2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Fri Apr 17, 2020 11:23 pm

17th April 2020 / Day 108

Friday, yay! Finished work a little earlier today, watched what I think is possibly the worst horror film ever made (and it got 2.8 on IMDB so I don't think I'm the only one...) and then did a bit of language learning this evening. It's my last day with Māori, though I'll try and record an insta video tomorrow. I'm a little annoyed at myself because I finally got around to watching the Toku Reo videos and uh they would have been a great resource for the last three-ish weeks! :roll: But, nevermind, I guess I know for the future. (And hey, I at least got all the vocab/quiz stuff right for the first video without even watching the entire thing!)

Start with BSL tomorrow!

Spanish
2 mins Duolingo
4 mins Memrise

Māori
4 mins uTalk
17 mins Tipu app
6 mins Memrise
10 mins Toku Reo

Total: 43 mins (765 mins / 10,114 mins)
1 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sat Apr 18, 2020 11:29 pm

18th April 2020 / Day 109

Had a very chill Saturday overall. Spent a lot of it playing The Sims (finally got it working in German with a um questionable workaround and then started a 100 baby challenge :lol:) but then started my new endangered language—British Sign Language! I've signed up for an online course for this one (at british-sign.co.uk), which is working on a sort of pay-what-you-can basis at the moment because of the coronavirus. I actually did a level 1 certification in BSL about 10 years ago now but all I could really remember was the alphabet.

This should be a fun one! And it should be one where I'm forced to use the course because it's not like there's a myriad of resources out there. They are saying for the course that it should take you a week per unit but I'm midway through the second one already tonight, since the first unit covers fingerspelling/numbers 1-10, which were just refreshers for me.

German
292 mins Die Sims 4 (a surprising amount of reading involved to make sure I don't mess anything up! :lol:)

Spanish
10 mins Duolingo
5 mins Memrise

BSL
41 mins online course

Total: 348 mins (1,113 mins / 10,462 mins)
2 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Posts: 379
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:09 pm
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun Apr 19, 2020 11:46 pm

19th April 2020 / Day 110

Ah Sunday. Took the opportunity today to begin one of the three quarantine hobbies*: my friend and I recorded a potential first episode of our podcast. :lol: Was a lot of fun and I've enjoyed editing it, which is really the point even if nothing comes of it!

(*To note: the three quarantine hobbies are: starting a podcast, making sourdough bread, and writing a novel. I tried a sourdough starter but it didn't... start—will try again soon—and writing's my other hobby anyway so that's always on the table. Obviously, too, this is all a joke and I do really like that lots of us seem to be turning to the same comforts to order our very confusing lives rn.)

Aaaand I did a little bit of language learning! Wooh! Loving that the British Sign online course lets me toggle to left-handed signs, too, as I did wonder for a moment if that was going to be a hurdle for me using it. (And yes, I absolutely should have thought for like an entire second and known better.)

Mandarin
5 mins Memrise

Spanish
6 mins Duolingo

BSL
30 mins online course

Total: 41 mins (1,154 mins / 10,503 mins)
4 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Location: Nottinghamshire, UK
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue Apr 21, 2020 12:04 am

20th April 2020 / Day 111

Made sure my Super Challenge 2020/2021 spreadsheet was all ready today and have had a hunt around for what books I have already (on Kindle and otherwise) so that I'm not floundering for something to start reading next weekend. Might make a list of TV shows/films at some point.

I've found that WFH is quite productive in that I'm not the one answering the phones anymore so I can actually settle into tasks. I've been using pomodoros to keep myself on track, so the five min breaks in between, where I can, I've been throwing in a bit of language learning. Well, I've managed it today anyway. We'll see how long that lasts!

Mandarin
15 mins Memrise

Spanish
14 mins Duolingo

Korean
10 mins Memrise

Scottish Gaelic
8 mins Duolingo

BSL
33 mins online course

Total: 80 mins (1,234 mins / 10,583 mins)
4 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Posts: 379
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:09 pm
Location: Nottinghamshire, UK
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Tue Apr 21, 2020 11:14 pm

21st April 2020 / Day 112

Just trying to keep up some momentum. Also, am surprised how much Scottish Gaelic I remember, since I haven't touched it in about six weeks. I'm revisiting the skills I learnt on Duolingo and moving them up to the next level—but I'm also noting down each sentence and translating it into English after the session is over. Writing them down is good spelling practice, if nothing else! :lol:

Moved onto unit four of the BSL course today, which seems to be heavy on the vocabulary. I went through all the animal words (dinosaur is my favourite!) but am saving home/clothing for tomorrow. I've started a Pinterest board for BSL to collect some images together too. The course has ten units in total, so I'm moving along at a good clip (considering this is day four of BSL for me!) but I think it'll slow down now. I'm reaching the limits of what I can remember, though I'm glad to note that I can still fingerspell relatively smoothly.

I also took part in an e-conference today for work (as a speaker—but in English!) so spent a while listening to German; not that I'm necessarily counting it here. It's just a nice change to hear clear Berlin accents (for the most part). I spent a couple of years in Vienna and tend to seek out pretty accented media in general; when I went to Berlin last November for the expo that led to this conference, I was worried I'd find it difficult to get back into the groove of German and that I wouldn't understand anything, but it turns out that trying to parse an accent for aaaaaaages will make it really easy to understand 'standard' language when you hear it. :lol:

Still v v excited for the Super Challenge!

