Welcome!

May 13, 2012

Well, here I am again in the Netherlands! More information on that coming.

As you can see by the badge on the right, I've completed my mission to get to 1000 words in French. With that, I'll be working more on the site for the next mission. =)

∙ Current mission: Reach 1000 known words in French on LingQ! (April 24th, 2012 - May 13th, 2012)

May 4, 2012

I've discovered a new interest of mine in Eurovision. Listening to some past Eurovision songs has made me excited to be able to tune into the 2012 version. I've always loved foreign music, especially when sung in a non-English language, and from Eurovision, I particularly like Germany's Lena and Norway's Alexander Rybak. :)

Also, if you haven't ever read the webcomic Scandinavia and the World, but you like learning funny tidbits about history and geography, you should check it out. For instance, I didn't know that Scandinavia does not include Finland! I've always dreamed of writing a webcomic like that (except mainly with countries I'm more familiar with here in the Western hemisphere), and Humon is a true inspiration for when I end up doing anything involving comics. :)

April 24, 2012

So, it's time to share the news! I wanted to share that I will be spending two months in the Netherlands this summer! I can't believe how much I've fallen in love with the Dutch culture and tolerance, and I'm eager to experience more of this attitude! My Dutch has also gotten remarkably strong, as my reading and listening comprehension continue to build even though I don't work too actively on the language anymore. After awhile, your brain gets used to it and has seen the language for so long that reading and listening become fluid! I'm very excited that this has happened, as it reinvigorates me for any future languages I take on!

My main finals for university are finished and now I have more time to develop and do things I want to do. I played the Diablo III beta over the weekend, and it's a very fun game as a standalone, despite my belief that it's not worthy of the Diablo title. I've also been messing around in The Sims 3: Late Night and SimCity Societies, because playing games is the best way to get ideas on what makes a game fun (and also to see what just doesn't work, like World of Warcraft-ifying everything in order to make more money). =)

I still have my French final, and I will continue to learn the language in bits and pieces, but I must say that I've never been extremely excited to learn French. I don't know too many French people and I haven't heard many good things about the French; however, the best way to get myself interested in the language is to meet more people who speak it! I'd like to finish off my French goals for now by getting to 1000 words on LingQ, and then more adventures await!

∙ Reach 900 known words on LingQ by April 15th, 2012! (April 8th, 2012 - April 15th, 2012)

April 13, 2012

Hello everyone! I have some big news that I'll share next post, but for now I will tell you that I am very excited for this summer!

I will also be updating more often during the summer once the semester is over. For now, I will tell you that my previous goal has indeed been met, and that I am aiming for 900 words in French by Sunday the 15th (aka tax day ;))!

∙ Converse in French and reach 700 known words on LingQ by April 7th, 2012! (March 30th, 2012 - April 7th, 2012)

April 5, 2012

Hello! With the help of a friend, I was able to add the ability for readers to comment on the articles I post (check this out with the Most Confusing English Words article). More changes are forthcoming, so stay tuned!

March 30, 2012

This post will be short (I'm making a few coding changes to the site), but I wanted to inform you all that I reached my goal of not only 300 known words in French, but 598, even a day before my deadline! For this next goal, I'm going to make it to 700 known French words by April 7th.

∙ Completed: Converse in French and reach 300 known words on LingQ by March 31st, 2012! (March 26th, 2012 - March 30th, 2012)

March 26, 2012

Hello everyone! If you look on the sidebar, you can see that I've put some badges from LingQ up that display the amount of words I know in a few languages according to their website (note: The word count is quite an overestimate: for example, in the English count, "like" and "likes" are counted as two separate words). It updates as I'm working in LingQ, too, so you can see the latest count simply by heading to any page of this blog. I'm proud to announce that over the weekend I reached my goal of 150 known words in Esperanto on LingQ by March 24th!

∙ Completed: Reach 150 known words in Esperanto on LingQ by March 24th, 2012! (March 15th, 2012 - March 24th, 2012)

And to that effect, I have some important news: Because this semester at my university has only a month left to go, and because I'm currently in French class, I have chosen to switch my targeted language temporarily over from Esperanto to French. This is to maximize on the advantage of taking French both at university and having exposure to it during personal study. Both methods combined are quite powerful, though of course I prefer the do-it-yourself form.

My new goal is to converse in French with a new friend and reach 300 known words in French on LingQ by March 31st, 2012!

