Learning Spanish - week 3

Today I finished Spanish (from English) tree on Duolingo!
This was quite challenging. I learned a lot of Spanish words and some of its grammar. Due to high speed many things weren't remembered good enough though.
For all it merits, Doulingo has also disadvantages - grammar isn't explained adequately. And for many grammar points there is no explanation at all. Also the balance of exercises isn't really optimal I think - I'd prefer more exercises of translating English into Spanish.
But well, you can't hope to learn language from one sourse. So I also used additional sources to study grammar. The question is what to do next. I suppose I'll do the following things:

• Review the spanish tree (by using "strengthening skills") and translate articles in "Immersion" section;
• Begin duolingo courses in Spanish for learning English and German. The former will provide more opportunities to practice translation into Spanish, the latter will give an additional benefit of strengthening German;
• Try to start reading Spanish news;

Learning Spanish - week 2

This week I learned more about verbs.
Bad thing: there ~17 tenses in Spanish.
Good thing: only 5 or 6 of them are commonly used.

Bad thing: depending on the person (1st/2nd/3rd, singular/plural, casual/polite) verbs can have one of 6 different endings in each tense.
Good thing: at least this allows to drop personal pronouns. For example: "I am tall" can be written as "Yo soy alto" or just "soy alto".

Bad thing: there are ~200 commonly used irregular verbs in Spanish.
Good thing: most of them can be classified in patterns.

As any language Spanish has easy and difficult points. It just takes time to learn them.
For now I have an open point about the way of learning the conjugations.

I still remember how I studied the conjugation of irregular verbs in English language.
I was somewhere in 1-3 grade and had a private language tutor. She made me drill all the irregular verbs one by one. It was boring as hell and took a lot of time, it was repetitive and non-inspiring. But as a result even now I remember forms of most verbs by heart. So it was really effective.
But I'm not sure that this way will apply to Spanish good enough, as there are much more forms in it.
For example let's take English verb "to speak" and see it forms in present and past:
speak, speaks, spoke... and that's it.

Now the Spanish analog - "hablar".
hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan, hablé, hablaste, habló, hablamos, hablasteis, hablaron.
And this is a regular verb!

Now you get the idea.

So at first I'll try to learn just patterns.

Learning Spanish - week 1

So I began learning Spanish last weekend. It was mostly Duolingo. ~700 words are in the vocabulary. Not sure how many of them I really know :)
In fact a lot of words weren't really new.
Some words are exactly the same as in other languages, for example "the animal" is "el animal" or "библиотека" is "la biblioteca".
Some words are almost the same as "der Pistole" and "la pistola" or "the calender" and "el calendario". 
Spanish, as many other languages, has many loan words, so this makes things easier.
Also in some cases things are simpler due to the endings - the world ending can change the gender the word, so that you need to learn only one word and not two:
la gata/el gato - the female/male cat
la hermana/el hermano - the sister/brother

But, of course, not everything is easy. For example, Spanish has more pronounce: they distinguish between "him" (lo) and "to him" (le). Also verbs have much more endings. In some cases word order is different.

During this week I learned several hundreds of most common words and the grammar for basic conversations. Next week I'm going to concentrate more on verb forms.

Anyway, learning a new language is a really interesting experience :)

New challenge is set - learning Spanish

It is rather sudden, but yesterday I decided to start learning Spanish. I wanted to take a break from studying Japanese and try a new language.
Spanish is widespread (in TOP-3 of world languages), interesting and not very difficult, afaik. Spain has a rich culture, so there are a lot of things to get known.
Anyway learning foreign languages is a good investment in many ways.

When one starts exploring something new, the first question is "How to do it?" Currently there are many ways of learning new languages:

• Many organizations and private tutors offer good education;
• The number of textbooks is impressing;
• Already many learning systems exist, and new appear frequently;
• There are many sites which offer information or courses;
• Communities (like lang-8) offer people a possibility to help each other on the way to the new language;
• And so on;

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the possibilities and one can spend days or weeks on choosing the "right" way or trying one idea after another, searching for the best one.

I decided to start with 2 resources:

1. Duolingo. I suppose this site doesn't need introductions. While it has some drawbacks, it's very good at the beginning and lower medium levels, I think. It provides enough exercises so that topics and grammar points stuck in one's memory, it offeres training in pronunciation and various practice in the form of immersion;
2. The second one is a good textbook called "Spanish An Essential Grammar". I used a book from this series while studying German and it helped a lot;

I suppose these two things will keep me busy for a month. Looking forward for the new knowledge!

The autumn is ending, was there anything meaningful?

