Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

[cjareck]

I would like to stress that I'm only playing with these two languages and have no long term plans to speak them!

You have chosen quite complicated toys, but I hope you will enjoy them!

[rdearman]

You have chosen quite complicated toys, but I hope you will enjoy them!

True!

After only a few days of Korean study, I have come to believe that it will be significantly easier than Chinese. I've only been using Free YT videos and the DLI SOLT course. I believe it is easier than Chinese because I think I can get up to speed reading fairly quickly since Korean uses an alphabet rather than characters and there are only 40 parts of the alphabet, only 14 more than English! Rather than thousands of characters which must be memorized by brute force if you want to read Chinese. I'm diligently trying to make sure that I can reproduce the sounds of the alphabet before even bothering to learn any words.

Obviously this doesn't mean I'll understand what I'm "sounding out" since I still have to learn vocabulary, but learning vocabulary should be quicker since the sounds and the written form are closely associated. Or at least a lot more closely associated than the sounds in Chinese and the Hanzi. In addition, I don't need to worry about tones (although I've seen some discussion of there being a "pitch-accent" in parts of Korea).

A little mini review of the DLI & FSI courses for Korean. I have found the SOLT course the most useful. It starts with the Hangul and pronunciation. The DLI head start uses Romanised spellings and doesn't get to the Hangul until the end of the course. So I stopped using that after the 2nd unit. The SOLT seemed to have the most beginner-friendly manual and audio, so I've decided to work through that one first.

I might be wrong, since I haven't done an exhaustive study of all the materials, but I'm just starting on this one, and I might come back to the others later. I managed to find some free Children's books in Korean. So after learning Hangul I plan to try and read a page a day of one of these books. Most estimates say people can learn Hangul in about 90 minutes. I figure this means I can probably master it within the next 6-12 weeks.

I got resources for reading, childrens books, comics, the bible, lots of online newspapers and some other stuff for free. Korean newspapers don't seem to all be behind paywalls like they are in the UK, so that makes reading a little more assessable. So compared to doing the FLC in Setswana, Korean should be a doddle. At least it is a very "resource rich environment".

As for Polish... well, I got a big box of audiobooks from my friend, so being super smart I thought to myself. "I'll put that up and out of the way so that when I want it I'll be able to go straight too it and pull out the stuff I want." If you're a regular reader of my log you're probably thinking. "I bet he lost the bloody box." and you would be correct! I can't find that box for love nor money. I have searched the whole house twice and cannot find it. But it is here somewhere, so I'll eventually stumble over it while looking for something else that I misplaced. I did find a Harry Potter book in Chinese and a bunch of printer cartridges I thought I'd thrown out.

[Montmorency]

Sounds like you have my "filing system"! - Good luck in finding it!

[rdearman]

Well, good news update! I found the box of Polish CD's in the Garage under an old tarp which I'd used when I painted a bench and threw over the box. Anyway, I spent the entire day today, almost 9 hours ripping the CD's over to MP3 so that I could load them on my phone. But I seem to have lost the Hobbit! I have 3 sets of CD's with nothing but text on them in Polish, so no clue what they are? Anyone know?

1. Ogniem i Mieczem
2. Pan Wolodyjowski
3. Potop

Typically I found all the Harry Potter books (I don't like Harry Potter anymore) but if nothing else I suppose I'll have to use them. I need to search some more to find the Hobbit, and now I'm really regretting not writing down the titles in English when my friend gave me the CD's.

[vonPeterhof]

I have 3 sets of CD's with nothing but text on them in Polish, so no clue what they are? Anyone know?

1. Ogniem i Mieczem
2. Pan Wolodyjowski
3. Potop

Those are the titles of the novels in Sienkiewicz's Trilogy, some of the most famous books in all of Polish literature.

