Made a list of all the resources I have access to in order to improve my Chinese. It includes drama series which I use for listening practice, new vocabulary and colloquial phrases and just to make my learning a bit more fun; and also books thanks to this glorious gem here. [Seriously, never undermine the value of google books].
Anyways, so far I have:
Drama - Currently completed 1/107
Completed one series (Devil beside me), gotten halfway through another (It started with a kiss) and watched an episode or two of another 3. So, 1 out of the 107 Taiwanese drama shows I counted on the drama website with another 4 in progress.
Grammar books - Currently completed: 0/15.
I've read 30/50 chapters out of the grammar book: A Practical Chinese Grammar [which I would really recommend] but I still have another 14 to start in order to pick up some new material not avaliable in the other books and to refresh already studied grammar points.
Textbooks: Currently completed 0/21
At University we follow the material set out in New Practical Chinese Reader. I think we've currently completed 8/9 chapters. I've also completed 5/20 chapers of Mandarin Chinese the easy way.
Character focused books: Completed 0/6
It would be impossible to gauge how many character I've learnt since I recognise some from haven studied Japanese and I prefer to learn vocabulary as opposed to formally studying characters but so far I have officially studied 7/100 characters in 'The First 100 Characters'.
_____________________________
As for today, I studied two grammar points: 一点儿 [yi1dian'r3 - a little more] and 所以 [suo3yi3 - so]. Also listened to a video on youtube about coffee and tea and which is better and learnt 让 [rang4] can also mean 'to make' as well as 'to let'. There was also something on 对 but I still haven't fully demystified those tricky little co-verbs as of yet.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Wanderlust returns! Along with some philosophy on languages.
Another bout of wanderlust has graced itself with me. I decided to watch some of Lost which I haven't watched in age and ended up watching the episode where Sun reveals to everyone that she can speak English. So, I had all the nice vowels of Korean flowing through my ears for a good 45 minutes. Then I decided to browse through the internet looking for things about Lost and stumbled across this page, which lists all the languages the characters speak - Korean, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, Latin, Turkish etc - and boom! Wanderlust returned full on force!
That being said, this wanderlust is different from the other wanderlust periods I've had. First of all, I still want to continue studying Chinese. Secondly, this wanderlust isn't necessarily a bad thing. The previous wanderlusts tried to steal the spotlight from the main language I was focusing on and they didn't bring any benefits other than to sate my curiosity about other languages.
However, now that I'm doing linguistics, this wanderlust may be beneficial. In Morphology, we learnt about agglutinating languages (1) such as Turkish and circumfixes [2] in Dutch. In phonetics, we learnt that the Korean alphabet [hangul] has some letters which represent how the sound is pronounced using our vocal organs. In syntax, we compared some English word order with Dutch and so on. Next semester is all about Society and language, the Brain and language and my favourite: historical linguistics and language families. Suddenly Latin is looking quite appealing and learning some German to be able to contrast some of its features with English wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Different people learn different languages for different reasons. Language learning has been a hobby of mine for the last 4 years now. I'm currently learning Chinese with the aim of someday being fully fluent in a foreign language at university. This means being able to read and listen to Chinese as well as being able to construct my own grammatically correct sentences both on written paper and face to face with some native Chinese speaker. I'm slowly accepting the fact that being fluent in 15 languages is a dream and nothing but a dream. That doesn't mean to say that I can't understand the basics of 13 languages and be fluent in 2. Understanding a language and being fluent in a language are two different things. To me, it's much easier to read a language and listen to a language [both passive skills] than it is to speak and write in a language [both active skills]. I like knowledge and I love understanding things. So I think I might try to understand the basics of a few more languages, not so I can claim to speak the languages, just so I can understand some of them and take some of the grammatical knowledge I gain from those languages and apply it to areas in my linguistics degree. No more guilty wanderlusts! Bring on the German!
That being said, this wanderlust is different from the other wanderlust periods I've had. First of all, I still want to continue studying Chinese. Secondly, this wanderlust isn't necessarily a bad thing. The previous wanderlusts tried to steal the spotlight from the main language I was focusing on and they didn't bring any benefits other than to sate my curiosity about other languages.
However, now that I'm doing linguistics, this wanderlust may be beneficial. In Morphology, we learnt about agglutinating languages (1) such as Turkish and circumfixes [2] in Dutch. In phonetics, we learnt that the Korean alphabet [hangul] has some letters which represent how the sound is pronounced using our vocal organs. In syntax, we compared some English word order with Dutch and so on. Next semester is all about Society and language, the Brain and language and my favourite: historical linguistics and language families. Suddenly Latin is looking quite appealing and learning some German to be able to contrast some of its features with English wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Different people learn different languages for different reasons. Language learning has been a hobby of mine for the last 4 years now. I'm currently learning Chinese with the aim of someday being fully fluent in a foreign language at university. This means being able to read and listen to Chinese as well as being able to construct my own grammatically correct sentences both on written paper and face to face with some native Chinese speaker. I'm slowly accepting the fact that being fluent in 15 languages is a dream and nothing but a dream. That doesn't mean to say that I can't understand the basics of 13 languages and be fluent in 2. Understanding a language and being fluent in a language are two different things. To me, it's much easier to read a language and listen to a language [both passive skills] than it is to speak and write in a language [both active skills]. I like knowledge and I love understanding things. So I think I might try to understand the basics of a few more languages, not so I can claim to speak the languages, just so I can understand some of them and take some of the grammatical knowledge I gain from those languages and apply it to areas in my linguistics degree. No more guilty wanderlusts! Bring on the German!
好久不见 - Long time no see!
大家好，好久不见 = Hey everyone, long time no see. Semester 1 is now finished at university and a lot has happened within this time. My Mandarin has been coming along really well and thanks to having spent time learning Japanese since 2007 [and currently continuing with it at university], I think that has given me a slight advantage over my peers.
Firstly is due to the writing system since Japanese kanji are derived from Chinese characters [汉字 hanzi]. Even if they are sometimes not completely the same, the same character in both languages may still be related. For example, the Japanese word for book is 本 [hon]. In Chinese the word for book is 书 [shu1] however the classifier (1) for books in Chinese is 本 [ben3]： 那本书很有意思 [Na ben shu hen you yisi] - That book is interesting. Although the character for books are not the same, 本 is still related to the topic of 'books'. This can make it easier to remember.
Another reason is Japanese grammar. Japanese grammar is completely different from English with its different word order and particles etc. Because the verb must appear at the end of the sentence, in Japanese you would say 'I at school Chinese study' : 私は学校で中国語を勉強します。Chinese is a SVO [subject verb object] language like English however, certain phrases such as phrases which mark location must appear before the verb. 我在大学念书汉语 = I at university study Chinese. Due to shifting around different parts of a sentence for the last three years in Japanese, it has become easier to adapt to doing it in Chinese.
While this is good and all, I'm still a far-cry from being profient enough to go about daily life in Chinese. In a year and a half, I'll be packing my bags for the first time going abroad to stay in China or Taiwan for a full year. I would quite like to make some Chinese or Taiwanese friends whilst I'm over there but that will be difficult to happen with a low profiency of their language. So, I'm studying everyday to get better. I've found some music in Chinese I like and could listen to over and over and over again. I watch Taiwanese drama shows [with subtitles of course] to get accustomed to the tones and pick up some colloquial phrases. But there are still so many grammar points I have yet to grasp and so so many of those characters to master. So I've drawn up a 'get damn good at Chinese' plan. Each day I plan to:
Firstly is due to the writing system since Japanese kanji are derived from Chinese characters [汉字 hanzi]. Even if they are sometimes not completely the same, the same character in both languages may still be related. For example, the Japanese word for book is 本 [hon]. In Chinese the word for book is 书 [shu1] however the classifier (1) for books in Chinese is 本 [ben3]： 那本书很有意思 [Na ben shu hen you yisi] - That book is interesting. Although the character for books are not the same, 本 is still related to the topic of 'books'. This can make it easier to remember.
Another reason is Japanese grammar. Japanese grammar is completely different from English with its different word order and particles etc. Because the verb must appear at the end of the sentence, in Japanese you would say 'I at school Chinese study' : 私は学校で中国語を勉強します。Chinese is a SVO [subject verb object] language like English however, certain phrases such as phrases which mark location must appear before the verb. 我在大学念书汉语 = I at university study Chinese. Due to shifting around different parts of a sentence for the last three years in Japanese, it has become easier to adapt to doing it in Chinese.
While this is good and all, I'm still a far-cry from being profient enough to go about daily life in Chinese. In a year and a half, I'll be packing my bags for the first time going abroad to stay in China or Taiwan for a full year. I would quite like to make some Chinese or Taiwanese friends whilst I'm over there but that will be difficult to happen with a low profiency of their language. So, I'm studying everyday to get better. I've found some music in Chinese I like and could listen to over and over and over again. I watch Taiwanese drama shows [with subtitles of course] to get accustomed to the tones and pick up some colloquial phrases. But there are still so many grammar points I have yet to grasp and so so many of those characters to master. So I've drawn up a 'get damn good at Chinese' plan. Each day I plan to:
- Learn 5 new characters including words in which they appear in and some sentences for each of these words.
- Study a new grammar point each day - one if it's a large point, two if they are both small.
- Do a new lesson in a book from google books on any topic.
- Do 5 minutes of shadowing per day.
- Construct a sentence each day.
Monday, 27 September 2010
Progress 27/09/2010
Iv'e been on quite a long hiatus since I just started university two weeks ago. I'm studying Chinese & Linguistics and hopefully Japanese as an outside course although that still has yet to be fully confirmed. I'm probably going to be taking a 4 year long hiatus with Portuguese although hopefully listening to songs in Portuguese will still keep the very basics logged in my brain. So from here onwards, if you happen to stumble upon my extremely boring progress site then you'll find Chinese & Japanese in it a lot.
University semester 1 week 1 - Linguistics
On Monday I got a very basic introduction on the main principals we'll be focusing on in Linguistics 1A - Phonetics, Morphology, Semantics and a few other things I now forget. On the second class we started learning about different languages with different linguistic typologies aka. languages which have OSV structure as opposed to English which has an SVO structure - S being Subject, V being verb and O being object. Then on Thursday we started learning the basics of phonetics which is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. On Fridays we have extra lectures not related to the main syllabus which focus on different linguistics related topics each week. Last friday we were made to think about what we define as communication and communication between animals.
Chinese
From day one we've been encouraged to speak out loud and say things like 我们是爱丁堡大学学生 - We are students at Edinburgh University. If I were to only go away learning one thing from Chinese, that sentence would be it after saying it 15 times in a row. In the second class, we started learning the very basics such as 你好 -hello, 我叫。。。 - My name is..., 我是苏格兰人 - I'm Scottish. We learnt quite a few nationalities which I later expanded by myself and then we started learning how to properly write some of the characters by stroke order. On Thursday we started learning some food and how to say what we like 我喜欢。。。 and don't like 我不喜欢。。。
Japanese
Did a placement test to see whether I'd be put in the Beginner's tutorial and speaking class or not. I'm hoping to maybe have gotten around 50-60% but it was a good chance to recall what I've learnt through studying on and off throughout the last few years.
University semester 1 week 1 - Linguistics
On Monday I got a very basic introduction on the main principals we'll be focusing on in Linguistics 1A - Phonetics, Morphology, Semantics and a few other things I now forget. On the second class we started learning about different languages with different linguistic typologies aka. languages which have OSV structure as opposed to English which has an SVO structure - S being Subject, V being verb and O being object. Then on Thursday we started learning the basics of phonetics which is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. On Fridays we have extra lectures not related to the main syllabus which focus on different linguistics related topics each week. Last friday we were made to think about what we define as communication and communication between animals.
Chinese
From day one we've been encouraged to speak out loud and say things like 我们是爱丁堡大学学生 - We are students at Edinburgh University. If I were to only go away learning one thing from Chinese, that sentence would be it after saying it 15 times in a row. In the second class, we started learning the very basics such as 你好 -hello, 我叫。。。 - My name is..., 我是苏格兰人 - I'm Scottish. We learnt quite a few nationalities which I later expanded by myself and then we started learning how to properly write some of the characters by stroke order. On Thursday we started learning some food and how to say what we like 我喜欢。。。 and don't like 我不喜欢。。。
Japanese
Did a placement test to see whether I'd be put in the Beginner's tutorial and speaking class or not. I'm hoping to maybe have gotten around 50-60% but it was a good chance to recall what I've learnt through studying on and off throughout the last few years.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Wanderlust frustration
These last weeks, I've been getting a big case of wanderlust. A couple of days ago, I decided that I wanted to learn how to speak Japanese and improve on my listening skills [by far my best skill in Japanese] which meant focusing on books which only contain romaji [the Japanese language using the Latin alphabet]. Back 2 years ago when I was really focused on learning Japanese, I would've refused to touch a book that contained any romaji but learning to read and write in Japanese is going make my efforts much more longer so I think I might go looking for some romaji books or even better, some audio resources to learn Japanese.
