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Josquin’s TAC 2014 - Катюша, Celts, 旅立ち

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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 137 of 227
08 June 2014 at 3:31pm | IP Logged 
Good to have the real Josquin back!
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Woodsei
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 Message 138 of 227
11 June 2014 at 7:24am | IP Logged 
Josquin! First, welcome back, and big, big hugs are being sent over your way right now. I
apologize for posting for the first time this year on your log when we're at the halfway
point, but I have been having my own problems. I just read through that whole political
shenanigan over at the team thread. Must have been pretty stressful. Reading your log has
been such an emotional roller-coaster of a ride, and I'm so impressed at how well you've
handled all the curve balls life threw at you, and still managed to keep up with your
studies, lead Team Katyusha, and maintain such a positive perspective. Hats off to you,
mate!

As a side note, I was a terrible, nonexistent fairy godmother to the middle eastern team
last year, but feel free to shoot your questions my way should you ever take up Arabic
again. Will do my best to help out.
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Woodsei
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 Message 139 of 227
11 June 2014 at 7:53am | IP Logged 
Oh, and Josquin, I noticed that you've mentioned some trouble with the kanji. Are you
aware of James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" and the koohii forum? I'll put in a
link here and
Characters/dp/0824835921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402465640&s r=8-
1&keywords=heisig">here



It basically teaches you kanji intuitively through stories and building up through
radicals/primitives. It may not be for everyone but I found it to be a tremendous help
in my kanji studies early on. I think it will save you lots of pain and tears and help
jump-start your reading, since you'll be able to understand the meanings of the kanji.
A note, though. The method stresses the meanings over the readings, so you'll have to
learn the readings through:
1. Reading and listening simultaneously, or reading books with furigana (the tiny
hiragana over the kanji)
2. Remembering the kanji 2 (1 and 3 are for meanings, and 1 is enough for learning the
jouyou kanji. 3 is more if you want to read books or classics, although I have found it
useful. But don't overload yourself with resources; 1 should be enough for now).
3. Other books like Basic/Intermediate Kanji or Kanji in Context, which are fantastic
too, BTW. I haven't given them due diligence, though, and recently have been sticking
with just native materials and audio.
4. I just noticed the koohii forum has a nifty feature where they show you example
words, and thus, the readings. It seems that it's been recently added, not sure.

Let me know if you need any help.


Edited by Woodsei on 11 June 2014 at 7:56am

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Josquin
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Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian

 
 Message 140 of 227
11 June 2014 at 4:35pm | IP Logged 
WEDNESDAY, 11 JUNE 2014

Thanks, Jeff and Woodsei!

Yes, the last few months have been some sort of rollercoaster, but now things finally have sorted themselves out. Keeping a positive attitude wasn't always easy, but it has paid off in the long run.

Thanks for your recommendation of Heisig, Woodsei! I had a look at it one time, but it didn't really convince me. Inventing stories for the kanji didn't really work for me, plus I decided knowing a lot of kanji wasn't that important to me at that time. In fact, I'm taking a little break from Japanese at the moment, so I probably won't get into serious kanji studying in the near future anyway.

I'm also putting my Irish on hold in order to make room for some other languages. Instead of Japanese and Irish, I decided to revive my Icelandic and to have another go at Portuguese. My fascination for exotic languages has diminished for the time being and I'm more interested in Indo-European languages again.

Íslenska

I'm going to brush up my Icelandic with Colloquial Icelandic and Stefán Einarsson's Icelandic. Additionally, I'm going to read a little bit of Old Norse in E. V. Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse.

Português

I'm going to work with Helmut Rostock's Lehrbuch der portugiesischen Sprache, which apparently is the classic textbook for Portuguese at German universities.

Русский

I'll also keep working on my Russian using the transcripts for Кухня, which has proven to be a quite fun show.
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AlOlaf
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 Message 141 of 227
11 June 2014 at 9:44pm | IP Logged 
Glad to see you're back to your old self, Josquin! I don't know what we German learners would have done if they'd have cast our godfather out into the wilderness.

