Thoughts about the 6 weeks' challenge

I have a plan on how to use the six weeks the most effective way. There is though a small problem there. How to learn to read a language is VERY DIFFERENT from how to learn to speak a language. And I want both... :-(

Here's something about how to learn to speak a language

One important difference is that if you want to learn to read fiction, you will get very sufficient with past tense in third person singular. When you speak, you use mostly first person singular in present tense.
The vocabulary is very different from every day speech to literacy. When you speak you use very simple language, ignore grammar, don't give a crap about such things like artistic expression and style, the word frequency lists are your friend and you can manage with phrase  book samples and replacing words in sentences. When you read, you are trying to understand the language of someone who is very adequate in using it, who cares a lot about grammar (or whose editor does), the style, impression and expression are important, the words are much more variable and difficult, and you don't get to ask for clarification, explain anything, or even speak.
So... when people are learning a language, they should actually be getting into hacking the language.
And, I... I just want to read and receive information. And there... there really are no shortcuts. I wish there was some sort of upload pack. :-( I don't do much with phrases and frequency lists...
But... 90% of free language courses are created for people who want to learn to speak the language... that is, not for me.

But, but... my 6 weeks challenge plan is based on all this, and it will make me able to use the language in all possible ways. It just causes some problems, because I have to change my attitude. I have attitude problems :-D

Two days and counting...

6 Weeks' Challenge is starting again on May 1st.
I am really tempted, but... considering that I participated in it a couple of times, and got among three best, and it was for French BOTH TIMES, and I STILL am not good with French... er... I'm not good at 6 weeks' challenge. :-D
I really need to keep reading French literature. *sigh*
It shouldn't be a "sigh". :-D

Today I compiled (yet again) my 50 when 50 list of languages, and decided to give each 15 minutes a day for the next year. It will take 12 hours a day, and I won't be doing it, but as I said, I have nothing else to do. I'm free as a bird all days long.
(Yes, I have a lot of free time, but it's not all fun and games and lazying about. I have a very painful and incapacitating illness, which is why I live on disability pension. But I am free.)

I kind of... well... I'm not quite sure about some half of the languages on the list.

I mean, some of the languages I am not passionate about. I am not especially hot on learning Asian languages, except Chinese, Japanese and Korean... I mean... I have Hindi and Sanskrit on my list, but I don't really want to learn them. Not even to understand Bollywood movies without subtitles.

Then there are the rare languages no-one seems to want to learn... where it is extremely difficult to find any material - or at least any EASY material online. Like... I like Albanian a lot, but try to actually learn the language? Ha! No-one will answer your questions, no-one will correct your texts, you won't find vocabulary, translations, much help at all. I think I should take the Bible approach and learn that, and then see what I can do...  And Suryoyo is about the same. I mean, the only text I have been able to find was all about God and sheep and archaic farming society with very old-fashioned rules. I don't think those two old guys in the bus where the one sang a song to the other and then they laughed, were talking about lambing problems.

And then there are the endangered languages. Not really possible to learn through internet.

And then there are the constructed languages... *sigh* Talk about a guilty pleasure! I would really love the fantasy writers to take an existing language and use that as the language of their imaginary world, it's already created and time tested and historically correct, someone has already created a whole language, and when it dies, it will take with it a whole world view, a whole world! So why not rescue them? Most endangered languages are spoken by so few and probably also isolated, so it won't be like people will get mad with you for misusing their language.
Any way... I would really like to learn Klingon and Sindarin... :-( But it feels like I should use the effort and resources to learn an endangered language. (Which leads us to the material problem with endangered languages)

And then there's the "being in love" effect. It wears off. I know too much of certain languages for them to be interesting enough for me to actually study more of them... I find it really hard to sit down with Spanish, Italian, French, German and Scandinavian languages. *sigh*

6 weeks' challenge: Russian

Ok... so I'm back. For now.
I don't think I'll ever become a "superpolyglot", because I just lack the tenacity. Whatever. :-D

Anyway, Russian...
I'm trying on a new concept.