March 16, 2012

I've gained a lot more readers over the past days, and for that I thank you all! I will within the next week or two (after a big exam coming up) add the ability to comment on posts I make, a feature I've been meaning to fix up for awhile now. Stay tuned!

March 15, 2012

Hello! I would like to give you all a glimpse at the start of a game I'm making (alongside Chrono Trigger: Crimson Tide). Its current, in-progress name is Mijne, which is Dutch for "mine". You can see the beginning steps of creating it by downloading it from the link below:

Mijne

In addition, I have updated the list of topics I've covered so far in Calculus III. If you need basic tips on how to get through this class, feel free to e-mail me (find my screen name and/or e-mail by clicking the "contact" link on the bar above).

Also, over spring break I got a lot more involved with a cool site called LingQ, which is helping my Dutch and Esperanto progress tremendously. With its help, I've been able to meet my goal of reading Esperanto paragraphs aloud!

∙ Completed: Read aloud Esperanto paragraphs continually until March 11th, 2012! (February 29th, 2012 - March 11th, 2012)

My new goal is to work more on my game! ...but also, of course, to reach 150 known words in Esperanto on LingQ by March 24th, 2012! :P

(As a note: number of words is a terrible way to measure knowledge of a language; my true goal is to get even further involved with LingQ since it has helped me quite a lot so far.)

February 29, 2012

Hello everyone! I've made a list of English words that I've seen confuse many people:

New article: Most Confusing English Words

I have also been chatting with Esperantists and improving slowly on the language, but now that spring break is here, I can work properly on it! Expect more progress soon! I've also been updating other bits and pieces of the site not related to languages, and will continue to do so in the coming weeks as well. :)

∙ Completed: Chat with fellow Esperantists continually until February 29th, 2012! (February 17th, 2012 - February 29th, 2012)

My new goal is to read aloud Esperanto paragraphs continually until March 11th, 2012!

February 25, 2012

Starting today, I will make attempts to translate this and further blog posts into all the languages I'm working on or have worked on during the short history of this blog (that is, Dutch and Esperanto)! You can access these translations by going to www.katiejurek.com/nl.php and www.katiejurek.com/eo.php, respectively (or just click on the flags under "My Languages" on the sidebar).

I ask that advanced speakers or natives correct my translations so I can practice and improve those languages. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated! :)

Viva la language-learning! :D

February 20, 2012

Happy Presidents' Day to residents of the U.S.! Oddly enough, I had classes at university today despite today being a holiday for non-university schools and even for working adults. Interesting.

Anyway, I managed to delve into the time expressions like tempo (time), vespero (night), monato (month), etc. I have successfully learned the ones I wanted to and am moving onto a new goal!

∙ Completed: Learn all Esperanto time expressions by February 17th, 2012! (February 12th, 2012 - February 17th, 2012)

My goal is simple this time: to chat with other Esperantists using lernu.net's built-in chat service. This goal will extend until Wednesday, February 29th!

February 15, 2012

Hello everyone!

Being satisfied with what you have instead of only wishing for more can drastically improve your mood. I'll post more about this later, but I hope some of you know what I mean.

On another note, over the weekend I have become more comfortable with Esperanto! My vocabulary is growing and I was able to send an e-mail to a fellow Esperantist to practice, and more than just the basics at that! With that, I consider my latest mission completed.

∙ Completed: Have starting vocab and a meaningful exchange with a fellow Esperantist by February 12th, 2012! (February 5th, 2012 - February 12th, 2012)

My next mission will be to learn all the Esperanto time expressions (today, yesterday, tomorrow, last month, this year, etc.) by two days from now; that is, Friday, February 17th.

By the way, I'm going to be adding more school stuff to this web site soon, so stay tuned if you're interested in my adventures with Computer-Science-related classes.

February 6, 2012

Whew! Hello!

My friend from the Netherlands is finally here! He arrived in Florida yesterday after 15 hours of travel from the Netherlands. I'm excited to say he'll be staying with me for a bit. It's really great seeing him again. :)

And there's other good news about yesterday too, of course! By simply taking the chart from lernu.net (a site for Esperanto learners), rearranging it in the opposite direction (that is, switching the rows and columns), and putting the question words in an order that was easy to remember (who, what, where, when, how, why, etc.), I was successfully able to memorize the Esperanto correlatives; thus, that mission is complete! I also succeeded in another personal mission by its deadline, which was yesterday as well, so I'm feeling particularly swell. :)

∙ Completed: Be comfortable with Esperanto pronunciation and correlatives by Sunday, February 5th! (January 29th, 2012 - February 5th, 2012)

My next mission is to be able to have a meaningful conversation with a fellow Esperantist and know a handful of starting vocabulary words by Sunday, February 12th!