Once again the season is going to change. I think it is a good time to draw a line and to summarize what was done.

Japanese studying:

• I decided to try reading another visual novel in Nasuverse (the shared setting of a number of TYPE-MOON works like "Fate/Stay Night) - 魔法使いの夜 (Witch's night). Didn't regret the spent time. Captivating music, interesting characters, good plot, nice atmosphere, fine art - all of this resulted in a great work. The story is about Aoko Aozaki - a wizard apprentice, her teacher, her sister and a quite boy from a rural location, who wandered into a dangerous territory. Took me around 50 hours of reading. Maybe I won't read it again, but it will be remembered;
• Then I decided to try VN with RPG part, because... well just like playing games :) So next were three visual novels by Eushully: 創刻のアテリアル (Arterial of Origins), 戦女神 0 (Battle Goddess Zero), 戦女神VERITA (Battle Goddess VERITA). The first one is about part of a city and people in it moving to a different world, where main heroes manifest unique abilities and fight monsters to return home. There are three routes: siding with demons or angels and staying independent. Story isn't very original, but still quite nice, so it is possible to enjoy it. The second game is placed in a fantasy world. The hero is a follower of one of gods and after series of adventures loses his body and his soul dwells in a goddess's body (hence the title). A lot of fighting ensures. The narration was quite interesting. And the last piece is the continuation, which is difficult to understand if previous parts weren't played. The gameplay for all these games is quite good, but sometimes repetitive; there is one major problem though - a lot of grinding is necessary to achieve the full completion. And the games should be completed more then once for certain things. And it has diminishing returns to time spent. It took me 100-140 hours for the first one, ~80 for the second, ~60 for the third one. Suppose that 10-20% of the first two games and 30-40% of the second one aren't done;
• While reading VNs I also decided to improve grammar skills. Used series Kanzen Master (3kyuu and 2kyuu). Understood that I have a lot to improve. Will certainly try again next year;
• Starting to read light novels now. A couple of first ones weren't able to keep me interesting, so now moving to others. I use Anki with Yomichan plagin for reading (see the screenshot). This way looking up new words is easy, and adding them to the deck is done in one click. I hope this will be a step to success, as extensive reading was that thing which greatly raised my English skills (of course good foundation played a very important role);

Some other things:

• Spent a week in a hospital due to a little operation. Hope not to stay in a hospital once again. It's a kind of experience one doesn't want to have;
• After 1,5 years of working our project is coming to an end (1,5 year for me, but the start date is May 2012). We are developing a SAP trading system for one of Russian oil companies. In fact it is a first SAP trading system, so most was developed from scratch. My main occupation was manual testing: alpha, beta, perts of functionality, pre-UAT, scenarios and so on. It's a miracle for me how we managed to finish it. Maybe in future the thing we created will become a new standard module in SAP. Anyway, the project is ending by the New Year's Eve. A new project or a new job will follow;
• This autumn I read a lot. Maybe I starved for good reading after manga and months of studying, maybe I just got my hands on good things. Today I finished the 13th book of Dresden Files. A detective story with supernatural staff is an entertaining thing in itself, and these series offer good humor and some interesting insight into American culture. And the wiseass, deadpanning hero is quite fun;
• Also I read some more funfiction. "He Who Fights Monsters" is a funfiction based on "Rosario + Vampire" manga, which is good itself. The manga is about human finding himself in a school for monsters, where he finds foes and friends, who protect him (until he becomes a badass). But what if there are no friends for him? What if he has none to help. Then he can only fight back as a human. A dendroid attacks? Burn it! Golem? Use water under high pressure to cut it... And so on. A dark, but interesting story;
• Another one was "Victory at Ostagar". Funfiction based on the game "Dragon Age". One key point at the beginning is changed, and the things become really different. What if Wardens make the light signal in time, so that Loghain can attack the darkspawn in time to win the battle? As a result the King is alive, the army is in place, the Wardens can act with the crown's help. But as the King is alive, his correspondence with Orlais continues... Various characters have more brains, the story has more twists. One could say that the resulting plot is better than in the original. And the story is more than 1,1 mln words long! It's almost 2,5 times longer than "Lord of the Rings"! It is organized in 5 volumes with illustrations here.
• The last one is "In Flight" (760k+ words) - a crossover between VN "Fate/Stay night" and manga "Sekirei". The events of the "Sekirei" are places in the Nasuverse. The main hero is Shirou and the magic system is like in other Type-Moon works. The tournament in manga is really kind compared to the Holy Grail War, but it still sword some serious and bloody scenes. The crossover makes it darker and serous, more interesting. Most of the tale follows the manga, showing how differently can Shirou behave. Good humor, developing characters, interesting story and other aspects of this work made me like it so much, that I read it twice :)
• And while reading so much in English I decided that it would be good to make this pleasant time spending also useful. So new interesting words are written down for future learning. Now this list nears 500 words, and this will enrich my vocabulary I hope.