Then last night, after meeting a girl online who will be doing the same linguistics course at university as me and who is trying to learn Korean, I started thinking that it might not be a bad idea but I know from past experiences how weirdly hard Korean is, so I think I'll be forcing that thought out of my head.
For the most part, I've been learning Chinese this week, more specifically Chinese grammar which, to my uttermost delight, is incredibly simple and very logical [prepositions in Chinese come before the verb] but then I think about the huge vocabulary and all those nasty tones and it gets to frustrating because I know it will be ages before I'll be able to understand basic conversations.
Then I watched a music video on youtube called Esperanto by a German band which has some German, French and I'm pretty sure some Esperanto too. I thought "Esperanto, that's supposed to be an easy language and oh did I just hear the word 'sprachen'? That has something to do with speaking doesn't it. Maybe I should learn some German". But I'm already learning too many to add more to the pile so I disgarded that thought and then I started thinking to the languages that I can understand at a high-beginner to intermediate level [French and Portuguese]. Whenever I study Portuguese I now feel as though I'm not making any progress because I've learnt the basics and now I'm at that slow stage where I need to read and read in Portuguese in order to pick up vocabulary and less used grammatical structures and make some progress. And then I think to French, the language which I can read the fast and talk with the best accent solely due to 8 years exposure yet I'm still not sure how to say the 'this' in the sentence 'This is a book' in French.
To add more salt to the wound, I've just sat and wasted 20 minutes writing this post when I could've been reading how to write 'this' in French or some Portuguese vocabulary. So here's to an end of the whining about not making any progress! I'm a huge procrastinator and when I procrastinate I tend to think about languages in general but then I complain about not making progress in any of these languages. So from here onwards, I'm not going to waste time thinking about languages, I'm going to start acting and focus on what I have learnt and not about what I haven't learnt including the languages I haven't learnt yet.
Then last night, after meeting a girl online who will be doing the same linguistics course at university as me and who is trying to learn Korean, I started thinking that it might not be a bad idea but I know from past experiences how weirdly hard Korean is, so I think I'll be forcing that thought out of my head.
For the most part, I've been learning Chinese this week, more specifically Chinese grammar which, to my uttermost delight, is incredibly simple and very logical [prepositions in Chinese come before the verb] but then I think about the huge vocabulary and all those nasty tones and it gets to frustrating because I know it will be ages before I'll be able to understand basic conversations.
Then I watched a music video on youtube called Esperanto by a German band which has some German, French and I'm pretty sure some Esperanto too. I thought "Esperanto, that's supposed to be an easy language and oh did I just hear the word 'sprachen'? That has something to do with speaking doesn't it. Maybe I should learn some German". But I'm already learning too many to add more to the pile so I disgarded that thought and then I started thinking to the languages that I can understand at a high-beginner to intermediate level [French and Portuguese]. Whenever I study Portuguese I now feel as though I'm not making any progress because I've learnt the basics and now I'm at that slow stage where I need to read and read in Portuguese in order to pick up vocabulary and less used grammatical structures and make some progress. And then I think to French, the language which I can read the fast and talk with the best accent solely due to 8 years exposure yet I'm still not sure how to say the 'this' in the sentence 'This is a book' in French.
To add more salt to the wound, I've just sat and wasted 20 minutes writing this post when I could've been reading how to write 'this' in French or some Portuguese vocabulary. So here's to an end of the whining about not making any progress! I'm a huge procrastinator and when I procrastinate I tend to think about languages in general but then I complain about not making progress in any of these languages. So from here onwards, I'm not going to waste time thinking about languages, I'm going to start acting and focus on what I have learnt and not about what I haven't learnt including the languages I haven't learnt yet.
Monday, 23 August 2010
Progress 23/08/2010
Not been updating recently. I'm moving out in three weeks and starting university in 4 so between arranging my accommodation and getting all my documentation done for university and finances not to mention spending hours with my dog in labour and then keeping her company after her miscarrage, I've been very busy.
However over the last couple of days, I have managed to find about 50 new words in Portuguese. I've spent most of today learning Chinese. I'm on trainchinese.com which is good for picking up vocabulary and sentences arranged into frequency, student level or in which test in the HSK [the main Chinese profiency test] the vocabulary is most likely to appear. I also started a new anki with both words and sentences in Chinese mixed together since the last anki was full of vocabulary such as 'teachers training college' which really isn't useful to a student who can barely string a sentence together. I currently have 108 words and sentences in my new anki with basic vocabulary.
However over the last couple of days, I have managed to find about 50 new words in Portuguese. I've spent most of today learning Chinese. I'm on trainchinese.com which is good for picking up vocabulary and sentences arranged into frequency, student level or in which test in the HSK [the main Chinese profiency test] the vocabulary is most likely to appear. I also started a new anki with both words and sentences in Chinese mixed together since the last anki was full of vocabulary such as 'teachers training college' which really isn't useful to a student who can barely string a sentence together. I currently have 108 words and sentences in my new anki with basic vocabulary.
Friday, 13 August 2010
Progress 13/08/2010
Haven't been updating that much recently but I have been studying some Chinese. Using some of the materials on Google Books [a great resource regardless of the preview limit] I studied 30 characters and radicals out the book 'Reading and Writing Chinese' and then took down notes on the 一 character, which means one or many other meanings when combined with other characters, using the book '250 essential characters'.
I've also been finding it easier to pronounce tones. I no longer make ridiculous faces and head movements when saying each one. However, I still find it very difficult to distinguish between tones in listening comprehension.
I've also been finding it easier to pronounce tones. I no longer make ridiculous faces and head movements when saying each one. However, I still find it very difficult to distinguish between tones in listening comprehension.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Progress 08/08/2010
This month before starting university, I've decided to start learning some Mandarin before I go. One of the interesting thing I read about my course by a former student is that the levels of student's Mandarin in the class varies quite largely:
Exagerating or not, I would much prefer to be one of the people in the former category rather than the latter. Hence, I'm starting my studies early! I've been looking for some books on ebay but the majority of them are books published in China intended for foreigners and I have no idea of their quality so I'm going to stay clear of them for now. Instead I'm using online resources such as Chinesepod and a good game called Enterzon. They both introduce both culture and language and are great resources however they don't have a basic course structure to ease you into the language in a way that you can easily build a solid foundation of a language. They tend to offer topics at random which is great but I would prefer to learn from a good main course and have Chinesepod and Enterzon as additional resources rather than the main ones until my Chinese gets to the post-beginner stage. So I'll need to keep hunting for one.
Today however, I played a little bit of Zon and copied and pasted a lot of good language points which I will write in a notepad later. I listened to four podcasts on taxi's today on Chinesepod : Taxi conversations - finding a taxi
Finding a taxi
Taxi small talk
A Taxi for tired feet
So I can now talk about Taxi's [but not much else] in Mandarin. One of the best things about Chinesepod is the discussions about the podcasts where other learners post their experiences and views on the topic. As a result, I not only know that 出租车 chūzūchē is overall the most comprehensible word in China for Taxi but also that 差头 chātóu tends to be the most common word for taxi in Shanghai, 的士 díshì in Guangdong Province and 计程车 jìchéngchē in Taiwan.
But then I decided that I should stop neglecting other languages and even if I want to mainly focus on just the one language, I should fit in 5-10 minutes a day for another language. So I read a small article on Wikipedia on Mandarim Padrão [Standard Chinese] in Portuguese and copied down a few words into Anki.
Standards in the class also have a really wide range, like some people practically fluent and some can hardly string a sentence together, gets kind of irritating whichever category you fit into!
Exagerating or not, I would much prefer to be one of the people in the former category rather than the latter. Hence, I'm starting my studies early! I've been looking for some books on ebay but the majority of them are books published in China intended for foreigners and I have no idea of their quality so I'm going to stay clear of them for now. Instead I'm using online resources such as Chinesepod and a good game called Enterzon. They both introduce both culture and language and are great resources however they don't have a basic course structure to ease you into the language in a way that you can easily build a solid foundation of a language. They tend to offer topics at random which is great but I would prefer to learn from a good main course and have Chinesepod and Enterzon as additional resources rather than the main ones until my Chinese gets to the post-beginner stage. So I'll need to keep hunting for one.
Today however, I played a little bit of Zon and copied and pasted a lot of good language points which I will write in a notepad later. I listened to four podcasts on taxi's today on Chinesepod : Taxi conversations - finding a taxi
Finding a taxi
Taxi small talk
A Taxi for tired feet
So I can now talk about Taxi's [but not much else] in Mandarin. One of the best things about Chinesepod is the discussions about the podcasts where other learners post their experiences and views on the topic. As a result, I not only know that 出租车 chūzūchē is overall the most comprehensible word in China for Taxi but also that 差头 chātóu tends to be the most common word for taxi in Shanghai, 的士 díshì in Guangdong Province and 计程车 jìchéngchē in Taiwan.
But then I decided that I should stop neglecting other languages and even if I want to mainly focus on just the one language, I should fit in 5-10 minutes a day for another language. So I read a small article on Wikipedia on Mandarim Padrão [Standard Chinese] in Portuguese and copied down a few words into Anki.
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Chinese & Linguistics
I got accepted into University! I'll be going to the University of Edinburgh to study Chinese and Linguistics in one month and a week/mid-September. Therefore my Portuguese is now onhold indefinitely and Chinese will be my main focus along with Japanese. I've got Colloquial Chinese with the CD's, Teach Yourself Beginner's Chinese without the CDs and a couple of others but I'll need to find more resources online and books.
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Progress 20/07/2010
After getting that dictionary which I did a short review for, I spent the morning and afternoon studying Japanese. I mainly learnt that using ’な’ after a plain infinitive verb is the same as the negative imperativ [ordering someone not to do something]. So 話すな on it's own as a sentence means 'don't talk'. However I think it's an informal construction. I also learnt that 間 means 'whilst' and あげる means more than just 'to give'.
Then after reading a post on a native French speaker who speaks Mandarin like a native I decided to go an experiment on listening to Mandarin and imitation what the speakers say without attempting to learn the meaning. You can read my post two entries down. Acording to LingQ I have spent 30minutes today doing this. I also have VLC media player which allows you to listen to audio slower than at normal so you have more time to process what you have heard. This was quite good at giving me a better chance at getting the tone right and giving me more time to repeat what I had just heard.
As for Portuguese I'm using VLC to listen to a podcast I've listened to a few times about detoxification. There are a lot of words I can pick out more easily in the podcast but it's taking for ever for it to get through so it's very hard to keep on concentrating. I also learnt that 'ter graça' means 'to have grace' or 'to have fun' but 'de graça' means 'for free.'
Then after reading a post on a native French speaker who speaks Mandarin like a native I decided to go an experiment on listening to Mandarin and imitation what the speakers say without attempting to learn the meaning. You can read my post two entries down. Acording to LingQ I have spent 30minutes today doing this. I also have VLC media player which allows you to listen to audio slower than at normal so you have more time to process what you have heard. This was quite good at giving me a better chance at getting the tone right and giving me more time to repeat what I had just heard.
As for Portuguese I'm using VLC to listen to a podcast I've listened to a few times about detoxification. There are a lot of words I can pick out more easily in the podcast but it's taking for ever for it to get through so it's very hard to keep on concentrating. I also learnt that 'ter graça' means 'to have grace' or 'to have fun' but 'de graça' means 'for free.'
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.
This is the first in a series of book reviews based on my own experiences with the book. Each book will have a star rating from ★ - ★★★★★.
The first book is 'A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar' by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui:
It is 600+ pages of Japanese grammary goodness which is one of the reasons why I love and yet I am so frustrated with Japanese. As the title suggests, this 600+ page dictionary only shows the basics. Infact there is also an intermediate dictionary and an advanced dictionary by the same publisher. From what I've read so far, the book is great. There is general information about Japanese at the front such as it's word order, verb tenses, i-adjectives and na-adjectives and then there is a main section' which takes particles and individual words with grammatical importance from A-Z and gives the usage of each word and some example sentences written both using the Japanese script and in romaji and then the English meaning. If a word is similar to another word, it tells you which word that is so you can look it up and observe the similaries and differences.
This above is a snippet of an entry for the word 方. Click on the photo to get a closer and clearer view.
This book is so thorough and in depth that I would have to rate this book as ★★★★★.
The first book is 'A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar' by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui:
It is 600+ pages of Japanese grammary goodness which is one of the reasons why I love and yet I am so frustrated with Japanese. As the title suggests, this 600+ page dictionary only shows the basics. Infact there is also an intermediate dictionary and an advanced dictionary by the same publisher. From what I've read so far, the book is great. There is general information about Japanese at the front such as it's word order, verb tenses, i-adjectives and na-adjectives and then there is a main section' which takes particles and individual words with grammatical importance from A-Z and gives the usage of each word and some example sentences written both using the Japanese script and in romaji and then the English meaning. If a word is similar to another word, it tells you which word that is so you can look it up and observe the similaries and differences.
This above is a snippet of an entry for the word 方. Click on the photo to get a closer and clearer view.
This book is so thorough and in depth that I would have to rate this book as ★★★★★.
