Language Geek

Russian

This morning, I started out with the New Penguin Russian Course. I worked through some exercises in chapter 12 dealing with verb aspect, and did a short word list with the verbs presented.

In the afternoon, I finished copying lesson 52 of Russian without Toil. I started a list of the new words in the lesson that I need to learn; I still like pulling the words out into a list, so I can look them up and verify they mean exactly what the translation says they do. I also want to know both the imperfective / perfective forms of verbs, and Assimil doesn’t always provide that for all of the verbs.

Finally, I read a few pages from Terence Wade’s Comprehensive Russian Grammar about verb conjugation.

French

I copied out / translated lesson 20 of New French with Ease, and then made some notes from lesson 21 about things I had forgotten. One such thing was the fact that if the definite article is added before a day of the week, it means that what’s happening happens on that day of the week repeatedly. An example might help explain that a wee bit better:

Il vient samedi – He’s coming (on) Saturday.
Il vient le samedi – He comes (on) Saturdays [i.e., every Saturday].

I also listened to the first 10 or so lessons of Using French as review.

German

I listened to some podcasts and read a few articles at Deutsche Welle; nothing earth shaking, I’m afraid.

Russian

Read lessons 49, 50 and 51 as review in Russian without Toil.

German

I listened to around an hour of Manfred Mai’s Deutsche Geschichte in audiobook format. I found it pretty easy to follow along; I’m not sure if he’s using a fairly simple vocabulary, or if it’s because of my background in history.

I also listened to a few podcasts from Deutsche Welle, but don’t remember which ones.

And, as usual, I did my Anki reviews (around 50 cards).

This will be a bit of a messy update, as it covers stuff I’ve been doing since my last update. I’ve written down notes and things as to what I’ve done exactly on which days, but don’t really want to bother hunting it all down. So:

German

I’ve been adding cards to Anki and reviewing diligently on my iPhone. I’ve also been poking about at Deutsche Welle’s website, and have read a few of the Top Thema mit Vokabeln articles. The last one I read was the most recent one, Die Angst vor der Armut. I also listened to one of the Alltagsdeutsch podcast episodes which I found still hiding on my iPod, Nacht. I need to work through the transcript of it, however, as there’s a fair amount of vocabulary I don’t know.

Dutch

As review, I listened to lessons 8-20 of Dutch with Ease. In the book, I reread lessons 18 and 19 and started working on lesson 20. I’ve still not copied anything yet, which I need to do.

French

I copied lessons 18, 19 and 20, or at least partially copied them. I would look at the English, and anything that I was confident about, I would translate to French and write it down. If I were unsure of something, I would read the French and then copy it down.

I also listened to a few episodes of 2000 ans d’histoire, but I’m still not understanding much of it. My vocabulary is still too weak. I wish that particular podcast had transcripts.

Russian

I copied lessons 47, 48 and 50 by hand, essentially using Professor Arguelles’s scriptorium method. I’m finding that copying out stuff by hand really helps it stick to my memory, far more than just reading it over and over. In the age of spaced repetition systems, audio-only courses, and other such things, copying out passages by hand seems very old school, but it seems to work, at least for me.

I also listened to those listens many times each, and found that my comprehension of them was a great deal higher after copying them.

Or perhaps, “I think I still remember how to study languages.”

I did some Anki reps for German using the new Anki iPhone app. Admittedly, I’m not using the version in the app store, as I’m a beta tester and the beta tester is already a lot better than the version in the store, but still.

I also poked around a bit in one of my Russian books, but didn’t really do any concerted study. That should come in a day or two; the 5 week course I’m enrolled in is over in 2 weeks, and my paper has to be done before then, so my being overburdened with research should soon come to an end.

Boy, do I miss my daily language stuff.

I’ve not abandoned this little language learning journal project. I’ve not posted anything over the past few days for a very simple (and to me, irksome) reason: I have basically done no language learning during the past few days. Summer semester at university started up this week, and I’m taking the last course I need to finish my degree in history. It’s a senior seminar course, which basically amounts to doing a lot of research, writing a large paper, and giving a presentation. It normally is a 15 week course, but summer semester is shortened into two 5 week sessions – so those brave (stupid) souls who took senior seminar over the summer have to do 15 weeks of work in 5 weeks.

I suppose I shall now have to learn how to say “This was a terrible idea” in all of my languages.

Dutch

I reviewed lessons 13-16, then listened to 17-22 about 5 times each (all Dutch with Ease). If it had been a more exotic language, the listening to 17-22 before doing the lessons in the book would most likely have been pointless, but with how similar Dutch is to German and English, I found it profitable. There were only a few words here and there that I couldn’t work out the meaning of.

Russian

I worked some more on 46 and 47 of Russian without Toil, and started 48. 46 and 47 have been perfect examples of why Assimil Russian is taking me so long: the words just don’t want to stick to my memory. I learn them, I review them, and then the next time I see them, I don’t recognize them at all.

The weekend was more or less a total bust. I got in a bit of Dutch with Dutch with Ease, and some Anki review (German, Russian), but mostly the weekend was dominated by things other than language learning. Namely: my niece’s wedding (Saturday), then chores and the Lost series finale (Sunday). The wedding was worth it; the chores and Lost finale, I’m not so sure.

Dutch

I reviewed lesson 13 again in Dutch with Ease, and moved on to do lessons 14 and 15. 14 was a review lesson, however, so didn’t take much time. I still need to write out the lessons I’ve done, and I may try the translation method Catherine and Luca wrote about here.

Russian

I finished copying out the short text from New Penguin Russian Course about the founding of St. Petersburg, then moved on to reading chapter 12. This chapter’s going to take a while to nail down, as it introduces aspect. Aspect itself isn’t really that hard to grasp, but the chapter also gives a number of irregular verbs which are quite common. I’m still not sure how best to approach learning Russian verb pairs; I mentioned previously that I’ve found word lists to not be very effective for learning them, and I’ve not settled on an alternative yet.

Also sprinkled throughout the day were Anki reviews, both for Russian and German. I’ve been helping beta test Anki for iPhone, and it’s helped me stick to my reviews much better than just using the desktop app / AnkiMini (the latter being somewhat laggy).