472

As usual, my latest book, The Winner by David Baldacci, has the odd reference to language learning. One of them was especially relevant for me. It’s when someone is described: 

He craved information, absorbed it like a three-year-old learning a foreign language. He only needed to hear it once and he never forgot it.

I read this passage whilst walk/jogging laps at the Caledonian running track. I do 12 laps in lane 3, thus 5000 metres. I run for part of the lap (100 metres at this stage) and walk the rest, reading. I dog-ear multiple pages to keep track.

Today: J2       

Total: J293 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 A6 Da1 R1

471

When I’m on the boil, I’m on the boil. So what prevents me from always ‘running hot’? Childhood conditioning? Regardless, getting organized and turning things into a game is part of the antidote.

I flitted from one Arabic video to another. A wide range, of course. One or two were useful; others were awful. Yet I managed to spend a useful half hour on them, and about an hour on Japanese too. As long as you can turn work into something nerdish, and forget yourself, you can lose yourself in any activity.

Today’s plan is for more of the same.

Today: J4 A2       

Total: J291 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 A6 Da1 R1

470

Arabic. Why Arabic? I mean, hadn’t I decided on Polish, and Spanish before that? Where’s my system? What’s my resolve?

Well, that’s what 20 tongues consists of. I go with the flow. I do as I please.

So I have this little Arabic primer. It’s written for Indonesian students. The first part’s about single letters. Then there’s a chart showing pronunciation of the entire alphabet. And indonesian uses English letters—yay!

Then it carries on to show how letters join. It’s that cursive thing. It’s kind of cool, but confusing. Do they use real words? Google translate may tell me. 

Today: J4 A1       

Total: J287 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 A4 Da1 R1

469

In HP1 there are a couple less than 1600 unique kanji. I want to be able to recognize them on sight, initially. And so I am locating snippets of text containing them that I instantly know. 

That’s not in random order. On, or in, an Excel document I go through them in order according to frequency. There are several hundred instances each of 2 or 3 dozen. But over 400 kanji appear just once or twice. I’m down to the ‘sevens’.

As an aside, today as I type I have a baby blackbird sitting on the back of my neck.

Today: J2       

Total: J283 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 Da1 A3 R1

468

We were talking the other day (Magneto and Titanium Man). The other party, or parties, spoke of how they thought in English, in words, or sometimes in Japanese when the situation warranted. 

I considered that, then said that I didn’t. Oh, so you think in images, they responded. No, not that way either. I kind of grok whole gestalts of meaning. Then I usually struggle to put them in words, even though they are are clear as crystal to me.

So in a sense working with language(s) is for me a frustrating business. It doesn’t come very naturally to me.

Today: J3 A1       

Total: J281 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 Da1 A3 R1

467

Reading my 2^nd novel written by David Baldacci: The Escape. One character is 'Macri'. A typo says ‘Maori’. Another character claims to think better in cursive. For him, just as it did Roald Dahl, apparently, joined-up writing seems to spur connected thinking.

And so I’m going to play around a little with Arabic. I’ll use that Arabic keyboard that pops up with Google translate, and I’ll experiment to see how the letters join up. With Arabic, letters have different forms at the beginnings, middle or ends of words.

But it beats me how they write right to left without smudging.

Today: J3       

Total: J278 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

466

I might need another language—a non-human one, this time. Because on Christmas whilst taking an early morning walk I came across a fledgeling sat smack in the middle of the path, it beady eyes looking at me. I checked it out. Picked it up and took it home. I worked out how to feed it, and once it cottoned on to the idea, it went for it. I took it to my daughter Albany’s place where the rest of the original family spent the rest of the day from noon until evening. 

So that’s my Xmas story about Eks. 

Today: J3       

Total: J275 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

465

In David Baldacci’s novel, The Hit, the lead character, Will Robie, knows Arabic. Oh, and so does his female counterpart. Just like that. Without any mention of how or why. Without any reference to their using and refining it in real life. Well, it just doesn’t work like that. You don’t simply pick up a language like some isolated skill. It’s not like learning to ride a bicycle and never forgetting.