Imitation
I encountered on the forum How-to-learn-any-language, a French man who speaks Mandarin like a native from Beijing. There is a video on youtube which shows him on a tv show having a conversation with 2 Mandarin speakers:
After reading through the rest of the post, the man who claims to be the man in the video starts posting on the thread and answering questions on how he achieved this feat. This is part of what he said :
I think this is such a interesting method and I too have sort of learnt some words this way in Japanese. I'm always listening to Japanese music and in songs there are some words such as 心 [kokoro-Heart] which always turn up. I can remember hearing this word and once I knew what it meant, I have never forgotten it. So I'm going to start an experiment. I will start my Chinese studies by repetitively listening to texts and then imitation what is said. I will not attempt to learn any of what is said until August 1st. I will be using LingQ as the main great resource for this experiment as it has both text and audio so you can read and listen at the same time.
After reading through the rest of the post, the man who claims to be the man in the video starts posting on the thread and answering questions on how he achieved this feat. This is part of what he said :
I started with tapes, and always by myself. Tried schools and university, and all added together lasted a month and half! My philosophy is that language is all about imitation, so learn THEN understand is the key rule. Unfortunately most education systems these days are more and more the contrary of my theory, since in order to make people feel good while learning they make sure you understand BEFORE learning. What a waste of time! Sometimes the more you think, the less you learn. Which also means that at the end you are less able to think.
Think of that: the main reason why we study a language faster in its country is because we don't understand anything. You keep hearing words and wondering what they mean, and will remember them before knowing their meaning. Which means when you start using them you'll do it naturally! If I teach you a word and tell you its meaning, say, “computer”, the only thing you’ll remember after a few days is that I taught you a word which meaning was “computer”. What was the word? Forgot it. Now if I don’t tell you its meaning, you’ll remember it a lot more probably.
I think this is such a interesting method and I too have sort of learnt some words this way in Japanese. I'm always listening to Japanese music and in songs there are some words such as 心 [kokoro-Heart] which always turn up. I can remember hearing this word and once I knew what it meant, I have never forgotten it. So I'm going to start an experiment. I will start my Chinese studies by repetitively listening to texts and then imitation what is said. I will not attempt to learn any of what is said until August 1st. I will be using LingQ as the main great resource for this experiment as it has both text and audio so you can read and listen at the same time.
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Taking a breather
Around an hour ago, I posted a now deleted post on a routine I was going to set up. It would take 2 hours per day to get it finished but it would definitely help me to improve my skills. Part of this also included spending 15 minutes a day speaking a native speaker. However, the problem with all of this is that I'm turning a hobby into a chore. I'm not planning on studying Portuguese at university I'm studying it solely as a hobby but by forcing myself to stick to rules and deadlines I'm completely sucking the life out of it. Speaking plays another factor in this. Speaking online with a microphone to an unknown person in English would make me so nervous but doing it in a language that I'm no where near fluent is unbelievably nerve-racking. It's no longer any fun at all but something I really dread. This is now not a hobby, it's become something I feel that I have to do and that's something I detest. So from this point on Portuguese will no longer be a chore. If I feel like studying it and reading an article in Portuguese then I will. I'm going to deleted my sharedtalk account so I no longer feel obliged to go on it but I'll probably return when I think the time is right. Also, from now on, if on a whim I feel like learning any part of any language then I will. Because it will be fun and that's why I learn languages!
Progress 18/07/2010
After googling aprender línguas into Google Brasil I ended up discovering that Babble does online language courses for around 5-7 languages, Portuguese included. So I decided to try the free trial which I found really good! There's speech recognition which forces you to pronounce the word correctly before moving onto another vocabulary piece. There are many different courses for each language too with many subunits. You learn vocabulary and then reinforce what you have learnt through small exercises. I was quite impressed with it and might consider paying £8 for a month's trial. However I currently have three other courses in process: Livemocha 101, Busuu A1 and FSI Portuguese unit 1 so I would like to finish one of these before venturing onto another course. So I completed the Sports unit on Busuu and I'm just about to go onto livemocha to finish another part of 101.
Update 19:19
I submitted two exercises on livemocha, both a writing and a speaking exercise. I also looked over a short introductory video at graspchinese.com which teaches basic phrases such as '你好’ [ [Hello], ‘我很好,你呢’[I'm fine, yourself?], '我也很好谢谢‘[I'm fine too, thanks] which I already know but as long as I keep on studying for at least 5 minutes per day in a language then I'm satisfied.
Also on Huitalk where you can read reviews on different language books and it's becoming more and more tempting to go on ebay now but I already won a Japanese book off there today so I don't want to spend anymore money.
Update 19:19
I submitted two exercises on livemocha, both a writing and a speaking exercise. I also looked over a short introductory video at graspchinese.com which teaches basic phrases such as '你好’ [ [Hello], ‘我很好,你呢’[I'm fine, yourself?], '我也很好谢谢‘[I'm fine too, thanks] which I already know but as long as I keep on studying for at least 5 minutes per day in a language then I'm satisfied.
Also on Huitalk where you can read reviews on different language books and it's becoming more and more tempting to go on ebay now but I already won a Japanese book off there today so I don't want to spend anymore money.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Os esportes
I said yesterday that I need to focus on everyday topics that I can start using in everyday conversations. So I choose the topic 'hobbies' which is in Portuguese 'os hobbies' or 'os interesses' or 'os passatempos'. My next unit on A1 Portuguese in busuu was sports so that I'll has been my focus of today.
Here are some questions to ask what someone's interests are:
Que faz nos tempos livres? - What do you do in your free time?
Que hobbies tem? - What hobbies do you have?
Quais são os seus hobbies? - What are your hobbies?
Os esportes
Você pratica algum esporte? - Do you practice any sports?
Que esporte você pratica? - What sport do you practice?
Praticar um esporte - To practice a sport
Praticar ciclismo - To go cycling
Fazer exercício - To do exercise
Fazer atletismo - To do athletics
Fazer caminhada - To go hiking
Fazer windsurf - To go windsurfing
Jogar futebol - To play football
Jogar rugby - To play rugby
Jogar voleibol - To play volleyball
Jogar basquete - to play basketball
Jogar handebol - To play handball
Jogar tênis - To play tennis
Jogar batminton - To play badminton
Jogar beisebol - To play baseball
Jogar golfe - To play golf
Esquiar - To ski
Patinar - To rollerblade/To skate
Nadar - To swim
Velejar - To sail
Here are some questions to ask what someone's interests are:
Que faz nos tempos livres? - What do you do in your free time?
Que hobbies tem? - What hobbies do you have?
Quais são os seus hobbies? - What are your hobbies?
Os esportes
Você pratica algum esporte? - Do you practice any sports?
Que esporte você pratica? - What sport do you practice?
Praticar um esporte - To practice a sport
Praticar ciclismo - To go cycling
Fazer exercício - To do exercise
Fazer atletismo - To do athletics
Fazer caminhada - To go hiking
Fazer windsurf - To go windsurfing
Jogar futebol - To play football
Jogar rugby - To play rugby
Jogar voleibol - To play volleyball
Jogar basquete - to play basketball
Jogar handebol - To play handball
Jogar tênis - To play tennis
Jogar batminton - To play badminton
Jogar beisebol - To play baseball
Jogar golfe - To play golf
Esquiar - To ski
Patinar - To rollerblade/To skate
Nadar - To swim
Velejar - To sail
Progress 17/07/2010
It seems as though I haven't been doing much today because I haven't been looking up words in a dictionary and then putting them into my anki deck but now that I reflect on it, I have.
At 2:30 I went downstairs and went to the international section on my sky box. There are about 40 channels there, 1 in Chinese, 1 in French and thankfully 1 in Portuguese. The rest where all either Arabic or Hindu, Urdu or another Indian language. I was surprised at this because although there are a lot of people of South Asian origin living in the UK, there are an equal number of people from East Asian origin [especially Chinese] yet there is only 1 tv channel in Chinese. Anyways, I spent around 3 hours listening on and off to the 1 Brazilian tv show for some listening practice. I didn't understand a lot but I think I understood a part of a small 10 minute show to do with Switzerland that the shape of a Toberlone is mimicked after the shape of the mountains in the Alps. It makes sense but it never occurred to me before.
At the same time, I was typing away sending messages to people on Sharedtalk, so that's me done some writing practice today too.
Now, after last night, I was quite disappointed in myself because I completely froze-up when I was confronted with having a real conversation with a native Portuguese speaker but then within the last hour, I was talking to some other Brazilians whose English weren't so good and when I asked 2 of them a question, they asked me to repeat, hesitated and then left the conversation which made me realise that lots of people panic and freeze up when confronted with that type of situation. So I don't feel so disappointed anymore. I then spoke to another young guy who asked me if I spoke Portuguese and I quite easily replied with 'Só falo um pouco mas não falo muito bem' [I only speak a little but not very well]. It's a short sentence but it came out quite fast and I didn't really hesitate. I think that with practice and some more confidence in my abilities then I should manage to start to speak more and more.
So I'm going to find some texts to read on lingq to find some new vocabulary and then I'll have practiced all four skills today. =]
I might also continue some of FSI Chinese.
Update 01:15
I just had a conversation on Sharedtalk where 80-90% of it was in Portuguese and the other person was very aprehensive about speaking English so I was forced to use Portuguese to keep the conversation going. It lasted for around one hour and despite the fact that the two words I said most were 'Sim' and 'desculpe', it's still a start. Aparently I have a strong São Paulo accent which I found strange because the majority of recordings that I listen to are from Rio de Janeiro.
I also trudged through tape 3 of FSI Chinese and the tips in the tape of how to pronouce Chinese consonants which are different from English was extremely helpful but it's so slow and so tedious to work through. The woman explains something clearly and then she explains that thing again and again in slightly different ways. It's unnecessary! But I managed to get through it and although it was so boring, it will help.
At 2:30 I went downstairs and went to the international section on my sky box. There are about 40 channels there, 1 in Chinese, 1 in French and thankfully 1 in Portuguese. The rest where all either Arabic or Hindu, Urdu or another Indian language. I was surprised at this because although there are a lot of people of South Asian origin living in the UK, there are an equal number of people from East Asian origin [especially Chinese] yet there is only 1 tv channel in Chinese. Anyways, I spent around 3 hours listening on and off to the 1 Brazilian tv show for some listening practice. I didn't understand a lot but I think I understood a part of a small 10 minute show to do with Switzerland that the shape of a Toberlone is mimicked after the shape of the mountains in the Alps. It makes sense but it never occurred to me before.
At the same time, I was typing away sending messages to people on Sharedtalk, so that's me done some writing practice today too.
Now, after last night, I was quite disappointed in myself because I completely froze-up when I was confronted with having a real conversation with a native Portuguese speaker but then within the last hour, I was talking to some other Brazilians whose English weren't so good and when I asked 2 of them a question, they asked me to repeat, hesitated and then left the conversation which made me realise that lots of people panic and freeze up when confronted with that type of situation. So I don't feel so disappointed anymore. I then spoke to another young guy who asked me if I spoke Portuguese and I quite easily replied with 'Só falo um pouco mas não falo muito bem' [I only speak a little but not very well]. It's a short sentence but it came out quite fast and I didn't really hesitate. I think that with practice and some more confidence in my abilities then I should manage to start to speak more and more.
So I'm going to find some texts to read on lingq to find some new vocabulary and then I'll have practiced all four skills today. =]
I might also continue some of FSI Chinese.
Update 01:15
I just had a conversation on Sharedtalk where 80-90% of it was in Portuguese and the other person was very aprehensive about speaking English so I was forced to use Portuguese to keep the conversation going. It lasted for around one hour and despite the fact that the two words I said most were 'Sim' and 'desculpe', it's still a start. Aparently I have a strong São Paulo accent which I found strange because the majority of recordings that I listen to are from Rio de Janeiro.
I also trudged through tape 3 of FSI Chinese and the tips in the tape of how to pronouce Chinese consonants which are different from English was extremely helpful but it's so slow and so tedious to work through. The woman explains something clearly and then she explains that thing again and again in slightly different ways. It's unnecessary! But I managed to get through it and although it was so boring, it will help.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Progress 16/07/2010
After my last post, I went and studied two tapes of the first module of FSI Chinese and apart from it taking forever to get through, it was very useful! It focused on tones and had a couple of good exercises to practice distinguishing tones from one another. I think I'll continue with it.
As for Portuguese I took down a note on 'Por mais que' which means as 'Much as...' which I got off a nice wee blog for Portuguese speakers wanting to learn English. I wrote a new introduction on livemocha in Portuguese too and then read a message from a nice Brazilian guy who directed me to the site www.palcomp3.com which is a music site for independant Brazilian bands so that should help with my listening skills which I have definitely seen a bit of an improvement in recently.
Then I did another speaking exercise on livemocha and got '5 estrelas' which made me feel quite good.
