Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga Continues

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Fri Nov 10, 2017 9:43 pm

SPOILERS AHEAD

The Spanish flu episode of El Ministerio Del Tiempo makes me absolutely furious because I can relate to the idea of having an overeducated yet wildly incompetent boss, who jeopardises everyone’s interests through a mixture of sheer arrogance and deliberate ignorance.

Bringing the Spanish flu into the 21st century against the express wishes of your head of medical staff? Surely that was going to end well. Also at first refusing to let a dead body be carried out of the infirmary, someone dead due to her own incompetence in the first place, because it would ‘look bad’?

‘What is it with this country that the stupider someone is, the higher they rise?’
Speaking the truth there, Ernesto.



Great tv show, 5/5 for me.
1 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Sat Nov 11, 2017 7:35 pm

SPOILERS AHEAD

Thanks to the Season 2 finale of El Ministerio del Tiempo, I have yet another alternate history scenario to consider. What if the Spanish Armada won and the sun never set on the Spanish Empire? Also what if an imperialist king came in possession of the key to time itself and used it to become king in every era, king of all?
The Holy Inquisition in the 21st Century, no democracy, hundreds of influential authors and artists censored or killed, no LGBT (and by extension human rights) rights, London as a Spanish colony (scares me far too much, being English myself) etc

Utterly fascinating, what if the US did not have the cultural hegemony that we Anglophones now enjoy? What if the shoe was on the other foot and perhaps Spanish was the lingua franca? It’s one thing to consider it abstractly but another to see it interpreted on screen, albeit for 30 minutes, and see characters one cares about thrust into this brave new world. Fascism on an inter temporal scale.


This show has greatly exceeded my expectations
0 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Mon Nov 13, 2017 9:30 am

Hello wanderlust my old friend, it’s nice to meet with you again. Japanese dabbling is a go go go. Somehow I stumbled on a Japanese Pod 101 video about learning the Hiragana and I sat for so long last night that I fell asleep right there, with a pen in my hand. The idea of seeing shapes within the characters really helps a lot and I’ve learnt about 15 characters already. I’ve tried half of the first CD of Michel Thomas Japanese and it wasn’t bad. And I have Assimil Japanese too:

To be perfectly honest I have no idea why I’m doing this as I don’t reasonably expect to set foot in Japan- for racial reasons, as much as I hate to say it. The reality is that I’d probably have a rather unpleasant time there. In any case, the best way to overcome temptation is to give in to it. The show must go on.

Had a very extended Russian grammar study period over the last few days, sitting in my room compiling charts and attempting to lock the examples in mentally by wading my way through the first few chapters of the Linguaphone Russian 1961 course. It’s very tedious work because of a severe lack of vocabulary, being that the booklet containing the English translation and explanations seems to have been lost to the ether forever.
It’s time to hop back on Assimil Russian without Toil as I was forced to stop earlier due to frustration over unlearned case declensions.


Done with the first two seasons of El Ministerio Del Tiempo and almost halfway through my half SC. I’ll have to finish it off by checking out the Velvet series as I can’t seem to find a site that hosts Season 3 of El Ministerio Del Tiempo (with integrated subtitles). What a shame, I’ll have to wait and take a rain check on Season 3 then.


French is dormant for now, I’m stalling on the German Active wave due to time constraints but I’m sure I’ll have it done by the end of the year.
0 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Tue Nov 14, 2017 5:29 pm

Thanks to the excellent JapanesePod101 video on learning the Hiragana, I’ve managed to learn how to read (and write) the Hiragana in 6 hours. The memory hooks were surprisingly effective but not for all characters it seems, as I can remember and write some from memory more easily than others. In any case, I’m sure they’ll solidify further in my mind as I progress through Assimil Japanese with Ease. Why I’m so pleased is that I expected a truly unpleasant learning experience and I’m glad to get one alphabet out of the way in so short a period of time. I haven’t begun with the katakana yet but I’ve already been introduced to three kanji characters (or words?) in the first lesson of Assimil. :(

So I’ve hunted down a library copy of Remembering the Kanji and I’m not sure what goal I should set for myself with regards to speed. Used in conjunction with Anki, what is too short a period of time to aim to learn all 2000 kanji? Heisig apparently did it in a month (or was it six weeks?) but I really don’t think I’d have the time to sit and do 80-100 new Kanji a day plus Anki reviews.

In any case, after months of quietly dreading and postponing, I have begun my first Asian language and I’m absolutely fascinated.



Russian
Assimil is still on hold until I do the first 1000 words in the Memrise top 10,000 deck. Meanwhile I’m simply making my way through the Linguaphone 1961 course, a lesson a day. Although the English translation and explanatory notes booklet may have been lost to the ether, I’m still using it as best as I can with a dictionary and my grammar charts. If anything, it’ll improve my understanding of the cases while I do the primary task of front loading vocab in order to get back to Assimil Russian as soon as possible.


German and French on hold, a podcast here or there, while I’m still on the half SC for Spanish.