I noticed that you're picking up Icelandic again.This language is like a snarly little rat terrier that's clamped down on my pants leg and won't let go. Even after discovering that Icelandic grammar lives inside Pandora's box, I still want to learn to talk like a Viking.


Any tips on the best way to take on the behemoth?
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Luso
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 Message 142 of 227
11 June 2014 at 11:24pm | IP Logged 
I see plain old Josquin is back. Good.

It's not every day I come up with an expression that other people find cool. "Josquin de Lassus" was the one for this year. Maybe I'll come up with a new one in 2015. ;)

In the mean time, I see you're going for European Portuguese. At least, that's what I can infer from your book choice. It'll probably be a while before you need help, but I'll be here for you.
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Josquin
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Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian

 
 Message 143 of 227
12 June 2014 at 1:50pm | IP Logged 
Thanks, AlOlaf and Luso!

Yes, I'm getting back to more "mainstream" European languages for the moment. In comparison to Irish, even Icelandic is mainstream. ;) But this is more of an experiment. I'm motivated to go on with Portuguese, but I don't know if I'll really go on with Icelandic. My passive understanding of Icelandic is still quite decent and I don't have any good resources for practising my active skills, so, maybe, I'll exchange Icelandic for Irish after some days, but we'll see.

@AlOlaf: My gateway to Icelandic was Colloquial Icelandic from Routledge. It focuses on the most important declension paradigms, so you don't get swamped in declension tables. I think it's pretty good to get a decent grasp of basic Icelandic.

After that, I watched Viltu læra íslensku?, which is a good show for beginners of Icelandic. On the same website, there's also Íslenska fyrir alla, which seems to be quite useful, but I have never worked with it.

Generally speaking, there aren't a lot of good resources for Icelandic out there, which makes self-studying a bit difficult. Maybe, you could get some more inspiration from Henkkles's log. He seems to be very serious about his Icelandic.

@Luso: Thanks for your help! Yes, I'm going for European Portuguese, because Portugal is ten times nearer to Germany than Brazil and, also, I think European Portuguese sounds a bit nicer than Brazilian Portuguese.

"Josquin de Lassus" was really cool! (Un)fortunately, I don't need that name any more, as I'm back as good ol' Josquin.
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Josquin
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Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish
Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian

 
 Message 144 of 227
19 June 2014 at 6:34pm | IP Logged 
THURSDAY, 19 JUNE 2014

I was invited to a bachelor party, which took place in Munich, over the weekend, so I didn't get to study a lot. In fact, I was still intoxicated on Monday, so I took the complete day off. Fortunately, today is a holiday in my part of Germany, so I got some work done.

Русский

I wrote a book review for the June Challenge of Team Katyusha. I chose Дама с собачкой by Anton Chekhov, which was a pretty good read.

Íslenska

I decided to drop Icelandic again. I still have quite a good passive knowledge of it and I'm not really interested in activating this language, so I'll rather concentrate on Portuguese instead.

Gaeilge

My motivation for Irish is quite low at the moment. I'm trying to work with Gaeilge gan Stró 2 and Learning Irish, but it just isn't fun. Both books have severe shortcomings and combining two wrongs doesn't make a right.

Well, I know I keep complaining about the Irish courses available, but I'll say it once more. I wish there were a good, solid textbook with an intelligent structure, lively dialogues, useful vocabulary, solid grammar explanations, and maybe even good exercises. That would be heaven!

Português

I'm already on lesson 4 in Lehrbuch der portugiesischen Sprache. So far, I'm really enjoying it. Unfortunately, I don't have any recordings yet, but I'm planning on buying them in July.

日本語

My motivation for Japanese is suffering as well. I'm on unit 16 in Genki now, but I don't really feel motivated to work actively on my grammar and my vocab. I normally just read the dialogue and the grammar points and that's it.

Sometimes, it seems to me that the vocab focuses on college life too much. For example, in this unit, we learn the words for "scholarship" and "day". I'm really wondering how often I'm going to use "scholarship" in Japanese, especially in comparison to "day".

EDIT: Fixed the link.

Edited by Josquin on 19 June 2014 at 10:45pm



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