Then I signed up to sharedtalk to practice speaking and my bottle crashed. In fact my bottle completely smashed into tiny little shards that it was no longer recognisable as the remains of a bottle. It's a great thing that the girl who I was speaking to was great at English. So then I decide to try to teach her a little French. I decided to translate 'I don't know what to say' in French only to forget halfway through, the French word for 'to say'. I give the girl a thumbs up for being able to understand my accent though! I might not be ready to start speaking but I'm a introverted person who doesn't talk a lot. After reading an article on a blog I've know forgotten about the 4 different skills in language learning [Reading, writing, listening and speaking] and how people often never get round to speaking a language after studying it for so long, I decided that I'm not going to let that happen to me and I'm going to practice potentially the most important skill in language learning. It didn't go at all like planned but I have to persevere.
Update 21:21
I need to start learning everyday language [not colloquialisms but language about hobbies, sports, food, routine etc] before things such as dieta, nutrição, viagens. So my new topic is hobbies!
As for Portuguese I took down a note on 'Por mais que' which means as 'Much as...' which I got off a nice wee blog for Portuguese speakers wanting to learn English. I wrote a new introduction on livemocha in Portuguese too and then read a message from a nice Brazilian guy who directed me to the site www.palcomp3.com which is a music site for independant Brazilian bands so that should help with my listening skills which I have definitely seen a bit of an improvement in recently.
Then I did another speaking exercise on livemocha and got '5 estrelas' which made me feel quite good.
Then I signed up to sharedtalk to practice speaking and my bottle crashed. In fact my bottle completely smashed into tiny little shards that it was no longer recognisable as the remains of a bottle. It's a great thing that the girl who I was speaking to was great at English. So then I decide to try to teach her a little French. I decided to translate 'I don't know what to say' in French only to forget halfway through, the French word for 'to say'. I give the girl a thumbs up for being able to understand my accent though! I might not be ready to start speaking but I'm a introverted person who doesn't talk a lot. After reading an article on a blog I've know forgotten about the 4 different skills in language learning [Reading, writing, listening and speaking] and how people often never get round to speaking a language after studying it for so long, I decided that I'm not going to let that happen to me and I'm going to practice potentially the most important skill in language learning. It didn't go at all like planned but I have to persevere.
Update 21:21
I need to start learning everyday language [not colloquialisms but language about hobbies, sports, food, routine etc] before things such as dieta, nutrição, viagens. So my new topic is hobbies!
Hankering for a new language.
After learning all the basics of Portuguese, I'm starting to want to venture onto another language. Don't yet me wrong, I still have a strong desire to continue with Portuguese and do not plan to stop studying it anytime soon but I feel as though I could be doing more with another language. Last night I had the desire to start learning Spanish after reading an article on wikipedia on the differences and similarities between Portuguese and Spanish and I think that Spanish would be extraordinarily easy to pick up with my knowledge of basic Portuguese. However I don't want to speak Portuñol and I think that studying Spanish may lead me to become confused with the two.
This morning I had a desire to start with my French again which has been long neglected for the last two years. To be honest, I wish there was a way to completely forget a language and start afresh but there isn't, unless you are willing to complete neglect the language for years. I have technically been 'studying' French 8 years through a utterly rubbish education system which teaches you how to memorize a language rather than learning it. Sure I can produce the phrases 'Je ne sais pas', 'Je m'appelle Erin', 'je voudrais aller à la université' [noting that I had to look up université in the dictionary to make sure I had spelt it correctly] without thinking about it but apart from those phrases that I've memorized I can't properly construct a sentence with ease. I asked one of my friends last year who has no interest in learning language but had studied French for 6 years, the question ' Comment t'appelles tu?' and he had no idea what I had asked him. After learning Portuguese for 1 year, my Portuguese far exceeds that of my French and it makes me feel really ashamed and embarrassed. The only good thing about my French is my listening skills and my pronunciation. So I'm hoping that Hugo's French is three months is very similar to its Portuguese equivalent because I need to start learning French rather than memorizing it.
I've been wanting to continue with my Japanese again too. I don't think I have ever been as interested in a language as much as Japanese. I love the country, culture and language but I need to find a different approach to learning it. It's a unique language with me in that I can understand every word in a Japanese sentence yet I still don't know what it means. So until I can find a method that works for me, I think I'll be postponing it for a little bit longer.
Now finally Mandarin. Mandarin is another language that I love and if were to only visit one other country in the world, it would be China. However, tones completely intimidate me. Then there's a question of the sentence structure which seems to get surprisingly difficult as you proceed with the language. But if I want to do Mandarin at university then I would like to enter the classroom with a little but of knowledge under me belt rather than have it all hit me at once. So I think that I'll start experimenting with it. The FSI course looks quite good for Mandarin [although I don't want to talk too soon after what happened with FSI Spanish] so I might give it a wee try.
This morning I had a desire to start with my French again which has been long neglected for the last two years. To be honest, I wish there was a way to completely forget a language and start afresh but there isn't, unless you are willing to complete neglect the language for years. I have technically been 'studying' French 8 years through a utterly rubbish education system which teaches you how to memorize a language rather than learning it. Sure I can produce the phrases 'Je ne sais pas', 'Je m'appelle Erin', 'je voudrais aller à la université' [noting that I had to look up université in the dictionary to make sure I had spelt it correctly] without thinking about it but apart from those phrases that I've memorized I can't properly construct a sentence with ease. I asked one of my friends last year who has no interest in learning language but had studied French for 6 years, the question ' Comment t'appelles tu?' and he had no idea what I had asked him. After learning Portuguese for 1 year, my Portuguese far exceeds that of my French and it makes me feel really ashamed and embarrassed. The only good thing about my French is my listening skills and my pronunciation. So I'm hoping that Hugo's French is three months is very similar to its Portuguese equivalent because I need to start learning French rather than memorizing it.
I've been wanting to continue with my Japanese again too. I don't think I have ever been as interested in a language as much as Japanese. I love the country, culture and language but I need to find a different approach to learning it. It's a unique language with me in that I can understand every word in a Japanese sentence yet I still don't know what it means. So until I can find a method that works for me, I think I'll be postponing it for a little bit longer.
Now finally Mandarin. Mandarin is another language that I love and if were to only visit one other country in the world, it would be China. However, tones completely intimidate me. Then there's a question of the sentence structure which seems to get surprisingly difficult as you proceed with the language. But if I want to do Mandarin at university then I would like to enter the classroom with a little but of knowledge under me belt rather than have it all hit me at once. So I think that I'll start experimenting with it. The FSI course looks quite good for Mandarin [although I don't want to talk too soon after what happened with FSI Spanish] so I might give it a wee try.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Um texto curto sobre vocabulário.
Isto é apenas uma tentativa para escrever e treinar mais meu português. O texto abaixo já tem corrigido por um locutor português. A cor verde indica uma correção.
Algo muito importante é utilizar as novas palavras com que você se depara, porque lendo palavras não quer dizer que você conseguirá usá-las quando quiser escrever. É possível que você já tenha um vocabulário em uma língua muito grande e possa ler textos com facilidade, mas quando você quer escrever neste idioma, não sabe quais palavras deve usar e como construir uma sentença. Isto acontece porque o vocabulário que lê é diferente daquele que usa para escrever. Ao ler um texto, o vocabulário reconhecido é chamado 'vocabulário passivo' enquanto que o vocabulário usado para escrever é chamado 'vocabulário ativo.' No entanto, seu vocabulário passivo pode se tornar vocabulário ativo se você tentar usá-lo em conversas do dia-a-dia. É por esta razão que eu tento usar cada palavra nova que vejo em uma sentença.
I'm not sure if I like the amount of green in there.
________________________________________
In English:
This is an attempt to write and practice my Portuguese more. The text below has already been corrected by a native Portuguese speaker. The colour green indicates corrections:
Something very important is to use the new words that you come across, because reading works doesn't mean to say that you will be able to use them when you want to write. It's possible that you already have a very large vocabulary in a language and can read texts easily, but when you want to write in this language, you don't know which words you should use and how to construct a sentence. This happens because the vocabulary that you read is different from that which you use to write. When reading a text, the recognisable vocabulary is called 'passive vocabulary' whilst the vocabulary that you use to write is called 'active vocabulary'. However, your passive vocabulary can become active vocabulary if you attempt to use it in daily conversations. It's for this reason that I try to use each new work that I see in a sentence.
Algo muito importante é utilizar as novas palavras com que você se depara, porque lendo palavras não quer dizer que você conseguirá usá-las quando quiser escrever. É possível que você já tenha um vocabulário em uma língua muito grande e possa ler textos com facilidade, mas quando você quer escrever neste idioma, não sabe quais palavras deve usar e como construir uma sentença. Isto acontece porque o vocabulário que lê é diferente daquele que usa para escrever. Ao ler um texto, o vocabulário reconhecido é chamado 'vocabulário passivo' enquanto que o vocabulário usado para escrever é chamado 'vocabulário ativo.' No entanto, seu vocabulário passivo pode se tornar vocabulário ativo se você tentar usá-lo em conversas do dia-a-dia. É por esta razão que eu tento usar cada palavra nova que vejo em uma sentença.
I'm not sure if I like the amount of green in there.
________________________________________
In English:
This is an attempt to write and practice my Portuguese more. The text below has already been corrected by a native Portuguese speaker. The colour green indicates corrections:
Something very important is to use the new words that you come across, because reading works doesn't mean to say that you will be able to use them when you want to write. It's possible that you already have a very large vocabulary in a language and can read texts easily, but when you want to write in this language, you don't know which words you should use and how to construct a sentence. This happens because the vocabulary that you read is different from that which you use to write. When reading a text, the recognisable vocabulary is called 'passive vocabulary' whilst the vocabulary that you use to write is called 'active vocabulary'. However, your passive vocabulary can become active vocabulary if you attempt to use it in daily conversations. It's for this reason that I try to use each new work that I see in a sentence.
Progress 15/07/2010
Discovered that Euronews allows you to watch news clips and provides the trascript underneath so you can read and listen at the same time. I think I'll start doing that for about 30-1 hour each day and acquire some of the vocabulary frequently used in the news.
Apart from that, I've been trying to write a little more. Yesterday I posted a writing in my lang-8 journal about active and passive vocabulary in Portuguese that I'll post in the next entry. I find it really useful and would definitely recommend that people use it. Now I know that I should use o subjuntivo after 'É possível que' [it's possible that].
Not been doing much about my diet topic. Read two articles today: one about how studies show that an adequate amount of Vitamin C can help you to shed some pounds and another about how soya based foods are important in alleviating menopause symptoms [assuming I correctly understood the articles]. Here's some of the vocabulary I took down:
Pular uma refeição - To skip a meal
A desidratação - Dehydration
A vitamina - Vitamin
O nutriente - Nutrient
O tumor - Tumor
O aminoácido - Amino acid
A infecção - Infection
A insônia - Insomnia
Update 19:57
Not really interested any longer in the topic 'dieta'. So I'm going to move onto traveling. I've only left Scotland once and that was to spend a few days in England but apart from that I've never been abroad. I learn languages in the hope of being able to visit and live in other countries. I currently have a 1000+ photo collection of around 70 different countries and this has helped to motivate me in the past to continue with a language. In brief, the new topic is 'Viajando'.
Apart from that, I've been trying to write a little more. Yesterday I posted a writing in my lang-8 journal about active and passive vocabulary in Portuguese that I'll post in the next entry. I find it really useful and would definitely recommend that people use it. Now I know that I should use o subjuntivo after 'É possível que' [it's possible that].
Not been doing much about my diet topic. Read two articles today: one about how studies show that an adequate amount of Vitamin C can help you to shed some pounds and another about how soya based foods are important in alleviating menopause symptoms [assuming I correctly understood the articles]. Here's some of the vocabulary I took down:
Pular uma refeição - To skip a meal
A desidratação - Dehydration
A vitamina - Vitamin
O nutriente - Nutrient
O tumor - Tumor
O aminoácido - Amino acid
A infecção - Infection
A insônia - Insomnia
Update 19:57
Not really interested any longer in the topic 'dieta'. So I'm going to move onto traveling. I've only left Scotland once and that was to spend a few days in England but apart from that I've never been abroad. I learn languages in the hope of being able to visit and live in other countries. I currently have a 1000+ photo collection of around 70 different countries and this has helped to motivate me in the past to continue with a language. In brief, the new topic is 'Viajando'.
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Progress 14/07/2010
Still keeping in theme with studying only about specific topics once at a time. However, 'a dieta' is also related to 'a saúde'[health] e 'as doenças'[illnesses] that come with having a bad diet. Using itunes I came across a podcast called alimentaçao saudável which is entirely in Portuguese and which has some diet specific podcasts. I've currently listened to one called 'Dietas detox' and trying to download 'Uma dieta contra a envelhecimento' [A diet against aging] but it's not letting me do it at the moment.
Also read a few articles on 'A dieta japonesa', '4 razoes para não ganhar peso' [4 reasons to not gain weight] and 'Comer chocolate faz mal à saúde?' [Is eating chocolate bad for you?].
Learnt some new vocabulary and some new sentence constructions. I plan on taking a note of them so that if I lose motivation during this stage, there will be proof that I am improving.