So I guess what I’m saying is that authors don’t know. People haven’t got a clue.

In other news, I’m still tweaking the introduction of Any Language I Like. 

Today: J5 G1      

Total: J272 D144 G50 P37 F26 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

464

To drive, or to be driven—that is the question. How would I engage in languages if it was purely for myself, and not to prove some method to others?

Well, I’d dabble. I wouldn’t rush nor be pressured. I wouldn’t stretch myself out of duty.

I’d spend maybe an hour daily. A quarter reading (Dutch, German) a quarter on Japanese, a quarter familiarizing myself with French, Spanish etcetera, and a quarter on a new one like Polish or Arabic. 

That’s what I ought to do. That’s what I’m going to do from now on. I’m going to please myself!

Today: J2      

Total: J267 D144 G49 P37 F26 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

463

At R’s bookshop, I spent an hour happily browsing. He has the Dunedin’s most extensive range of reasonably priced books in foreign languages. And you can’t go wrong spending a dollar. That’s what I paid for The Art of Offence Around the World. With it you may insult people in English, German, Spanish, French, Russian and Italian.

On another topic, I find that David Baldacci uses simpler and shorter sentences than even Lee Child does, so I’ve gone on the hunt for some of his books (about 35 of them) translated. I have some now in English, Dutch and Italian.

Today: J1 F1     

Total: J265 D144 G49 P37 F26 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

462

Why would I get myself another book in French, when I’ve just worked out that I have 24 already?

Only if it’s better or cheaper. 

Well, I’m not sure if the paperback that I got yesterday is better. But Peter Mayle’s Une Annee en Provence is a book that I recognize. I may even have owned it in English. It’s readily obtainable. And it’s a nice compact paperback easy to carry around.

But was sold me on it was that it wasn’t for sale. It was free, from the box outside the animal welfare op shop near the Botanical Gardens.

Today: J1 F1     

Total: J264 D144 G49 P37 F25 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

461

I hadn’t done any language activity yet, and it was late afternoon. I was Internet surfing, on Youtube. As you do. I was clicking on suggested videos. I was intrigued by the sprinting sensation, Daphne Schippers. I watched her run once or twice, and then happened to catch a race broadcast in another language. 

So I continued to watch.

And that’s where today’s time in Dutch originates.

One thing led to another, and I got into the mood to have some kanji fun. I followed up by locating a dozen or so of them. All in all, a fruitful day.

Today: J2 D1     

Total: J263 D144 G49 P37 F24 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

460

I caught some of the students at it. They were at my computer keyboard typing. In Arabic. So I made them show me how.

What you do is use Google translate. Then you choose the language in which you want to write. If you choose Arabic, then you can select from two ways to enter input.

You may speak out aloud, or you may use a virtual keyboard that pops up. I’ve now tried both of them.

I like how the letters are arranged. I like how they come out ‘uniform’. And I like how the computer links them together.

Today: D5 J2 A1    

Total: J261 D143 G49 P37 F24 Sp21 Da1 A2 R1

459

Compulsive reading. That’s where I’m at with Post uit de oorlog. In a couple of days I’ve read 100 pages (out of 150). So that’s two days in a row that Dutch has outstripped Japanese!

The Japanese work is progressing well. I’m able to copy and paste into Google translate, and find the pronunciation of kanji there. That’s a work-around that does the job.

My Syrian students can become a handful. Today I’ll sort them into teams. Assign points to them as a group. They are respectful, but some of the lads can play up in front of each another.

Today: D5 J2     

Total: J259 D138 G49 P37 F24 Sp21 Da1 A1 R1

458

This weekend I sorted books. In just a year I’ve collected several hundred. So I got out the cartons and arranged them in piles.