[cjareck]

1. Ogniem i Mieczem
2. Pan Wolodyjowski
3. Potop

They are classic end extremely patriotic! There are movies based on them that you may also find interesting, but please skip the "Ogniem i mieczem" movie.
Trailer for "Pan Wołodyjowski"

Trailer for "Potop" - even with English subtitles


Famous duel scene from "Potop". They are swearing to be witnesses, and then the fight commences. There are two extremely known quotations from that. Wołodyjowski says during the duel, "Waść machasz jak cepem" ("Sir, You are waving [with the sword] like with a flail"), referring to Kmicic's poor fighting skills. And the infamous one - Kmicic, when he realized that he is no match for Wołodyjowski, says, "Kończ waść, wstydu oszczędź" ("Sir, finish me off, spare me the shame")

[rdearman]

Thanks!

Those are the titles of the novels in Sienkiewicz's Trilogy, some of the most famous books in all of Polish literature.

I had managed to figure out the authors name, since Sienkiewicz appeared on all 3 disk sets (although I did think it might have been the publisher for a little while)

They are classic end extremely patriotic! There are movies based on them that you may also find interesting, but please skip the "Ogniem i mieczem" movie.

I don't even know where I would find the films! I'll probably leave these 3 to the very last, since although I don't really like Harry Potter much, I do have the books and the Hobbit in English. So I can use them for the LR method. I'd need to try to find an English translation of the Sienkiewicz books. But given that with the HP & hobbit books I have 7.3 GB of audio files or 149 hours of audio, so you'd think after that much exposure I could work out the Sienkiewicz by myself.

Oh, I did find the Hobbit as well. It was in my car, I'd been listening to it in the car on and off last year.

[cjareck]

I don't even know where I would find the films!

That is no problem The site is, of course, fully legal, so you don't need to worry.
Potop: https://www.cda.pl/video/6340589b9
Pan Wołodyjowski: https://www.cda.pl/video/587335159

[rdearman]

When I was first starting to write software I learned a valuable lesson, which was before you spend a long time coding something, check your logic first. I have recently relearned this lesson in terms of hardware. I've been building an 8-bit CPU on breadboard using CMOS logic chips. Before you wire up a whole load of chips with wiring, check your logic first. So yesterday I spent the day rewiring 8 wires. Which honestly doesn't sound much so why an entire day? They were some of the first wires I put down and all the other wires put down subsequently had to be pulled out, and then put back afterward. There is probably some sort of corollary related to language learning I could derive from this lesson in electronics, but I can't think of it.

Korean might not be as easy as I first thought. I'm still in early days, but I thought it would be easy with a language with an alphabet, but the sounds related to the letters aren't really sticking in my brain. I've been watching a couple of YT channels in hopes of getting this. The DLI Korean has a lot more resources than I thought. I discovered some more audio to work with. I've been trying to update the first page of this log with resources as I find them. There are a lot of Korean teaching channels on YT, which is great for me since this is a FLC. Having ready access to instruction in sounds of the language is very cool when I compare it with the Setswana challenge I did last time.

While being in lockdown I've been binge-watching a Korean drama with my wife. It is based on some US series called Designated Survivor. I'm trying to follow the plot, reading subtitles and also trying to listen to the language. I've been trying to identify words while watching. I'm hoping that I'll be able to spot a simple word here or there. I'm trying to focus on the words I know, not the words I don't. I've also discovered a word which seems to be used a lot, but have a couple of different meanings.

I have installed Korean Hanguel on my computer so that I can type in Korean (eventually). But at least for now I can use it to create some practice sheets for writing the letters with the correct stroke order, etc.

Well, that is about all there is to report. I haven't really done anything with Polish, and I need to complete the first episode of my Autodidactic podcast and start the second season.

[rdearman]

I've also discovered a word which seems to be used a lot, but have a couple of different meanings.

The word was 그럼 which seems to translate as "well then", but in the series I watched seemed to be translated as "well then", "ok", "Sure".

Anyone know enough Korean to confirm or deny this?