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 » Mon May 18, 2020 11:43 pm

18th May 2020 / Day 139

Not much to report—got my hands on some German magazines so I'm gonna try and read those as part of the SC too, even though I only read for like five mins today. :lol: Aside from that, some Memrise/Duolingo/Cornish as per. Also tentatively set up some plans (study plans, ofc!) for this week but it's gonna be a busy one at work so will not be at all surprised if they don't get done.

Oh! And I've been working on the world's spookiest quiz for our Monday lunch quiz hour at work :lol: Not language-related, but it's been a lot of fun.

German
5 mins reading

Spanish
21 mins Memrise

Scottish Gaelic
13 mins Duolingo

Cornish
28 mins KDL
3 mins Memrise

Total: 70 mins (2,651 mins / 14,068 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sat May 23, 2020 10:55 pm

23rd May 2020 / Day 144

Haven't updated in a few days. I have done language study/practice/whatever every day but it was a bit of a slog this week tbh. Today was my last day with Cornish, which I think may have been part of it—I really haven't clicked with this language, sadly :( but it's still been interesting to see the similarities between it and Welsh, and even between Cornish and Scottish Gaelic with regards to certain words and structures. Ojibwe begins tomorrow!

I finally downloaded jeffers' actual Excel spreadsheet and have tweaked it so that I can see stats for all five of my SC languages (but on two dashboards; took long enough to just update everything to what I wanted it to be :lol:). I've watched a lottttt of TV today, but I'm now on target for German books and films and in the 'super' segment for Spanish TV. Finished Avatar - Der Herr der Elemente S01 in German and Community S01 in Spanish and have done a little dig through Netflix for some good Mandarin/Korean series, which I'll probably start with tomorrow.

Ooh, I have also finished the language notebook I only started in January (wooh!) so spent time here and there this week setting up my new one so it looks ~pretty~. I am going to experiment a little with taking my endangered language notes on Evernote, though, as those are the notes that took up a lot of the last book and if I'm not investing in them long-term, it seems a bit... idk, wasteful?... to use all that paper on them. I'll see how it goes; I do really like the act of writing out notes to aid memory, but since I use virtual flashcards, etc., it seems like it might be something that works generally. Either way, I know I won't be switching to purely computer-based notes any time soon!

Gonna just list times for each language for the last few days; will be back to normal tomorrow!

German
20/05: 19 mins
23/05: 162 mins

Spanish
19/05: 138 mins
20/05: 49 mins
21/05: 30 mins
22/05: 15 mins
23/05: 151 mins

Scottish Gaelic
19/05: 11 mins
20/05: 14 mins
22/05: 12 mins
23/05: 15 mins

Cornish
19/05: 33 mins
20/05: 31 mins
21/05: 30 mins
22/05: 33 mins
23/05: 34 mins

Total: 777 mins (3,428 mins / 14,845 mins)
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: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon May 25, 2020 10:41 am

24th May 2020 / Day 145

Spent a lot of yesterday working on bumping up my SC TV numbers. I've done away with any subtitles for Avatar - Der Herr der Elemente because I really don't need them; there's perhaps a word or two per episode that I don't know but I usually end up picking up the meaning from context. Maybe that means I should move onto another series but I really want to finish my re-watch and since there's only three seasons in total, I don't see any harm in it. If I can keep up a good rate with German (which means reading a LOT more), then I'm happy to upgrade to a double challenge anyway.

Watched another episode of Community in Spanish—also on season two—and jumped back into 锦绣未央 (The Princess Weiyoung). I'm at episode 22 and oh, this one's still so fun! I also started 더 킹: 영원의 군주 (The King: Eternal Monarch), a new Korean show on Netflix. Not sure how I feel about this show yet; I like the aspect of parallel worlds but I'm not feeling a lot of chemistry between the two leads yet. Still, I did recognise my first Korean phrase without having to look it up 가자 - let's go!

I also started with Ojibwe last night, which meant the first lesson from Pimsleur Ojibwe. I think I forgot that I kind of like Pimsleur; it can get a bit repetitive after a while but it really helps me drill those phrases into my brain. Though, Ojibwe is obviously not transparent for me at all, so I did a hunt around for a list of words used in the first lesson (seeing something written down helps it stick so much better!) and found this summary of the first ten Pimsleur Ojibwe lessons.

