#language update

Along with a recent vocal mode demo, Eclipsed Sounds has uploaded Forever, a full song showcasing SAROS' range and tones, as well as their Spanish-speaking capability.

Cantonese

Had my first Cantonese lesson on italki today! I am at A0 for Cantonese but I think I felt pretty good about the first lesson. My tutor was a little bit disorganized at first but eventually found their rhythm and I felt like I learned a lot. They were super cognizant of my reasons for learning Cantonese and gave me excellent, relevant examples. They also provided me with excellent resources. After just this one session, I am starting to get the hang of basic sentence structure for declaratives and interrogatives. They let me know my tones are pretty accurate which is great because I feel like I am a little tone-deaf and it's a big concern of mine. I'm hoping tutoring will give me more structure and intensify my studying.

Cantonese pronunciation (tones and phonemes): https://www.polyu.edu.hk/cbs/pronunciation/cantonese/intro

Cantonese top 100 verbs: https://www.cantoneseclass101.com/blog/2020/08/25/cantonese-verbs/

Persian

These last few weeks have been a little bit slow. Still doing the On/Off method. It is working to alleviate the stress of feeling like I'm not doing enough. I'm inconsistently going through the motions, but don't feel like I'm absorbing or progressing. I do feel that some things come a little bit more naturally to me like reading and thinking in Persian.

French

Currently reading Les Impatientes by Djaili Amadou Amal after being tempted to join a francophone reading book club in my area. I missed their meeting in May and this is the book from that meeting. Jury's still out on whether I will join the bookclub because of my rampant imposter syndrome and self-diagnosed performance/cultural anxiety as a first generation francophone in a non-francophone country.

I still keep up with writing in French by dedicating at least one entry per day in my journal.

Spanish

I live and breathe this language every day, but am trying to increase my reading (still, *sigh*). Like French, I dedicate at least 1 day for writing.

Portuguese

I stopped studying Portuguese to make room for Cantonese, but am highly delusional and have been thinking of sneaking in some Portuguese to my already scattered and inconsistent routine.

Overall, though, my progress has been super super slow/stagnant. I really have not been focused or consistent with any of my languages (other than obligatory Spanish). These last few weeks have been blunder after blunder and very stressful. Even just today, I had a dreaded phone call with some parents at work today. I had to stand my ground and not let them bully me into giving into their *demands*. I already have given so much because I notice how much they are concerned and, clinically, I also notice the concern (albeit, not as intensely as they do from a clinical POV). I tried my best to explain and answer questions but after a while just ended up getting sucked into a vicious circle of a conversation about test scores with them who were hearing me but absolutely not fucking listening, I sort of got curt, interrupted them, and repeated my point kind of cruelly. And our mediator had to step in lol.

I've put Russian on hold for now, as self study is just too difficult for me living with family.

14/5/21

Almost missed the big number, but I hit 1,500 active hours in Japanese! Already hit 500 reading hours a couple of days ago apparently wasn't checking my tracker often, and also about to hit 1,000 active hours of listening probably once I wrap up the drama I've been watching. Still quite a ways to go from the short term goals I've set, but still pretty hyped about reaching a solid number finally.

Short observations:

Reading:

Reading novels and visual novels comfortably and intensively at a pace of 8,000-10,000 characters an hour. Manga (my entry to reading JP) used to take me 3 hours to read in the beginning now takes me about an hour or 25 minutes a volume at best.

Listening:

Can listen to slice of life, drama, romance, and a bit of comedy and fantasy comfortably and follow plot decently without subtitles. Can listen to audio books, but would still need to concentrate or have to replay sometimes to follow. Trouble starts with the lack of vocabulary and the brain working hard to comprehend and fill in the gaps quick enough before the next line starts.

Output (speaking, writing):

Sometimes, I talk to myself silently and use words that seem situation appropriate, but stop myself from fully committing unless I'm absolutely sure I heard the phrase used before. Still working on confidence issues to actually pursue looking for language partners or even to just blog in JP. It's always a confidence thing for me. I'm working on it.

Anki:

Norwegian

I can now remember 'sannsynligvis' and 'i alle fall' which is a triumph, especially because the former *would not stick* no matter how many times my study buddy said it!

I have a new batch of vocab to learn for next weekend, but I am slacking. I need to build myself a daily challenge for speaking in this language, perhaps an end of day report on video or something.

I also have a goal to watch some Netflix Norwegian shows.

Japanese

We've had some missed lessons, and some recap lessons, so this is going at a leisurely pace. I am watching lots of Japanese dramas, currently working through Matsuda Shota's stuff and loving it. I've finished Sannyuu Tantei Tokage and adored it, I need to make a gif-filled post all about it.

With this language I am very comfortable with the sound of the words in my mouth, and with little casual things like 'yokatta' (good) and 'so desu' (so that's it) and am just getting familiar with sizes, colours and that you can use 'kore wa' not just for objects but in the same way as the English 'this is' to describe a situation.

Chinese

This is what I am focusing hard on at the moment. I asked my course teacher for a tutor recommendation, because the course is over for the Summer and returns in October and I was painfully aware that my speaking is rubbish and very very slow. My new tutor is so sweet!! I meet her at lunchtimes during the week, she lives really close to my workplace. She's massively energetic and enthusiastic, and we routinely shout 加油！at each other. She scolds me when I say anything in English that she knows I can say in Chinese, and tries to get me speaking as much as possible. She's from Taiwan, and speaks SO fast, omg. She routinely says whole sentences I do actually know and I miss the whole thing because it's so fast!

My favourite times are when I say a string of words and she stares back at me blankly and I'm like, really? Nothing? None of those words? :P

We're practising lots of question/answer combos like:

你家有几个人？ 你喜欢喝什么？ 你喜欢吃什么？ 你今天去上班吗？

Really the best thing so far is that she messages me all the time with voice messages in Chinese on Whatsapp, with practice phrases and then I have to reply daily as much as I can. I was proud of myself in the lesson yesterday too when I managed to say at the start: 今天我的工作不好送一对不起如果我不会中文 ("Work isn't good today, so I'm sorry if i can't speak chinese")

I'm sure it was an appallingly put together sentence, but she understood me! So I am happy :D

This week she taught me the cool thing to say when you want to say you love something is to say 我超爱... using the addition of 超. She described its general feeling to me, and it feels like it suits me so I can use it when i want to be very emphatic/enthusiastic about something.

I did it! I completed the Mandarin Chinese 2 course before 2019!

I guess in 2019 I’ll be doing the next course but I’m scared because it contains 1107 words 😂

it’s going well. as long as i remember the spellings and where the accents go, and as long as i remind myself to not freak out and panic when i see some grammar i don’t quite understand. i can figure it out, and i’m relatively good at retaining vocabulary. the one area i do lack in is pronunciation. but i don’t blame myself for that. i’ll be listening to pronunciation albums on youtube while i do household chores this week.