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Random blog but I'm feeling a bit frustrated. It's 2am, my fan has been running for 23 of the last 24 hours and its still 30+ degree's in my room. I'm english.. I'm not used to this.
anyway..
Languages
I learn Japanese, currently on exchange year in Osaka. I don't know if any other language learners are like this, but I've found, as you learn a language you become somewhat bipolar about it. One second you feel like a genius and you understand everything 100% the next you'll come across something that leaves you stumped, feeling stupid and wanting to cry yourself to sleep. Staying on motivation is a total PITA. I just watched a TV show this evening, aimed at Japanese natives, not learners like myself and understood a farly good percentage, while not everything I could give you a good solid summary of everything that was said and done.
In my Intermediate (N3ish) level textbook, I hit an example sentence that left me wanting to launch the book off my balcony in a rage. Totally stumped me for a good long period of time, making me feel useless, worthless and like i've not progressed at all.
It's a love / hate thing. You either feel really good, or really bad. There's no middle ground, and combined with the heat here.. it's exhausting.
Anyone else find the same thing with languages.. ?
You're either on top of the world or you want to give to up.
Laptop woes
My laptop.. no longer plays starcraft 2. well it does.. if i want to play it at 5fps. I had this problem before which I thought was my graphics card, but its not. It's my sound card. The audiodg.exe thing. But I've done everything recommended, disabled mic, turned off enhancements etc. Still... I can play for 5 minutes, audiodg.exe will spike eating 50% of my ram, killing my fps. Even disabling my soundcard, reinstalling the sound drivers, turning off game sound etc doesn't help. So currently I can't do shit.
For some reason the same thing happens when i watch full screen blip.tv. ie day[9] dailies. but not full screen streams, youtube or anything else.
So all I've been doing is playing 1 3v3 a day with some friends because I can get about half of a game played before my laptop tries to kill itself and at least in 3v3 I'm not entirely accountable for the losses.. but as we just play mono-battles anyway It's not like we care. Zealot - Muta - Marine = Wins.. Hellion, Reaper, Ling.. doesn't lol
 
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In case you don't already know, this site has been invaluable for learning languages. They even have a forum and it's quite active.
http://www.wordreference.com/
Maybe it's because of that that I've never felt like a complete idiot.
Also, I've Michel Thomas and Pimsleur really really useful that almost everybody I've spoken to can't believe I've either learnt French for 1 year or never took Spanish classes before and only learnt it for a few months (though the Michel Thomas Japanese courses kinda suck.)
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On July 11 2011 02:12 Gingerninja wrote:
It's a love / hate thing. You either feel really good, or really bad. There's no middle ground, and combined with the heat here.. it's exhausting.
Anyone else find the same thing with languages.. ?
You're either on top of the world or you want to give to up.
I've found the same thing with Japanese. I am not actively trying to learn it though, but I do slowly learn a bit from Anime and Japanese Live Action shows. Then I thought, well I get this and can watch without subs, I should sub something. SO frustrating, there are sentences I simply couldn't translate, not even after listening to them 20+ times and spending quite a bit of time on online dictionaries.
I decided I don't want to learn the language but if I do happen to learn it by mistake, then that is fine by me. :p
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Languages
I learn Japanese, currently on exchange year in Osaka. I don't know if any other language learners are like this, but I've found, as you learn a language you become somewhat bipolar about it. One second you feel like a genius and you understand everything 100% the next you'll come across something that leaves you stumped, feeling stupid and wanting to cry yourself to sleep. Staying on motivation is a total PITA. I just watched a TV show this evening, aimed at Japanese natives, not learners like myself and understood a farly good percentage, while not everything I could give you a good solid summary of everything that was said and done.
In my Intermediate (N3ish) level textbook, I hit an example sentence that left me wanting to launch the book off my balcony in a rage. Totally stumped me for a good long period of time, making me feel useless, worthless and like i've not progressed at all.
