don't know if he plans to go in more directions than just pronunciation, but it will be interesting to keep up and see.

He talked about the "3-P's"--Perception, Practice and Performance and he brought up an idea that I heard from someone else but questioned whether it would work. He said to listen to something harder than you can understand and try to pick out 5 words, and find out the meaning of those 5 words. The other person (in a book I recently read that I think I named in an earlier post) said to listen 20 minutes every day, from day 1, and just look for 5 words.

He gave everyone a challenge to make Performance the foundation of their language journey and talked about the importance of finding language partners, even if it takes some time to find ones that fit for you.

Here's his seminar on Youtube if anyone wants to see it. I noticed he also has a lot of short videos about pronunciation helps in a variety of languages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIyZDwGP3ws
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby CarlyD » Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:22 pm

Benny, Benny, Benny. We've been booted from Bootcamp.....again. It wasn't perfect; he wasn't ready; and he scheduled the livestream for the new Add1 Challenge at exactly the same time. I guess he missed yesterday's seminar on scheduling......

So I went through everything and made a schedule of everything I want to do and when I want to do it. Now I'm wondering if the 9 hours a day it will take to do it might be a tad too much.... I'm going to work on a wee more reality based schedule today.
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby CarlyD » Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:49 pm

I finally went through and changed all my social media--Facebook, Next Door and Ravelry--to German. Ravelry is probably the worst--in the Forums it's still 90% English, but when searching for a pattern it's totally German. Which would be nice but I don't actually have a knitting German vocabulary. I wanted a pattern that was knit in squares using 5 needles and didn't even know how to correctly word it in English--I ended up switching back temporarily to English. :(

Facebook is now totally German. I was trying to hide a post that had a horrible picture and was seriously hoping that I wasn't blocking the whole group when I clicked.

I was told I should also switch my phone and computer operating system. Um....no. Hopefully one day though.

365 Challenge--16 days, plus currently have a 220-day streak in Memrise.
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby CarlyD » Tue Jan 22, 2019 5:34 am

So my internet died Friday night. Don't have a clue why--and it just came back on a few minutes ago, again, don't know why. I'm thinking something storm/rain related.

I lost my Memrise streak. :o :( (insert seriously crying emoji here)

I still kept to my challenge--plenty of vocab, textbook and grammar to work on. But I was so proud of that streak......

Oh, well. I knew it would happen sooner or later. AT&T internet is not all that reliable to begin with.

Off to do my Day 1 streak on Memrise. :(
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby SGP » Tue Jan 22, 2019 2:55 pm

CarlyD wrote:I still kept to my challenge--plenty of vocab, textbook and grammar to work on. But I was so proud of that streak......
What stage of Deutsch Lernen are you currently at? If there are any particular Grammatik-Sachen (grammar thingies) that are a bit more difficult than others, I'd like to hear about them as well. Because sometimes, there are some, you know, tricks to remember them.

Oh, well. I knew it would happen sooner or later. AT&T internet is not all that reliable to begin with.
Really, how come? Didn't they even invent the Internet?


Off to do my Day 1 streak on Memrise. :(
As a previous user of some additional web sites/tools/etc., including Memrise, I'd like to know how in which way these associations/mnemonics contribute to your current progress.
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby CarlyD » Tue Jan 22, 2019 10:14 pm

Oh, well. I knew it would happen sooner or later. AT&T internet is not all that reliable to begin with.
SGP wrote:Really, how come? Didn't they even invent the Internet?


I'm not sure who invented the Internet--I thought it was people in Silicon Valley, but I know it wasn't the phone company. I live in an odd "dead zone" and can't even receive television without have a satellite service. I keep hoping better service will come along, but mostly it's just been more expensive service, not better.

Off to do my Day 1 streak on Memrise. :(
SGP wrote:As a previous user of some additional web sites/tools/etc., including Memrise, I'd like to know how in which way these associations/mnemonics contribute to your current progress.


I'm doing seven courses on Memrise right now. Two are "just" vocabulary, but the rest are mostly all phrases and sentences. I've found I tend to remember a word better if there's some context involved. If not, then I mostly just need to see it enough times that it just sinks in.

Ok, I have totally not perfected the art of multiple quotes here.
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby CarlyD » Tue Jan 22, 2019 10:30 pm

I received my copy of Der, Die, Das The Secrets of German Gender on Saturday. This book is amazing. It doesn't just get into the weeds of gender, it gets under the weeds.

Just in the first chapter, there's a discussion about the Greek and Roman gods and how the words associated with that god will be the same gender as the god. One of the examples was the goddess of hunting (Greek--Artemis, Roman--Diana) and then listed all the words that had to do with hunting and obtaining food--and the majority were feminine. I knew a number of those words already, but never thought to look for a connection. It went on to list a number of other gods and their corresponding words and the pattern holds.