Mandarin
7 mins Memrise

Spanish
6 mins Duolingo

Scottish Gaelic
12 mins Duolingo

BSL
31 mins online course

Total: 56 mins (1,290 mins / 10,639 mins)
3 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Posts: 379
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Wed Apr 22, 2020 11:11 pm

22nd April 2020 / Day 113

Not ~feeling~ a lot of anything today. Did have a read through of the Super Challenge discussion thread from last year and found some Scottish Gaelic books for a potential TBR but aside from that and the small amount of studying I've done, the day's not amounted to much. Eh. Some days are like that, I guess.

Mandarin
5 mins Mandarin

Spanish
6 mins Duolingo

BSL
31 mins online course

Total: 42 mins (1,332 mins / 10,681 mins)
2 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Posts: 379
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Location: Nottinghamshire, UK
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Thu Apr 23, 2020 11:33 pm

23rd April 2020 / Day 114

So, turns out if I throw a bit of language learning into my work day (in the little breaks I take between pomodoros), I can get about 30 mins done! Nice! Am brushing up on TTMIK level one; if I don't remember the words from looking at Memrise, I go back to the lessons. Handily, having learnt 가다 makes it easier to remember the difference between the two goodbyes and I've been surprised to find that I still remember Hangul pretty well, though I am, of course, reading really slowly. Re-learnt four different ways of saying excuse me/I'm sorry and, since I remembered May is a 6WC month, signed up for that with Korean too!

Did a bit of Scottish Gaelic/Mandarin too and then BSL this evening. Unit four is a lot of vocabulary but it's split into four areas. Today I did the countryside pages—I practise the signs a few times while looking at the videos but today I put all the words in a random choice generator so that I could practise them out of order too. I'll see tomorrow if they've stuck a little better or not! There were only two pages of countryside words but there's eight for home-related stuff, so that might take a couple of days! :lol:

Still thinking ahead for the SC. There's plenty of Mandarin graded readers available on Kindle (and some in Kindle Unlimited, which is great for me!) but I can't seem to find anything for Korean. I'm at a beginner's stage of it and I'm not sure I'm going to register for the SC with it* but... does anyone have any recommendations for easy Korean reading stuff that's not just a textbook? Graded readers would be great but they seem to be impossible to find?

Mandarin
7 mins Memrise

Spanish
4 mins Duolingo

Korean
7 mins TTMIK
4 mins Memrise

Scottish Gaelic
9 mins Duolingo

BSL
30 mins online course

Total: 61 mins (1,393 mins / 10,742 mins)

*j/k I already am 90% sure I'm going to register with every language I'm currently learning as 'main' languages but let's all just pretend I'm not :roll: :lol:
4 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Location: Nottinghamshire, UK
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun Apr 26, 2020 1:04 am

24th April 2020 / Day 115

Finished work with a headache yesterday (lots of intent staring at a screen, sadly!) so managed to muddle through my BSL learning for the day but didn't spend much time looking at screens after that.

Mandarin
4 mins Memrise

Spanish
6 mins Duolingo

Scottish Gaelic
73 mins uTalk

BSL
30 mins online course

Total: 113 minutes (1,506 mins / 10,855 mins)

25th April 2020 / Day 116

Watched a terrible horror film today all about Ouija boards! Nothing to do with language learning, of course, but I ended up doing some research on their history and delved into some stuff about parapsychology and it's all quite interesting. Turns out that if you're asked a yes/no question you have to guess the answer on and use a ouija board, you'll get it right about 65% of the time, but if you're asked without the board, it's 50/50. That happened in a 2012 study anyway and it makes sense, since your unconscious mind picks up a lot more information than you realise.

But, of course, not language related! And on that note I didn't get loads done, though I did finish unit four of the BSL course. There were 121 signs in the unit, I was tested on 20 of them, and got 90% correct! Actually, got all of the ones I answered correct; I just didn't know the two I skipped. :lol: I'm going to go back over the assessments at some point, but looks like my generating random lists works for practising pretty well.

Still waiting on the Super Challenge. I've been browsing through posts about past ones on the forum, as well as some logs for anything that might just give me inspiration/motivation. I took the wortschatz.tk German vocabulary test mentioned in slowmoon's log and got a score of 10,800. Generally, I'd rate my passive skills at C1 because I'm not daunted picking up anything and reading it and I feel like I usually understand at least the general meaning... but that suggests a lot more work is needed. Anyway, did a quick KU search for some books to start me off next Friday and found some that I know are going to be a lot of fun! :D

Spanish
5 mins Duolingo

Korean
3 mins Memrise

BSL
33 mins online course

Total: 41 mins (1,547 mins / 10,896 mins)
3 x
pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

DaveAgain
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Apr 26, 2020 5:42 am

LunaMoonsilver wrote: Anyway, did a quick KU search for some books to start me off next Friday and found some that I know are going to be a lot of fun! :D
Sorry if this is a silly question, but can you please tell me what a "KU search" is?
0 x

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun Apr 26, 2020 9:43 am

DaveAgain wrote:Sorry if this is a silly question, but can you please tell me what a "KU search" is?


It's not a silly question! KU = Kindle Unlimited. I abbreviate it all the time so forget that sometimes other people don't know what I'm talking about! :lol:
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: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es


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