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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | Catalan | Ancient Greek | Turkish | Polyglot | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 177 of 331 10 September 2013 at 4:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I took the plunge - I'll be heading to the Tokyo / Kanto region for ten nights at the
end of November. It's time to make Japanese a priority language! I'll be poking around for a good textbook this week. I have a copy of Japanese the Manga Way, but am still tempted to add Living Language to have something a bit more structured to work through. And I finally finished Les Misérables last night - 13 months after picking up the first volume! It took me a bit longer than I thought. And it was maddening right up until the end. I started my next book over lunch today: La Vie mode d'emploi (Life, A User's Manual) by Georges Perec. I've read lots of reviews calling it a masterpiece, but I wonder if it might not be beyond my skill level. I can follow the basic plot, but I think there are a lot of word-games and puzzles within the book that might fly over my head. I've already had to slow down, and I'm looking up far more words per page than I'm used to. Meanwhile, I'm on Line 58 of the Iliad (how's that for slow?), and Agamemnon is a more of a sh*& than I remembered. Or maybe it just sounds worse in Greek. Chryses has come to ransom his daughter, and Agamemnon tells him that he won't release her until she's old, and meanwhile she will sit at her loom during the day and share his bed at night. He seriously get's what's coming to him, in my opinion. Edited by kanewai on 10 September 2013 at 4:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 178 of 331 12 September 2013 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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A Users Manual to Life A Users Manual
No spoilers: this is all background information!
This is a puzzle-book, and the lit-nerds all call it a masterpiece. But forty pages in I had to stop, and read up on the background of this novel to try and figure out just what was going on. This is what I learned: the novel was inspired by Genji Monogatari Emaki (The Tale of Genji Handscroll) and the drawing below by Saül Steinberg from The Art of Living (1952). Perec wanted to show the inhabitants of an apartment building in Paris all at once, like the scrolls and drawings do. He added a number of constraints to the novel, and this is where it becomes either brilliant or insane, or possible both: - Each chapter will have 42 'constraints' that must be mentioned, each constraint having ten values. - The constraints are laid out on a map of the building (I'm still not sure how this works). - One constraint: each chapter must contain a scene lifted out of another novel (from Agatha Christie to Moby Dick). - The chapters will land on each spot in the building once, following the chevalier's pattern in chess. Over all this are layers and patterns of history, myths, mysteries, and so on. I was having two problems with the book. The first, I get irritated by books that require me to do homework to understand them. I'm willing to do it, but it better be worth it in the end. And even then, I'm not that interested in untangling all the puzzles. I just want a good story. The second is with the vocabulary. There are a lot of descriptions of the rooms and furnishings themselves, and I have no idea what the difference is between a regency bateau table and a Louis XV sofa are, nor do I know what Hungarian point parquet floors are - much less what they might signify about the characters around them. Sometimes I don't even know what the words mean in English! It took me three hours to make it through the first 40 pages, but I had to re-read a lot of sections, and look up far more words than usual (especially when the author is describing clothes, furniture, and design styles). It is going to be a challenge finishing this book, but ... the more I read about the novel the more I want to tackle the actual novel ... although I will be printing out a lot of maps and charts to help me navigate it. 
 Edited by kanewai on 12 September 2013 at 10:35pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5346 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 179 of 331 13 September 2013 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I used to love puzzles like this when I was kid (the drawings are amazing in all their intricate detail), but then again, I had more time and seemingly more patience too. I am sorely tempted to acquire a copy of the original "La Vie mode d'emploi" though, if only to exasperate my slowly developing French mind in odd spare moments when it starts to feel too comfortable... :) Edited by Teango on 13 September 2013 at 12:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 180 of 331 15 September 2013 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm finding I have different phases for language study. I'm sure there are technical
terms for some of these, and I might start a separate thread once I've thought through these a bit more. Cruising Mode - The plateau. It's not too hard to do some reading or studying each day, and progress is slow and steady. Some people complain about being stuck on a plateau, but I love cruising mode. I can maintain three languages here without stress, and I start to have dangerous fantasies about adding a fourth ... or fifth ... Breakthroughs - When you're on the brink of breaking through to another level,the periods where you make rapid gains & where hard work really pays off. These are the exciting periods, where I want to spend all weekend working on my language, and maybe honestly become a little anti-social. The Walls - And then there are the periods where you feel you've forgotten everything, and where nothing seems to stick no matter how hard you study. These also require a lot of energy and time to work through, but it's much less enjoyable than the energy and time you spend during the breakthrough periods. Like I wrote, I'm ok on cruising mode for multiple languages. And it's not too bad if only one language hits a wall, or enters a breakthrough period. But when they all act up at once ... it gets challenging. And that's where I'm at now: three languages in potential breakthrough periods, all competing for my attention. It's a good thing, but I don't have time for it at all. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 181 of 331 15 September 2013 at 4:04am | IP Logged | ||