The plan for today? Well, it's a bank holiday but I'm working because there's a lot going on this week (and I'll get to just take this day off somewhere else without using up my holiday entitlement, which is nice), so I'll only have the evening as usual. A bit of reading, I think, as well as an episode or two of something, though I'll definitely try to actually learn some Korean!

German
23 mins TV (Avatar S02E01)

Mandarin
44 mins TV (The Princess Weiyoung E22)

Spanish
23 mins TV (Community S02E01)
7 mins Memrise
5 mins Duolingo

Korean
144 mins TV (The King: Eternal Monarch E01-02)

Scottish Gaelic
14 mins Duolingo

Ojibwe
38 mins Pimsleur (L1)

Total: 298 mins (3,726 mins / 15,143 mins)
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: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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

Postby jeffers » Mon May 25, 2020 11:15 am

LunaMoonsilver wrote:24th May 2020 / Day 145

Spent a lot of yesterday working on bumping up my SC TV numbers. I've done away with any subtitles for Avatar - Der Herr der Elemente because I really don't need them; there's perhaps a word or two per episode that I don't know but I usually end up picking up the meaning from context. Maybe that means I should move onto another series but I really want to finish my re-watch and since there's only three seasons in total, I don't see any harm in it. If I can keep up a good rate with German (which means reading a LOT more), then I'm happy to upgrade to a double challenge anyway.


I would argue that now you don't have to think about the meaning of what you're watching, this is the perfect time to re-watch the series. First, because you can enjoy it fully, and second because you are getting continued exposure to the structure of the language, which is harder to assimilate than vocabulary.
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

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

Postby guyome » Mon May 25, 2020 12:06 pm

Good luck with Ojibwe!

You may already know about that but there are several back issues of the Oshkaabewis Native Journal available online. Apart from the first ones, they all have around 40/50 pages of Ojibwe texts (together with facing English translation and index at the back) and corresponding audio files (around one hour/issue). The dialect is the same as the one used in Pimsleur (Minnesota Ojibwe).

I remember Pimsleur Ojibwe as the only one where you don't invite girls to have a drink but to a pow-wow instead.
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon May 25, 2020 10:19 pm

jeffers wrote:I would argue that now you don't have to think about the meaning of what you're watching, this is the perfect time to re-watch the series. First, because you can enjoy it fully, and second because you are getting continued exposure to the structure of the language, which is harder to assimilate than vocabulary.


Oh, that's true! I guess I forget that just because it doesn't feel like any kind of challenge, that doesn't mean I'm not learning—and I'm having fun, importantly! I may start making sure to list the words that crop up that I don't know (since there's so few of them), but yeah, otherwise I'm going to sit back and enjoy watching my fun gang save their world! :lol:

guyome wrote:Good luck with Ojibwe!

You may already know about that but there are several back issues of the Oshkaabewis Native Journal available online. Apart from the first ones, they all have around 40/50 pages of Ojibwe texts (together with facing English translation and index at the back) and corresponding audio files (around one hour/issue). The dialect is the same as the one used in Pimsleur (Minnesota Ojibwe).

I remember Pimsleur Ojibwe as the only one where you don't invite girls to have a drink but to a pow-wow instead.


I did not and that's such a good resource, thank you for dropping it in here! I might use it for a teeny LR experiment (since the texts are pretty short), but either way, the fact that they essentially seem to be kind of parallel texts means that they'll be accessible for me even when I put Ojibwe back down. (If I do, ofc.)

And yeah, there was a bit in the first lesson at the end where the narrator says 'you want to dance' and I thought, for a change, I was going to bother the man a bit (:lol:) but instead it was a precursor to byeeeee (except not bye, because there's no exact 'goodbye'). Still, nice to see they've adapted this one a bit!
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Fri May 29, 2020 11:39 pm

29th May 2020 / Day 150

It's been a busy week at work so, while I've done the bare minimum, I haven't really managed much more than that. Gonna just post my total times. :lol: But! I'm attending the Polyglot Gathering Online this weekend, so that's fun! Went to the crash courses for Esperanto (made me want to learn Esperanto/flashback to spending time on lernu.net over a decade ago), Klingon (made me wanna watch Star Trek: Discovery) and Na'vi (meh) today, as well as the talk about Decoding Movies (aka the importance of transcription), which has really lit a fire under me to try that method. Have talks/stuff listed from 10:00-20:00 tomorrow and 09:00-20:00 on Sunday, so it's a busy weekend ahead! :D (Almost makes up for the comic con I would have been going to being cancelled but I also solved that by doing a big old Etsy shop last weekend!)