The last day of the summer - time to check what was done

The summer is almost finished, so it's a good time to think whether it was meaningful or meaningless.

Considering studying languages:

• I was able to finish reading "Fate/stay night" last weekend. I think it took me 1-1,5 hours every day, so, yeah, it was a very long novel. It was really fun and provided a lot of useful words and expressions - maybe more then a thousand;
• In late July I tried to take a test to determine my Japanese level and the result was Pre-Intermediate. Not bad, but I hoped for higher figures. I think the main problem is that I never tried to prepare for such tests - at the beginning I learned necessary grammar and vocabulary, and then I just studied the things which I encountered. So for several weeks I drilled grammar - there are heaps of grammar points about which I had no idea. Also I specifically tried to acquire as much words from JLPT sheets as possible. So I'm going to tackle this j-cat test this week again and hope for higher results;
• Going for another visual novel now :)

On other things:

• I usually don't read fanfiction. But somehow I came upon "Hill of Swords" - a crossover between visual novel "Fate/Stay night" and light novel "Familiar of Zero". Quite a big story (~350k words)... and it is just incredible. After several chapters I was completely hooked and was almost unable to stop reading it. The plot is based on "Familiar of Zero", which has a good plot, but it's completely wasted by dumb and silly characters and tons of fanservice. The fanfic fixes the problems by swapping the main hero with the one from "Fate/Stay night". As a result narration is greatly improved, characters are more reasonable, fanservice is more adequate. Now I'm rereading it with slower speed to savour it; if only there were less typos >_<;
• At last read "Stranger in a Strange Land". It was interesting to read, but left mixed emotions as the ideas are aren't really close to me;
• I remembered that many years ago I read some fantasy book and was able to find out that it belongs to series of four books named "War God" of David Weber. So got them, they were fun, though didn't give any useful thought after the finish;
• Tried to read "Chronicles of Thomas Covenant", but my determination completely failed in the middle of the second book. I just can't approve of such a hero, he is too different from me. This series increased the list of books, which I dropped without finishing them. By the way, this list have less then 10 items;
• Currently reading "Dresden files" - quite interesting and entertaining;
• There were many frictions at my job - I almost threw it up, but one way or another it became more reasonable and peaceful; so continue it for the time being;
• Got some new health problems, hope to be able to fix them soon;
• After 6 years of wearing the same glasses I changed them at last. The first impression: I see world in HD! Well, with these glasses my effective eyesight is ~1,5 dioptres, but it is twice as good as in previous glasses. Anyway, now the world is much clearer for me :)

Language learning notes

Some time passed since last post and I made good progress since then.

German

The main problem with studying German for me is a lack of motivation: I just don't know what to do with this knowledge. So I'm trying to find something interesting in German. And I remembered that some years ago I have read two books by a German author in Russian translation. They were about the son of famous Captain Nemo. The books fascinated me then, so I decided to read them in German now. I was really surprised to find that the series contain twelve books! So I found them and began reading. I was able to comprehend ~70% of the text, which I suppose is quite good. And as I couldn't find the last book in e-format, I had to use audio book. I was very glad that this German audio book didn't give me much trouble.

So I suppose my German isn't too bad. I'm looking forward for more interesting German books to read.

Japanese

I have read two lengthy visual novels and I can say that they are great for studying Japanese. They provide a variety of terms in different spheres, they show differences is speech used by peoples of various social standings, the speech is voiced and so on.

I was able to learn a lot from them.

Now I'm going to read visual novel "Fate/stay night", they say that it has more text that "The Lord of The Rings". Concidering it's size and the fact, that my job takes a lot of time, I hope to finish it in 1-2 months.

I'm not sure what will be next. Maybe I'll start preparing for JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test), which takes place twice a year - in December and in July.

Anyway, I realize now that I like studying languages. I suppose I may start learning a new language within a year or two.

More than a year passed since I started learning Japanese

It's difficult to calculate how much time did I really spent on learning Japanese. I started in October 2012 and and I have been spending ~2-3 hours every day and even more on weekends for several months. Then I began slowing down. I even made a break in July - October. Recently I spend ~1-2 hours every day.

