Reflexions (Setmana 8 del Repte Idiomes Estiu 2021)
Sí, he fet el càlcul i tinc la setmana correcte...benvinguts i benvingudes a la vuitena setmana del repte! La cosa va bastant bé, heus aquí els números:
basc* (1129/1903 mots = 59%)
gal·lès* (477/1632 mots = 29%)
romani (355/715 mots = 50%)
amhàric* (687/1646 mots = 42%)
Tot i el progrés que he fet, no crec que arribi al final dels cursos abans que acabi el repte. Dit això, mai he passat la fita de mil paraules en un curs de Memrise, així que ja ha valgut la pena. I penso seguir, si puc, durant l’any. Però primer, cal enfocar-me en les quatre setmanes que em queda, perquè amb això ja hi puc fer bastantes coses.
També estava pensant, i crec que estic en el moment ideal per fer un “level up” amb el gal·lès i el basc. És a dir que gairebé els sé parlar – no dominar, però simplement que em comencen a sortir frases i paraules sense haver-les planejat abans. Per això, vull tenir més hores d’estudi amb aquests dos, perquè si començo a entendre sèries/cançons/converses/et cètera, ja tindré més hores de pràctica i que no em faci mandra. Perquè amb el català ja tinc més de 100 hores aquest any (i amb la resta dels idiomes, menys de 20), només perquè miro sèries i vaig a hores de conversa i tal. Per tant, aquest és el meu repte per finals d’any.
Yes, I did the calculations and I have the right week...welcome to the eighth week of the challenge! It’s going pretty well, here are the numbers:
Basque* (1129/1903 mots = 59%)
Welsh* (477/1632 mots = 29%)
Romani (355/715 mots = 50%)
Amharic* (687/1646 mots = 42%)
Despite the progress I’ve made, I don’t think I’ll make it to the end of the courses before the challenge ends. That being said, I’ve never passed the milestone of a thousand words in the Memrise course before, so it’s already been worth it. And I think I’m going to continue, if I can, during the year. But first, I need to focus on the four weeks that I have left, because I can still do a lot with that.
I was also thinking, and I think I’m in the ideal moment to “level up” my Welsh and Basque. What I mean is that I almost know how to speak them – not master them, but just that words and phrases are starting to come to me without having planned them beforehand. Because of that, I want to have more hours of study with these two, because if I start understanding series/songs/conversations/et cetera, I’ll have more hours of practice and that won’t bore me. Because with Catalan, I already have more than 100 hours this year (and with the rest of my languages, less than 20), just because I watch shows and go to conversation hours and stuff. Therefore, this is my challenge for the end of the year.
Crec que havíem passat el punt del mig alguna setmana per aquí, no n’estic segur perquè fa tant de temps que no faig un post sobre el repte que ni sé en quina setmana estem (crec que la sisena però no us ho sabria dir segur). Però vaig estudiar molt durant el viatge, probablement perquè no tenia Tumblr per ocupar-me, i vaig avançar bastant. Aquí els percentatges i els números:
basc* (982/1903 mots = 52%)
gal·lès* (327/1632 mots = 20%)
romani (239/715 mots = 33%)
amhàric* (578/1646 mots = 35%)
rus* (455/4995 mots = 9%)
He deixat de banda el rus perquè el curs té àudio, cosa que m’és molt útil, com que no llegeixo bé el ciríl·lic, però que em fa molta mandra :P La resta em van bé, he après gairebé (o potser més de) 200 paraules cadascuna. I no hi ha cap curs amb un percentatge de menys de dues xifres! Així que estic bastant content amb el progrés que faig.
He canviat una mica alguns objectius per a finals d’any però ja us ho explicaré més endavant.
English below cut :)
I think that we’ve passed the middle point some week in here, I’m not sure because it’s been so long since I’ve made a post about the challenge that I don’t even know what week we’re on (I think the sixth but I’m not 100% sure). But I studied a lot on my trip, probably because I didn’t have Tumblr to keep me busy, and I advanced a fair amount. Here are the percentages and the numbers:
Basque* (982/1903 words = 52%)
Welsh* (327/1632 words = 20%)
Romani (239/715 words = 33%)
Amharic* (578/1646 words = 35%)
Russian* (455/4995 words = 9%)
I’ve set aside Russian because the course has audio, which is very useful for me, since I don’t read Cyrillic very well, but also annoys me :P The rest are going pretty well, I’ve learned almost (or maybe more that) 200 words for each. And there’s no course with a percentage under 2 digits! So I’m pretty happy with my progress.
I’ve changed some of my goals for the end of the year but I’ll explain that to you guys later.
So February is finally at an end, and actually it was a really good month for language study! (Plus this is actually the most posts I’ve made in a month on this blog for the first time in a long while, possibly ever.) I think there are quite a lot of things to reflect on though, so this might be a somewhat rambly post.
I’ve been keeping track of how much time I spend on languages this year because I set goals back in January based on the amount of estimated hours I’d need to move up a CEFR level. That has been really interesting, because I don’t actually have any sense of how much time things take, and tl;dr the time goals are a lot more intense/unachievable than I previously thought. That being said, I think it’s been a really good demonstration to me of how committed and hardworking I really need to be able to make progress. For Romani, I did about 15 hours of work, and for Malayalam about 8. Which was quite a good amount in terms of how I felt about them for having done it, but it really puts the fact that you need several hundred hours to go up a level into perspective.
