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Well. Last week was A Week. I had the mental bandwidth for working, eating, and sleeping. It was not delightful, but it has passed, and now I can catch up on fun Internet things.
Language Learning
Was on pause for all of last week, but here's where I was as of two weeks ago.
Mango Indonesian: Chapter 1: Units 1-3
The two things that stuck out to me in this week’s content:
*Actual lesson content from Mango Languages’ Bengali course.
Mango Japanese: Chapter 2: Units 8-10 + R/L, Chapter 1 review, Chapter 3: Units 1-3
Speaking of gender bias in language courses, let’s have an example of how it plays out in practice. This week’s Mango Japanese material covered asking people about their professions. In the example sentences, men are:
Mango Korean: Review flashcards
Exactly what it says on the label.
Podcast Gaelgagh: 84-90
We're learning to make pretty complex sentences that combine multiple grammar patterns in challenging ways, and to combine those sentences into entire paragraphs. It’s a hefty lift but very rewarding. For the first time, I also have to pay close attention while formulating the answers to avoid making mistakes. In particular, I have a tendency to mix up forms (e.g. ‘I like’ and ‘I prefer’) and pronouns (‘with me’ instead of ‘with her’).
しっかり学ぶ韓国語―文法と練習問題: Units 5-16
Units 1-15 focused on spelling and pronunciation rules, which I was already familiar with and could breeze quickly through. That said, there’s much to be said for working through beginner material in new textbooks for the tidbits you never picked up as a beginner.
In my case, I learned from this textbook that what I’d assumed were arbitrary spelling rules were intentionally set to distinguish homophones. This is unnecessary in the wild, as I can’t imagine a case in which any of the homophones I’m aware of wouldn’t be clear from context, but it’s neat to learn that hangeul's emphasis on logic extends to spelling. The other thing I learned is that, although it isn’t reflected in spelling, vowels in certain words are intentionally lengthened to differentiate what would otherwise be homophones. Thus, the word 말 (word) is held for a beat longer than the word 말 (horse). This is something I learned unconsciously for a lot of these pairs by virtue of mimicking native speakers, but it’s cool to discover that the differences are intentional and why they were created.
これで以上です。
Language Learning
Was on pause for all of last week, but here's where I was as of two weeks ago.
Mango Indonesian: Chapter 1: Units 1-3
The two things that stuck out to me in this week’s content:
- For some reason, there are several seconds of annoying dead air at the start of most of the sound files, and
- So far, the content has duplicated the script from the Mango Languages Bengali course.
*Actual lesson content from Mango Languages’ Bengali course.
Mango Japanese: Chapter 2: Units 8-10 + R/L, Chapter 1 review, Chapter 3: Units 1-3
Speaking of gender bias in language courses, let’s have an example of how it plays out in practice. This week’s Mango Japanese material covered asking people about their professions. In the example sentences, men are:
- American or European teachers of English with Japanese wives.
- Doctors.
- Engineers.
- Computer programmers.
- Web designers.
- Japanese women who teach Japanese and are married to Western men.
- French teachers.
- Cashiers.
Mango Korean: Review flashcards
Exactly what it says on the label.
Podcast Gaelgagh: 84-90
We're learning to make pretty complex sentences that combine multiple grammar patterns in challenging ways, and to combine those sentences into entire paragraphs. It’s a hefty lift but very rewarding. For the first time, I also have to pay close attention while formulating the answers to avoid making mistakes. In particular, I have a tendency to mix up forms (e.g. ‘I like’ and ‘I prefer’) and pronouns (‘with me’ instead of ‘with her’).
しっかり学ぶ韓国語―文法と練習問題: Units 5-16
Units 1-15 focused on spelling and pronunciation rules, which I was already familiar with and could breeze quickly through. That said, there’s much to be said for working through beginner material in new textbooks for the tidbits you never picked up as a beginner.
In my case, I learned from this textbook that what I’d assumed were arbitrary spelling rules were intentionally set to distinguish homophones. This is unnecessary in the wild, as I can’t imagine a case in which any of the homophones I’m aware of wouldn’t be clear from context, but it’s neat to learn that hangeul's emphasis on logic extends to spelling. The other thing I learned is that, although it isn’t reflected in spelling, vowels in certain words are intentionally lengthened to differentiate what would otherwise be homophones. Thus, the word 말 (word) is held for a beat longer than the word 말 (horse). This is something I learned unconsciously for a lot of these pairs by virtue of mimicking native speakers, but it’s cool to discover that the differences are intentional and why they were created.
これで以上です。
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