Multiligual log

Weighing in my language goals for the year

Don't think I've got this one yet .... I have definitely gotten better at this, and most of it seems to be improving my listening skills in general, and not with Cebuano itself. With the proper warm-ups (and sleep ) I can understand. I understand more that I did when I'm tired. There's still more to go on this one. I don't know if I'm good to move yet.

check still need a little boost for say, Acts but for the most part I don't have to look anything up unless I require some exactness for religious purposes, but people do that in English don't they?

check I'll finish reading through Genesis in a day or two. I'm still lacking verbal accuracy though (cause to speak or spoke?)

nope. I finished the Goldlisting but never got around to actually using the stuff.

Well, for this vague goal I guess I made it. I can follow the gist of news, and occasionally understand the soaps.

No, didn't do this, but I've figured out the grammatical constructions that were bugging me, which was the whole reason for doing FSI II anyway.

Nope, Got through about 5 chapters and I just didn't care anymore

Random: Earlier this year, I got distracted with some Duolingo (ok a lot of Duolingo)although I had a lot of success with the system. It boosted my romance languages for one. My feeling this that this is a good step to take after my Goldlisting process. I always have success with these at the start, but my goldlisted languages did not become a burden after a few days, and it was easy to keep going.

Cebuano: My Cebuano comprehension did not drop for several weeks even though I wasn't doing my listening exercises. I think the listening exercises from Duolingo in other languages was keeping my ear up. But after several weeks (as I was nearing the end of Portuguese) I think what happened is that I was able to guess what the words should be instead of simply listening, and that's when I had to come back and concentrate on Ceubano listening again.

To have some indication of my progress, about three weeks ago I put my Ceubano mp3s in a player that tracks # of plays, and this way I can track how much I have listened overall, and how many times I have repeating listening. I've pulled the notebook out again yesterday, but I didn't write everything down, only those words or phrases that were hard. Just doing this has boosted my Cebuano today. For the moment I'm putting away my other languages and just doing this one. My thought for the day: Your listening skills are only good when you can fill in what you missed.

Documentation of my snail's progress
First, a transcription from last June


and the same from a few days ago



Stars show the slight improvements (and I guess it's all slight at this stage). Lower down I was wavering between "atong" and "ato ang"

I also found where I originally transcribed the first sentence also. The first time I missed "lang" but caught it this time on the second listen. Also, you might see between the first 2 lines where I wrote "siya" and then later erased it. I was way off last time, and it turns out that it's a contracted from "s'ya"

Looking at the data from my mp3 player, look like I'm making an average of 1 hour per day of listening. I have a feeling that if I push it to much more than that my brain starts rebelling

I've been using audio bibles most recently to up my listening skills in various languages. Here's the breakdown of current ones:

Cebuano: I really feel that I have reached the end of its usefulness for Cebuano. 99% of it seems really clear. however, listening to it seems to my personal Cebuano come out better. I'm concentrating now on a Cebuano soap.

Tagalog: What I have listened to several times is good, but I can still feel a lag remembering what several of the word mean that isn't there in Cebuano. Starting to understand TV commercials The upside of that is one I figure out what the commercial is saying I'll hear it again all day long.

French: By far this still seems the most bizarre language to listen to and remains my worst language in listening skills but not in reading.

Ilocano: A Filipino dialect of which I Goldlisted the basics a long time ago. feeling progress on a low level

Hebrew: Listening to Genesis Chapter 3 over and over. I'm not feeling any improvement

finished reading the original Cebuano play "Ang Paghigugma sa Yuta nga Nataohan" or Love for The Native Land from 1902 about a tyrant preist.

Listening bonanza:
french: After about a week more spending, I think 15 minutes a day on it, I can finaly understand Matthew 5 orally
Hebrew: listening has gotten me out of the rut I was in. I now clearly know the differenc between bra (create) and brx(bless) I think the 3 letter roots are a bit to mich to take on visually. Also unusuall vowel sounds usually stand out and signal aome less common grammar distinctions.
Cebauno: No longer focusing on Bible, supplementing with some stories from gutenberg. reading has definately reached a new level of ease and i realized that I understood the ending to the first story incorectly when i read it a year ago.

Also as a fun side note, there is a catalan course on duolingo for spanish speakers

Jumped up a level in Tagalog. I've been listening to the first 3 chapters of John off and on, understanding some things here and there. A few days ago somewhere in the middle of it, everything started making sense. I even listened to a few more chapters past the 3. I think this means I just moved into A2 territory (for predictable input).

Other dates:
March 9 of last year... breakthrough for reading familiar text
May 25 of last year... worked my way through unfamiliar children's stories.

Cebuano: lots more Cebuano and lots less English around the holidays. I prepared myself for a provincial trip and did quite well upon arrival. The next day it faded off. Good news is I now recognize the local accent there, and also the locals feel much less pressure to speak to me in English. This was a big goal of mine that I was aiming for last April... now if I could just do it consistently. I think I'll change my listening strategy for a while to what I tried on the way there... listen to the Bible in a A1/A2 language unrelated to Ceubano. I can't explain why this helps, but I think it's like running with weights... and it's not close enough to cause vocabulary confusion. The other possibility is that it forces me to just listen to the word and parse the sounds without worrying about what everything means.