Other than that, I'll probably watch some TV, though I definitely should spend some time reading. Ojibwe's going pretty well; well, it's interesting anyway, but my lack of knowledge of any languages close to it means that I've had to repeat the first two Pimsleur lessons again because the words wouldn't stick! Did Memrise yesterday (someone's put up a deck based on the Pimsleur stuff) and then the third lesson today, but I'm definitely going to have to repeat that one, too.

Total (25/05-29/05): 305 mins (4,031 mins / 15,448 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun May 31, 2020 12:18 am

30th May 2020 / Day 151

Lots and lots of Polyglot Gathering talks today, so not so much time spent on language learning.

Again, though, I'm feeling really inspired to get stuck in, it'll just be... after this weekend :lol:

Grabbed a lot of tips from Dr Popkins' talk about the four skills (most weren't that new but some were quite interesting), and some interesting methods from Luca Lampariello about pronunciation/accent. I have to admit to that being something that doesn't bother me that much, but it was cool to hear ways to reduce your accent and get more natural pronunciation. The listening-reading talk was super interesting too (even if I had kind of seen the progress of those examples here! :lol: ). Makes me want to try again.

Also – the third (and final?? I might just be making that up!) season of Dark is coming out on 27th June, so I definitely need to get a move on with watching/re-watching that. I watched season one ages ago, then meant to re-watch it before moving onto season two but never quite got there. Will definitely try before season three.

Also also, with all this stuff that's got me thinking this weekend, I'm going to make a dedicated effort to improve my Chinese next month. It's really a language I've been letting languish for no good reason except that I think I've ended up tied down by the textbook method – just read/listen to this text and do these exercises and eventually you'll get there. Great! Except: I'm finding that too dull to continue. Plus, it's never going to get me where I need to be for the Super Challenge, either. Plus, if I level up my Chinese, I'll have more time to spend on Spanish/Korean/Scottish Gaelic – I don't think it would take me long to push my Spanish up into the B levels, tbh, and then I'd have a lot more time to lay down a good foundation in the two other languages.

So: June is Mandarin month! (Which is to say, the focus, but I'll still be doing bits and pieces in all my other languages.) Going to amass what I need tomorrow/work out my strategy and then I'll be back with that too – but I think the basic element is do a little bit in all four skills everyday, then have a blow-out session when I can! :lol:

Anyway, for today...

Mandarin
4 mins Memrise

Spanish
3 mins Duolingo

Ojibwe
32 mins Pimsleur (L3, second time)

Total: 39 mins (4,070 mins / 15,487 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun May 31, 2020 11:16 pm

31st May 2020 / Day 152

Uh, I'm kind of exhausted. Another full day of Polyglot Gathering talks (I was going to watch the Quenya crash course but honestly gave up after the closing talks – though I can catch up through to the end of June anyway!) but why am I tired?! I didn't even do anything!

Yeah, so, I didn't really go into any of the practice rooms but I'm not super sad about that; I'm sure they were fun but the talks were really what I was after. Today's highlights: lessons from neuroscience for language learners – not a ton of new stuff in there but there's something nice about getting it all laid out and with evidence (!); and when can I say I speak a language (from Richard Simcott) which obviously didn't straight-up answer that question (I don't think I was expecting him to? :lol: ) but was an interesting look at the development of the online language learning community over the last 14 or so years, as well as people's different opinions on when they feel they can say they 'speak' a language.

I have to admit to that being something I've only started to do relatively recently (like, the last few years) and only with German – which I've been learning for uh SIXTEEN YEARS by this point. Yes, I started it in school, but even then... I did a degree studying this language! I did a degree translating this language! It's interesting the barriers we create for ourselves – because there was definitely no one stopping me saying I spoke German (in fact, I think there would have been several people who would have encouraged me to admit it), and yet... there we go.

(I also realised I think I've been hanging around here HTLAL for the last nine to ten years??? Like, not with the regularity of some of the members who've been around for ages but still. I forgot.)