January 29, 2012

Hi there! I bring good news! I have finished Michel Thomas's advanced course in Dutch, and can create sentences with a whopping 25 different tenses. I also speak Dutch rather naturally now, especially common or simple sentences, and I will continue to improve this ability for years to come!

The final version of the Dutch.txt has been uploaded, and will be available in another section even after I replace the nifty link on the right sidebar with an Esperanto-related file. For now, however, I am moving onto Esperanto! Known as an international language (because it brings people together), it is an incredibly simple yet useful language. There are no verb conjugations, and it has extremely regular rules. For example, nouns end in "o", adjectives end in "a", infinitive verbs end in "i", and adverbs end in "e"! You can find tons of exceptions to this rules in other languages, but not very many in Esperanto! Hence, the point of me learning an artificial language like Esperanto is because of how incredibly quickly one can get acquainted with others who don't speak English, but have also sought out the same international language in order to communicate with others who don't speak their native tongue!

Now, the best goals are SMART: they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. I am going to be specific with my next goal and say that I want to be completely confident with Esperanto pronunciation and the difference between the correlatives (which include question words, "this", "that", and far more). My goal is measurable in that I will be speaking with fellow Esperantists in an Esperanto chatroom, where I can monitor my progress with the correlatives. This goal is also most definitely both achievable and realistic. However, where I'm faltering for the moment is having my goal be time-bound, because my friend that I hung out with a ton in the Netherlands will be here for three months starting a week from now, and spending time with him will be my focus for many days! That doesn't mean I'm abandoning my language learning or this blog by any means, though; simply that I cannot say exactly when I'll have my current goal's due date. For now, I am going to schedule it for one week from today, as in, the very day that my friend arrives!

∙ Completed: Finish the Michel Thomas advanced course in Dutch by Sunday, January 29th! (January 16th, 2012 - January 29th, 2012)

My next mission is thus to be comfortable with correlative forms and pronunciation in Esperanto by Sunday, February 5th, 2012!

January 16, 2012

Hello! I was caught up in doing all kinds of things in the Netherlands, but now I'm back home and starting a new school semester! Here's a very short list of some things that happened:

• Met a great and close online friend of mine, at whose house I ended up staying for three full weeks!
• Lived in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Noordwijkerhout
• Stuffed my face with so much Dutch food it's criminal; my favorites include appelflappen, pannenkoeken, and stroopwafels, pictured in order:

I cannot even begin to describe the incredible kindness of the family who kept me for those weeks (letting me stay for so long, making dinner for me every day without ever once complaining or making me feel bad, etc.); though, of course, they have their quirks, too. The person I stayed with also began becoming a very close friend of mine, and he may be visiting me soon in the United States (soon as in less than a month!). Overall, it was a fantastic experience, and I definitely will have more trips lined up. My next likely destination is Norway! More on that later!

So with that, I declare my Dutch mission...ALmost complete! I still want to finish the Michel Thomas course for Dutch, and I have less than one CD left before I move onto my next language. Two hints: it's known as an international language and it was artificially created (in that it did not develop naturally over time). More posts about my stay in the Netherlands are upcoming, but I wanted to share the good news!

∙ Completed: Learn a new Dutch word every day until December 10th! (August 23rd, 2011 - December 10th, 2011)

So! My next mission is to finish the Michel Thomas advanced course in Dutch by Sunday, January 29th!

December 9, 2011

My flight leaves at 6:20 PM, in 3-and-a-half hours. My nerves are bouncing like crazy but I absolutely love the feeling. I'm almost to Amsterdam! =)

Also, penguins!

November 15, 2011

I am changing my appetite over the coming weeks to get myself out of the habit of having humongous American portions of food. The fact is that over here we're extremely prone to becoming unhealthy fast because of the extreme excess in food portioning. I was fed to absolute bursting at my mother's place recently and she gave me quite a few snacks to take home, that is, tons of sugar cookies and chocolate! I have easily gained 5 pounds in the week of eating them before they expired, which I managed to accomplish but was not rewarded kindly by my body for it! It won't be hard to lose that same amount in a short period, but the fact that it happened (and in sUCH a short time especially!) has opened my eyes to how incredibly unhealthy and pushy this country is about anything involving food (or consumerism in general, really).

