Multiligual log

Discussion in 'Language Learning Logs & Super Challenges' started by Bob, Oct 30, 2014.

  1. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    The end of the year is nigh and I thought I would look at my goals from the beginning of the year. (copied from HTLAL)

    Well I didn't really hit this goal but I've still made allot of progress in this direction. I broke out of the prescribed pattern more than once. I have good days when everything is clear. I don't have to worry about the Spanish comprehension, because apparently, whenever I have one, I have the other. (weird no?)

    Acts was more of a hurdle than I anticipated, so I didn't get this one, but I'm through it now, which means I'm still more than half way through the whole thing.

    nailed it :)

    Well, not much done with this but I do have a limited reading ability now. LRing first before even being able to read somewhat fluently seems like a bad idea in hindsight

    Had allot more success with this than I expected. Thank you Spanish. I can recommend this course, although it's probably got more detail than is helpful. Don't use the Portuguese for Spanish speakers!

    Not calling my name anymore. I was able to read through this material, but working on listening to the audio was just too much of a time sink. I've never really had to deal with a foreign language with so many different vowels :p This one's shelved indefinitely.
  2. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    Wow, you made some excellent progress this year!

    This may be beyond your goals, but if one is shooting for being able to understand people talking amongst eachother, movies, tv, etc, the word brain suggests 1500-2000 hours, so it wouldn't surprise me if you didn't reach that in a year.
  3. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    This is indeed my goal, though media is a bit limited. let's see at an hour a day it would take 2000 days or something like 5 years. Wow I need to make sure I 'm doing enough there. I think on average it's been more than an hour. What does he say about listening to closely related languages?

    I've started listening to the news without looking at it again. I think it's helping. I understood a whole newscast, and much of today's, and then the topic changed and I got kind of lost. I think I'll repeat that part again.
  4. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    I love this sign.

    [​IMG]

    It says "Our language is Tsakonian. Ask people to speak it with you", above in the Greek Tsakonian dialect, and below in more standard Greek. I can make out the bottom after knowing that "va" is "iva". The differences on the top are just bizarre to me. Apparently these dialects are not mutually intelligible.
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  5. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    He says it makes no difference.
  6. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Cebuano: constantly listening to Cebuano now, not really making an effort to re-listen. I'm cycling again, but I'm noticing a "battery effect". as in, when I get a break and can recharge my batteries, my listening gets allot better. This is probably just my level of concentration.

    Today when I listened to people in person, I had moments of awesome as well as moments of total fail :p It seemed easier in a way, because that comes in a bit slower, where everything on news pretty much comes in a constant stream.

    I'm feeling background noise becoming less of a factor now. I even changed from focusing on a Tagalog TV show and cebuanos having a conversation in the room close to the TV and back. This used to drive me bonkers as the noise from one would distract me from the other and I couldn't do anything :/
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2014
  7. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Cebuano: Listening allot! The last few days, hearing words in fluent speech feels more automatic. At all hours and situations it seems like I can do that. The extra step of making sense out of it seems to be the unstable factor right now. It seems like I I was able to hear all the sounds of Tagalog and Japanese TV also, and even make out some words here and there but of course, I don't know enough to make sense of out that yet :p

    Traditionally, you are asked to listen for this word or that word. If your brain naturally sorts this out over time, maybe this is not the best use of your time. I feel I'm going the way of Kaufmann. Still no final results can be drawn because I'm not there yet.
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  8. Big_Dog

    Big_Dog Administrator Staff Member

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    I'm listening a lot these days too. Averaging about 10 hrs listening to Russian per week. Should probably do more, but it seems to be my limit with my other responsibilities.
  9. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Cebuano: comprehension was down today, but I had no doubt where the word breaks were.When listening to someone speak I'll suddenly put it all together and it makes since, and then it goes away again. I'm more often able to ask what a word was.
  10. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Cebuano: listened through the gospel of Luke. At first listened to one chapter at a time, but the last few days, I just start listening and go until I feel like stopping. I need a breakthrough in conversation to get my motivation up.

    Greek: Romans is proving ponderous, just because the way Paul says stuff in here is confusing at first no matter the language. I've had to pull out a translation a few times.

    Hebrew: goldlists are starting to feel ponderous because I've got about 20 hours of headlisting ahead.

    japanese: I have maybe about 10% of what I want Goldlisted. My first distillation was odd, because I would remember what the English translation was rather the the Japanese pronunciation. Then, quickly after that I remembered the pronunciation anyway. I ended up with more that the regular 1/3. I'm probably getting a boost from my latent Mandarin skills.
  11. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Hebrew: zoomed ahead on my vocab project because I got into the "i's" and there's a whole lot of names that start with i, and they just get transliterated anyway.