Most are in English, of course. Roughly 250. Then German (60), Dutch (30), Japanese (30) and fifthly French (24). I have a total of 17 Scandinavian books, 6 in Spanish and Portuguese, and 7 that are either Mandarin or Taiwanese. I have 4 books each of Vietnamese, Russian, Italian Korean and Maori. And finally I have one or two in Polish, Latin, Esperanto, Pitman shorthand, Swahili, Romanian, Indonesian, Finnish, Hungarian, Hindi, Bulgarian, Thai, Welsh, Arabic and Farsi.

Today: D4 J2     

Total: J257 D133 G49 P37 F24 Sp21 Da1 A1 R1

457

Two work-arounds. 

Firstly, there are sometimes hiccoughs when I do word-processing in Japanese. The cursor sometimes jumps from the text search box into the main body of the text. This means that I cannot copy-and-paste. So instead I need to recall the kanji’s pronunciation so as to enter it that way. I’m surprised to discover how much I know.

The second thing is an overweight issue. It’s a pain to have to drag around two fat Maeve Binchy tomes (the books, not the author!) That’s 5kg of paper! Should I rip out individual pages? So far, I’ve found it impossible.

Today: J2 G2      

Total: J255 D129 G49 P37 F24 Sp21 Da1 A1 R1

456

Weird dream: I’m at a language school where a bomb goes off. They lose vocabulary and even some letters of the alphabet. But I show staunchly remain enrolled while the school rebuilds.

Other news: I break my rule of avoiding textbooks and buy Teach Yourself Russian at the Orphans Aid Op Shop. It was printed in 1943—Russian must’ve seemed a good idea then.

The Russian alphabet of 32 letters can be divided into 4 groups: letters alike with English, letters like English but with different sounds, letters unlike, and a final weird group of 4. 

No bomb explosions but. 

Today: J2 D2 G1 F1 R1      

Total: J253 D129 G47 P37 F24 Sp21 Da1 A1 R1

455

The idea of copying down 10,000 sentences to pick up a language. I suggested it to my class. I thought about doing it myself. I’m sure that I’ve mentioned it previously, but I haven’t gone through with it. Why not? 

There are habits that I’ve managed to start. There are others I’ve considered, and that’s as far as it’s gone. Well, I guess that that’s normal.

The ten thousand would work for German, Japanese, French and Spanish. It could work for a Scandinavian language, Italian, Portuguese and the like. It’s not necessary for Dutch. Polish isn’t yet at that point.

Today: J2 G1      

Total: J251 D127 G46 P37 F23 Sp21 Da1 A1

454

I unexpectedly did some French today when I stumbled across famous French humor or, as the French would say l’humour. I happened to see Remi Gaillard on Youtube. He is one of the original pranksters, famous for crashing football matches, tennis open finals and Mr Universe contests. He also likes to dress up as an animal.

Language needs to be kept playful too. In class today I’ll demonstrate various tricks to keep language learning light. The trick with teenagers, however, is not to let it get too much out of hand!

Today’s lesson: how not to be intimidated by books.

Today: J2 F1      

Total: J249 D127 G45 P37 F23 Sp21 Da1 A1

453

There’s a junky second-hand place in Kaikorai Valley. I went there yesterday and filled a shopping bag with books for $5. Altogether 53 of them—young adults’ ones mainly. I’ll use them for my class.

Almost weighing in at the same amount are a couple of hardcover books: Cathys Traum, and Scarlet Feather. They are both by Maeve Binchy; they are both the same book.

I’ll use for for my class too, but for myself mainly. I’ll read them, not sentence by sentence, but paragraph by paragraph. English then German. A modified Heinrich’s manoeuvre, therefore. They’re just not very portable.

Today: J2 G1 D1      

Total: J247 D127 G45 P37 F22 Sp21 Da1 A1

452

My creative energy is all going into my class. I don’t have much left for me. Figuring out how to get across my ideas on acquisition, and on how to apply and present these in practical ways to rowdy adolescent males is a challenge. 

Nevertheless, it’s all to the good. The better I can clarify the principles to a less-than-perfect audience, the better I’ll be able to do that generally. Also, I’ll be in a better position to help myself too.

