Wanda Kaishin

5 hours ago, yulia.krivoruchko said:

Good day dear teachers and students and visitor of this site.

I am a English teacher from Ukraine, and I would like to invite people who want to go to Ukraine, to my Ukrainian/Russian lessons

Do you now some sites where my advertisment would be appropriative?

Thank you very much

 

 

Hi Yulia,

Welcome to linguaholic. You can promote your site/lessons in this sub-forum, but not in the general forum.

14 hours ago, Blaveloper said:

Having English as your native language doesn't make you the sage of everything regarding the English language.
I often find myself in situations where I even have to teach Americans or Brits some English, because they "don't care about spelling and/or grammar".

In many cases, non-natives can even get more knowledgeable to a given language than native speakers, because native speakers generally never learn super complicated words or rules while a non-native speaker does (unless the native speakers have to, like studying law for example).

Hahaha - do you realize how many errors there are in your post? You need to learn to just let it go man. If you're not willing to do the work required to reach C1/C2 in a language, then just be happy with your level and don't get frustrated. Correcting native speakers because you think they are in error is a fruitless pursuit, and you are no doubt better off using that time and effort practicing your languages instead.

Your native language is listed as English. Is that a mistake, or are you really coming to this forum to try to improve your mother tongue?

As for your question, it depends on the context, but I think it's normally used as an informal way of requesting someone to write something up so it can be evaluated, voted on, etc.

1 hour ago, Blaveloper said:

Because as I already said before, it's an example of 1 day based on how I do it, it's not my exact daily routine.
Besides, this example shows 1 hour and 30 minutes of listening (or even 2 hours if you count the "review" part, or even 2 hours and 30 minutes if you count the "watch news" part, or even more if you add up any empty 'on-the-go' spots).

Glad to hear you're doing more than you wrote. But to clarify, I said "normal (not made for learners)" listening. It looked to me like all you're doing is listening to the news for 30 min on some days. 

23 hours ago, Blaveloper said:

All day long - Go through the kanji on WaniKani.
7:00 - 7:30 - Wake up, shower, put on clothes, etc.
7:30 - 8:00 - Listen to a podcast at JapanesePod101.
8:00 - 8:30 - Breakfast.
8:30 - 9:00 - Flashcards.
9:00 - 12:30 - Web development job.
12:30 - 13:00 - Read or watch news in Japanese.
13:00 - 13:30 - Lunch.
13:30 - 17:30 - Game development job.
17:30 - 18:00 - Dinner.
18:00 - 19:00 - Ask friends about Japanese based on what I found that day.
19:00 - 20:00 - Listen to the same podcast again.
20:00 - 21:00 - Fitness.
21:00 - 22:00 - Review what I've learnt.
22:00 - Go to bed.

Just out of curiosity - why so little listening? Unless I've misunderstood, it looks like you only have 30 min/day, and not even every day, of normal (not made for learners) Japanese listening.

I'm retired, so no problems here. My schedule:

05:45 get up

06:00-0700 Meet with Chinese tutor on Skype for 1hr conversation

0700-0730 misc

0730-0800 15min L3/15min English language exchange

0800-0830 misc

0830-0900 Put the notes from my moring Chinese conversation into Anki, after researching it in a dictionary

0900-0930 Anki for Japanese, Chinese and Russian

0930-1000 Set the day's diet in cronometer

1000-1100 Cook and eat a large breakfast while playing a Chinese TV show 

1100-1130 misc

1130-1200 Chinese grammar and writing practice

1200-1400 Exercise (cycling or strength training), shower and lunch

1400-1430 misc

1430-1500 Chinese reading and listening

1500-1515 Careful watching of a Chinese drama

1515-1600 L3 Reading and listening

1600-1630 Careful watching of an L3 drama

1630-1700 misc

1700-1800 Cook and eat large supper while playing a Chinese TV show

1800-2200 misc

2200 go to sleep

Have you ever had someone, upon learning your proficiency in one or more languages, tell you that you have a natural talent for it? If so, how does that make you feel?

