Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

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David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:30 pm

The biggest update over the past weekend since my last post is that since my wife was out of town for the weekend, I ended up watching a lot of foreign television. I didn't mean to waste so much time, but I ended up binging Gran Hotel season one, and got through 12/14 episodes on Netflix!! I wanted to watch a show that takes place in Spain with a Spanish cast, since I'm visiting in May and I'm not as used to the accent. I ended up loving it. It's a bit telenovela-ish, but the mystery and pacing kept me hooked throughout (obviously). I also started watching a children's anime series in Japanese too on Netflix called Naruto and saw 4-5 episodes (they're short). On one hand the language is not great in that the language is very informal in the show and would be considered very rude to use. On the other hand it's simple, and I now have enough experience with Japanese to know the difference between formal/informal language, and it will help me pick up vocabulary and just get used to hearing the language, so I may watch episodes here and there to boost my Japanese. Especially after being scarred off from the beginning of watching Tag, it may be awhile before I give another 'non kids' Japanese movie a shot. 

March hours.
Spanish: 13 hours, 0 minutes
Japanese: 12 hours, 15 minutes
Russian: 11 hours, 15 minutes
Mandarin: 11 hours, 0 minutes
French: 4 hours, 40 minutes
Portuguese: 2 hours, 15 minutes
German: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Bengali: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Italian: 1 hour, 0 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 31 hours, 10 minutes
Russian: 27 hours, 35 minutes
Mandarin: 22 hours, 55 minutes
Spanish: 22 hours, 25 minutes
French: 9 hours, 20 minutes
Italian: 4 hours, 25 minutes
Portuguese: 3 hour, 50 minutes
German: 3 hour, 35 minutes
Bengali: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 20 minutes
3 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Wed Apr 17, 2019 2:58 am

Interesting day linguistically. First at around noon I get a consult for a French speaking woman from Guinea, who’s native language is actually mandinka, and she spends part of the time speaking Mandinka with her mother. It’s a beautiful sounding language, and I wish I could understand or say something in it! But I had to use French to communicate. Then at around 6 when I was about to go home, I get another new consult from the ED. I go down and she is from The Gambia, and she only speaks Soninke, another language if the mande branch of the Niger-Congo language family. I don’t run into these languages too often, but now these are the 3rd and 4th times this year.

Otherwise my day to day this week I used a good it of Spanish (which is pretty typical) with Dominicans and my Colombian coworker who is quite colloquial when speaking with me and has (to me) unique slang from Cali.
2 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Wed Apr 17, 2019 3:04 am

I can’t get the link to work by pasting it here, it if you’re interested, Wikipedia has a great map of the Niger-Congo language family with their linguistic branches color coated and their geographic distribution.
1 x

dampingwire
Blue Belt
Posts: 559
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2015 8:11 pm
Location: Abingdon, UK
Languages: Italian (N), English (N), French (poor, not studying), Japanese (studying, JLPT N3)
x 609

Re: My language log

Postby dampingwire » Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:33 pm

David27 wrote:I can’t get the link to work by pasting it here, it if you’re interested, Wikipedia has a great map of the Niger-Congo language family with their linguistic branches color coated and their geographic distribution.


Is it this one?

If so, someone's put a lot of effort into that!
2 x
新完全マスター N2聴解 : 94 / 103新完全マスター N2読解 : 99 / 177
新完全マスター N2文法 : 197 / 197TY Comp. German : 0 / 389

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:05 am

dampingwire wrote:
David27 wrote:I can’t get the link to work by pasting it here, it if you’re interested, Wikipedia has a great map of the Niger-Congo language family with their linguistic branches color coated and their geographic distribution.


Is it this one?

If so, someone's put a lot of effort into that!


That’s it!
0 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Fri Apr 19, 2019 2:36 pm

A good week for exposure to languages from the Niger-Congo family! But yesterday it was a Bantu language: Rundi to be precise. Unfortunately all I can say about it is, sounds fascinating and I wish I knew more. The breakdown of Niger-Congo family in my head is: Western Africa (Senegal to Cameroon) where Wolof, Mende/Mandingka family, Fulani, Yoruba, and other languages in that region are spoken, then Bhantu families I in my mind divide between western (Lingala, languages of the Congos), Eastern: which mainly I think of Swahili, but other related languages like Rundi I would place there, then Southern where click sounds come in, with Xhosa being the most known example.

Since I know very little about these languages, just what my cursory reading has thought me. Please if this is a wildly incorrect way of thinking of things and someone with more knowledge of the topic reads this, please share and educate me!