I passed different stages of motivation and success, some of them can be described like this:

• Learning Japanese is difficult, but I will surely do it and really soon;
• Learning Japanese is difficult, but I will do it;
• I don't know whether I can do it, but I'm determined to continue;
• It seems all my efforts give no result;
• I won't be able to do it;
• I stop;
• ...
• I'll try again, I still want to learn Japanese;
• If I use dictionaries, I can really read in Japanese - wonderful! I hope to be able to read without dictionaries one day though

Learning a foreign language, which radically differs from those you know, is really difficult. Also, if you learn by yourself - without teachers or textbooks - you can easily take a wrong path and lose your way.
I had successes and failures, I made a lot of mistakes, I even lost motivation for several months due to encountered problems.
But since August I renew studying German and realized that I should try learning Japanese again.
I should lower my expectations and just practice again and again.

So for a couple of months since last October I did it. Every day I read Japanese news, this really was interesting and helpful.
But with time I realized once again that to do something good, you should be interested in it. But reading news was becoming more and more boring. I had to find something else.

I turned to light novels. In fact I have a list of Japanese light novels which I want to read. I understood that it would be difficult... and it was really so.
I made one more mistake here - the novel, which I chose, wasn't interesting enough. Before I noticed, I began spending less than an hour each day on studying Japanese.

It was sad, so in January I decided to turn to origins.

The last thing which pushed me into studying Japanese in October 2012 was one visual novel.

Eien no Aselia

I played it in English and it really captivated me. I completed it twice and then I found out that the version which I played wasn't the full game. Of course I wanted to play the full game, but I faced a critical problem - the full version wasn't translated from Japanese into English.
With this my desire to learn Japanese prevailed over my laziness and hesitancy, and I began my adventure of acquiring the knowledge of the new language.
And my target was to play this game in Japanese in a year.

I didn't have high enough level of Japanese in October, so I failed this goal


And so in January I decided to try.
This is difficult, but possible. Here is a screenshot of my desktop:

Visual novel is in top-right corner.
When a new text line appears, it is captured and recognized by a program in low-left corner.
The text is copied in clipboard. And from clipboard it captured by a program in top-left corner.
This program shows furigana for kanji and used several dictionaries (i set four) to translate text in English.
And I copy interesting sentences to a notepad to study later.

The quality of this translation varies. Short and simple sentences are translated fine. But complex sentences are to difficult to electronic dictionaries.
But at least I have translation for words. I just have to use my brain to create a normal translation.

It's a pity though that only "normal text" can be captured; this, for example, I have to translate by myself:

But this is fun :)

At last I completed my original target - completing the game in Japanese. But I still have a long way to go.

Trilingual post 14.

Суеверие: подкова на счастье
Люди из многих стран верят в то, что лошадиная подкова приносит счастье. В результате есть много легенд, объясняющих появление этого суеверия. Говорят, что эта примета появилась в Древнем Египте. У фараонов были колесницы, в которые были запряжены лошади. И эти лошади были подкованы золотыми подковами. Лошади часто теряли золотые подковы. Естественно, тот кто находил золотую подкову, мог считать себя счастливым.
Кроме того существует легенда о дьяволе и о кузнеце Святом Дункане (или об обычном кузнеце). Дьявол попросил кузнеца подковать копыто, а вместо этого оказался приковал к стене. Кузнец отпустил дьявола только тогда, когда тот поклялся не входить в дом, где висит подкова.
В реальности любая подкова стоила денег, поэтому найти её было полезно. Возможно так и появилось суеверие.
В разных странах принято вешать подкову по-разному. В России подкову вешают рожками вниз для защиты от зла. Если повесить подкову рожками вверх, то она будет приносить удачу. В других странах говорят, что если повесить подкову рожками вниз, то в дом будет литься счастье. Мексиканцы украшают подкову лентами и монетами, а потом вешают высоко, чтобы никто не мог коснуться её. А итальянцы вешают подкову так, чтобы каждый вошедший задевал её. В любом случае, все верят, что найденная подкова это символ удачи.

Superstition: horseshoe for good luck
People from many countries believe that the horseshoe brings good luck. As a result, there are many legends explaining the emergence of this superstition. They say that this omen appeared in ancient Egypt. And these horses were shod with golden horseshoes. Horses often lost golden horseshoe. Naturally, the one who found the golden horseshoe, could consider himself lucky.
Also there is a legend about the devil and the Holy Duncan smith (or an ordinary blacksmith). The devil asked the blacksmith to shoe his hoof, and instead was chained to the wall. Blacksmith released the devil only when he vowed not to enter the house with a horseshoe hanging.
In reality, any horseshoe cost money, so finding it was useful. Probably this is how the superstition appeared.
In different countries, people hang a horseshoe differently. In Russia, a horseshoe hanging horns down protects from evil. If you hang a horseshoe horns up, it will bring good luck . In other countries they say that if you hang a horseshoe horns down, happiness will fill the house. Mexicans decorate a horseshoe with ribbons and coins, and then hang up high, so that no one could touch it. And the Italians hang a horseshoe so that each newcomer touched it. In any case, everyone believes that founded horseshoe is symbol of good luck.