To me, it's an insult. They are basically saying that my proficiency just fell into my lap, when in fact I worked very hard for it. The implication is that if they had my gift, they would also easily acquire my same skill. But the truth of the matter is that they lack the dedication to learn a language, so they pretend to have some sort of genetic disadvantage. Nice try 

Personally, I wouldn't waste my time suggesting reforms; they will never be adapted. The same is true for any language. Instead of pointing out problems and suggesting changes, we are better off just to resign ourselves to learning the existing system. 

8 hours ago, anna3101 said:

@Wanda Kaishin I'm pretty sure we can all get along just fine!We already have at least one thing we agree on: we are not fans of Benny

Haha - I'm a fan of anyone who's not a fan of Benny.

On 2/5/2016, 12:39:29, NATASHA said:

Language is fun to learn but if you cant share the experience with others than a good way to learn is to watch a show on tv in the language that you want to learn about. it makes learning fun and easy to do.

Only if I can't share the experience with others? I have to disagree with that. Imo, TV is the best single tool for improving listening at the intermediate level. So whether you're immersed, living with native speakers, or completely isolated in Antartica, I strongly recommend watching TV for hundreds if not thousands of hours in your L2.

I've been misunderstood, but (to my knowledge) not mocked. People will sometimes mock or imitate "the American accent" in their language, but that's more general and I actually find that humorous. 

Yes, it's inevitable. The programs to "save" languages, while well meaning, will probably not have much effect.

3 hours ago, anna3101 said:

Why do you think the claim is ridiculous? I think it's actually quite logical that if you enjoy whatever it is that you are learning to do, you'll proceed quicker and your motivation will be way better.

Also, there's nothing wrong with choosing a language because you love it. That's the way I went with French and Polish, and it's probably no coincidence that those are also the ones I know better than others.

And actually, Benny Lewis says the exact opposite - that he doesn't enjoy learning languages and to him it's just "means to an end" (http://www.fluentin3months.com/means-to-an-end/)

Something that has always annoyed me about him. Can't help it - I do feel strongly about languages, so when someone says "There's no need to love them" or "Urgh, I hate them", I feel like a mother whose children just got a derisive look by a stranger. Going into "protect little ones at all costs" mode

I am not saying that passionate linguistic feelings are a strict requirement if you want to master a language. But they help A LOT. The difference you see between people who like the language (doesn't matter for which reason - sound of it, culture, lots of friends etc) and dislike it is (sometimes for the very same reasons) is huge. I've seen it at school, at the uni and in various courses. Nobody can deny the fact that motivation is key, and loving the language is an excellent motivator.

The claim "you must love a language in order to learn it" is ridiculous, and obviously false, as I explained above. The claim "loving a language can make it easier to learn" I don't have a problem with. I don't know your English level; I assume it's pretty high, but if you can't tell the difference between these two types of statements, it's not worth arguing about.

I agree that Benny seems to contradict himself. But what he says in the link you provided is that he doesn't like the learning process. However, he has written in great detail how one needs to have passion to learn a language. Evidently that's passion for succeeding and getting to the point where you can use the language, not passion for the learning process itself.  To be clear, and avoid being called a Benny-lover, I disagree with him. I think all you need to succeed are motivation, time and resources. Benny says motivation isn't enough, and that you need passion instead. He goes onto define passion, and it's basically types of motivation that he considers acceptable. No one, not even Benny Lewis, can tell us what our motivations need to be.

If you're annoyed with people who don't love the languages they are learning, keep in mind there's only one person in the world who can control that. Like Benny, I don't love the process or the languages themselves; I love what I can do with them. I don't see why that should annoy anyone. Some people love the learning process, but aren't too concerned about the results. Some people love the learning process, and love the results. None of these people annoy me. Can't we all just get along?

6 hours ago, takibari said:

maintaining the motivation to keep at learning may just be difficult compared to those with the innate passion.