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other updates:
La vie mode d'emploi has gotten easier for me to read, now that I know a couple of the patterns. The chapters are more snapshots of a life than actual stories with a plot, but I'm enjoying them. He reminds me of Italo Calvino (who, I think, was part of his literary circle. Teango, I'll loan you my copy when I'm done! The library has an English version I picked up, but I've only had to use it a few times. And ... Living Language Japanese arrived. At first glance it looks excellent, and I'm excited. The set is four books (beginning, intermediate, advanced, writing) and nice audio cds. There are links to on-line forums, flashcards, and games that I haven't checked out yet. I've seen criticisms that LL "advanced" is still "beginner." I don't care. This is a lot of material for US $40, and I find that 'slow and steady' works for me better than courses that try and give you everything too quickly. I'll start with it lightly, and dive in at the end of the month when I've finished Pimsleur II. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 182 of 331 18 October 2013 at 3:26am | IP Logged | ||
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The forces of chaos have been strong this month - it's been weeks since I've been able
to stick to a regular study regimen. I've had two little bumps that helped me get on track. I saw Hayao Miyazaki's last film, The Wind Rises, and was surprised at how much I understood. It wasn't much, but it was more than zero. And ... even better ... I was trying to see if I could budget for trip to Miami with some buddies this spring, and realized that I had enough miles to get a ticket to Europe. As much as I love my friends, I love the idea of Italy and France even more. I'm horribly disloyal sometimes. Japanese I have five weeks until I leave for Tokyo, so it's time to get serious. I'm half-way through Pimsleur II, and have started Living Language and Japanese: The Manga Way. Pimsleur is it's usual blend of useful and irritating. Living Language reminds me of a high school book. It's big and glossy, and focuses more on vocabulary than grammar. Manga isn't really a course-book, but it has been good at helping me figure out the structure of the language. So far Japanese isn't a hard language per se, but I feel like there is a huge amount to learn just to reach the beginner's level. By this point with other languages I could stumble through basic conversations. I'm still lost with Japanese, even though I can sometimes make the right sound at the right time. French I've fallen seriously behind in my Super Challenge reading. La vie mode d'emploi is enjoyable, but it's slow going - it's much easier to read books with a strong narrative. Exhibit A: I also started reading La Chartreuse de Parme (Stendhal, 1839) on my kindle ... and finished 75 pages in two days. La Chartreuse is a fun read - there's lots of action, and a lot of comic misadventure. It's a bit of a cross between Don Quixote and the Three Musketeers. I'll probably finish all 600 pages before I finish the last 200 of La vie. I'm also hoping to finish FSI XXI this weekend, and should be able to complete the last of the course before my trip. My current plan is to spend about ten days between Nice, Avignon, and Lyon; this has given me a huge boost in motivation to push for the next level. I'll be traveling solo this round, which will really help my speaking abilities. I also saw three boring French films at the Hawaiian International Film Festival. Nothing new there. ελληνικά I can understand the first 100 lines of the Iliad. I haven't had time to push on to the next section, but have been reviewing a lot on Anki. I created a deck out of all the Greek sentences and English translations from Pharr; if anyone else is using the course I've put it on Anki Web under Pharr Homeric Greek. Anki hasn't always worked for me, but in this case it's been a fantastic resource. Spanish Yeah. One day I will get back to Spanish. Italian But first, back to Italian!!! I'm starting my Spring trip with a week in Florence, and I figure I'll start 2014 with an intense focus on Italian. Edited by kanewai on 18 October 2013 at 3:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 183 of 331 18 October 2013 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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some venting ...
Japanese is starting to feel like Arabic, in that there doesn't seem to be any consistency in the different courses. This morning Pimsleur went through names for family members ... and they were different than the names I studied last night in Living Language. And I mean significantly different. I've had the same challenges with particles - I can't find a pattern for when to use ga, nga, ka, or wa after a subject-type noun, and I swear that the exact same sentence will use a different particle depending on the course I'm using. Meanwhile, the frequent iTunes updates are killing me. I do a lot of my listening on my phone, and it seems like everything gets rearranged with each upgrade. The best I can tell is that my phone is updating via the 'cloud,' and not my computer, and I think I have it figured out, but I lost a lot of evenings in the process. / venting. Back to work ... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 184 of 331 23 October 2013 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm learning more than ever that "languages that are hard" are not the same as
"languages that take a long time to learn." I'm finding the concepts in Japanese pretty straight forward. It's certainly foreign and exotic, and yet I can comprehend it's grammar. There haven't been those moments I've had with Arabic or Greek where I struggle to understand the basic core concepts. Even the confusion I've had with particles isn't that big. And yet I've never made such slow progress with a modern language! It's been three months, and I still don't know if I could handle basic conversations. I can do the drills on Pimsleur / Michel Thomas / Living Language, but still don't have the confidence to start forming my own sentences. I can pick up random phrases when I listen to people, though, so I am making some progress. I'm going to make Japanese my target language for the next month, and dedicate serious time to it. My new plan is to head to some of the old noodle & donburi shops around town, and do an hour of book-work there. I'm hoping for some synergistic effects! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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