Some diet/health related vocabulary:
Desintoxicar - To detox
Fazer uma boa dieta - to have a good diet
Exercitar-se - to exercise
Malhar - to work out
Fazer mal à saúde - to be bad for your health
O adoçante - Sweetener
O açúcar - Sugar
O estilo de vida - Lifestyle
A escala - Scales
O sangue - Blood
O metabolismo - Metabolism
O colesterol - Cholesterol
A diabetes - Diabetes
And some vocabulary less relevant to the topic:
A pressão arterial - Blood pressure
Os flavonóides - Flavanoids
A coagulação - Coagulation
A fadiga - Fatigue
O fluxo sanguíneo - Blood flow
A tensão pre-menstrual - Pre-menstrual tension
O ataque cardíaco - Heart attack
O envelhecimento - Aging
A estrutura óssea - Bone structure
Also, on another note. I've managed to get to 1000 vocabulary and 500 sentences in anki.
Also read a few articles on 'A dieta japonesa', '4 razoes para não ganhar peso' [4 reasons to not gain weight] and 'Comer chocolate faz mal à saúde?' [Is eating chocolate bad for you?].
Learnt some new vocabulary and some new sentence constructions. I plan on taking a note of them so that if I lose motivation during this stage, there will be proof that I am improving.
Some diet/health related vocabulary:
Desintoxicar - To detox
Fazer uma boa dieta - to have a good diet
Exercitar-se - to exercise
Malhar - to work out
Fazer mal à saúde - to be bad for your health
O adoçante - Sweetener
O açúcar - Sugar
O estilo de vida - Lifestyle
A escala - Scales
O sangue - Blood
O metabolismo - Metabolism
O colesterol - Cholesterol
A diabetes - Diabetes
And some vocabulary less relevant to the topic:
A pressão arterial - Blood pressure
Os flavonóides - Flavanoids
A coagulação - Coagulation
A fadiga - Fatigue
O fluxo sanguíneo - Blood flow
A tensão pre-menstrual - Pre-menstrual tension
O ataque cardíaco - Heart attack
O envelhecimento - Aging
A estrutura óssea - Bone structure
Also, on another note. I've managed to get to 1000 vocabulary and 500 sentences in anki.
Monday, 12 July 2010
Progress 12/07/2010
Not updated in a while but I'm gettin back on track with my studies. Studied FSI 20 a couple of days ago and have completed half of FSI 21 today which is good revision of the imperfect tense. Only 3 and a half more lessons until I've finished the first course. I've not gotten very far with lingq but I'm 11% complete to my target [which is quite worrying since it's almost half way through the month].
If you read the post below, I'm trying to increase my Portuguese through learning topics at a time. The first topic focuses on 'diet and weight'. Here are some of the main vocabulary and phrases that I have found so far:
O peso - Weight
A caloria - Calorie
A obesidade - Obesity
A perda de peso - Weight loss
A dieta - Diet
A saúde - Health
A gordura - Fat
Emagrecer - To get thin
Engordar - To fatten
Perder peso - To lose weight
Ganhar peso - To gain weight
Queimar calorias - To burn calories
Consumir calorias - To consume calories
Pesar-se - To weigh oneself
Ser obeso - To be obese
Gordo/a - Fat
Magro/a - Thin
Esbelto/a - Slim, Slender
I'm currently reading the site aprendaemagrecer which is very clear and easy to read which has a step by step method to lose weight.
If you read the post below, I'm trying to increase my Portuguese through learning topics at a time. The first topic focuses on 'diet and weight'. Here are some of the main vocabulary and phrases that I have found so far:
O peso - Weight
A caloria - Calorie
A obesidade - Obesity
A perda de peso - Weight loss
A dieta - Diet
A saúde - Health
A gordura - Fat
Emagrecer - To get thin
Engordar - To fatten
Perder peso - To lose weight
Ganhar peso - To gain weight
Queimar calorias - To burn calories
Consumir calorias - To consume calories
Pesar-se - To weigh oneself
Ser obeso - To be obese
Gordo/a - Fat
Magro/a - Thin
Esbelto/a - Slim, Slender
I'm currently reading the site aprendaemagrecer which is very clear and easy to read which has a step by step method to lose weight.
Post-beginner
I'm currently getting to the stage where I no longer still have major grammar points to learn:
I know most of the tenses, how to expand my sentences using conjunctions, adjectives, articles, contractions [em + o = no], adverbs, pronouns and so on.
I'm reaching the stage between a high beginner and a lower intermediate level. This should be exciting but I'm quite fearful of it. I have been at this stage in French for the last 2/3 years and have been stuck in a rut ever since. In my opinion, this is the most unmotivating stage whilst learning a language because you no longer see any progress. This is not true- ever word you learn, mistake you correct, new sentence pattern you encounter contributes towards your growing language abilities- however it is very difficult to see your own progress. It's not like at the mid-beginner stage where you learn a particular tense such as the conditional or the subjunctive and suddenly a lot of sentences you read now become so much clearer and you can definitely say that you have made progress. In this stage you need to learn so many individual words, phrases and sentence constructions that you won't encounter very often [which may lead you to forget them] which makes your progress much more difficult to see. Furthermore there are so many expressions and words related to so many different topics that it seems you'll never get anywhere. The realisation that learning a language isn't as easy a ride you may have once thought dawns on you and leaves you completely unmotivated to continue.
However, after twiddling my thumbs in French for the last 2 years due to lack of motivation and making absolutely no progress at all, I've decided not to let my Portuguese suffer the same neglect. It will be hard and maybe unsatisfying but it's a necessary jump I'll need to make in order to see my dream of fluency in a language come that one step closer. I've decided to focus on one subject of conversation at a time. This is because when I used to go through French articles, this is what happened:
-I would spend ages learning all the vocabulary related to a subject.
- I would then move onto another subject that tickles my fancy and have to learn another load of vocabulary to learn.
You learn all the vocabulary in one article and then encounter little to none of that vocabulary in the next article and instead have another chunk of vocabulary to learn which makes you feel as though you haven't made any progress.
If I stick to one topic at a time then this is what I hope will happen:
-I'll spend a lot of time learning the vocabulary of a topic.
-I'll read another article on that topic and probably will still have quite a lot of terminology to learn.
-But after reading a few more articles, I'll start to recognise more of the words I've learnt related to the topic until I've read so many articles that I know most of the terminology without consulting a dictionary.
This way I will be able to see some progress which will keep me motivated. To start off with, I'll make my first topic diets. I've not been eating much recently due to nerves about my exam results which will determine if I go to university in September and which are due in 22 days. Being worryingly underweight as been an issue for me for quite some time. It's something I'm interested in reading about so that will be my first topic. I think it's important to choose a topic which has some significance in my current life or interests as it will make me more interested and motivated in reading it.
I know most of the tenses, how to expand my sentences using conjunctions, adjectives, articles, contractions [em + o = no], adverbs, pronouns and so on.
I'm reaching the stage between a high beginner and a lower intermediate level. This should be exciting but I'm quite fearful of it. I have been at this stage in French for the last 2/3 years and have been stuck in a rut ever since. In my opinion, this is the most unmotivating stage whilst learning a language because you no longer see any progress. This is not true- ever word you learn, mistake you correct, new sentence pattern you encounter contributes towards your growing language abilities- however it is very difficult to see your own progress. It's not like at the mid-beginner stage where you learn a particular tense such as the conditional or the subjunctive and suddenly a lot of sentences you read now become so much clearer and you can definitely say that you have made progress. In this stage you need to learn so many individual words, phrases and sentence constructions that you won't encounter very often [which may lead you to forget them] which makes your progress much more difficult to see. Furthermore there are so many expressions and words related to so many different topics that it seems you'll never get anywhere. The realisation that learning a language isn't as easy a ride you may have once thought dawns on you and leaves you completely unmotivated to continue.
However, after twiddling my thumbs in French for the last 2 years due to lack of motivation and making absolutely no progress at all, I've decided not to let my Portuguese suffer the same neglect. It will be hard and maybe unsatisfying but it's a necessary jump I'll need to make in order to see my dream of fluency in a language come that one step closer. I've decided to focus on one subject of conversation at a time. This is because when I used to go through French articles, this is what happened:
-I would spend ages learning all the vocabulary related to a subject.
- I would then move onto another subject that tickles my fancy and have to learn another load of vocabulary to learn.
You learn all the vocabulary in one article and then encounter little to none of that vocabulary in the next article and instead have another chunk of vocabulary to learn which makes you feel as though you haven't made any progress.
If I stick to one topic at a time then this is what I hope will happen:
-I'll spend a lot of time learning the vocabulary of a topic.
-I'll read another article on that topic and probably will still have quite a lot of terminology to learn.
-But after reading a few more articles, I'll start to recognise more of the words I've learnt related to the topic until I've read so many articles that I know most of the terminology without consulting a dictionary.
This way I will be able to see some progress which will keep me motivated. To start off with, I'll make my first topic diets. I've not been eating much recently due to nerves about my exam results which will determine if I go to university in September and which are due in 22 days. Being worryingly underweight as been an issue for me for quite some time. It's something I'm interested in reading about so that will be my first topic. I think it's important to choose a topic which has some significance in my current life or interests as it will make me more interested and motivated in reading it.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
10/07/2010
Barely been doing anything for the last few days regarding my Portuguese studies but I have my laptop working today so hopeful I'll get back on track.
Monday, 5 July 2010
Progress 05/07/2010
Listened to 5 of the podcasts that I downloaded last night by Tá falado and they're really good! They are mainly aimed towards people who already speak Spanish and who want to learn Portuguese so I actually think I learnt more Spanish last night than Portuguese. I like how clearly spoken Spanish is and how easy it is to be pronounced compared to Brazilian Portuguese but the heavy nasal sounds of Brazilian Portuguese makes it unique to me and it's one of the reasons why I like it. This morning I listened to their pronunciation podcast on the sound 'lh' which in my opinion is probably the hardest sound to make in Portuguese, probably due to its absence in the English language.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Progress 04/07/2010
My adventures with Spanish lasted approximately 20 minutes. I learnt next to nothing but I don't think I'll ever complain about the FSI portuguese course after trying out the Spanish course. The first unit concentrated on learning sounds and intonation as did the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth and maybe more but by this time I was too put off by the programme to bother checking.I didn't learn any words but I did kind of learn how to distinguish between a statement, a polite question and an informal question of which I had not a single clue what any of them meant. Then at the end of unit 1, in small little writing at the bottom of the page, were sentences which pretty much said that these recording were heavily exaggerated so you probably won't be able to tell whether or not the speaker is asking a question politely or informally or making a statement.
So basically, I learnt 'hee-haw' as you might say in Glasgow.
Now I'm just back to studying some Portuguese. I've decided to make use of anki's online service because I don't want to have to keep on starting a new one anytime my laptop decides to screw up. I wrote a new entry in my lang-8 journal in Portuguese yesterday and one of the members suggested that I should rewrite the entry out into a notebook with all the corrections so I can make comparisons between the correct way to write the sentences and how I previously thought they should have been written. Also, I found my ipod so I'm going to download some podcasts and songs and put them on it so I can listen to it before I go to bed.
Update 21:27
Wrote another entry in my lang-8 journal. Was just complaining about my laptop and the freak weather we've been having in Ayrshire today but it was nice to talk about something other than languages in another language. Been downloading some mp3s of Portuguese thanks to last.fm to listen to tonight. I've also solved my problem about not finding enough material to learn Portuguese. I've been typing in aprender inglês/português into google Brazil and reading some websites. It's interesting to see the perspective of people learning your language and some of their main difficulties.
So basically, I learnt 'hee-haw' as you might say in Glasgow.
Now I'm just back to studying some Portuguese. I've decided to make use of anki's online service because I don't want to have to keep on starting a new one anytime my laptop decides to screw up. I wrote a new entry in my lang-8 journal in Portuguese yesterday and one of the members suggested that I should rewrite the entry out into a notebook with all the corrections so I can make comparisons between the correct way to write the sentences and how I previously thought they should have been written. Also, I found my ipod so I'm going to download some podcasts and songs and put them on it so I can listen to it before I go to bed.
Update 21:27
Wrote another entry in my lang-8 journal. Was just complaining about my laptop and the freak weather we've been having in Ayrshire today but it was nice to talk about something other than languages in another language. Been downloading some mp3s of Portuguese thanks to last.fm to listen to tonight. I've also solved my problem about not finding enough material to learn Portuguese. I've been typing in aprender inglês/português into google Brazil and reading some websites. It's interesting to see the perspective of people learning your language and some of their main difficulties.
Other languages
My new laptop charger, only 4 days old, has broken. This means that I can't access the 700 word anki in Portuguese and 300 sentence anki that I had built up over the last few days. So I'm back onto my old computer. For some reason, being on this computer makes learning another language more appealing. It may be because I have a lot of Portuguese things on my laptop which distract me from other languages. Last time I was on this computer, I had a hankering to learn Korean, a language which I long gave up on 2 months or so after I had started it back in 2007 and even dutch. Now, I would really like to learn a Scandinavian language due to their close proximity to Scotland, the fact that they are Germanic languages like English and because I really like the countries. Not only that, but I like the idea of 'buy one language' get two half price in regards to their supposed mutual intelligibilty. The only problem is that materials for these languages are probably more scarce than those for Portuguese.