    Cebauno: I've been listening so much that I think my ears have become lazy and want to take shortcuts. I switched over to my Tagalog Bible for a while, with some progress made, and then I switched back to Cebuano and I could tell I was doing it right again. It feels like a "running with weights" scenario.
  12. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    cebuano: I had a weird situation where I was listening to two people talk to each other and I understood one person but not the other. It was like one of those sci-fi movies where someone's talking to a robot who makes randim noises. Speech seems tp be getting better... sometimes I'm at a loss for a word, but It's ususaly because I never used that word before.

    Tagalog: switching over to my Tagalog Bible now and then. This may be the first language I learn to hear well *before* I read.

    greek class side note: continued use of Goldlist in our Greek class is undetermined. We have some students that just completed the course, and half of them didn't like Goldlist, and the other half didn't think it did anything. One of our instructors has been against the idea pretty much the whole time.

    Still, something interesting here is that we didn't do any vocab tests in the last year like we normally do, and the results are basically the same. Was it just extensive/intensive reading, or did Goldlist lend a hand? hard to say
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2014
  13. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Big listening block the last few days. I could still preform simple tasks, and shop and such, but everything else was pretty much hosed. Listening to my Cebuano Bible was pretty much just noise to me :/ even when I went back to Luke, which I had fun listening to almost straight through last week. This is annoying.. the last week or so I was building and progressing quite nicely, and then it just all crashed down.

    Today I don't know if my brain has had time to consolidate, or if I just tried something different. I read I chapter or two out of my Greek Bible, and then listened to it in Cebuano. I felt myself getting up off the ground again. I felt a steady improvement, picked out some words by context, and then listened to the next chapter cold. not up to where it was before though.
  14. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    There's this Cebuano grammar you can find online that was written by some Spanish priest. I think his Latin studies got the better of him. Here's the definite article:

    Screenshot 2014-12-24 13.36.47.png

    Filipino Grammar... You're doing it wrong.
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  15. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Goals for 2015

    In descending order of importance:

    Ceubano: understand spoken Cebuano (by april 2016). I’ll be going to another part of the island where they don’t speak English very well, but I CAN make myself understood in English. A skill I have gained over the past month or so… background noise seems to make no difference. The speaker can make a difference, otherwise I usually hear everything now, it’s a matter of being able to put the sounds/words into coherent thoughts. Not sure of any special way of doing that.

    Greek: Finish reading though my reader’s NT, then throw it away and use my “regular” Greek Bible. I had this as a goal last year, but now I have a better idea of what I'm up against. At that point I’ll probably have to underline some things I don’t know, but I think to continue with the reader’s NT would not help me any more.

    Hebrew: Finish my Goldlisting (April?) and start reading through my reader’s Hebrew OT. I'm half headlisted today.

    Japanese: Goldlist level 5 stuff. Find some appropriate materials to make it all come out. (Naruto is helping already :p)

    I won’t feel bad if I don’t do these:

    Tagalog: a general boost in comprehension.

    Portuguese: Listen through FSI programmatic II dialogues.

    French: read through 2000 Leagues under the Seas.
  16. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Cebuano: Speaking is improving. I've become self correcting. When I say something, I usually know what came out wrong. If I get weird looks I just start restating the sentence with fixes, maybe more times with more fixes. I'm noticing that I'm saying some words wrong even when I think of the spelling first.

    Had some awesome listening today. I wonder if I look back at my log, If I could see a pattern of good listening and bad, and the predict what days I should do listening, and what days would not help. It could be a time saver. I was near the bottom about 10 days ago. The peak before that was about 6 days before that.​
  17. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Cebuano: according to some advice from all japanese all the time I've started listening to Cebuano at every possible moment. (not when fully asleep though, that just makes me cranky). listening seems to have stablized, at a lower level than I have touched in the past. I'm really hoping for some consistency. I think a New Testament is roughly 25 hours of listening.

    NT Greek: I started listening to 1st John, because this is something I can read when half asleep :p Already I'm starting to be able to hear parts of it correctly. An added hurdle is that it's pronounced in the modern way, but it's quite doable. That's how they read it in Greece anyway.
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2015
  18. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Japanese: finished headlisting JPLT level 5 stuff. My estimate of how long that would take was over somehow. I dog-eared the last page I thought it would go to and it looked like I would still be a few weeks out. Now I wonder where there's some suitable reading material for this most basic level 3 months from now.
  19. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    Cebuano: The last two weeks I've been crazy busy and unable to work on Cebuano. Listened to the news today, and somewhere in the middle of the 4th time my listening started flowing again. Since it's been two weeks, I expect this to be my situation if ever I was to stop for long periods of time.
  20. Bob

    Bob Active Member VIP member

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    cebuano: after a long time of not doing this exercise, I started transcripting some audio bible. It's less "street" but the upside is that I have a perfect transcription. the thing that stands out the most for me was missing a "ng" sound on the end of a word. a handful of times I only had "n". This is odd because this is the only place an English speaker would expect this sound to be.

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