Some day I’d love to start learning some of these languages. I’m not even sure where I would start though.
1 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Sat Apr 20, 2019 3:35 pm

After getting some exposure to African languages this week, it made me go in and research a lot about different languages of Africa, the language families, historical territories and features of the language families. In my search I found the Harvard website for the African language program to be inaccurate in some of it's classifications: "The Niger-Congo languages occupy Western, Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken languages of Africa – Swahili (48 million), Hausa (38 million), Yoruba (20 million), Amharic (20 million), Igbo (21 million), and Fula (13 million) – all belong to the Niger-Congo family." It's a sad day when Wikipedia is more trustworthy than Harvard (but good for the people as good information is easily accessible. The error is that Hausa is a Chadic language from Afro-Asiatic family and Amharic is in the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family), and doesn't inspire confidence in their African language program. At a glance it looks like they offer over a dozen African language courses, but on closer inspection full courses with a formal curriculum is only offered in Gikuyu, Swahili, Twi, Yoruba (which is still impressive to me, at the University of Iowa there was no African languages department).

Meanwhile... in South Asia, I worked a bit on my Bengali this week. Usually I meet 2 or 3 Bengali speakers per month, but it's been a quiet April on the Bengali front. One of my mentors speaks fluent Bengali, but also speaks perfect English so I only hear her speaking Bengali when she has a Bengali patient (maybe in a year after I can string together more than 4 words in a row I'll try to speak with her in Bengali :lol: ). I also have a coworker who speaks Malayalam, but she was born in New York and doesn't feel as comfortable speaking it, but can understand. Her fiancé speaks Bengali. I tried to encourage her to keep up her Malayalam so she can some day pass the language on to her children as well... but without a passion for language, it's hard to keep it up (other interests and work being prioritized).

For East Asian languages: I've done well with Japanese this month. I've done a lot of listening, watching different shows and some anime on Netflix (I haven't found anything in particular that holds my interest, but I jump around in order to listen to Japanese and expose myself to more). I've also had a bit of time each week for more formal study to sit down to learn grammar points and some new vocabulary, and of course: Japanese podo ichi-maru-ichi. Mandarin I have done less listening than I have with Japanese, but I did take an italki one hour lesson two weekends ago. I left the lesson feeling sweaty and exhausted (amazing how nervous I can feel when clearly not comfortable speaking the language), but I would say for about 30/60 minutes I was speaking some Mandarin (the other 30 minutes being filled by awkward pauses, typing or looking something up, or occasional English). I couldn't do another lesson since because last weekend I was on call the whole weekend, this weekend is easter and I'm at my in-laws house, next week I'll be in Florida to visit my best friend from high school who I haven't seen in too long, and I'm giving an hour long grand rounds talk on Thursday so a lot of my spare time has been spent researching and preparing for that. So at this rate, it's looking like I'm on a one Mandarin italki lesson per month schedule, but starting in July my weekends are going to look a bit better, so I'm going to ramp it up to 2-3 Mandarin lessons, and maybe 1 Japanese lesson (but they're more expensive!).

On the European front: Spanish is an everyday practical language for me, and it looses it's exotic/exciting feel that comes with learning a foreign language, and just becomes a part of my life. I've never been to Spain before though, and I'm really excited about spending a week in May in Andalusia, so that brings that excitement for Spanish back for me. French... I haven't used that much lately, but this week I've had several dreams taking me back to 2009 when I studied in Lyon (and only spoke French there, so the dreams were all in French). The rest of the languages I did a bit here and there, but nothing substantial given it's been a busier month for me in general. Reading news in Russian in the morning, listening to music in different languages when exercising or an occasional youtube video is about it.
3 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Wed May 01, 2019 2:49 am

In the last 2 weeks, I met two Bengali speakers, and speaking some basic introductory phrases in Bengali brought a smile to both of their faces, and helped connect. They each shared a word or a phrase or two for me to learn, and it was just a way that my interest in the language helped connect a bit with them, before I had to turn over to the interpreter (which always feels so impersonal, especially while I have to write and look things up in the computer, place orders, look through labs with them and imaging, etc... really takes away from the human element).

I'll get into a rant here on this eventually again, but why is Bengali such an unpopular language to learn? Why are there so few materials for it? It is the 7th to 8th most spoken language in the world, with a robust history and literature, music, movies, and a fascinating culture. I just don't get why I have such a hard time getting good materials. At least what I'm using is free, but studying off of my cell phone internet is... less than ideal. I've transcribed chapter one a few times into a journal to learn it, and now going through and writing out the conversation, vocabulary, and grammar of lesson 2.