I’m in the second week of 3 before a fortnight’s break. And then another 4 weeks. Easy. Good fun.

Today: J2 G1 D1      

Total: J245 D126 G44 P37 F22 Sp21 Da1 A1 

451

As always it was an interesting day—

I visited a couple of second-hand bookshops. Got a number of juicy foreign language texts. One is a phrasebook for Dutch people learning French. Two birds with one stone, in other words. I got The Never-ending Story in its original German. And there were three Mary Scott paperbacks, also translated into German. I got one, and may go back for the others if she writes well.

I also happened to listen to Krautrock in German. That’s a resource that I hadn’t previously considered. The bands were Pinguin and Electric Mud. An eclectic sampling?

Today: J2 G2 F1 D1      

Total: J243 D125 G43 P37 F22 Sp21 Da1 A1

450

How about?—

Whenever I turn on the Kindle, I first spend 15 minutes in another language. That ‘earns’ me 15 minutes escapist reading. If I want more, then I earn more.

This resembles my system of situational exercise. This I’ll label ‘situational exposure’.

It means, of course that I’d need to make sure that I have the Kindle loaded up beforehand.

I can set up something similar with my mp3 player. With my laptop. With physical books too. Whenever I wish to read, write, walk or listen to music. It could become a way of life. The sky’s the limit!

Today: J3 F1 G1      

Total: J243 D125 G43 P37 F22 Sp21 Da1 A1

449

I bought myself a small mp3 player yesterday. It seems not to be new; on the box it says that it was returned. So we’ll see how that goes.

I completed my second Harry Bosch novel. He’s a detective based in Hollywood. As many books as there are in the Jack Reacher series. There was stuff in there about using Spanish. There was also a reference to undue acronymization. Which occurred at the last English conference that I attended.

And I’m puzzling over how to run a multi-level class. 

In these and other ways, language learning sometimes resembles real life!

Today: J2      

Total: J240 D125 G42 P37 Sp21 F21 Da1 A1

448

I’m at different levels with 8 languages. How do I divide the time? I need a strategy. I need to keep thing simple and fun.

First, they all need to be addictive. Appropriate activities. So that needs setting up. Organization. I’ve thought about ‘tagging’ languages to different times of the day. That could be part of it.

I’m maintaining a tally. The better I know each language, the more time that I devote. Rather, though, I need to spend more time on those languages that require getting up to speed.

I need gears. I need an odometer. A tachometer too? 

Today: J2 F1      

Total: J238 D125 G42 P37 Sp21 F21 Da1 A1

447

Twenty languages, 2 years, 100 words, and 60 years. The first three I boundaries I can set; the last one lies outside of my control.

Here’s my reason for looking at 20 languages: I could, and I wanted to. I felt—and still feel—that by tackling languages another way you may enjoy them without stress or hardship. So I decided to show people. I decided to show off.

But it is probably more efficient, if one wishes to reach the above ‘goal’ to do them one at a time.

I’ll ponder how to organize my time toward that end.  

Today: D3 J2      

Total: J236 D125 G42 P37 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

446

Yesterday I asked my class questions. On a sheet of paper I got them to write me their answers. They each wrote 11 lines of information for me.

I learned their names, ages, facts about their families etcetera. And I could see how well (or how poorly) they could form letters, write neatly, spell, and use correct grammar. I looked at 15 features of their writing.

Finally I asked what they needed to improve the most—reading, writing, speaking or listening. Ten people chose speaking, Three chose listening. Two chose reading. Zero people chose writing. And one person didn’t say.

Today: J2 G1 D1      

Total: J234 D122 G42 P37 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

445

Started with a new bunch of students—16 so far. All between 16 and 22 years. All from refugee families. They’ll be with me for 7 weeks over the summer.

They have a wide range of English ability, although at the low end. A year ago 3 of them were in my class. They have made a little progress but not a great deal. I’m going to concentrate on their basic writing. Maybe it’s the effect of the Arabic script, but their orthography is all over the place.