On my "6 weeks from zero to C2" plan, day one goes:
learn the alphabet
learn the numbers
deconstruct the language (apple is red)
thank you
good morning
100 most used words on flashcards
put the Omniglot phrases + vocabulary on flashcards
find a radio station of everyday music and talk and listen for 30 minutes of radio

The alphabet. Pretty straightforward. Except for и краткое, твёрдый знак and мягкий знак - short i, hard sign and soft sign. I mean, I know how they work, but remembering the names when reading out the alphabet... eh.
And the fracking esses. I have made cards to try to remember them, you know, like the classic children's alphabet pictures. Zebra, journal, Chekhov, tzar, chess and "shchuka" - the pike.
Why the pike, you might ask. Well... in my mind, the Russians used planes called "pike" during WWII against Finland. Firstly, it wasn't Russians, it was the Germans, and the planes weren't called "pike", but Stukas. The thing is that it's not even pronounced the same way,  Щ is more just another "shsh" sound, but it's SUPPOSED to be "shch" instead of "shsh". And why would the Russians - or anyone - name an airplane after a fish? Doesn't even make any sense! :-D But - mnemonic devices don't need to make any sense, they just need to work :-D I suppose flying fish fighters is a memorable picture.

The numbers are very straightforward as well.
Except for the number 40... :-D
I really like numbers. Oh, and the pronunciation... not so self-evident.

Deconstructing the language

The apple is red. => Яблоко красное.
It is John's apple. => Это яблоко Джона.
I give John the apple. => Я даю Джону яблоко.
We give him the apple. => Мы даём ему яблоко.

He gives it to John => Он даёт это Джону.
She gives it to him. => Она даёт это ему.

Is the apple red? => Яблоко красное?
The apples are red. => Яблоки красные.

I must give it to him. => Я обязан ему это дать.
I want to give it to her. => Я хочу ей это дать.
I'm going to know tomorrow. => Я узнаю завтра.
I have eaten the apple. => Я съел яблоко.
I can't eat the apple. => Я не могу есть яблоко.

useful phrases
Good morning - Доброе утро!
Thank you - Спасибо!

Top 100 Russian words
And here we went haywire... :-D

I love learning words. I love my flashcards. I love the parrot style. Yes, it works. You know, all these people who will tell you that you should absolutely not learn words because they are useless.

Sorry, bullshit.
They are not useless.
I agree in that if you ONLY have words and grammatical rules in your head, you wouldn't be able to use the language very much. The grammatical rules would be pretty... meaningless, the words... very... not fluid. :-D One would be able to make oneself understood, to some extent, get one's basic needs fulfilled, perhaps. "I thirsty".
Now, the pronunciation... with IPA it's possible one would have a pronunciation that's understandable, even when it would not be good. (Well... I actually managed to learn French pronunciation OK - some sounds are even "good". But it's just words.)
So, yes, one cannot learn a language by learning words like a parrot. BUT learning words like a parrot is not useless. That's about the way children learn languages.
All these "learn sentences, learn the words in sentences, not in itself" people forget the very important step of how kids learn languages.

How to Learn Any Language in Two Months, Part 2: SENTENCE MINING
"I put a little food on the table"
"I squeezed a little lemon on my avocado toast"
"I pooped a little on the carpet"

I need to know what is "food" and "table". I need to know what is "lemon" and "avocado toast". I need to know what is "poop" and "carpet". To be able to deduce the grammar "a little" and "on", I need to have the building blocks in between. I mean, how many kids say things like "little mouses" or "little sheeps"? If they had learned the word in context, they would use the correct plural form automatically... but they are deducting. One toy, many toys, one spoon, many spoons, one mouse, many mouses, one sheep, many sheeps...
I could be staring at a sentence in hours without it opening to me if I have NOTHING to go after. There is this story of this man who took a Portuguese book with him to a vacation, and he had basically nothing else to do but try to figure out the book. He had no dictionaries or anything else, just the text in Portuguese, a language he didn't know anything about. He managed to figure out the language well enough to be able to actually read and understand the book during his month-long vacation. Now, I believe he knew some language that is related to Portuguese, or at least some words,  to have SOMETHING to go by.
I mean, look at this and tell me what it is:

 So if you have the 1000 most common words of a language in your vocabulary, in their basic forms, suddenly the sentences make sense and it is possible for you to start deducting and associating and experimenting with sheeps and mouses, and realize that that's not right, and correct your sheep and mice, and the more you see the correct forms, the less you remember the wrong ones. You have to have SOMETHING to be able to USE the sentences.
I mean, you COULD learn to say "Как тебя зовут?" with perfect pronunciation, but if you don't know what you are saying... There is this story of a Swedish guy asking his Finnish friends how to say "I love you" in Finnish so that he can say that to girls on the ferry to Finland, and his friends tell him "minä olen hirvi". Which means "I am a moose". (Я лось in Russian, compared to я люблю тебя.)