So instead, I might finally get opening some of the Spanish books in my collection I've been saving up in case I end up studying Spanish at university [something I'll find out a month today]. I've only studied a little Spanish in the past and it's been well over a year since that happened but Portuguese and Spanish are very similar so I might find I know a bit more than I think. Besides, I have Hugo's Spanish in three months which I borrowed from the library [which contains approximately 4 language books] gathering dust under my bed and if the Spanish one is as great as the Portuguese one than I should make good use of it before it has to go back.
So instead, I might finally get opening some of the Spanish books in my collection I've been saving up in case I end up studying Spanish at university [something I'll find out a month today]. I've only studied a little Spanish in the past and it's been well over a year since that happened but Portuguese and Spanish are very similar so I might find I know a bit more than I think. Besides, I have Hugo's Spanish in three months which I borrowed from the library [which contains approximately 4 language books] gathering dust under my bed and if the Spanish one is as great as the Portuguese one than I should make good use of it before it has to go back.
Friday, 2 July 2010
Listening Comprehension with songs
Unfortunately, reading any word doesn't in any way guarantee that you will be able to recognise it when spoken. Even with languages like Japanese and Spanish where words are spoken exactly as they are written it can still be a difficulty to recognise all the different sounds in a sentence and translate them into individual words with meanings. So I've just decided to pick a song in Portuguese which I wouldn't mind repeatedly listening to, pausing the song after each line and trying to write down what I think is being said in that line. There are drawbacks such as not knowing all the vocabulary but the same situation might occur in daily life.
So I picked a song by Clã called Problemas de expressão. My first attempt was abysmal but that's to be expected. So I decided to have a second attempt. I'll post my version first in yellow and then the exact lyrics in green:
Note that the [----] refers to a part of the song I couldn't quiet catch.
Sobre dizer que ti amo
Só pra dizer que te Amo
I was almost correct on my first attempt with 'sobra' but I hadn't recognised it as a word I knew so I though it may have been 'sobre'. I'm kicking myself now because a couple of days ago I learnt that 'só ' is pronounced 'saw' and I've usually been good at picking out 'pra' and 'para'
Nem sempre conto ---
Nem sempre encontro o melhor termo
I was slightly on the right track but not close enough.
Nem -----
Nem sempre escolho o melhor modo.
This sentence was just a failure.
---dizer como um cinema
Devia ser como no cinema
A língua inglesa fica semprovise
A língua inglesa fica sempre bem
I'm pleased that the majority was correct. Not sure how I heard 'vise' when I should have heard 'bem'.
E nunca --- ninguém
E nunca atraiçoa ninguém.
Never knew what atraiçoa [a form of the verb atraiçoar 'to betray'] meant, hence the space but at least the other words were correct.
Eu te o mundo está perta de meu
O teu mundo está tão perto do meu
At least half of this sentence is right. For my first attempt I wrote 'oute' which I though was some form of a verb I didn't know but then changed it to 'eu te o'. Since I'm predominantly learning Brazilian Portuguese, I'm used to using 'o seu' rather than 'o teu' which is used in Portugal to mean 'your' but I'll still have to be able to recognise the European Portuguese accent.
E que diga que tão longe
E o que digo está tão longe
Como mamostro seu
Como o mar está do céu.
Not a clue where I got 'mamostro' from.
Sobre dizer que ti amo
Só pra dizer que te Amo
nunca ---
Não sei porquê este embaraço
It's a shame since I was a tad close on my first attempt.
-------
Que mais parece que só te estimo.
Até ------ não quero
E até nos momentos em que digo que não quero
é que sinto por ti
E o que sinto por ti
If it weren't for that one little word...
são coisas confusas
são coisas confusas
The only fully correct sentence.
E até parece que ----
E até parece que estou a mentir
Nearly there.
as palabras custo sair
As palavras custam a sair
I'm surprised at this sentence because I thought it was just making up 'custo'
não o que estou---
Não digo o que estou a sentir
Digo ---- que eu senti
Digo o contrário do que estou a sentir.
Eu te o mundo está perto de meu
O teu mundo está tão perto do meu
é que digo estão tão longe
E o que digo está tão longe
At least I made an improvement from the first time as I got tão this time.
como maristado seu
Como o mar está do céu.
E então difíceis dizer um --
E é tão difícil dizer amor
---- Disse que eu cantar
É bem melhor dizê-lo a cantar
Porize esta noite fiza está canção
Por isso esta noite fiz esta canção
I had no idea what 'porize' was when I wrote it but I thought it was a word I didn't know. I'm disappointed that it was 'por isso'.
Palavras ouver a problema de expressão
Para resolver o meu problema de expressão
I suppose I can see where I got 'palabras ouver' from, even though I thought it made no sense when I was writing it.
E fica mais perto ---do perto
Pra ficar mais perto, bem mais de perto.
Fica mais perto ---do perto
Ficar mais perto, bem mais de perto.
So that was my first time doing so but I don't think it'll be my last. It was good to try to gauge what they were saying and then analyse what I had thought they were saying with what the actual were saying. I'm a tad disappointed since there were only 3 or 4 words I didn't understand when I read the lyrics but that indicates to me that I just have to continue practicing! But now I'm off to translate the song to make sure I fully understand what the lyrics mean.
So I picked a song by Clã called Problemas de expressão. My first attempt was abysmal but that's to be expected. So I decided to have a second attempt. I'll post my version first in yellow and then the exact lyrics in green:
Note that the [----] refers to a part of the song I couldn't quiet catch.
Sobre dizer que ti amo
Só pra dizer que te Amo
I was almost correct on my first attempt with 'sobra' but I hadn't recognised it as a word I knew so I though it may have been 'sobre'. I'm kicking myself now because a couple of days ago I learnt that 'só ' is pronounced 'saw' and I've usually been good at picking out 'pra' and 'para'
Nem sempre conto ---
Nem sempre encontro o melhor termo
I was slightly on the right track but not close enough.
Nem -----
Nem sempre escolho o melhor modo.
This sentence was just a failure.
---dizer como um cinema
Devia ser como no cinema
A língua inglesa fica semprovise
A língua inglesa fica sempre bem
I'm pleased that the majority was correct. Not sure how I heard 'vise' when I should have heard 'bem'.
E nunca --- ninguém
E nunca atraiçoa ninguém.
Never knew what atraiçoa [a form of the verb atraiçoar 'to betray'] meant, hence the space but at least the other words were correct.
Eu te o mundo está perta de meu
O teu mundo está tão perto do meu
At least half of this sentence is right. For my first attempt I wrote 'oute' which I though was some form of a verb I didn't know but then changed it to 'eu te o'. Since I'm predominantly learning Brazilian Portuguese, I'm used to using 'o seu' rather than 'o teu' which is used in Portugal to mean 'your' but I'll still have to be able to recognise the European Portuguese accent.
E que diga que tão longe
E o que digo está tão longe
Como mamostro seu
Como o mar está do céu.
Not a clue where I got 'mamostro' from.
Sobre dizer que ti amo
Só pra dizer que te Amo
nunca ---
Não sei porquê este embaraço
It's a shame since I was a tad close on my first attempt.
-------
Que mais parece que só te estimo.
Até ------ não quero
E até nos momentos em que digo que não quero
é que sinto por ti
E o que sinto por ti
If it weren't for that one little word...
são coisas confusas
são coisas confusas
The only fully correct sentence.
E até parece que ----
E até parece que estou a mentir
Nearly there.
as palabras custo sair
As palavras custam a sair
I'm surprised at this sentence because I thought it was just making up 'custo'
não o que estou---
Não digo o que estou a sentir
Digo ---- que eu senti
Digo o contrário do que estou a sentir.
Eu te o mundo está perto de meu
O teu mundo está tão perto do meu
é que digo estão tão longe
E o que digo está tão longe
At least I made an improvement from the first time as I got tão this time.
como maristado seu
Como o mar está do céu.
E então difíceis dizer um --
E é tão difícil dizer amor
---- Disse que eu cantar
É bem melhor dizê-lo a cantar
Porize esta noite fiza está canção
Por isso esta noite fiz esta canção
I had no idea what 'porize' was when I wrote it but I thought it was a word I didn't know. I'm disappointed that it was 'por isso'.
Palavras ouver a problema de expressão
Para resolver o meu problema de expressão
I suppose I can see where I got 'palabras ouver' from, even though I thought it made no sense when I was writing it.
E fica mais perto ---do perto
Pra ficar mais perto, bem mais de perto.
Fica mais perto ---do perto
Ficar mais perto, bem mais de perto.
So that was my first time doing so but I don't think it'll be my last. It was good to try to gauge what they were saying and then analyse what I had thought they were saying with what the actual were saying. I'm a tad disappointed since there were only 3 or 4 words I didn't understand when I read the lyrics but that indicates to me that I just have to continue practicing! But now I'm off to translate the song to make sure I fully understand what the lyrics mean.
Progress 02/07/2010
Did my first speaking exercise on livemocha for a while and scored 5*. There are still a few errors with my pronunciation such as pronouncing 'lh' as 'i' and not saying 'rr' correctly, but apart from that everything seemed okay. It was a nice little confiance booster and makes me want to keep on studying Portuguese even more. Yet again, I still have a lot of work to do to diminish my accent but that will come with time and lots of practice both speaking and imitation through extensive listening. Speaking of listening, I was listening to a nice song the other day when I found the phrase 'lobo em pele de cordeiro' which is the first idiom I studied whilst looking at animal vocabulary last week. It was nice to see a phrase which I thought would be useless until I have a much higher level of Portuguese being used in some context only a week after studying it.
I also studied the present subjuctive in Portuguese today which, to my delight, is the same as the imperative tense which I learnt two or so weeks ago. It was a nice surprise because whilst learning French two years back, there was always such a big fuss over the subjuctive tense and how to use it and even how to completely avoid it. Now I'm starting to wonder what the big deal was. Sure, it's rarely used in English but there are set conditions and set phrases after which it should be used [when expressing doubt, uncertainty, probablity etc] which in my opinion makes it quite easy to deal with. If I see someone who wants to try to avoid it in the future, I would tell them to at least be able to recognise it because, like it or not, it is a part of the language.
Update 22:37
Just finished unit 19 of FSI Portuguese. It was much more interesting than other lessons because it was much more informal with sentences such as 'O que há com o professor' [What is it with the teacher/What's up with the teacher] and 'é mesmo?' [Is it really?]. Apart from teaching some informal sentence constructions, it mainly focused on the present progressive tense [the tense that ends in -ing in English] which was nice revision. It also taught a few good pronunciation pointers such as the final vowel before the -ndo in the progress tense [falando, saindo, fazendo] is nazalised. Not only this but the 'm' in 'com o professor' [with the teacher] shouldn't be pronounced otherwise it sounds like 'como o professor' [like the teacher]. Anyway, it was a nice change compared to the previous boringly repetitive lessons and I hope the next lesson like this one.
I also studied the present subjuctive in Portuguese today which, to my delight, is the same as the imperative tense which I learnt two or so weeks ago. It was a nice surprise because whilst learning French two years back, there was always such a big fuss over the subjuctive tense and how to use it and even how to completely avoid it. Now I'm starting to wonder what the big deal was. Sure, it's rarely used in English but there are set conditions and set phrases after which it should be used [when expressing doubt, uncertainty, probablity etc] which in my opinion makes it quite easy to deal with. If I see someone who wants to try to avoid it in the future, I would tell them to at least be able to recognise it because, like it or not, it is a part of the language.
Update 22:37
Just finished unit 19 of FSI Portuguese. It was much more interesting than other lessons because it was much more informal with sentences such as 'O que há com o professor' [What is it with the teacher/What's up with the teacher] and 'é mesmo?' [Is it really?]. Apart from teaching some informal sentence constructions, it mainly focused on the present progressive tense [the tense that ends in -ing in English] which was nice revision. It also taught a few good pronunciation pointers such as the final vowel before the -ndo in the progress tense [falando, saindo, fazendo] is nazalised. Not only this but the 'm' in 'com o professor' [with the teacher] shouldn't be pronounced otherwise it sounds like 'como o professor' [like the teacher]. Anyway, it was a nice change compared to the previous boringly repetitive lessons and I hope the next lesson like this one.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
June progress
June
Portuguese
716 / 700 words. 102% done!
French
/ 350 words. 0% done!
I'm loving the fullness of the Portuguese bar but I can't say the same for French. I'm completely focused on Portuguese right now and find that it's the only thing I want to study but as soon as my exam results come on August 4th, this could completely change so I want to study Portuguese as much as I can for July. That's why I'm aiming for an ambitious 1400 new known words. It may seem a tad too ambitious but learning, reading, exposing myself to Portuguese is the only thing I've been doing since summer started in June so I think it may just be possible =].