October 28, 2011

I've bought my ticket to Amsterdam for December 9th to January 7th. I'm, as you can imagine, exTREMEly excited, though I won't let time go to waste while waiting for the date to come; there is more Dutch to be learned and games to be programmed! I'll be flying with KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines, an airline I chose specifically because it was Dutch. I want to immerse myself as fully as possible and it was only a few dollars more expensive, so why not?

If any of you Nederlanders want to go out for a cup of coffee or something during that time, drop me a line and let me know and I'm sure we'll be able to set something up! =)

October 14, 2011

I cannot believe how selfless my friends are. I'm overjoyed at the incredible lengths some of my friends are willing to go to make my travel plans go as smoothly and without a hitch as possible. I love them so, so much. I really don't know what to say.

September 28, 2011

I took a trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota this past weekend and had a wonderful time meeting an online friend of mine. Though it was only for a short day-and-a-half (most of which was spent at the Mall of America), it was a great trip and one I won't likely forget anytime soon. You see, I was actually born in Minnesota, but I moved down here to Florida when young. I found my friend's Minnesotan accent to be amusing, especially since most of my family except for me has it, too. ;)

The flight over was also incredible. I hadn't been on a plane in a year-and-a-half, and it made me excited to be able to go through the whole flight process again. The kind man sitting next to me from my layover in Charlotte, NC to Minneapolis offered me the rest of his spicy tomato juice, which was amazing. We talked for a good while, and though I never got his name, I'll never forget the little bit of kindness he showed me that day. :)

My desire to travel has, of course, only been rejuvenated!

September 20, 2011

I'm feeling a lot better now that I have my new mouse, mousepad, and wrist splint from Amazon! They're working just dandy, so I hope to have my wrist strength back relatively soon. This will make my life a lot easier! :P

As a side note, there's nothing like looking like an idiot and not caring in public. ;)

September 18, 2011

Today I discovered very clearly something about myself. In a move to get me extra motivated in my programming class, I have bought a book to help me along. This may not seem like much, but as soon as I made the purchase, all my anxiety about falling behind in the class fell away; I realized that I know myself best when it comes to my own learning. The professor teaching the class is just barely out of college himself and going for his Ph.D, and thus assumes that all of his students are like him and know a lot more than they actually do. Instead of just paying attention in class and trying to learn that way, I've found that the method that helped me with my language learning helps me with regular schooling as well! That is, carrying around a book and reading up on things in the spare time I have between classes and at other idle moments of the day.

Only you know your learning style best. Take advantage of that fact!

September 13, 2011

When learning a language, it's essential to keep yourself interested in the language by reading and listening to things you actually enjoy. Repetition will never teach you a language; you need to be excited about what you're doing! To that effect, I've just made a cool purchase:

I'm looking forward to opening this baby up and owning my first ever Dutch book. You can read some Dutch books online, but possessing one in your hand is so much more inspiring and real!

As a side note, I've developed a minor case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and have bought a new mouse, mousepad, and wrist splint to help remedy it. This happened over the summer as well, but recent bouts of calculus and physics homework have aggravated it again. Keep your wrists healthy! :)

September 10, 2011

Hello there!

I've decided to do something that I hope will interest some of you: I will upload the file containing most of my language work in Dutch so far (stay tuned to the end of this post, or check on the sidebar to the right), and this will be done every time I update so the most recent version is always online. I start off every language that I can with the Michel Thomas method, and I write down everything that I learn to say, as well as its translation and some notes. This should be especially something for those of you also learning Dutch!

I am also going to start putting up the words that I'm learning every day. I'm pretty busy with university at the moment, but I promise that at least once every few days I will update this site with the new words. As always, everything will be dated (because I have some OCD tendencies ;)).