I’m not sure I particularly care when I finally achieve some level of proficiency in Russian or Japanese. For now the pleasure of study is enough, though I’m especially motivated to learn Russian because I’ve always wanted to read Soviet era literature as quite a few of those works were apparently never translated into English.

Come to think about it, I suppose I’d consider reading as my secondary motivation for language learning.

Primary motivation? I’ve been doing some thinking and I think I’ve arrived at an answer.

Although extroverted, I’ve never been very talkative, neither have I got the itchy feet of a modern nomad, thus communication with native speakers has never been a present worry. In the future perhaps, since I’m young and I have my travelling days ahead of me, but not now.
Also being able to understand TL native media is nice, but I lack the patience to binge watch
or listen to media in my native language, suggesting that I don’t consume TL media particularly for the pleasure of consumption but for the pleasure of knowing that I’m able to understand it. It’s all about the sense of accomplishment, I find.

Finally, although it’s nice to be multi lingual in my future career at a law firm, it’s not particularly an absolute requirement as most of the business is conducted in the UK for the City firms and the international firms have branches in other countries to handle the business there too. Multi lingualism may give an edge as an associate solicitor but it’s hardly a roundhouse kick to the competition.

Well, if not for travel/communication, media consumption, career reasons, then why am I spending so much time on language learning?

Boredom.

I don’t think I can handle doing nothing all day, I’d go insane. Law school is honestly quite boring and I need something else to do. Also that sense of accomplishment that language learning provides is rather addictive, I must say. Just a steady drip drip of dopamine laced internal validation, straight to the brain. I suppose there are worse things to get addicted to.
2 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Wed Nov 15, 2017 1:36 am

A small pleasure of mine is reading demotivational articles about language learning. You know the type ‘10 reasons not to learn German’, ‘8 reasons why learning correct French pronunciation is next to impossible’ etc etc

Sometimes I wonder if the authors are actually seriously trying to discourage people and thus justify their failure at language learning or simply giving a small wink to the (very small, I’m sure) amount of people who, like me, enjoy reading these articles ironically.


In any case I always feel refreshed after encountering such demotivational material and ready to hit the books once more
3 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:59 am

I like how studying Japanese has recalibrated my entire view on Russian.


My view on Russian

Before Japanese ‘Maldita sea, was für eine ärgerliche Sprache!‘

After Japanese ‘Ah, finally a reasonable language with an actual alphabet. Very relaxing to study’
5 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Mon Nov 20, 2017 12:51 am

Spent the weekend in a chemical haze and got absolutely no work done. However, my attempt to speak a different language with others in that haze was nothing short of surreal. The French sentences felt almost heavy in my mouth, a little too smooth even, and I could see the words float up in the air as I said them. Studying under these conditions was next to impossible as I couldn't just focus on anything at all. Even now, even after spending the whole day recovering, I couldn't sit still for long enough to learn more than 5 Katakana characters from the JapanesePod101 video.

In any case, I've restarted my love-hate relationship with my old flame Anki. I bought the iOS app today, and whilst wincing temporarily at the cost (being an impoverished student), I can see myself getting a great deal of use out of it indeed.

I think I'm going to try the Anki approach with regards to finally locking down the Russian case endings, as I've seen a few people attest to the success of this approach. With German, I simply waited the grammar out - seeing the endings in context so many times that I got an intuitive feel of what was appropriate or not. That's not working quite well for Russian, so a little Anki help may be what I need.
For Japanese, I'll limit Anki use to the kanji- only when I've learnt them from Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. I'm not quite sure how to go about learning Japanese but I'm firmly convinced that I'd like this to be as much of a smooth, painless experience as possible. Assimil, Anki and Heisig's book should suffice for now, as I really don't have time for anything more intensive than that.

Before ending this post and taking some more time off to recover, I'd like to ask a question - Is it just me or does Memrise feature far more reviews in a shorter period of time than Anki? If so, why?
1 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Mon Nov 20, 2017 1:40 am

After much consideration, I've decided to stop using the Memrise 10,000 most common Russian words deck and simply switch to Anki- where I'll enter in the sentences myself from my copy of A Frequency Dictionary of Russian. Perhaps this is my first step on the path to a proper 10,000 sentence deck like I see quite a few of you guys doing, massive props to those who actually managed to complete this herculean, and I imagine, rewarding task.
0 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga Continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Mon Nov 20, 2017 1:54 pm

Rosetta Stoned
One who gets so high that he or she begins to speak in a foreign language.

Beth got so Rosetta Stoned last night she could effectively communicate with the cab driver!


https://www.urbandictionary.com/define. ... a%20Stoned

I thought you guys would appreciate this one
2 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Still overly ambitious, now 20 years old. The Saga Continues

Postby Atinkoriko » Tue Nov 28, 2017 11:16 am

So far so good, the Anki mobile app has been a great investment. The ease of adding and reviewing cards certainly eases some of the stress I had come to associate with Anki use. I went back over the Assimil lessons and jammed the stubborn vocab into Anki, meaning that I can now return to the daily schedule without wanting to rip my hair out over forgotten vocab.

In essence, not much work done but things are looking up.
0 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests