December 4th, 2008

It has been 7 months since I made my last post on this blog. In these 7 months, I have done a lot. I fulfilled my dream of studying abroad, going to Brazil for 2 months(Mid-June to Mid-August) and I loved it. The country had great people, good food, and I was basically in bliss for my whole time there, only amplified by speaking in Portuguese as well(made it that much better). I have kept in touch with my host family, and I actually need to get in touch with them again soon, but I hope to go there again sometime soon. But I am already making plans to study abroad again next year. After realizing that high school in America sucks, and that I am tired of it, I decided it would be best if I took a year off and went to another country to study for a year as well as learn an additional foreign language. My top choices right now? #1. Russia. #2. Turkey. #3. France Even though I am not exactly final on that list, I definitely want to go to Russia. So, in preparation of going there, I have decided to start studying the language. I officially plan to start Monday, after deciding on a good "program" to use, which will probably involve some type of text to follow with English translation, a good dictionary(online probably), and tapes to use and get a basic grasp of the language with. I have already learned the alphabet so I just need to dig in and get some self-motivation that I always can find in myself.

Post-RTK1 Era

It's been a while since I finished Remembering The Kanji I, and I have moved on to the other 2 writing systems, the Hiragana and Katakana. I am tackling the Hiragana first, just because its the order the book I'm using goes in(Remembering the Kana, also by James Heisig), and the Hiragana are also a little more important. I've only done about 23 of the 46 characters, but I should be done by the end of the week and on to the Katakana if I can find some 30 minute pockets of time to fit Japanese in during the week. I've also made significant improvement in my Portuguese listening skills, much due to playing some type of Brazilian music everyday or listening to the radio(I download UOL podcasts everyday on iTunes). Now it's only about a month and a half before I get the whole summer to have fun with all the books around the house and resources online. Até Próximo.

It's been a long time...

I haven't posted on here in over a month, due to me entering the hardest semester of school I have ever had in my life. After bombing basically every exam I took in January, I decided I really need to step it up and start doing some work, even if it includes me slowing down with my language learning or lifting weights after school. The workload has been tremendous, and everything is moving so fast it's crazy. But I decided I could still make a little time to make another post since it doesn't really take too long.

I am disappointed in myself because I never got to finish my kanji. I am still doing it everyday, but I should be done with it and starting to work on the actual language(writing, reading, speaking) and I am really tired of just doing kanji, even though I know it is essential for me to do them. But there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to do that. I am about 300 kanji away from finishing the book, so I guess I will just finish it no matter what some time soon. As for my other languages, my Portuguese has really improved, and I feel like I am almost as good at it as I am in French(which I have been taking at school for over 3 years now). My Chinese is going nowhere, but I am going to try and finish the year out strong because my grades aren't so good. The funny thing is, even though I have all this stuff, I really want to start learning Afrikaans. I think I will try to make time for it on the weekends, since I plan on being in the house more from now until Spring Break, which should give me a whole lot of time to work on my languages. I am going to post some more useful links and hopefully get some more readers!

What a week

This is now officially my 6th post, but it's coming a little later than I planned on it being. It has been a hectic week due to a lot of work being due, plus having a couple health problems hinder me so I haven't been able to keep up with by blog this week. But I did make a little progress, especially in my Japanese. I was unable to do much work, but when I was fine I put in a lot of work into memorizing more kanji and I am currently up to 751 characters, and I have been counting down everyday to the final character in the book, so I now have 1291 characters left, which actually surprises me and motivates me to get them done. I've been trying to do about 50 a day which would get me to 1300 in 26 days, just in time for Christmas! Now realizing that my goal would be reached right around my day, I have proposed to finish this book and my 2042 kanji by Christmas Day, a hefty proposal but definitely a possible one. I know it won't be easy, but I'm fine with that and I am ready to do it. Memorizing the kanji usually takes me about an hour, which is a long time, but I usually have a lot of time on me, especially on the weekend, so I will probably step up the input on the weekend to maybe 80 and maybe drop the load down to 40 during the week, but always try and do 50 if I can. Now, coming into what I am about to say, I understand I am dealing with enough languages as is and adding yet another could really be too much, but at this point in my language learning "career," I find it quite easy to handle multiple languages, I never get confused except for the occasional pause when I am talking to people in different languages at once, or, I must admit, I have some situations where I am not sure how to say something in English! I am kind of worried, my brain is starting to think moreso in Portuguese or French than English and I have to say things aloud to myself a couple times before I am sure it is right. But, I don't really care, I'm not planning on being an English major. Now, what I was going to say was, I think I might try to pick up Russian or German, or maybe both. I might have mentioned it in one of my earlier posts, or on my blog before I changed it around and lost it, but I did do a little bit of German study but I didn't keep it up just because of loss of interest and tutor :). As with Russian, I've ran by PLENTY of materials I could use to teach myself Russian and I think I am pretty good at putting together a curriculum for myself. As with Portuguese, I have been talking much more in Portuguese and I think once I go back over my conjugations I will be at an intermediate level of Portuguese, I think at this point it's basically just a matter of learning vocabulary and working on my speaking/listening. My speaking is decent, I sort of developed a strange brazilian accent, I was talking to someone and I forget which region of Brazil, but I am kind of happy that I don't sound like an English speaker completely. But the thing I have to work on is just putting together sentences and sounding smooth when I talk. Listening is just really hard because Brazilians talk SOOOO fast. I can understand a little bit because I just take keywords and put them together and figure it out, but I want to be able to understand everything. Due to lack of time as always, I have to end it here but I will try to post again later, 1~

How I am going about learning all these languages

For all of the 0 readers I have out there, if you think talking about what I am doing concerning my language learning I am not going to just talk to about what I am doing personally %100 of the time, but I am going to be talkiing about what I am doing all the time, I am also going to post links to sites I think would be helpful to others, as well as interesting articles about languages. I probably will even occasionally post links about stuff that has nothing to do with languages just because I think it's something worth mentioning.

Now, back to the languages. Today, I'm going to talk about how I go about studying numerous languages. The path to my method has come from a combination of many things: Time limitations, laziness, resources, and money. I only study 2 languages on my own(Japanese and Portuguese), and I study them differently primarily because of how difficult Japanese is(I want to get the hardest part over with).

Right now I am in my first year of Chinese at school and it is very, very hard, not because of the language itself, but all the work involved. I am enjoying it though, and I think it's easier to understand than other languages because in my opinion the Chinese don't talk very fast. As for French, I think it is the hardest language to understand orally because everything to me sounds just mushed together. I am in my third year of it and the honors track and even though I think it's hard to understand, I enjoy it alot, obviously.

Now for the languages that I am studying independently. What I do for Portuguese, quite simply, is talk. Anyone can find sites online to find penpals to talk to through e-mail, MSN, or any way of talking online. I try not to put too much information out about myself simply because you can't trust everyone you meet online, but I'm pretty confident that if someone came to my house expecting to kidnap me they would be in for a HUGE suprise. :) How I got myself to the point of being conversational in Portuguese was I went online to a site that uploads all the texts used by the Foreign Language Institute(U.S. organization used in the military to teach languages), and since it is owned by the U.S. everything it makes has to be free to the public, and therefore there are a bunch of language courses on the site to use if you want to learn x amount of languages(link will be posted below). I only went through about 14 units before I got bored and decided to just force myself to speak in Portuguese online and force myself to figure out how to say anything I want to say, either by using a dictionary, verb conjugator, or finding phrases online. I also use a program called Mnemosyne to memorize vocabulary and I actually use it for numerous languages, even for English vocabulary or Biology words. What Mnemosyne does is set up a spaced repitition system for you to memorize words. It works like a flashcard program and when it asks you for a word, you think of the word in your head or say it and then click "show answer," then choose 0-5, 0 meaning you did not know the word at all, and 5 meaning you immediately got the word. After you go through all the words until you have got them right, you make sure you open the progam up everyday and it will test you on words it thinks you haven't memorized yet. Basically what it does is test you on words it thinks your brain needs refreshed in your memory, and if your brain brings up words over longer and longer stretches, it gradually goes into your long-term memory. Due to lack of time, I will discuss what I do in Japanese at a later date, probably within the next couple of days. Also, if you are interested in Mnemosyne, I have posted a link where you can download it.

Link to FSI: Here
Mnemosyne

Languages for the average unaverage high school kid

Well, to start off the 1st post, I would just like to give an overview of what I plan to talk about on here. As you can see from the heading, I am in high school and play sports and a bunch of other stuff so expect to possibly see some off-the-wall stuff on here, I have a lot of stuff I do :) Also, don't be scared to leave a comment asking me about what I do that concerns my language learning or anything I post on here, just don't get too personal.

Now, to get on to the big reason for this. As you can read from the 1st two words, I am a guy who is about learning languages. I realized this was something I enjoy back in about 8th grade when I was really fascinated by the fact that my friend could speak Spanish. In 10th grade I decided to try and teach myself Japanese. I couldn't do it, and was sort of disappointed. But once the summer started the next year, I decided I would give it another try. But not only did I begin teaching myself Japanese, but I also decided on Portuguese. Even though I see myself as being a harder worker last year this year, I have been able to keep up with learning both, even though I have had some blocks and am at almost a brick wall in my Japanese that I hope to get over(I should have been done with the book I am using about 2 months ago). Doing this as well as going to school and playing sports has proven a little bit hard, but I don't mind seeing that it is something I love doing. I am going to go into more in my next post, it's always good to keep the reader wanting more :)

Also, I am going to leave some links to sites/blogs that you should look at:

Kevin Levin(my history teacher)'s blog
All Japanese, all the Time(Method a guy used to learn Japanese very quickly)
How to Learn Any Language(Make sure to go to the forum)

Also, you can add me on Facebook, just type in Torrey Payne in the search bar.