With no further ado, here is my Dutch phrase file as a .txt: Dutch.txt

September 7, 2011

As I begin to get more comfortable with my university schedule and a good rhythm for studying, I absolutely see now that the diligence and positivity with which I learned Dutch over the past few months has made me somehow quicker in programming, as well! This confirms my hypothesis that feeling confident in myself in general will carry over to every facet of my life. :)

I'm finding that learning Dutch words and a few things here and there is easy during the week, but the vast majority of my language study has to take place on weekends since a lot more time is available. There's always time to learn a language; sometimes you may have to restrict it to during wait times (standing in line, etc.) during the week and splurge during the weekends, though! It's a treat to look forward to at the end of every week. :)

September 4, 2011

I'm finally beginning to settle down into a university routine, which is good for my morale. :)

I went to a Labor Day party hosted by my elder brother today and it was quite nice seeing my mother, sister, and brothers all in one room for the first time since last Christmas. There were quite a few people there (at least 20) stuffed into a four-bedroom-but-still-very-crowded house. I got to see my brother's cat, Kyp, who fell asleep on and liked me when he was younger (not that he doesn't like me anymore, of course! He was just more interested in chasing flies today ;P).

In site-related news, I put up a gallery, where I'll be uploading photos of my sight-seeing adventures as well as of silly things like screenshots of my characters in The Sims (I enjoy creating simulated characters for my favorite games, movies, shows, etc.).

August 28, 2011

This weekend has been full of progress in Dutch. I started speaking to another one of my closest Dutch friends over Skype and he laughed at my "immigrant" pronunciation of the word "zevenentwintig" (twenty-seven), but he commented that I said everything quite well! ;)

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, I thought that being back in university would slow down my progress in Dutch. To the contrary, I've been using the time I have between classes to study my phrasebook. I've learned so much within the past week, and the greatest part is that I've forgotten hardly any of it. I'm feeling my way around more complex Dutch sentences as well as longer and compound verbs that I didn't understand before.

To another week of optimism and success! :)

August 25, 2011

Two nights ago I made a huge breakthrough in Dutch. When someone hears a language that they don't speak, they'll often think that the person speaking is doing so too quickly. More often than not, the listener's ears are simply not attuned to discerning the sounds in that particular language. For me, this is no longer the case with Dutch, as my listening comprehension is catching up to my reading: I can now understand the individual words someone is speaking in Dutch instead of just hearing a jumble of sounds. This is a huge step in the right direction, and it came nearly all at once. I was studying my Lonely Planet Dutch phrasebook outside of my calculus class two days ago and found that, when I had come home and started listening to Dutch music, I could pick out individual words. I may not be able to spell them or even know what they mean, but I can't complain!

I also noticed yesterday that this comprehension increase extends to Japanese as well for whatever reason, though not nearly to the same degree. I think the theory behind that is simply that I've been focusing on language a lot lately, and getting my uni mindset back has perhaps worked in my favor in this regard. I'll surely find out the true culprit with the next language! ;)

August 23, 2011

I've met all of my professors now and I can declare with great pleasure that this semester I don't have any terribly rude or unbearable instructors (not that I know of at this point, at least!). This is fantastic news given that professors for computer and math courses have the tendency to be foreign at my university. An accent is fine, but the teacher not being able to be understandable or speak very good English is a huge hindrance to students!

This brings me to the topic of teaching English in foreign countries. If I ever teach English somewhere besides the United States or England, I will be sure to learn quite a decent amount of that country's language. It is my honest opinion that you cannot be a fantastic teacher of English if you don't speak any of the language of your students! How can you all possibly communicate with each other in that situation? Hand gestures can only get you so far! Be the kind of teacher you'd love to have! :)

I found out tonight that I'm finally getting a truly natural feel for Dutch and how it should sound. While using audio software or trying to formulate sentences in my head, I notice that the speed with which I do this has drastically increased from even a mere week ago! Longer sentences are easier for me to generate automatically now, and I don't have to pause very often to think of how verbs are moved to the end of the sentence in many situations. I can hear a lot of improvement in my own speech, which means others are guaranteed to hear it, too! I've also been far surpassing my goal of learning "a" new Dutch word every day. I've learned enough single words over the past two days to fulfill that goal for two weeks! Being ahead of schedule won't stop me from making just as much progress each and every day, though!

Happy Tuesday!

August 21, 2011

I can happily announce that I have achieved my goal of being able to carry on a decent conversation in Dutch! My speaking and listening abilities have been improving and I can safely say I'd be just dandy if dropped off in the Netherlands this very moment. Of course, I'm going to be working on my Dutch for awhile yet, but I am happy to add Dutch to the languages in which I could help someone in a service environment or at a job. Learning Dutch has changed a lot for me: I feel more confident in myself, more excited to delve into Dutch culture, more motivated and able to learn languages, and, heck, even more worldly!