Portuguese
French
I'm loving the fullness of the Portuguese bar but I can't say the same for French. I'm completely focused on Portuguese right now and find that it's the only thing I want to study but as soon as my exam results come on August 4th, this could completely change so I want to study Portuguese as much as I can for July. That's why I'm aiming for an ambitious 1400 new known words. It may seem a tad too ambitious but learning, reading, exposing myself to Portuguese is the only thing I've been doing since summer started in June so I think it may just be possible =].
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Progress 30/06/2010
It's currently 22:05 and I'm currently only 93 words away from reaching my '700' new word goal which I've set for Portuguese. So that leaves me with less than 2 hours to go through all my lessons on lingq and tick off all the words that I'm now confident I know to get my status from 87% up to 100%. Whilst Portuguese is almost at a full bar, French is dismally empty so I think I'm going to just remove it for July.
On other new, I completed the 19th lesson of FSI Portuguese which I've been neglecting as of late for many valid reasons but I would like to get the first unit finished so I'm going to stick to it until the 24th lesson and then I'll decide whether to continue from then.
Earlier this afternoon, I completed 3 exercises in Hugo's Portugese which focused on the passive voice, past participles and the pluprefect tense.
Update 23:19
Eu fiz isso!
I made it in time [with quite a wee bit left to spare] but I didn't copy any of the vocabulary into my anki deck so I'm off to do that now.
On other new, I completed the 19th lesson of FSI Portuguese which I've been neglecting as of late for many valid reasons but I would like to get the first unit finished so I'm going to stick to it until the 24th lesson and then I'll decide whether to continue from then.
Earlier this afternoon, I completed 3 exercises in Hugo's Portugese which focused on the passive voice, past participles and the pluprefect tense.
Update 23:19
Eu fiz isso!
I made it in time [with quite a wee bit left to spare] but I didn't copy any of the vocabulary into my anki deck so I'm off to do that now.
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Progress 29/06/2010
Got my laptop back today but I couldn't find a way to transfer my new anki decks on my other computer onto my laptop so I had to make yet again make another new one. Found quite a few Brazilian rock songs that I like which I've been playing non-stop. I'm hoping to get quite deep into the Brazilian music scene. I've currently found a few samba and bossa-nova songs which I thought I wouldn't like but did indeed like. But for me, learning another language opens doors to different ideas and different styles of things such as music and discovering these different things makes language learning very enjoyable. I'm hoping that by getting into the music scene, it will really help my listening abilities as listening to Japanese music for the last 2-3 years has made my listening skills far exceed my reading, writing and speaking abilities [granted that I haven't been practicing these abilities much and have been neglecting them for months on end].
In other news, studied a chapter of Colloquial Chinese after a new package off ebay containing this arrived:
Despite still not being sure which university I'll be going to and hence which languages I'll be studying, I'm stocking up on language books so that as soon as exam day arrives on the 4th August, I can spend the whole month afterwards learning some of the language to prepare myself. The first chapter of Colloquial Chinese was much better than I'd expected. The introduction was also very helpful in guiding how to produce some of the awkward Chinese sounds so I think I'll be becoming very acquainted with this book.
Again, in other news, I just found out that iTunes has a section where universities can post podcasts and there's a language section so I might download a bit of Greek or some beginner's Spanish. Haven't came across any Portuguese material yet.
Update 23:53
I got round to reading a few other blogs that deal with language learning and it was nice to see the different points of views and methods out there. I remember reading a post, I'm pretty sure it was on Spanish-Only, about how advanced students should read books in their target languages for fun without preoccupying themselves with looking up every unknown word. Whilst I haven't tried it out [mainly due to the fact that I'm not yet at an advanced level in any language thus far] I do think that as soon as you have mastered the basics, you should get yourself into some literature. Not only does it give a nice insight into the different customs, culture and history of a country where your target language is spoken [assuming the book isn't set in an alternate world] but different authors have different styles. The same author might be fond of a certain expression, word, sentence structure and so you will continually be exposed to that certain expression, word, sentence structure and the more exposure you get to something, the easier and faster you'll learn it.
Then there was another blog that used to 'TV-method' which as the name suggests, revolves around learning languages through continuous exposure through tv. So I googled 'Portuguese Dramas', found a teenage drama series called 'Morangos com açucar' [Strawberries with sugar]. And watched 10 minutes of an episode. I would like to watch some more but I'm afraid to it would slow down my internet connection since I've already watched far too much television online this month. So I settled for finding a good radio show which plays high quality, predominantly Portuguese speaking music. Hopefully making good use of the radio will help me with my listening skills as well as giving me some enjoyment from finding new songs.
In other news, studied a chapter of Colloquial Chinese after a new package off ebay containing this arrived:
Despite still not being sure which university I'll be going to and hence which languages I'll be studying, I'm stocking up on language books so that as soon as exam day arrives on the 4th August, I can spend the whole month afterwards learning some of the language to prepare myself. The first chapter of Colloquial Chinese was much better than I'd expected. The introduction was also very helpful in guiding how to produce some of the awkward Chinese sounds so I think I'll be becoming very acquainted with this book.
Again, in other news, I just found out that iTunes has a section where universities can post podcasts and there's a language section so I might download a bit of Greek or some beginner's Spanish. Haven't came across any Portuguese material yet.
Update 23:53
I got round to reading a few other blogs that deal with language learning and it was nice to see the different points of views and methods out there. I remember reading a post, I'm pretty sure it was on Spanish-Only, about how advanced students should read books in their target languages for fun without preoccupying themselves with looking up every unknown word. Whilst I haven't tried it out [mainly due to the fact that I'm not yet at an advanced level in any language thus far] I do think that as soon as you have mastered the basics, you should get yourself into some literature. Not only does it give a nice insight into the different customs, culture and history of a country where your target language is spoken [assuming the book isn't set in an alternate world] but different authors have different styles. The same author might be fond of a certain expression, word, sentence structure and so you will continually be exposed to that certain expression, word, sentence structure and the more exposure you get to something, the easier and faster you'll learn it.
Then there was another blog that used to 'TV-method' which as the name suggests, revolves around learning languages through continuous exposure through tv. So I googled 'Portuguese Dramas', found a teenage drama series called 'Morangos com açucar' [Strawberries with sugar]. And watched 10 minutes of an episode. I would like to watch some more but I'm afraid to it would slow down my internet connection since I've already watched far too much television online this month. So I settled for finding a good radio show which plays high quality, predominantly Portuguese speaking music. Hopefully making good use of the radio will help me with my listening skills as well as giving me some enjoyment from finding new songs.
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Progress 26/06/2010
After my laptop charger failed to work, I've been forced to use another old computer in it's place. I used to use this one all the time but then it broke and everything had to be wiped off it. However, I've decided to start a new anki on this computer which I will transfer onto my laptop to replace the old muddled up one. Taking advantage of books.google.com, I'm looking through the book 'A frequency dictionary of Portuguese' to increase my vocabulary which I think is the main thing slowing down my progress. I'm picking up vocabulary by topics and I'm currently finishing 'animais'. Anytime I look at a new word, I search that word into the searchbar on tatoeba which is a sentence database that I found and which currently contains about 5000 sentences. Currently my anki vocabulary stands at 193 and sentences at 81. Any additional vocabulary in the sentences are added to the vocabulary anki. Now just off to read a story in portuguese over the idiom ' lobo em pele de cordeiro' or 'a wolf in sheep's clothing'.
Update
After reading the story about the 'lobo em pele de cordeiro' I realised I only knew half the story. I knew about the wolf adopting the sheep's skin to deceive his prey but I didn't know about the ending where the shepherd went to the barn to get some meat for the next day and pulled out the wolf in sheep's clothing, the moral of the story being 'Sempre que nós enganamos os outros, pagamos pelo nosso erro logo em seguida' - Whenever we deceive others, we immediately pay for our error'. Anyway, I'm glad that I came across that story because I learnt something new due to being able to read a little in a foreign language. I gained some results of my language learning and it feels good ☺.
Update
After reading the story about the 'lobo em pele de cordeiro' I realised I only knew half the story. I knew about the wolf adopting the sheep's skin to deceive his prey but I didn't know about the ending where the shepherd went to the barn to get some meat for the next day and pulled out the wolf in sheep's clothing, the moral of the story being 'Sempre que nós enganamos os outros, pagamos pelo nosso erro logo em seguida' - Whenever we deceive others, we immediately pay for our error'. Anyway, I'm glad that I came across that story because I learnt something new due to being able to read a little in a foreign language. I gained some results of my language learning and it feels good ☺.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Progress 22/06/2010
Did quite a bit of chapter 7 of Portuguese in 3 months which is mainly focused on nem...nem and ou...ou and other negatives. I glanced over the future tense and the conditional tense which look easy enough but after taking a lot of new things in yesterday I'm going to postpone learning these two tenses for a couple of days. Submitted both a writing and a speaking exercise on livemocha and have noticed a slight improvement in my writing but still making silly little mistakes such as saying 'o televisão' rather than 'a televisão'
After searching through my dvd collections for subtitles last night, I noticed the majority of them had subtitles for scandinavian languages. I've always wanted to learn one of them but due to lack of resources, never really got round to it. So I'm going to do some lessons on livemocha for Swedish [of which according to Lingq I already now 50 words =)]. I thought against it at first because I'm meant to be focusing on just Portuguese but learning languages should be fun and even on a whim, if I think it would be fun to learn some Swedish then I'm going to learn some. I think I have a fear of neglecting my Portuguese because I've never advanced in a language so quickly, without having become fed-up with it, but as long as I review words and acquire some new vocabulary then I'll still see improvements.
After searching through my dvd collections for subtitles last night, I noticed the majority of them had subtitles for scandinavian languages. I've always wanted to learn one of them but due to lack of resources, never really got round to it. So I'm going to do some lessons on livemocha for Swedish [of which according to Lingq I already now 50 words =)]. I thought against it at first because I'm meant to be focusing on just Portuguese but learning languages should be fun and even on a whim, if I think it would be fun to learn some Swedish then I'm going to learn some. I think I have a fear of neglecting my Portuguese because I've never advanced in a language so quickly, without having become fed-up with it, but as long as I review words and acquire some new vocabulary then I'll still see improvements.
Monday, 21 June 2010
21/06/2010
Completed the rest of lesson 5 and all of lesson 6 of Portuguese in 3 months. Went over the imperfect tense, the imperative and pronouns. Did 5 exercises composed of translating sentence to and from Portuguese to English, each exercise consisting of 12-16 sentences which gave me a good amount of practice. Also did chapters 5 and 6 of TY Portuguese [which really isn't too helpful without the accompaning cds]. Found a nice song in Portuguese from a singer from Lisbon and it was good to hear the European accent opposed to the Brazilian. Translated the song into English.
I feel that a lot of what is holding me back from having a higher level of Portuguese is my lack of experience and exposure with the language. So I've raided my dvd collection and have singled out those which have Portuguese subtitles and so now I'm off to watch happy Gilmore
I feel that a lot of what is holding me back from having a higher level of Portuguese is my lack of experience and exposure with the language. So I've raided my dvd collection and have singled out those which have Portuguese subtitles and so now I'm off to watch happy Gilmore
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Progress 19/06/2010
Got a new Japanese book in today called みんなの日本語 「Everyone's Japanese」 which is one of the three main series for having a good base for Japanese since I started semi-learning it in 2007. The drawback is that in my version, everything is in Japanese but I got it for £1.50 off ebay so I can't complain, it just means that my Japanese dictionary will be one of my new best friends for a while.
Also started learning bit of Spanish from my Living Language course but it's a tad too slow for my tastes. For quite a wee while now, I've been focusing mainly on one language [Português] which has brought me great results but it's started turning something that should be a hobby into a chore so I might start to dip into other languages too whilst improving my Portuguese. I don't want to take a break from Portuguese or start to become really burnt out from it since it's exciting to see results from a language plus I might have to stop it in August. If I go to Stirling University then I'll be doing a degree in Spanish [and French] and I don't want to study both Portuguese and Spanish at the same time as I feel I would confuse myself easily over the two languages. That being said, I feel that my Portuguese has improved the little Spanish I know due to their similarities.
In regards to Portuguese, I've almost completed FSI Portuguese unit 17 which focused on the preterite form of -ir verbs and some time expressions such as ontem de noite etc.
I also listened to a couple of podcasts from Brazilianpodclass.com which is great as it not only provides phrases of which I would otherwise find hard to find a translation but everything in the lesson is said in English and then in Portuguese and not just the dialog.
In addition to this, I also translated another song from Portuguese into English [making three in total]. I intend to translate them now and make any modifications as I progress.
Also started learning bit of Spanish from my Living Language course but it's a tad too slow for my tastes. For quite a wee while now, I've been focusing mainly on one language [Português] which has brought me great results but it's started turning something that should be a hobby into a chore so I might start to dip into other languages too whilst improving my Portuguese. I don't want to take a break from Portuguese or start to become really burnt out from it since it's exciting to see results from a language plus I might have to stop it in August. If I go to Stirling University then I'll be doing a degree in Spanish [and French] and I don't want to study both Portuguese and Spanish at the same time as I feel I would confuse myself easily over the two languages. That being said, I feel that my Portuguese has improved the little Spanish I know due to their similarities.