It's a love / hate thing. You either feel really good, or really bad. There's no middle ground, and combined with the heat here.. it's exhausting.
Anyone else find the same thing with languages.. ?
You're either on top of the world or you want to give to up.
I was about to do a blog about the language thing. Yeah, sometimes I feel like I'm at the same level as my peers and then at other times, I'm reading what they're reading and nothing seems to make fucking sense. Back when I had to learn french, my father had me doing french workbooks all summer for 4 years, hated it and I got so mad at the french workbooks because they made me feel stupid.
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Language takes time, man. I live in America for like 3 years, yet ACT reading part and SAT practice make me feel like an idiot (that's why I've not taken the SAT  ) Essay writing also sucks for me; still I think writing in English is easier than writhing in Thai since there are words for everything in English. I wonder how do you write an essay in Japanese. That gotta be pretty hard. I wish I know Japanese, though. I really want to understand anime without sub and some obscure manga that doesn't get translated >.< Also, I tried to learn Chinese for a year. All I could say was WTF LANGUAGE is that. It's the hardest thing ever.
GL HF with you studying abroad, sir 
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We've had to write small essays every week this semester, and mine have definitely improved. I get less and less corrections every week. That's the thing, I am improving, I know I am, but it only takes one small thing to just knock you out of your zone. I guess it could be compared to starcraft when your on a winning streak thinking your the greatest thing since Nada.. and you meet someone on ladder who obliterates you and you have to re-evaluate everything. Problem with language is, there's just so much of it, it's a constant reset.
It's impossible to have any kind of ego about learning a language. Everyday you get your ass kicked, until you reach a point where you don't. It's not that every day you improve, it's just every day you suck less until you reach parity.
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I think that's definitely the best way to treat it, you just have to keep struggling to learn in as many ways as you can. Measuring how you're going is always difficult unless you are working on a small area and have someone to test you.
I mostly learned Japanese from anime and manga, and it took me lots of failure in the real world to learn to speak even if i could understand a lot. Have yet to learn to write (without a computer).
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On July 11 2011 03:23 boon2537 wrote:
still I think writing in English is easier than writhing in Thai since there are words for everything in English.
This got me interested. There aren't words for everything in Thai?
I'm currently learning Spanish (aswell as English to an extent) and in August, when school starts again, I'm going to start studying Mandarin.
Now when I have my summer vacation, I'm trying to read texts while listening and listen to Spanish radio at least 4 times a week to (at least hopefully) improve my language. However, I'm not sure it's as effective as I want it to be. Since my level of Spanish isn't that good, I'm having troubles with the speed when they talk so I can't really pick up that many words or expressions to actually use while speaking myself. Do I learn anything this way? Maybe I'll learn to keep up with them eventually? Does anyone have any experience with this mean of improving your abilities in a language?
Are there ways to more effectively learn languages at home without too much of troubles buying books or CDs to listen to?
As this is a language related topic I figured this would be somewhat of a good place to ask this, sorry if it's too off topic.
Languages are so fun!
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I watch a lot of TV shows with exact subs. So even if I don't catch what they say, It's written infront of me. That's helped my comprehension a lot. Doesn't help my speaking, but that only comes with actual speaking practice. Constantly reading, and listening is the best way to improve.
I use an SRS (anki) to practice reading and stuff, I've found it a much better alternative that making flash cards. But then I don't like the brute force method of learning words etc, I find I learn stuff better if I here someone say it in context than if i read it from a list.
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On July 11 2011 06:06 Nible wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2011 03:23 boon2537 wrote:
still I think wwriting in English is easier than writhing in Thai since there are words for everything in English.
This got me interested. There aren't words for everything in Thai?
Well, in Thai, one word can have different meanings and there are many word to describe one thing, may be in a different tone. In Japanese, I think you add -sama, -san, or whatever after a person's name accordingly just to be polite. In English, as long as you don't use swear words, nobody really cares. In Thai there are words you can only use to monks, kings, older people, or peers. The easiest example is the word eat. If you go to google translator and make it translates the word eat, you will get like 17 results.