This also goes for "don't translate" rule. A lot of people are getting their knickers in a twist because "they can't stop translating!!!". It's not a problem. You stop it when you know the language well enough. 
It's like learning to read. In the beginning we name each letter. We say it out loud. We follow the letters with our finger. Then you start reading the words as pictographs. Then you stop talking. You still say the word in your mind, but you don't say it out loud. Then you stop following the text with your finger. Then you stop voicing the text. Though I still do that. :-D Some people don't "read out loud" in their heads, I've heard. It makes them read faster. I'm OK with my reading speed :-D You start reading whole sentences instead of words, then whole pages instead of sentences, and at that point you are speed-reading. :-D 
The same thing happens with languages. In the beginning you are thinking in your mother tongue, about what you want to say. You don't do that with languages you are fluent in. You don't think what you are saying, you just say it, because you are so used to say it. Most of us aren't even aware of most of what we say. So go ahead and translate as much as you feel like. You will stop it when you are ready.

Anyway, I find SOME basic vocabulary VERY HELPFUL in learning languages, which, of course, happens in context, by using it. By memorizing words you are collecting bricks, not building houses, but you can't build houses without the bricks.

As you see they give sample sentences where the word is being used... and as so many people are talking about "don't learn words, learn sentences", I'm going to try that this time. It shouldn't take that much longer to learn sentences instead of words.
But I suspect it makes my understanding of the language worse, or slower, but, whatever. We'll get there, sooner or later.

So - putting words on flashcards and memorizing them... not going to happen. Putting sentences on flashcards and memorizing them instead. And, yes, with translation.

Finding a radio station: Russian radio stations streaming
I think Russian Hit is a good choice. Good contemporary pop music and ads and a lot of Russian.

A week of not being well

Long story short... ish. I have fibromyalgia. I'm pretty OK most of the time, but when something bad happens, I'm really ill. And it usually lasts really long.
Like for now, it's been a week.
I am really tired, I sleep at least 12 hours every day, and my body aches.
The worst is that I swell up, and that feels especially bad in my hands...
which means it's painful to write, both with a pen and with a keyboard.
Which means that for a week I haven't been able to write much.
And that is pretty important when studying languages.
For me that is, at least.

But... there's

and

They take really nice photos of language learning :-D

Anyway, my August goals were:

6 Weeks Challenge - study 8 hours every day
Super Challenge
Learn the 5000 most common French words, 100 words a day
Memrise French A1 - 15 minutes a day

I have managed to study 8 hours a day for 10 days. On 11th the FM bomb exploded, and I have managed to put in about 5 hours a day after that... and that was surprising to me. I thought it was less than that.

Super Challenge is "5000 pages read and 9000 minutes movies watched in 20 months"
That is 250 pages and 450 minutes every month.
I started 2 months late, so I have about 300 pages (278 to be exact :-D) and 500 minutes every month
I read 194 pages in July and so far in August I have read 244 pages.
Movie minutes are easily gathered, reading pages is not that easy.
It has been much of this lately, because that's about all I can do right now.

100 words a day stopped on 12th, because I can't type >:->
So so far I have learned 1900 most common words. I should be on 2200 today. I know I can catch up by learning 200 words a day, but I think I'll go easy on me and have a break, and start anew when I'm more OK.

That's also why my Memrise French A1 stopped. I'll pick it up when I am feeling better.

Week 8: Maltese

I received the first book of the three in the series Il-Fiddien... unfortunately it's not the first in the series, but #2, it's just the first to arrive. The rest should arrive this week.

Nevertheless, the timing couldn't be better, because this is week 8 of the 52, and I had planned on studying Maltese today. And I got stuck... 5 hours. :-D

But - it's also week 5 of 6 weeks' challenge. I will be going to Finland in the end of this week, so I don't think there will be much languages studied. I plan on taking a book in French with me, and clock the reading time... but... Uh. What ever. It's just a friendly competition for everyone's own behalf. I'm nevertheless at top 3, and would like to stay there :-D

So more about Maltese later. Now I'll go and study a couple of hours French.