Words are divided by either categories or sounds--sounds being prefixes and endings that predict gender, like --keit is usually feminine. But there are a LOT of categories.

Since I'm not generally having a lot of luck with "just memorize the gender," I'm going to enjoy going through this book and seeing how I think about words will change.
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby SGP » Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:46 pm

CarlyD wrote:
Oh, well. I knew it would happen sooner or later. AT&T internet is not all that reliable to begin with.
SGP wrote:Really, how come? Didn't they even invent the Internet?


I'm not sure who invented the Internet--I thought it was people in Silicon Valley, but I know it wasn't the phone company.
Well, I'd say that the Internet (or its precursor) has been invented by a Swiss institute called the CERN. But what I wrote simply was a little Auflockerungsversuch . You might want to look up that word for your German learning progress ;). If you decide to do so, it may be easier by removing the "s" that connects the first word to the second one, and then to look at both of them in isolation.

I'm doing seven courses on Memrise right now. Two are "just" vocabulary, but the rest are mostly all phrases and sentences. I've found I tend to remember a word better if there's some context involved. If not, then I mostly just need to see it enough times that it just sinks in.
Context is helpful, no doubt. So could it be that the Memrise courses you are taking also provide some more context, in addition to plain mnemonics? Because for, e.g, myself, they didn't work too well.

Ok, I have totally not perfected the art of multiple quotes here.
But you still quoted one saying after another. This also gets the job done.

Maybe one day, Angela Merkel would register at this forum. Then she would have a discussion with Wladimir Putin about linguistics. Later, he would like to make a follow-up post.

So if he would like to use any nested quotes any day, it simply works as follows:

First, Angie clicks on "quote Wladimir". Then, inside the text box (where she is typing her reply), the following appears. But without the spaces between the Square Parentheses. And then, she writes her reply.

[ quote="Wladimir Putin" ]Angela, ich würde gerne eines wissen. Zwar kann ich viele Artikel auswendig. Aber welchen verwendet man für dieses eine ungewöhnliche Wort, das nicht einmal im Duden steht, und nur umgangssprachlich verwendet wird?[ /quote ]Der passende Artikel ist "der", mein lieber Wladimir.

Now in her post, there is a simple, i.e. non-nested, quote.

And when Wladimir Putin clicks on "quote Angie", the following text appears (but without the spaces between the Square Parentheses, once again).

[ quote="Angela Merkel"] [ quote="Wladimir Putin" ]Angela, ich würde gerne eines wissen. Zwar kann ich viele Artikel auswendig. Aber welchen verwendet man für dieses eine ungewöhnliche Wort, das nicht einmal im Duden steht, und nur umgangssprachlich verwendet wird?[ /quote ] Der passende Artikel ist "der", mein lieber Wladimir.[/ quote]

Now he can simply write his response after the second Closing Quote Tag.
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Re: CarlyD's 2018/2019 German log

Postby CarlyD » Mon Jan 28, 2019 5:55 pm

A big sloggy, but why my German is currently messed up.

Back a ways--Jan. 10th--I'd posted that something (that I was not involved in) was playing out as trauma/drama on various social media sites, including the two that I go to. I never posted, wasn't involved, but kind of like that thing you just can't look away from, I kept looking at the new posts and comments. I don't think I realized how much it was distracting me from other things, including my German. But I figured it would play out in a few days, and that would be that.

Last week, while my internet was out for the three days, and the drama still going on, someone apparently posted "well, let's blame those people over there. Get rid of those people and everything will be fine." Unfortunately, I was one of "those people." None of us had participated in the thread, drama, anything, but the owner cooperated in suspending all of the people in my group from his web site. Also, unfortunately, besides being one of "those people" (wrong political party) I was also the Admin for several large groups, including a huge charity group that had a ton of ongoing projects.

I've spent the last week trying to find people who know other people to get messages to them to try and keep all the other groups going until I get out of "jail" and can return to the site. And wondering why I still care and want to return. And have people always been this nasty and mean and I just didn't notice?

And my German. I've seen blogs and posts talking about "finding time for language" when you just don't have enough time. But what about when you have time but your mind is totally distracted? I don't think I've ever seen that come up before. I've been doing a lot of review with Memrise and such, but I'm just not sure if I started any new modules if it would sink in. I generally spend this week before the 6 Week Challenge starts in making all kinds of goals and plans on what I want to accomplish. And I'm just--meh.

Hopefully things will get better. And hopefully my next log post will be happy plans for the 6 Week Challenge.
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