True, in English, there are also many word to describe one thing, but they have differences in degree where as in Thai, differences are mostly just tone. Again, using the word eat as an example, synonyms for eat include consume, gobble, devour, munch, etc ( <3 thesaurus in Microsoft word) If you want to say devour in Thai you will have to add some random adverb. That's probably why Thai translated novels always contain more pages than the original English copy, but I digress. So, to answer your question, Yes, there are words for everything in Thai, but we need a combination of words (verb+adverb) to get the same meaning as one English word. That's why I find writing in English more fun. There's also no full stop, comma, semicolon in Thai >_> Have fun organizing your idea without distracting your readers...
Well, that's a longer response that I expected I'm taking Spanish at school as well. Man, I f**king suck at it 
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On July 11 2011 10:09 Gingerninja wrote:
I watch a lot of TV shows with exact subs. So even if I don't catch what they say, It's written infront of me. That's helped my comprehension a lot. Doesn't help my speaking, but that only comes with actual speaking practice. Constantly reading, and listening is the best way to improve.
I use an SRS (anki) to practice reading and stuff, I've found it a much better alternative that making flash cards. But then I don't like the brute force method of learning words etc, I find I learn stuff better if I here someone say it in context than if i read it from a list.
Ok, I have a few Spanish movies at home, I might want to look into those, though they're VHS-tapes with only Swedish subs. :/
I've tried an SRS but they aren't really my thing. It feels like there are too many words to learn one by one, it becomes boring.
I'll try and see if I can find som Spanish TV shows. Now that I think about it, American TV shows are probably where I've gotten the bigger part of my English vocabulary from.
On July 11 2011 12:56 boon2537 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2011 06:06 Nible wrote:On July 11 2011 03:23 boon2537 wrote:
still I think wwriting in English is easier than writhing in Thai since there are words for everything in English.
This got me interested. There aren't words for everything in Thai? Well, in Thai, one word can have different meanings and there are many word to describe one thing, may be in a different tone. In Japanese, I think you add -sama, -san, or whatever after a person's name accordingly just to be polite. In English, as long as you don't use swear words, nobody really cares. In Thai there are words you can only use to monks, kings, older people, or peers. The easiest example is the word eat. If you go to google translator and make it translates the word eat, you will get like 17 results. True, in English, there are also many word to describe one thing, but they have differences in degree where as in Thai, differences are mostly just tone. Again, using the word eat as an example, synonyms for eat include consume, gobble, devour, munch, etc ( <3 thesaurus in Microsoft word) If you want to say devour in Thai you will have to add some random adverb. That's probably why Thai translated novels always contain more pages than the original English copy, but I digress. So, to answer your question, Yes, there are words for everything in Thai, but we need a combination of words (verb+adverb) to get the same meaning as one English word. That's why I find writing in English more fun. There's also no full stop, comma, semicolon in Thai >_> Have fun organizing your idea without distracting your readers... Well, that's a longer response that I expected I'm taking Spanish at school as well. Man, I f**king suck at it
Alright, I see. Seems like a complicated language.
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I know what you mean, but at a certain point you kind of equalize and keep going. The most important thing is to try and inject new methods and ideas pretty often. I spent a week learning the planets, I do a lot of diseases and such (後天性免疫不全症候群 was my "hey look at the longass words I know" word for a long time), tool names and stuff in big groups to give me fresh things to study. A friend of mine describes it as bubbles that slowly expand then bust, throwing you over your last plateau, so if you can keep yourself fresh somehow during that time it can make things easier.
Glad to see someone else using Anki as well, as it's been the lynch pin of my studying for years. Have a deck of 16,000 cards and not sure how I would be where I'm at today without it.
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I studied Japanese for a short while some years ago and I switched to Korean.
Trust me, Korean is a clusterfuck... I miss Japanese because it was so much more easier and straightforward phonetically and grammatically.
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EPT