They are in Gore today, giving me time to analyze their needs.

Today: J3      

Total: J232 D121 G41 P37 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

444

The morning is my most productive time of day. What a pity, then, that I ‘waste’ it getting ready to teach me class. All that creativity squandered! But not today.

As son as I’m done here, I’ll set up an Excel for Polish. I’m going to start listing ‘the 625’ in English alongside their Polish versions. Then I’ll search for a short phrase containing each vocabulary item. I’ll grab instances of their occurrence from One Shot, if they exist there. Or from further afield.

Not flash cards, however. I’ve tried them before. I dislike their aura of obligation and compulsion. 

Today: J4      

Total: J229 D121 G41 P37 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

443

I attended a conference in Christchurch in the weekend. Some good aspects, some bad aspects. Perhaps the less said about it, the better.

Instead—a question. If I spend 15 minutes listening to German while following along on the page (well, Kindle) in Polish, what language do I credit? I’ll credit both of them.

I managed to skim read the whole of Fluent Forever. It relies too heavily on flash cars for my taste. Wyner uses them imaginatively, and my interest is peaked, yet I’m not going to bite.

I will, however, adopt his idea of targeting 625 key words.

Today: 0      

Total: J225 D121 G41 P37 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

442

On the way to the airport, a funny thing happened. I came across a book—Gabriel Wyner’s Fluent Forever. It’s about ‘how to learn any language fast (sic) and never forget it’.

Well, I like the concept. It’s good that it gives universal language training advice. It contains a number of interesting ideas. However, there’s a lot that I disagree with.

It falls into the trap of breaking language down into words and single sound bytes. There’s an emphasis on memorization. It treats a language as something artificial. And it approaches acquisition as deliberate learning. 

Nevertheless, it’s a worthwhile read.

Today: P1 G1      

Total: J225 D121 G41 P37 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

441

A year ago we returned to New Zealand from Japan. I got work teaching summer school. And I’m about to run that class for the second time.

I have notes on a blog about how I taught. I’ll be able to refer to them. But I want to do things better.

I might use the globish version of Hadashi no Tabi. I worked hard on that text, getting it into the sort of shape that an English learner would be able to benefit from.

I’ve all sorts of other ideas that I may expand on during the next 7 weeks.

Today: J2 P1      

Total: J225 D121 G40 P36 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

440

I’ve more or less completed my collection of approximately 1600 unique kanji from HP1, but there’ll never be an end to it. Next, I’ll complete my 1^st instance highlighted text, check for double-ups, compare against the standard jouyou kanji list, select phrases, go over Heisig, redo my 5-digit kanji codes, and then eventually go on to HP2 (and the others). 

However, from now on, or soon, after my family leaves for a 100+ day visit to Japan, I’m going to test out my system on Polish.

Japanese, German, Dutch etcetera will just need to tick on over in the background.

Today: J4 D2 P1      

Total: J223 D121 G40 P35 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

439

Dave Witherow is a newspaper columnist. He wrote an opinion piece last week that has got him lambasted as a racist. I’m sure, though, that he doesn’t see himself as anything of the sort.

Dave does not like the idea of compulsory Maori language education. People have latched onto the word ‘Maori’, whereas it’s probably the ‘language’ that Dave’s diatribe was about. I suspect that the imposition of any second language would have provoked the same response.

Being schooled in another language is uncomfortable. To endure it you need to start out as a beginner again. It’s that which rankles.

Today: J5 G1      

Total: J219 D119 G40 P34 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

438

A realization:

Up to now I’ve been fluffing about. I’ve dabbled and pottered. I’ve done the brainstorming, the thinking and the theorizing. But what I haven’t yet done is to knuckle down and apply myself. I have not yet tested out my ideas to produce a rock-solid outcome.

I need to choose a suitable language, sit down with it for between an hour or two daily over x number of weeks to test whether what I say works. That’s a fact. It’s as simple as that. 

I’ve got to run the experiment, collect data, and then write up the results.