The John Project

having found a weird boost to Cebuano when listening to other languages, I started listening to the first 3 chapters of The Gospel of John and the first the chapters of first John in an attempt to bump listening for these up to an A2 Level.

Greek (with modern pronunciation) the second time around I understood most of Chapter one, which I have never done before, but I felt myself struggling to stay focused. Sure enough I came back an hour later and I couldn't keep up any more.

Russian: There was a time in the middle of 1 John 2 where everything started making sense. My big problem seems to be stupid long words like "свидетельствовать" in John 1 which means something like "To testify" I'm noticing different versions of verbs pop up (eg an extra "πο" prefix) I seem to recall this has something to do with "aspect" which I don't really understand

Romanian: I’m at about the 80% mark. would you believe this is helping me with my Russian?

I find myself using a variety of strategies to understand. One is to just grab all the sounds.. when I do this 2 or three times,sometimes the meaning is already there. When I don't find any improvements, I read through some of what the hard parts were. Sometimes I can just concentrate on the train of thought and understand that way.

The John Project is working! Every morning I listen to language that I'm not as good at and my Cebuano listening is consistent. Thank the Lord. Not perfect, but consistent. For Tagalog I use a harder book Like 1st Corinthians.

One day I did NOT do this and noticed the drop in comprehension for the day. I'll probably concentrate on Tagalog Bible for a while because of all the Tagalog TV around here.

comprehension dropped last night. Not sure why. It could be:
1) too much listening to Tagalog
2) allergies
3) sudaphedrine for the allergies
4) bowave

At least I feel like a bad day is unusual, instead of a good one.

In retrospect I think I can rule out the Tagalog listening as the cause of the temporary drop. I've regained what I had I think over the past few days and can still sometimes deal with Cebuano with a lack of sleep... but there is a point where it's useless

I took a look at the self assesment thingy for language level, and I think I'm starting to see C1 criteria apply to me on the listening end.

I tried out listening to my Bible in the Waray and Illongo dialects, and I understand it for the most part. What I don't understand I end up getting by context after a few listening sessions.

edit: crosslink to someone else's Cebuano log http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5133

I don't know what this never came up before, but I confused a bread vendor when I asked for "diez" ka buok sa pan. I should have used the Ceubano number for ten "napo", because the first thing that comes to their mind otherwise is money.

Hiligaynon: I was lost as to why sometimes "sa" is used, and sometimes "sang". Looking up the grammar on wikipedia, there is an extra category of markers that Cebuano does not have. the middle column below:

singular impersonal ang sang, sing* sa
plural impersonal ang mga sang mga, sing mga* sa mga
singular personal si ni kay
plural personal** sanday nanday kanday

For Cebuano it's always sa (or ni for a person). Best I can figure, there can only be one "ang", one "sa", and the rest will be "sang". This causes no problem for listening, but it would be a problem if I tried to make my own sentence.

In addition the 4th row is completely different, compared to the "sila" and "nila" of Ceubano.

Japanese -- or, how far can you go with just familiar audio?

I decided to take a detour & tackle some Japanese this week, my current background includes going through pimsuler level 1, and goldlisting katakana, hirigana, and level N5 kanji/vocab. I don't really remember any grammar except that the verb goes last in a sentence.

There's a lack of Japanese beginner audio material here in Cebu, I i thought I would listen to John/1st John to see if I could figure it out. A problem is that the audio Bible I have is a different translation that the text, but I don't think I could use the text much anyway right out of the gate.

The first time I listened to it, the only thing I heard was "ta" or "yata" over and over. It kind of overpowered everything else. I figured it was some kind of verb ending but I didn't know what. I assumed it was an "is" of some sort, although I thought that was "des". I considered that whatever word is in the first and second phrases is "word", and whatever was in the 2nd and third phrase is "God". I heard "kotobo?" or possibly "kotobowa", and "Kami" appeared to mean God, but there's lot of other stuff going on... extra "wa"s and "de"s.

ok so the first phrase has "word" followed by "is" so whatever comes before that has to mean "in (the) beginning" (I seem to recall Japanese has no "the"). I hear that, I could repeat it right after hearing it, but can't remember it very well.

I need some help with this "ta" thing.
Over I go to look up some high frequency word and grammar on wikipeadia. Oh look, "ta" marks a past. Oh, it's some kind of equivalent of "was" not "is". Oh look at that, prepositions come after a word, not before, with an example "in" which happens to be "ni". Wait, are the first word of the verse something like "beginning in"? It is!

I take note of the particles and how they are used, and then I hear (after the first time occurrence of word) kotobo followed by "wa" and later on "kami" followed by "de". I heard a whole sentence! yeay.

I don't know how much time I'll have to keep doing this, but I wonder how much can be accomplished with a familiar (audio) text, and a simple grammar.