I did basically finish the challenges, although with Romani I didn’t post them all on here. I think that the Malayalam one was very productive and really got my brain going – my pronunciation improved a bit and also it was just really cool to talk to my dad about it, I could tell that it got his Malayalam brain going again as well. I’m excited to keep working on it, which I feel like is rare for me and Malayalam given my complicated past relationship to learning it. On the other hand, I wasn’t super happy with the Romani challenge. I wasn’t exactly unhappy with it, but I think that the nature of the daily challenges wasn’t enough to make me do the kind of learning I needed. I really liked listening to Radio Romano so I think that’s going to be more of a thing in the future. I also think I’ll try to focus on reading my book, which has a translation to English that on the one hand is helpful but on the other hand is probably sort of keeping me from really pushing my language skills...idk we’ll see. I also feel like I needed to work on rebuilding my vocabulary again, so I’ll work on that more in the future.
All in all, though, it was a successful month and hopefully I can continue to build on that in March!
So I've come to the end of my second month in a row studying Romani, and it's still going really well! I've learned a lot more words, and I also practiced lots and lots of verb conjugations and noun declensions, so I feel like I'm getting a better handle on both of those. I don't think I managed a single week where I did all four tasks (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), but I did do all of them multiple times over the course of the month and I think they helped significantly; I felt like I was starting to understand the stories in my book without having to look over at the English translation, which was a super cool feeling. All in all, I'm feeling really good about my studies, and I'm honestly really enjoying myself learning Romani, so I want to keep it up and get good enough to actually use it with people. I still don't really feel like stopping, so I think that next month I'm going to continue, albeit with new goals perhaps (but that's for tomorrow's post). Either way, I'm really happy with how it's gone so far, and I'm proud of the work I've put in thus far!
De trin shona, sikav Rromani shib tha me sim but vesolo, but siklem. Siklem but vorbi, dashtiv-man te gilabav but gilya, tha akana mangav te dav-duma Rromanes averesa. Sim tsirra trist, ke nashti sas te sikav kako shon, sas bi-lasho shon. Numa mangav te akanash shai sikav Rromani shib palpale, thai shai-vi te dav-duma averesa. Si vi-lashi vi-shukar shib, but kamav la. Kam-sikav la, numa akana nashtiv-man. (Te manges te des-duma Rromanes mansa, phen mange!)
I've really enjoyed the past three months that I got to spend dedicating solely to Romani, as it's something that I've wanted to do for a while. I love Romani a lot (more than Catalan? possibly...) and it's a language that I want to learn properly and give its due respect, so I'm very glad that I got the chance to do that. Unfortunately, last month was not the most productive, for reasons I'm sure we all understand, and I didn't get the chance to reach my (somewhat ambitious) goals. I'm feeling a bit burnt out now, so I probably will be taking a bit of a break from doing serious learning, although maybe in a couple of weeks I'll be feeling more up to it. That being said, I'm definitely going to be coming back to studying Romani as soon as I feel up to it, as I want to make an actual improvement this year so I can talk to people!
This month was definitely a big improvement over a lot of my language study last year, so I'm really happy with how it went. I did start the month off a bit stronger than I ended it, but I learned some things along the way and I'm generally pretty happy with the work I put in.
The system of making study materials for the week on the weekend was a double-edged sword to some degree, because it was definitely nice during the week, but took so much time over the weekend that I couldn't really make something that was comprehensive in the way it needed to be. I'm trying to think of ways to make it better for next month, but hopefully with time I'll figure out the system a bit better and can then use it for other languages.
With regards to Romani, I'm really in love with the language, and every time I'm like I can't possible like a language this much I get proven wrong, so that's probably a good sign. I really want to get to a B1-ish level, which I think would be enough for me to be willing to start actually talking to people in it, and that's the end goal here. Because of that, next month I'm going to keep studying it (that's a first for me, I think!) and actively try to push myself in expanding my vocabulary and learning to speak and understand the language to the best of my ability.
On a side note, here's a visual of the number of words I studied over the past month (definitely more than 300):
January ended a few days ago, so I just wanted to post a small reflection on the progress I made with my languages! At the beginning of the month, I set a few goals, and for the most part I reached them. It was a very rewarding experience; not only did I get stuff done, but it actually produced results.
For Romani, I wanted to get through Ronald Lee’s book, which I did with ample time. I also wrote a story in the language for the final week, which was fun to do even if the result was godawful. I’m really happy with the progress that I’ve made, but above all, I think that I’ve fallen deeply in love with the language, something that has been a pleasant surprise. I started the month thinking I would give it a try, and by a week or two in I was already deeply invested in it. I think this was mainly because I could already understand simple lines in songs without having studied the language for long at all, and this was really rewarding (I also realized that it’s the first Indo-European language I’ve learned since Catalan, so that’s a thing too). Anyhow, long story short learning Romani has been wonderful and I love it a lot — so much so, in fact, that I’ll be continuing it next month as well!
Welsh was not as intense of an experience, and while I may not have made massive amounts of progress, I did increase my comprehension a bit. By the end of the month, I could definitely listen to Pigion without being completely confused, but I still couldn’t understand the full story. I won’t be doing Welsh next month, but I think that perhaps in the coming year doing some more intensive study would be beneficial. I didn’t have enough time to actually sit down and learn stuff every day, and that’s probably what I would need to make notable progress, but I’m satisfied with the work that I did, and I think it was good at least as a review.
Tomorrow I should have up some of my goals for next month, which is looking to be pretty exciting and fun!