Of course I couldn't...

52 languages, 52 weeks...
Week six is over, and I haven't studied much Syriac at all. I can't find any motivation.
I have been practicing my Hebrew letters though. Ha.

I am also getting more and more interested in the Scandinavian languages. As far as I know I have the access to the Norwegian guy for three more months and that's it... so, I kind of think it would be better if I can use him now. :-D
So I have been learning how to count in Norwegian and Danish today.

Okay... Norwegian. Sounds pretty easy, huh?
But what... what are they doing with N? "enjnn"? R? Ärjr? My husband says that I shouldn't bother about such matters, the correct pronunciation comes with time, so I think I'll believe him.
Danish alphabet... I can say F, L, M, N, S, X and Æ :-D My Danish husband says my pronunciation is good for a foreigner :-D It's very good of him :-)


6 weeks challenge:
So... I was talking with a guy, and said that I am giving French only about 60%, not 100%. I have been wasting this day too, listening to funny videos at YouTube, listening to French songs, learning Danish and Norwegian, and 1 P.M. I decided to stop wasting my time and put in some serious language learning... now it's 5 P.M. Guess if I have studied French? No.

Hungarian? Not much...

I fell for the 6 weeks' challenge... I have always been easily excited about things like that. I want to end up among the 10 first, and right now I'm well up there. 

So what's happening with my 52 in 52 languages? Not much... because I got excited about the 6 weeks challenge. So I have been studying French instead of Hungarian. Now, Hungarian doesn't deserve to be treated that way, so I suppose I'll push a 6 weeks' opening in my 52/52 plan. I don't want to do that, because... well... I had a plan. But if I am ever going to manage a good week in 52/52 I need to give it at least 50%, and I can't if I give French 90%.

So - no more 52/52 before December. We'll get back on track on December 13th, the Lucia day here in Sweden.

So - 6 weeks' challenge and French.

I am listening to France Bleu. There was this song I liked a lot. I tried to find it, because I wasn't sure I would be able to catch the name when the commentator says it. I catch words, type them in computer, search - nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing... but then, I get something that sounds like it might be it. I go and check the lyrics, rush to the end of the lyrics, and, sure, that's it! And at that moment the song ends and the commnetator says "c'était Christophe Maé et Un Peu De Blues..."

YAY! I managed to hear enough words to be able to find the song and verify it!

Anyway, back to studying. I found "What makes reading fun" by Judith.

I took myself by the ear and started studying French verbs for real this time. *sigh*
I suppose I have no other choice but learn "the lists" and then learn phrases with the verbs in them. *sigh**sigh*
I really don't want to... you see I had this dream where I was studying all these word lists, and the word for hunter was among the words, and I also knew the verb for 'hunt' and how it was conjugated, had this table with all the forms in front of me... so somewhere in me I KNOW...
(It's chasseur, and I know it because it's the "official" fashion name of the Robin Hood hat, and to hunt is chasser and it conjugates like any -er verb, so that's easy. But I couldn't remember it when I woke up. I remember just wondering about how the heck do I know what the hunter is in French, and that I must have some sort of photographic memory, and I wish I could develop it so that I could actually use it...)

P.S. Funny thing, they were playing "My heart will go on" at France Bleu, and the commentator said "my 'ert will go ong".
Here in Sweden they cannot say 'air' but in the French way, you know with ä like a in cat - con äär, fäär play...
In Finland we say everything as it's written, as if it was Finnish. :-D My aunt corrected me when I said "maisons et jardins" [my-so-ns et yard-eens] :-D Well, that's how it is pronounced in Finnish. I KNOW how it's pronounced in French, but we were speaking Finnish. Besides I like the sound of words as they are written, especially when they are not Finnish.

Ah.

I started to transcribe the Comte... and gave up. I got the first line right. I heard things in the second line that weren't there, and missed part of the third line... I took a word as several, and even though the sentence made sense, it was not what was said. Then I took several words as one, and the sentence didn't make any sense.
Anyway, I now know what my biggest problems with transcribing French is :-D

I can see the benefits of this method, and won't throw the idea into garbage, because there's nothing wrong with it. I just don't know enough French to do that.