Today: J5 P2      

Total: J214 D119 G39 P34 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

437

I was reminded to have a single language activity going for each language.

I got a bunch of kids books in Dutch from the orphans’ thrift shop. They were about frogs—kikkers—and mice—muizen. I read one of them to Sachi. I simply translated the story into English while pointing out a similar word here and there. Then I read the story our again, this time incorporating a bit of Dutch.

“Hey!” I thought. This is a little like what I’m doing when I replace phrases of a English text with Spanish. (Which I haven’t done for a while.)

Today: J5 D2      

Total: J209 D119 G39 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

436

I like socializing to some extent, but I can’t abide conversation for the sake of conversation. Words used just to fill the ether mean nothing to me. If you’ve nothing to say, then don’t say it!

I hope not to fall into that trap here. Well, for no more than 100 words at a time.

I’ve referred to 20 tongues in the title. How do I make that a reality? Well, my daily statistics suggest a way. All I need to do is to build up the hours across a broad front. I just need realistic, interesting and relevant goals.   

Today: J5      

Total: J204 D117 G39 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

435

One interesting thing I did yesterday was to eliminate. But don’t jump to conclusions! 

What I did was to take the word document of my resource (HP1). From it, I removed each kanji when I had dealt with it. I edited out every instance—whether it occurred once or more than 700 times. That made it easier to find those that were left.

But there were hiragana and katakana in the way. Along with punctuation. They were the trees. I couldn’t see the woods.

So I took them out too, leaving a dense block of uncommon kanji that resembles Chinese. 

Today: J5      

Total: J199 D117 G39 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

434

What am I achieving here? What are the results of my carrying out an in-depth analysis of the ‘kanji composition’ of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (or Sorcerer’s) Stone?

Well, by locating the first occurrence of every kanji, and then by determining the frequency of each, I’m gaining a sense of their relative importance. I’m figuring out which ones are more common than others. I’m learning which ‘words’ they connect into. And by listing instantly identifiable phrases that contain them, I’m building up a context for them all.

I’m introducing fun into language acquisition. I’m tapping into my inner nerd.

Today: J5      

Total: J194 D117 G39 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

433

Just so as to capture the idea—Alan Watts says that all you need to do (in life, but also with language) is to wash one dish at a time.

I looked yesterday at one Arabic letter at a time, glossing through a workbook for speakers of Indonesian (I think) learning Arabic so as to be able to read the Koran (or Quran). There are only 28 letters. Most of the book explains how to link them. The Arabic script is cursive.

Finally, I ripped the original plastic off Wilfried Erdmann’s Segelzeit. 50 Years sailing. Half an hour of German.

Today: J3 G2 A1       

Total: J189 D117 G39 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1 A1

I like   usually sometimes

Please . . .

432

For about 10 days now I’ve been on a Japanese splurge. How should I view that? With dismay—because I haven’t done much else? Or with enthusiasm—because I’m getting so into it?

Today is more or less the last day of class. So I’ve organized something different. I’ll get my students into a computer lab where I’ll get them to have fun trying out some word-processing.

I’ll load everyone up with Mary Pope Osborne’s Dinosaurs after dark. And then I’ll show them how to manipulate a word document in various ways.

That’s what I plan as my Polish splurge.

Today: J5      

Total: J186 D117 G37 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1

431

I find kanji fascinating. They aren’t an alphabet yet neither are they a vocabulary. They exist in the twilight zone in between.

I am able to place them into an alphabetical order—using Excel. But unless you know their pronunciation—one of several alternatives—plus some other unknown rule(s) about stroke order, radicals and the like, that’s utterly impossible.

Discrete kanji can be used as words. But they also form 2-, 3- and 4-kanji ‘words’ similar to German. Nevertheless, the total vocabulary of Japanese is only a fraction that of English. Hence the overuse—to our ears—of formulaic expressions.