Anyway, all this to say that's why I'm looking to work on Mandarin next (this? Just hit midnight here!) month. The aforementioned German degree? Yeah, I did German and Mandarin and so while I would never expect them both to be at the same level, there's no real excuse for my backslide here. It's not like I don't enjoy Mandarin, too! I really like speaking it – which is a surprise, since I'm not a superfan of speaking in general – but like I wrote yesterday, I think I've been holding myself back with the methods I've been using. They were fine when I was starting out, or when I was going through a structured course, but now?

Now, I can do whatever I want!

So, I have a few (a lot ofc what was everyone expecting) Mandarin goals to hit next month. Since I've been recording all my time spent on languages all year, I've set myself a reasonable time goal of one hour per day – but I'm not pushing myself to do an hour of study every day, just, like, at least thirty hours in general. That'll still give me enough time for 30 mins per day with Ojibwe/Basque (!!!)/DGS and time with my other languages.

Also, the key thing is that I'd like to read, listen, speak, and write something in Mandarin every day.

Reading – graded readers, (likely to be) intensive reading of online news
Listening – LR either HP1 or some kind of web novel, TV
Writing – daily at least one sentence on this log, langcorrect
Speaking – taking part in the 30 day speaking challenge again (and will achieve more than one day this time!)

After rdearman's LR talk yesterday, I'm going with the intermediate method, in that I'm going to add transcription/translation etc. exercises to get the most out of the LR component. I'm also going to strive for 3+ hour sessions so if my brain explodes, that's why.

(Jk, I've definitely binged TV longer than that so I know I can keep up to some extent!)

I'm also aiming for around 30 mins of solid grammar/sentence structure practice per week and will focus on the HSK 5 list for vocabulary; there's 1,300 words total for that section and I should be able to get through them all at least once.

Aim: get my Mandarin from the A2/B1 a short online test put me at last night to a solid B1. Am I maybe pushing this in terms of time? Yes! Do I mind? No! I can't possibly get worse.

But anyway, long post's getting long. I'll be back tomorrow day time (aka earlier than this) to drop my May stats (hit 83% of my studying time goal woooooh) and my first month of the SC stats but for now, this is all I managed today. :lol:

Mandarin
2 mins Memrise

Spanish
131 mins TV (Community S02E05-10)
4 mins Duolingo

Ojibwe
35 mins Pimsleur (L4, which will be redone tomorrow :roll: )

Total: 172 mins (4,242 mins / 15,659 mins)
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:04 pm

MAY REVIEW
Days studied: 31/31
Total hours: 70.7
Total hours (year): 260.9

So, here's my breakdown of study time:

Image

Lots of TV of course, but still, I'm amazed at how far I pushed Spanish this month. My total time goal was fifteen minutes per day but I almost tripled that (obviously, because of the TV, but still). German and Mandarin were neglected a little but I'm definitely planning to fix that (at least for Mandarin) this month!

May was also the first month of the Super Challenge! I didn't think I was going to post updates on my progress about the SC every month, but I might just bundle it up in these updates.

Here's my versions of jeffer's dashboards:

Image

Image

And my own spreadsheet (for numbers):

Image

(Oops, didn't notice that 'plot area' over the Korean books. It's uh zero anyway :lol: )

Anyway, doing great for Spanish films! :D Doing... not as great for everything else but it's early days yet. It's not going to be difficult to get Spanish and German back on track (German especially) and with my push for Mandarin this month, I'm hoping that will be where it needs to be by the end of June, too.

I'm happy with how I'm doing for Spanish so far, but I don't know how much that watching is translating into learning. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm picking up new words and phrases, but I definitely need to combine this with other stuff.

Gamechanger, I know, but it's really more of a reminder.

Anyway – Korean and Scottish Gaelic are going to be on the backburner for a while, though I'd like to try and watch one episode of a Korean show per week. I'll chip away at studying them, but SC-wise, I'm in for a half on each, so I'm not too worried about them at this stage.

And yes, having those little speedometer-style charts is so so useful for working out what I need to be doing!

(Too bad I never listen.)

ANYWAY, onto my June goals:

  1. Level up my Mandarin – I wrote about this yesterday; practise all four skills daily, add in grammar 30mins/week, try and bump up from A2/B1 to secure B1.
  2. Keep up my 366-day challenge streak – I'm working on Ojibwe, Basque, and German Sign Language this month.
  3. Get my German SC numbers on target.
  4. Get both my Spanish SC numbers on target.

I think that'll do it. Happy June, everyone!
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: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es


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