In regards to Portuguese, I've almost completed FSI Portuguese unit 17 which focused on the preterite form of -ir verbs and some time expressions such as ontem de noite etc.
I also listened to a couple of podcasts from Brazilianpodclass.com which is great as it not only provides phrases of which I would otherwise find hard to find a translation but everything in the lesson is said in English and then in Portuguese and not just the dialog.
In addition to this, I also translated another song from Portuguese into English [making three in total]. I intend to translate them now and make any modifications as I progress.
Thursday, 17 June 2010
Progress 17/06/2010
Not did much for the last few days until today. Did another unit on the A1 Busuu course about jobs. Completed a writing exercise on what I wanted to do. It was very similar to an entry in my [currently abandoned] journal on lang-8 just after I finished my exams at the start of this month except this time it was much easier to construct it and I didn't make any mistakes =]. I like it when you can see proof if yourself advancing and I had one of they moments after completing that exercise. Spent a large part of the day listening to songs in English whilst reading the Portuguese translations of the lyrics and copied down around 100 new words into my anki deck.
Progress 18/06/2010 [Since I forgot to add it in]
Read Jack and the beanstalk in Portuguese which was really nice as I don't think I'd even read it before in English. Found a few good songs in Portuguese and started translating them into English. Also found my first Korean Rock song [which I have been looking for for a good 2 years now] which makes me tempted to start learning Korean when it comes up on LingQ. However I'm trying to dissuade myself since I tried to learn Korean way back in 2007/2008 and failed miserably plus materials for learning Korean are very scarse, more so than Portuguese which frustrates me to no end.
Progress 18/06/2010 [Since I forgot to add it in]
Read Jack and the beanstalk in Portuguese which was really nice as I don't think I'd even read it before in English. Found a few good songs in Portuguese and started translating them into English. Also found my first Korean Rock song [which I have been looking for for a good 2 years now] which makes me tempted to start learning Korean when it comes up on LingQ. However I'm trying to dissuade myself since I tried to learn Korean way back in 2007/2008 and failed miserably plus materials for learning Korean are very scarse, more so than Portuguese which frustrates me to no end.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Progress 14/06/2010
Not really been studying the last couple of days but did a little bit of the grammar sections on busuu since my 7 day premiere membership which provides the grammar lessons was about to run out. Did a lesson on the passive voice and the preterite. I'm in a very musical mood so I might go looking for some Brazilian bands to practice my listening skills.
Update 22:03
Just reviewed the 80 or so overdue items on my anki Portuguese vocabulary deck. Also listening to Mombojó whose music isn't heavily instrumented which is good to listening practice.
Update 22:03
Just reviewed the 80 or so overdue items on my anki Portuguese vocabulary deck. Also listening to Mombojó whose music isn't heavily instrumented which is good to listening practice.
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Progress 13/06/2010
Did the majority of FSI Portuguese unit 16 which focused on the preterit form of -er verbs last night but that was all. Used busuu talk to talk to someone in French but I found myself really struggling to find the correct way to express myself.
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Progress chart update.
Going to yet again change the way I monitor my progress chart. I decided to go back to the original method using lingq. Anytime I find a word I know and mark it as 'known' I'll add it to my progress chart. I'm also going to change the languages. Currently I'm monitoring progress for Portuguese, French, Mandarin and Japanese yet the last time I studied Mandarin was around March and the only language I've really studied this month has been Portuguese. So my new target will be 700 new known words in Portuguese and 350 known words in French.
From 10/06/2010 my known words in Portuguese was 1896 and French 1795 so I'll start counting from their.
From 10/06/2010 my known words in Portuguese was 1896 and French 1795 so I'll start counting from their.
Progress 10/06/2010
Completed the third and fourth lessons on Hugo Portuguese in three months today. Was just talking about the present tense and had to do a good few writing exercises for it. Also completed that final unit on the second line of A1 Portuguese on Busuu. Online right now listening to a radio which plays Brazilian music. Was originally looking for the Portuguese translation of Japanese songs until I came across a site for Portuguese speakers learning Japanese which encouraged them to listen to music as a means of increasing their language skills. Having learnt a lot of Japanese in this way myself, I've decided to do the same with Portuguese. The only problem is finding songs that I like but I hope that the more I search and listen, the easier it will be to find good songs.
Update 20:47
Just managed to finish FSI Portuguese 15. I have a love hate relationship with the thing and right now, it's closer to the latter than the former. It has started to become very tedious yet again.
Update 20:47
Just managed to finish FSI Portuguese 15. I have a love hate relationship with the thing and right now, it's closer to the latter than the former. It has started to become very tedious yet again.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Progress 09/06/2010
Didn't get round to doing much yesterday at all. Did one small unit on Busuu on colours but that was all although I did read some Portuguese translations of some of my favourite songs.
Today I'm planning to get the second line of busuu A1 finished, do an overdue writing on livemocha and FSI unit 15. Might do chapter 3 of Portuguese in three months.
Been really slipping these last few days with my studies. Only got through two more units on the second line of A1 busuu and got round to doing half of unit 15. Did do a little bit of French out of a new grammar workbook I got but after I couldn't find any French translations of songs I like, this encouraged me to move back onto Portuguese.
Today I'm planning to get the second line of busuu A1 finished, do an overdue writing on livemocha and FSI unit 15. Might do chapter 3 of Portuguese in three months.
Been really slipping these last few days with my studies. Only got through two more units on the second line of A1 busuu and got round to doing half of unit 15. Did do a little bit of French out of a new grammar workbook I got but after I couldn't find any French translations of songs I like, this encouraged me to move back onto Portuguese.
Monday, 7 June 2010
Progress 07/06/2010
Completed half of unit 14 on FSI Portuguese. Starting to move onto more complicated stuff such as the perfect tense and even the verbs with an irregular conjugation for the perfect tense. Might have to go back over it but hopefully I'll have grasped it by the end of the lesson. Finished the first line in A1 Portuguese on Busuu [there are 6 altogether]. Learnt some good vocabulary in the lesson 'Como vai você?' such as estar farto de - 'to be fed up of' and orgulhoso - 'proud' etc. Submitted three writing exercises and I'm starting to feel more confident about writing in Portuguese. Might do the next overdue speaking exercise on livemocha Portuguese 101.
Update 22:49
Finally finished unit 14 of FSI. Think I have quite a good grasp of the singular forms of the perfect tense but I'll still probably need to reinforce it more. Also completed two speaking exercises on livemocha. One with a horrible accent which I have no idea possessed me to use whilst talking and one which I feel much more comfortable with. I found a site with the Portuguese translations of a lot of English songs so I'm going to listen to some songs whilst reading the Portuguese and pick up some new vocabulary.
Update 22:49
Finally finished unit 14 of FSI. Think I have quite a good grasp of the singular forms of the perfect tense but I'll still probably need to reinforce it more. Also completed two speaking exercises on livemocha. One with a horrible accent which I have no idea possessed me to use whilst talking and one which I feel much more comfortable with. I found a site with the Portuguese translations of a lot of English songs so I'm going to listen to some songs whilst reading the Portuguese and pick up some new vocabulary.
Busuu
I remember being on busuu.com way back when it was first created but I was far more interested in livemocha at the time. I've just signed-up again after around 1-2 years and I'm impressed by the changes. At first there was only 4 languages available : English, French, Spanish and German. However now both Italian and fortunately Portuguese is available.
The site offers courses whose units follow the European Common Framework for languages. In the framework A1 is a novice to the language whilst A2 is a high beginner. B1 is a low intermediate [probably where I currently see myself as being in French] whilst B2 is a high intermediate. C1 is basic fluency whilst at C2 you can consider yourself fluent. Busuu offers courses in all 6 languages from A1 upto B2.
You follow a series of units on topics which you would be required have knowledge on at the level your following. In A1 Portuguese you start off learning basic greetings before delving into topics such as food, clothing, weather and grammar such as the present continuous, comparative and superlative adjectives.
If you have some time, it would be beneficial to try it out.
The site offers courses whose units follow the European Common Framework for languages. In the framework A1 is a novice to the language whilst A2 is a high beginner. B1 is a low intermediate [probably where I currently see myself as being in French] whilst B2 is a high intermediate. C1 is basic fluency whilst at C2 you can consider yourself fluent. Busuu offers courses in all 6 languages from A1 upto B2.
You follow a series of units on topics which you would be required have knowledge on at the level your following. In A1 Portuguese you start off learning basic greetings before delving into topics such as food, clothing, weather and grammar such as the present continuous, comparative and superlative adjectives.
If you have some time, it would be beneficial to try it out.
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Music
Of all the reasons why I learn languages, music is probably the biggest driving force. Music was the first thing that introduced me to Japanese and currently my Japanese music collection is probably as big as my English one. Finding a great song I love really encourages me to learn the language so I can understand what they're saying. If I go through a period of 'burn-out' with a language where I'm finding it hard to motivate myself, I usually turn to music as a way to inspire me to continue. A couple of nights ago, when I was really starting to lose motivation to study Portuguese due to the boring FSI course and lack of materials to learn the language, I tuned into my bossa nova collection. It's great when you don't listen to a song in a while but when you listen to it again, you realise you can pick out words that you hadn't noticed before. It's an indication that you've made a bit of progress. It's probably down to music that my listening skills in Japanese are far better than any of my other skills. Bur, it may well be that this is the reason why my Spanish isn't good. I haven't yet found any Spanish songs that I like enough to motivate me to study. So, I'm going to go off on a hunt for some songs on youtube.
Progress 06/06/2010
Did two speaking exercises on livemocha. Found out that I really need to practice the word 'eu' and I think today was the first time that a native speaker has ever told me to speak their language slower. Did the speaking exercise on careers and on time. Learnt some good time phrases off semantica :
às vezes - once in a while
De vez em quando - once in a while
De vez - for good; forever
Para sempre - forever
Ao longo do tempo - over time
Outra vez - again
Todos os dias - everyday
O dia todo - all day long
O tempo da minha vida - the time of my life
em vez de = em lugar de - in the place of; instead of
I think I'll make up a lot of sentence with these words for practice.
Also completed unit 13 of FSI Portuguese. Learnt that a lot of question word are followed by 'é que'. For example:
Onde é que... Where do[es]
Por que é que... Why do[es]
Quando é que... When do[es]
O que é que... What do[es]
Wrote down a lot of questions with these words and put them into anki. Also had some practice with the verb 'achar' and the phrase 'parece que' as well as using 'perto de' and 'longe de'. FSI is getting back into my good books. The level of study in FSI is catching up to my current level of Portuguese, plus there isn't so much of the tedious repetition as before so it's become much more enjoyable within the last 2 lessons.
Update 19:50
I was really tempted to move onto Spanish after watch a video on youtube about the passive voice in Spanish and realised how much easier it would be to learn Spanish but I might be spending the next 4 years learning Spanish and I don't think it's a good idea to study Spanish and Portuguese at the same time due to their large similarities so I'm going to continue with Portuguese. Acabo de estudar como usar o verbo 'acabar de' . I've just studied how to use the verb 'acabar de' [although I'm not sure if the second half of that sentence was right]. I also just realised how valuable a resource google books is, for a student how has next to no money. I would still much prefer to buy a book but at least I can use google books to learn a bit of what I otherwise might not be able to.
às vezes - once in a while
De vez em quando - once in a while
De vez - for good; forever
Para sempre - forever
Ao longo do tempo - over time
Outra vez - again
Todos os dias - everyday
O dia todo - all day long
O tempo da minha vida - the time of my life
em vez de = em lugar de - in the place of; instead of
I think I'll make up a lot of sentence with these words for practice.
Also completed unit 13 of FSI Portuguese. Learnt that a lot of question word are followed by 'é que'. For example:
Onde é que... Where do[es]
Por que é que... Why do[es]
Quando é que... When do[es]
O que é que... What do[es]
Wrote down a lot of questions with these words and put them into anki. Also had some practice with the verb 'achar' and the phrase 'parece que' as well as using 'perto de' and 'longe de'. FSI is getting back into my good books. The level of study in FSI is catching up to my current level of Portuguese, plus there isn't so much of the tedious repetition as before so it's become much more enjoyable within the last 2 lessons.
Update 19:50
I was really tempted to move onto Spanish after watch a video on youtube about the passive voice in Spanish and realised how much easier it would be to learn Spanish but I might be spending the next 4 years learning Spanish and I don't think it's a good idea to study Spanish and Portuguese at the same time due to their large similarities so I'm going to continue with Portuguese. Acabo de estudar como usar o verbo 'acabar de' . I've just studied how to use the verb 'acabar de' [although I'm not sure if the second half of that sentence was right]. I also just realised how valuable a resource google books is, for a student how has next to no money. I would still much prefer to buy a book but at least I can use google books to learn a bit of what I otherwise might not be able to.
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