I have lazily studied Hungarian, but considering that I had already "met" the language, I count this week as a failure in the 52 in 52 challenge. I really should know more Hungarian by now.

BTW, Hungarian food is amazing too. Here's a couple of food blogs in Hungarian.
- nemisbéka
- lila füge
- chili es vanilia
and here a recipe site

I wish people stopped saying "I was in this and this country, and they thought I was native speaker of the language!"
No-one has ever told me I sound like a native Finnish speaker, and I bet no native speaker of ANY language has heard anyone ever told them that. If they have, it's not many, and it's not a compliment... especially if South Americans say you sound like Spanish... I might be wrong about this, but I have got the impression that South Americans think Spanish Spanish sounds awful.
Nevertheless, the goal with studying languages should be understanding, not perfecting your accent.

6 weeks challenge

It's day 3 and I'm already frustrated because I don't learn French quickly enough. :-D
I SHOULD BE FLUENT BY NOW!!!

No I shouldn't. Really.

This is the truth about my French:

I have studied French off and on for 25 years. I have studied French "seriously" for one semester. With "serious" I mean I stuck to it for longer period than a week, and actually worked with it. I did that in School - for three months.

So, if you count everything together, I might have... 100 hours of French under my belt. My pronunciation is okay, I have a couple of thousand words' vocabulary and I understand perhaps 30% of written French (and 5% of spoken :-D).

And it's not even close "enough". I try to have discussions in my head in French, I try to think in French, and there just isn't enough concepts, words, knowledge of the language for me to be able to do that, and IT'S DAMN FRUSTRATING!!!

Anyway, I'm trying to learn by watching French movies.
I love Gerard Depardieu and French Baroque, Alexandre Dumas etc, so so far I've seen Le Roi Danse and I'm watching Le Comte de Monte Cristo. Both had English subtitles, and now I'm wondering if that is a good idea... "because I'm not learning anything!!!"

I try to tell myself that I would learn even less if I tried to understand what happens based on understanding every 20th word, a couple of phrases here and there, and having a basic understanding of what the story is all about... I'm trying to tell myself to be patient, let it have its time, take it easy...

BTW, I had fun yesterday with parsing Celine Dion's "pour que tu m'aime encore", and I did learn something... There's a word étincelle in the song, and yesterday le comte used the same word - he was talking about making the étincelle into all-burning fire or something to that sense. I caught it :-D

Now, just watching the movie would probably work, but here's what Thomas says about learning language with the help of movies: Project Mayhem – Learning a Foreign Language Through Movies

Now, I'm not doing THAT.

I wonder if I should find the Count of Monte Cristo in Librivox in French, and read that alongside with watching the movie (or tv mini series, that is. It's done in four parts.)

Le Comte de Monté-Cristo - French book
Le Comte de Monté-Cristo - French audiobook 
The Count of Monte-Cristo - English book 

Back to the movie.

Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite stories and the French version with Gerard Depardieu is one of my favorite versions of it. It has been uploaded on YouTube in several bits, about 5-10 minutes each, so I suppose I could do it the Thomas way...

I think I have taken too much on me again...

It's November. November is the NaNo month. I can do my 750 words with NaNo, no problems.

It's the 6 week challenge, that also began today. I have whole 10 minutes of studying language behind me today. Language: Hungarian. I am supposed to improve my French.

Je pense que j'ai besoin de regarder Le Roi Dance.

IPA

p - like p in English word pack [pʰæk] p̪ - like π in Greek word σάπφειρος [ˈsap̪firo̞s̠] (saphiros - sapphire)

p is good enough.
b - like b in English word aback [əˈbæk]
ɓ - like b in Jamaican word beat [ɓiːt]
β - doesn't exist in English... it's sort of very weak b/v sound
ʙ - like br in bring, 

when you try to make it sound French or Scottish and roll the r :-D     
ɸ - doesn't exist in English... 

I was wondering if you could say "like pf in upfront", but that has too much p and f in it :-D 

ɸ is very weak f-ish sound with a hint of p...
f - like f in English word fill [fɪl]
v - like v in English word valve [væɫv]
ʋ - like v in Finnish word vauva [ˈʋɑuʋːɑ]    

(it's slightly w-ish, but ordinary v is good enough.)