迷信：幸運のための蹄鉄
多くの国の人は、蹄鉄は幸運をもたらすと信じています。 これにともない、この迷信にまつわる多くの伝説があります。 この瑞気は古代エジプトに登場していると言います。 ファラオには馬に引かせる兵車がありました。 これらの馬は金色の蹄鉄を付けていました。 馬は、しばしば黄金の蹄鉄を失しました。 当然のことながら、金の蹄鉄を見つけた人は、自らを運が良かったと思えたでしょう。
また、悪魔と聖ダンカン・スミス（または普通の鍛冶屋）に関する伝説があります。 悪魔は蹄を履いて歩く鍛冶屋に尋ねたが、代わりに壁に鎖でつながれました。 鍛冶屋は、悪魔が蹄鉄を吊した家へは入らないと誓ってはじめて、悪魔を放しました。
実際には、どんな馬蹄でもお金がかかるので、それを見つけるのは都合がよかったのです。 おそらくそれが迷信のはじまりです。
さまざまな国では、別々に蹄鉄を垂れ下げます。 ロシアでは、悪からの保護のために蹄鉄に角を下にぶら下げます。 角を蹄鉄の上に乗せれば、それは幸運をもたらすでしょう。 他の国では蹄鉄の角を下に垂れ下げれば幸福が家に舞い込むと言われています。 誰も蹄鉄に触れることができないように、メキシコ人は蹄鉄リボンやコインを飾り、高く垂れ下げます。 各々の新人が蹄鉄に触れられるように、イタリア人は蹄鉄を掛けます。 幸運の象徴 - いずれにしても、誰もが馬蹄を見つけたいと考えています。 いずれにしても、誰もが見つかった蹄鉄は幸運の象徴であると信じます。

Trilingual post 13.

Российское суеверие: осина
У крестьян в России было двойственное отношение к осине. С одной строны, по Библии крест Иисуса был сделан из осины. Поэтому осина считается проклятым деревом. С другой стороны, осина считалась оберегом и была полезной в хозяйстве. Славяне верили, что осина обладает целебными свойствами. Если у больного лихорадкой отрезать волосы и ногти и спрятать в осиновом пне, то больной вылечится. Любой больной человек может вылечиться, посидев на свежем осиновом пне. Если положить ветку осины в кровать, то она поможет от бессонницы.
Вообще говоря отвар из коры и листьев осины действительно могут вылечить многие болезни. Кроме того дома, построенные из осины, стоят очень долго. При горении осиновых поленьев не появляется сажа.
Осина - удивительное дерево!

Russian superstition: aspen
The peasants in Russia had an ambivalent attitude towards aspen. On the one hand, according to the Bible Jesus' cross was made of aspen. Therefore aspen was considered to be a cursed tree. On the other hand, aspen was considered a talisman and was useful in the household. Slavs believed that Aspen had healing properties. If the patient has a fever, you should to cut his hair and nails and hide in aspen tree stump, the patient will recover . Any sick person can be cured, after sitting on fresh aspen stump . If we put an aspen branch in bed, it will heal insomnia.
Generally speaking a decoction of the bark and leaves of aspen can actually cure many diseases. Also houses built of aspen stand for very long. When burning aspen logs soot does not appear.
Aspen is an amazing tree!

ロシアの迷信：山鳴らし
山鳴らしについて、ロシアの農民の態度には二つの面がありました。一方では、聖書によれば、キリストの十字架は、山鳴らしで作られました。したがって山鳴らしは呪われた木であると考えられました。一方で、山鳴らしはお守りと考えられ、家庭に有用でありました。スラヴ人は山鳴らしに治癒特性があると信じていました。患者に熱があれば、彼の髪と爪を切り、山鳴らしの切り株に隠すと、患者が回復します。どんな病気の人でも、新鮮な山鳴らしの切り株の上に座った後、治すことができます。ベッドの中に山鳴らしの枝を置けば、不眠症を癒してくれます。
一般的に言えば、山鳴らしの樹皮や葉の煎じ汁は実際に多くの病気を治すことができます。また、山鳴らしで出来た家は、非常に長く持ちます。山鳴らし丸太を焼けば、煤は出てきません。
山鳴らしは素晴らしい木ですよ！