Today: J5      

Total: J181 D117 G37 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1 

430

In The Expats, the main character describes how she can handle the Romance languages but not the northern ones. She can’t differentiate the Scandinavian tongues, and even German and Dutch are impossible for her too.

For me, on the other hand, it’s easy. With Min forste bog om Peter Plys I can tell at a glance that it’s Winnie the Pooh. And so, when I spotted The House as Pooh Corner at the Silverstream School fair this weekend, I grabbed it.

And as a result I spent my first official session in the sun at Woodhaugh looking at some Danish.

Today: J5 Da1      

Total: J176 D117 G37 P32 Sp21 F20 Da1

429

Having completed chapter 3 and collected 839 kanji, the rate has slowed. I may have overlooked one or two, or have them in the wrong order (not that it matters).

So I’ve created another word document. I globally eliminate each kanji as I come to it—replacing them with asterisks. This lets me see how many times each kanji repeats. I enter that number on the Excel spreadsheet. And so I can report that the top 4 kanji are: 言, 見, 人 and 一.

Naturally this is all very time consuming, but that’s as it should be.

    

Today: J5 P1      

Total: J171 D117 G37 P32 Sp21 F20

428

During the last week of my level 2 English class, I plan to take my bunch of 20 along to a computer lab. I’m going to open up a word document for them—an Enid Blyton Adventurous Four story. And I’m going to encourage them to have some word processing fun with it.

I first realized the addictiveness and usefulness of this activity when I collected 4500-odd i+1 Japanese sentences from HP1.

I plan to do this again in Polish. You develop confidence from being able to manipulate text in this manner. And you tap into the power of play.

Today: J5 P1      

Total: J166 D117 G37 P31 Sp21 F20

427

Several threads:

The Expats by Chris Pavone is a good read. Americans in Luxembourg finding it difficult to settle. Lots of languages, European travel and spies.

Doing a few pages of Polish in the staffroom. Using Powroty nad rozlewiskiem as my Einstein Soup resource. Or is it Light, Wide & Shallow?

And hunting for kanji. I’m up to about 681. Which means that I added another 150 yesterday evening. They come from the second Harry Potter chapter. I zipped through the entire chapter in one sitting. It’s an amazing feeling to recognize everything that you see. 

American in Paris, not.

Today: J5 P2     

Total: J161 D117 G37 P30 Sp21 F20

426

I was in danger of doing no language yesterday. Actually, I was too busy with English. It’s almost the end of the year, so at school I’m dealing with assessments, portfolios, presentations, essays and end-of-term shortened attention spans.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day I felt bad about reporting a zero. So I read 

in bed for several minutes—Persoonlijk by Lee Child.

Better than nothing!

It’s a mystery to me how busy people manage to have any sort of life. I’ve aways managed to steer myself away from such a situation, and will strive to keep that up.

Today: D1     

Total: J156 D117 G37 P28 Sp21 F20

425

I’m pleased with myself. I did an hour each of Japanese and Polish. 

With Japanese, I completed the first chapter of HP1. I have ‘collected’ 533 kanji altogether.

With Polish, at Marsh, I ‘read’ 8 pages of the novel, Powroty nad rozlewiskiem. What that means is that I looked over every line, doing a different task for every page.

I noted down words I recognized, word pairs, first words of sentences, words that started with ‘k’, ‘z’, the 10 shortest sentences, words I could guess, and question words. 

Later on I noted down the 100 most common words in Polish.

Today: J4 P4     

Total: J156 D116 G37 P28 Sp21 F20

424

I’m going though Harry Potter with a fine-tooth comb. I’m collecting kanji as they occur (for the first time) listing them in an Excel document. Alongside each, I’m placing examples of their use—a phrases or a sentence.

To search the whole book, I copy and paste text in the search box. But I’m having trouble. Every so often there’s a malfunction. The cursor leaps back down into the main body and does its pasting there.

Short story—I’ve used this to help me. Now, I’m zipping through simply collecting the kanji without examples. I’ll do that later. It’s faster.