I will continue to update with my progress and with language-learning tips! University starts up again for me tomorrow, but that doesn't mean I'll stop learning languages entirely! I'm on too much of a high from my success so far to let it all falter so easily! =)

∙ Completed: Learn conversational Dutch by August 22nd (July 14th, 2011 - August 21st, 2011)

August 9, 2011

I've been learning a lot about my own emotions recently alongside my Dutch studies. I'm starting to put down on job applications and the like that I know enough Dutch to be able to handle merchandise-related issues and general customer service. Of course, this is unlikely to ever be needed, because most Dutch people speak English, especially if they live in the United States!

I like being more empathetic. As I progress in language and speaking to my friends about their problems, I've noticed that there's barely anything I'm afraid of anymore when it comes to job duties. When I got my first job at Honey Baked Ham, I was insecure and unsure of my abilities. Now it seems so silly to me now to have been such a worrywart when all I had to do was ask if I had a question. Often times I did ask, but then would have a mental countdown in my head of how long I had to wait until I allowed myself to ask another. It was really a silly way of doing things, but it was better than never asking anything at all and screwing up people's orders left and right!

Thus, my language endeavors have taught me confidence, and this confidence of course now extends to many other areas of my life! :)

July 30, 2011

I spent the day at Orlando Science Center with my friend from Ohio (after leaving the house of my other friend where we had a bonfire the night before). Little did I know that, along with getting some fantastic pictures of the animals on the bottom floor of the place (esPECially the bearded dragon and crayfish!), I would also get a chance to practice my Japanese with real Japanese natives.

After spending time in basically every room the museum had to offer, my friend and I happened upon a Japanese family of about 5-6 people messing around with a specific attraction, one where it was emphasized that if you increase an object's orbit, it'll slow down considerably. This was done with a large chrome marble that the family was throwing into orbit constantly. They seemed very happy and approachable, and I had already identified their language as Japanese a few minutes prior, so I jumped in to talk to them. I was still a little shy, so I only said a handful of one-word phrases, but the reaction was incredible! As soon as I said 凄い/Sugoi! ("Amazing!"), they all looked up at me. The little boy present even repeated what I said in the more masculine fashion, which sounds more like "suge". My interaction with them prompted the little girl to hand me the marble with a big smile on her face! I repeated what they did, and since the way I threw the marble made it take longer to fall out of orbit, I whined 速い/Hayaku! ("Hurry up!/Faster!") Now they knew that me speaking their language was no accident. The oldest lady there turned to me and said "You speak Japanese?" and I said "A little bit," returning her smile. Boy, there was a lot of smiling going on! :)

The little girl threw the marble back into the machine again, and when it finally fell out of orbit, I said a playful やった!/Yatta! ("Hooray!/Yay!") They left a few minutes later with the little girl calling じゃね/Ja ne! (See ya!) to me. I returned a さよなら/Sayonara ("Bye") and she said it back.

I feel very invigorated for my mission after today. Speaking with natives, even some short phrases, was an incredible experience, and they were more than willing to talk to me! Their good mood positively influenced mine and I was on a high the rest of the day. :)

July 26, 2011

Today was a good day that reinforced even further my desire to travel. As I was standing on the beach looking out over the Atlantic Ocean from about six stories in the air, I realized just how small human beings are, and yet how incredibly interesting each one of them can be. Here I was with a friend gazing at this vast, blue ocean, so tranquil and serene, and it hit me that humans can make me feel that way, too, just like the calm evening waters of the ocean. I enjoyed this day very much, if for nothing else, than certainly for this realization, among others.

July 22, 2011

I was able to encourage a friend to begin Michel Thomas's Language Learning Method today, and he blazed through the first disc of French mere hours after he started it! I'd normally suggest he go a bit slower, but as long as he's motivated, I won't get in his way! This made me feel pretty accomplished given that he had a seriously stubborn attitude about language learning beforehand, even calling me overconfident and cocky for thinking I'd be able to speak Dutch this December! All it takes is the right materials to get you started, and once you've gained the insight that learning languages is not hard, you're on your way to becoming an efficient and happy language learner!

July 21, 2011

Today was a beautiful day of thought and progress. When I did my Dutch study earlier this afternoon, I noticed that my mind could very quickly come up with the correct Dutch words and phrases. I'm starting to be able to think in Dutch! This is definitely a milestone! I am very happy with the events of today. :)

July 20, 2011

Sometimes you need to just stop thinking and ACT. Today I accomplished this. I spoke to my Dutch friend in Dutch, and I even took his corrections of my grammar into consideration (I'd normally be too embarrassed to do this). Much improvement in such a short time!