It might, or it might be the other way around. Survival, for example, is about as strong of a motivation that there is.

But who chooses languages to learn at random? While choosing a language, I've never said to myself "hmm, let's see...which language do I love the most?" There have been extenuating circumstances for all my language choices. I really get tired of people like Benny Lewis saying that if we don't love, or have passion for the language we are learning we will fail. If I have time, motivation and resources I will learn it. Stop telling me I have to love it, because that just isn't true.

And let me remind people of some very basic logic the we all should have learned in school. If you make a statement, and it isn't true all the time, then it's false. Understand? False. Is the statement "dogs are black" true or false? Does the fact that some dogs are black make the statement true? No. The statement isn't true all of the time, so it's false. So it wouldn't surprise me if some people have to love a language in order to learn it. But the statement "you must love a language to learn it" is clearly false. The internet is just littered with these ridiculous claims. 

3 hours ago, Blaveloper said:

But unlike 愛する, you can't make a verb out of 大好き (I think).

It's by far the most common way for Japanese people to express "I love you", which is the topic of this thread. Is it a verb? I think it depends on how you define a verb, but this is completely irrelevant to the thread topic.

On 1/25/2016, 3:03:17, Coral said:

Viki cannot sub Lakorns anymore due to copyrights issue. There are some fan clubs which sub in their private FB.

This isn't true. There are plenty lakorns with English subs on Viki. Sure, it's an unstable situation, and many shows are removed due to copyright issues (usually on the youtube end). But please don't go around saying viki can't sub lakorns. 

Personally, I don't use English subs very often - I prefer Thai subs or a Thai transcript. Here are some free Thai transcripts for one of my favorite lakorns:

Transcripts for the Thai TV drama สูตรเสน่หา (Sood Sanae Ha/Love recipe)

No suggestions, but welcome to the forum!

I see we have similar motivation, as well as languages. Welcome to the forum!

On 12/11/2015, 2:06:55, Blaveloper said:

Japanese: 愛します。 (Ai shimasu.)

大好き is about 10 times more common. 

10 hours ago, Vietal said:

Yes, this thread is about learning Mandarian which can be phonetically learned in Roman-Pinyin without learning Mandarian alphabetic characters.

It's called pinyin, or hanyu pinyin, not Roman-Pinyin. I removed content of yours that's not relevant to this thread. If you want to make lengthy posts about IPA, then do it in an IPA thread.

On 11/15/2014, 3:57:46, gegegeno said:

Don't feel too bad about it. I posted in this thread a year ago and I did know about 2000 kanji then, but now it's more likely that I can read around 1500 or so and write under a thousand. They seem to slip really quickly.

I'm about at the same level. I really don't practice the language enough to improve. When I was studying hard, my first 2 years of Japanese, I started out with Heisig, and never did enough reading/writing to get on top of the jouyou. Heisig is a great beginning for someone who is really gung-ho and puts all those characters to use right away. For everyone else, it's probably more efficient just to learn them as they encounter them.

As far as what makes you "fluent", it all depends on what you mean by "fluent". Please don't use that word without telling us what you really mean.

On 1/25/2016, 12:19:37, Vietal said:

Since most people learn second language through English,an easy way to learn a language is to write English words pronunciations in your script as well as in Roman transliteration. This way one may be able to read and write new characters.

But this thread is about learning Mandarin. Mandarin has a simple phonetic script available which uses mostly english letters, called pinyin. So your suggestion isn't very useful in this case.

On 2/2/2016, 4:56:44, kristbernard said:

I am sorry to say, but it is very difficult, near impossible, even, to learn a language without the help of a teacher. 

This is false. It might be near impossible for you, but not me. How are you affiliated to the site you posted?

On 2/2/2016, 9:37:46, johnny said:

One of the easiest ways to learn a seond language is explained here.   blemberg.tk/

So your entire method of learning a language is to use Duolingo? You might want to see the thread Should Language Apps be your primary tool for learning a language? FYI - most believe they shouldn't.