Today: J5     

Total: J152 D116 G37 P24 Sp21 F20

423

In terms of hours, my Polish has just overtaken both French and Spanish. Now, that isn’t saying very much. In total I’ve only spent a few hours on each. It’s interesting, as I’ve mentioned before, how easy it is to spend the time once you’ve made some progress. The trick is how to get that self-sustaining reaction going.

So with those 200 most common Polish words. I simply need to play around, instead of falling into the trap of memorizing and testing myself out. No, what I’ll do is to write myself a list and then locate them in situ. 

Today: J5 P1    

Total: J147 D116 G37 P24 Sp21 F20

422

At just over 4000 words, version 1.0 of Any Language I Like is done. That’s a milestone.

Doing the final edit, I realized that I expect the prospective user of Heinrich’s manoeuvres to already possess the basics of ‘Newbian’. And I realized that with Polish I don’t. So that poses the question.

Here’s what Moonface thinks. I read through it, and then started going over the 200 most common words. At this point I’m still dabbling. But I can see that quite quickly I could get addicted to the same sort of thing that I’m into with HP1 kanji collecting.

Today: J5 P2    

Total: J142 D116 G37 P23 Sp21 F20

421

In a magazine about conservation, in the article, 100 Ways to Kill a Rat, about how some students invented and tried to market a product that provides a new way to destroy pests, I read:

“The toughest thing of all has been getting people to change the way they do things, and to accept new innovations.”

Who would have thought that there are similarities between language learning and rodent extermination?

Meanwhile I sit at the table watching the birds feed on old rice, preparing to listen to Stephen Fry as I scan the corresponding Polish text.

Life is so interesting.

Today: J2 P2   

Total: J137 D116 G37 P21 Sp21 F20

420

I don’t remember how I actually came to focus on Polish. But anyway—

I learned, when I followed along in Polish/Polish, that its spelling is truly awful. But its pronunciation sounds a lot simpler.

And when I took a look online in search of the most common Polish words, I discovered an interesting language site by ‘Moonface’ (Duncan someone).

I’m starting to feel that grammar may not be a bad word. A sense of roughly how a language is put together can probably help, as long as you keep your eyes on the bigger picture (the wood, not the trees).

Today: J2 P2    

Total: J135 D116 G37 Sp21 F20 P19 

419

I started with Polish yesterday, and I touched on 4 languages altogether. So I’m happy with that.

How do I quickly get up to speed with a new language such as Polish? I tried the basic sentence by sentence comparison, but for One Shot there’s not a clear one for one word correspondence.

Therefore, I’ll go for the ‘triad’. For some reason I have chapter 7 of HP1—The Sorting Hat—as an mp3 file, so I’ll concentrate on that. Today I’ll also do the second leg of the triad in Japanese for chapter 1. Stephen Fry for a change. 

Today: J2 G1 D1 P1    

Total: J133 D116 G37 Sp21 F20 P17 

418

Assessment is going on now. Students in my classes also need to build up a portfolio. Fo reading they need to collect evidence of having read outside of the classroom.

Somehow this reminds me of Heinrich Schliemann claiming to pick up a language in 6 weeks. That would be from concentrated effort—a lot of time spend during the day on one language at a time.

Therefore, I too should concentrate. Priority goes to the new language I’m learning. Then, when it’s self-sustaining, it does just that! First part of the day for the new; the rest to the old.  

Today: J5 G1     

Total: J131 D115 G36 Sp21 F20 P16

417

Having generated such enormous enthusiasm for ‘collecting’ kanji, I’ll let the activity run for a few days. Let me describe what I’m doing.

I’m building up an Excel document. I’m going through HP1 from page 1, listing the kanji when they first appear in the narrative. Then I do a search through the story for a phrase that contains each kanji. I’m also looking for kanji compound words’ of two or more characters.

At first, I wanted only one of each kanji. But now, I’ll collect multiple examples if they ‘feel’ new. Otherwise it gets too much of a search.

Today: J5 D1     

Total: J126 D115 G35 Sp21 F20 P16