It's the little things that can make you truly feel satisfied and alive.

July 19, 2011

I've been bonding with my best Dutch friend lately and I've come to a decision: it's time to switch our friendship from just English to Dutch and English. I'm going to stop overthinking and ACT; this consists of me asking him to slow down a slight bit when speaking Dutch as well as me saying a full sentence in his own tongue to him tomorrow (I say tomorrow because he is 6 hours ahead of my time zone, EDT).

It's time to jump straight into the deep-end and get the unpleasant part over with!

July 18, 2011

One of the best language tips I can think of would be to sing to music in your target language. The number one area on which this works is pronunciation, which I like getting down to a science before starting to learn too many words if at all possible. It takes a lot of the average person's stress out of learning a language, being able to look at at least 75% of words and say "I know how to say that aloud."

I've also noticed that singing a song in another language can have a slightly different system from the way it's usually spoken (I'm looking at you, Japanese!) so when it is pronounced that way to sound cooler (or for whatever other reason, haha) you'll be able to recognize what's being done rather than thinking the way you originally thought something is said is wrong. This process has indoctrinated me the pronunciation of Dutch, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Sometimes you'll be pleasantly surprised; for instance, Japanese and Spanish have remarkably similar pronunciation on the vast majority of words, but you wouldn't expect that from a Latin vs. an Asian (more specifically Japonic) language!

July 17, 2011

Ever since I've found a method of learning languages that works for me, I've found that the academic approach I used in school for four classes' worth of Spanish is vastly different and focuses FAR too heavily on writing. I didn't actually SAY much in Spanish until the fourth class, which often required it. This meant that I only began speaking about the time I was in an atmosphere that was almost entirely dominated by native Spanish speakers. This can do a number on one's confidence! I had always spoken to myself to practice, but taking three classes where others were also a bit unsure about speaking and then reaching the fourth - which only students genuinely interested in Spanish volunteered to take - meant that the difficulty of my lessons changed drastically!

One of the two white girls outta place!

July 15, 2011

Here is a very short snippet of my thoughts on the Michel Thomas Language Learning Method, which I use to introduce myself to a language before speaking it with natives:

The Michel Thomas method is one I regard very highly. It is an audio software, but don't let that discourage you! I've had my fair share of terrible audio materials before, or ones that were unsatisfactory at best. However, with Michel Thomas, I went through the Japanese course a few months ago, but what I learned I still remember quite well! I love the pacing and the vision is incredibly unique: the teacher really does the majority of the work and you're just there for the ride and to reap the incredible benefits! This method is how I introduce myself to a language (provided it's one of the 12 that Michel Thomas covers, of course; I'll have to look elsewhere for Swedish, for example); I am currently going through the Dutch version and am learning a TON in a very short period of time. After I finish the course, I speak to natives for the rest and continue studying every now and then, especially vocabulary. I 100% recommend this method to ANYONE, esPECially if you've been let down by language-learning materials in the past. You'll learn quite a bit with Michel, but not only that; you'll REMEMBER it!

Highly recommended! :)

July 14, 2011

I'm setting up my blog so I can consolidate a lot of my online work into one main site. This will make it far easier to update my progress in one area instead of branching out into several!

In more relevant news to this blog, my Dutch has steadily been improving over the past few weeks. I'm really getting motivated and delving into the process of improving my speaking abilities!

Inspirational Quotations

"The limits of my language means the limits of my world."

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Table of Languages by World Rank

Please keep in mind the following is based on an estimate.^{source source}

Language	World Rank (# Natives)	Native Speakers	Secondary Speakers	Total Speakers
Mandarin Chinese	1	845 mil	180 mil	1025 mil
English	2	335 mil	613 mil	948 mil
Spanish	3	329 mil	61 mil	390 mil
Arabic	5	232 mil	220 mil	452 mil
Russian	8	144 mil	106 mil	250 mil
Japanese	9	122 mil	1 mil	123 mil
German	11	90 mil	28 mil	118 mil
French	17	68 mil	52 mil	120 mil
Polish	26	40 mil	< 1 mil	40 mil
Dutch	45	22 mil	3 mil	25 mil