Getting back to West African Languages, I have a second soninke patient coming in to my office tomorrow. I'm going to have to ask if there is a community here where soninke is heavily spoken, and maybe take a morning or afternoon on a free weekend to go visit.

April Hours:
Japanese; 14 hours, 25 minutes
Mandarin: 9 hours, 35 minutes
Spanish: 7 hours, 25 minutes
Russian: 3 hours, 0 minutes
French: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Bengali: 1 hour, 20 minutes
German: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Polish: 25 minutes
Dutch: 25 minutes
Italian: 10 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 45 hours, 30 minutes
Mandarin: 32 hours, 30 minutes
Russian: 30 hours, 35 minutes
Spanish: 29 hours, 50 minutes
French: 11 hours, 25 minutes
Portuguese: 5 hour, 0 minutes
German: 4 hours, 45 minutes
Italian: 4 hours, 35 minutes
Bengali: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 45 minutes
3 x

David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Mon May 20, 2019 4:09 am

I arrived in Spain yesterday afternoon. After a long, not brutally cold, but consistently cold winter in New York, my wife and I decided for our spring vacation we wanted to go somewhere warm, and settled on Andalucía. Neither of us have ever been to Spain, even though we both speak Spanish (she is half Puerto Rican, but grew up in NY as did her Puerto Rican mother, so she is far more comfortable in English and her Spanish level is ~B1).

Our first days are in Sevilla, and I am pleasantly surprised by the city. I had not heard many people talk about how much they love visiting Sevilla (though I hadn’t heard anything negative either), but it is such a beautiful historic city, that is also incredibly friendly, and cheap! I’ve been here only 24 hours, and had a lot of great food and wine, good conversations, and just enjoyed taking in the sites and history. We did a walking tour, visited the cathedral, and went to a professional flamenco show, where we were sitting with some roudy Portuguese tourists who were fun and lively throughout the show.

From a Spanish learner’s perspective, I love Spanish accents because they have an ‘exotic old world’ feel to me as an American, that I don’t often hear. My Spanish has heavy Caribbean and Mexican influence, but I try to keep a neutral Latin American accent. Here, after just one day I feel like I can’t stop myself from trying the Spanish c as a light ‘theta’ sound. I guess it’s my natural urge to try to speak the local language. In any case, it’s a brief fling that will be very easy to drop once I get back home. Also word choice and common expressions differ a lot. Between accent and word choice, it’s ebough to make me feel nervous speaking it here, even though it’s a language I speak almost daily in the States with no problem! But I find that to be fun, actually.

Speaking Spanish as a tourist is not always simple. Hotel clerks, some waiters, flight attendants, tour guides are paid to speak English, so about 50% of the time switch to English. It doesn’t help that I don’t look Spanish at all. It’s funny that if they look at my wife first, they often just start speaking Spanish, but she prefers English and will switch to English if the Spaniard in question speaks decent English, whereas I avoid English if I can, but I don’t excessively insist, so I’d say only about half of my conversations here have so far been in Spanish.

I also met a Portuguese group of tourists and chatted with them in Portuguese. I did better with the Portuguese accent than I anticipated, but did struggle in spots and had to ask for clarification several times as my Portuguese isn’t fantastic or anything special, and I’m used to Brazilian, not Portugal Portuguese.

After a bottle of wine and a good seafood dinner, we went on a passeo to close out the evening through the old Jewish quarter. We dropped in several stores, and in one there was RBic music with the store clerk singing along. I asked her in Spanish where she was from, and we had A great conversation. She is Morrocan and speaks Arabic and Berber natively. She tries to teach her children and keep Berber in practice, but says her family mostly speaks Spanish now, though they understand Arabic and Berber. We talked about integration, languages (about Berber in particular). She said she believes all languages are beautiful, except English. I countered that of course, beauty is subjective, but of course English can be as beautiful as any other language, it depends on the speaker, poet, or singer. However that when a language is imposed on you, it’s harder to see its charm. I had a similar experience with Spanish growing up, I initially resisted it because it was all around, and it was what everyone studied, and I became fascinated by French. In time though, when I gave into the practicality I’d learning Spanish and really dedicated myself to studying Spanish, I cured my ignorance and learned to love the sounds and music of the Spanish language.
6 x

nooj
Brown Belt
Posts: 1257
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 12:59 pm
Languages: english (n)
x 3358

Re: My language log

Postby nooj » Mon May 20, 2019 5:28 am

Have a wonderful holiday!
1 x
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