Road to Polyglottery

Moving to Georgia, etc

genghishahn — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:53:35 +0000

As it turns out, moving cross-country really drains all of your studying energy. I had intentions to keep up with Spanish during this move, but it’s been very difficult because of everything I’ve had going on. Between driving from California to Georgia, spending time with family and friends, buying a house, and getting started at my new job, I haven’t been able to get anything done. I plan on getting back on track with studying soon, but maybe not with Spanish. I’m actually thinking on doing a little bit of Japanese for a while. I got a book to learn Katakana and Hiragana, so I’d like to work on that for a while.

Also, my job necessitates that I take an Arabic dialect course in October, so once that starts, everything else will have to take a backseat to it. I’m thinking my goal should be to knock out Katakana and Hiragana prior to starting that class, and I can pick up with more Japanese later on if I decide I like it.

Not Studying and Going to Borders

genghishahn — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:09:00 +0000

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any studying done today. I was too busy with check-out stuff regarding my transfer to Georgia, then I had to go shopping for some things for a party at my house tonight and do some cleaning. I did step into Borders though and take a look at some study materials there. Everytime I go to Borders I have to peruse the language reference section. Nearly all of the languages there have some sort of appeal to me, some sort of reason I’d like to study them. It’s kind of hard to keep myself confined to the Spanish that is my current goal, but I think I’m doing pretty well so far.

Anyway, one book there really caught my eye as something that would be beneficial to me. It’s called Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses. It has very good reviews on Amazon, and from paging through it, I think it has a good, systematic method of teaching the verb tenses and all of the conjugations. But, as much as I found the book appealing, I decided to wait on purchasing it both because it’s a little cheaper on amazon.com, and I have about $150 in Amazon gift cards currently in the form of credit card rewards points. I think I’ll get the entire “Practice Makes Perfect” series for Spanish whenever I have a stable address I can have them shipped to.

Spanish 07/09/09

genghishahn — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:45:53 +0000

I did two more hours of Michel Thomas today. I finished disc 2 and went halfway through disc 3. I can really tell that I’m learning a lot, very quickly. Before long, I think I’ll have a firm foundation of the structure of the language upon which I can build my reading and listening proficiency. Luckily Spanish, unlike Arabic, has tons of authentic and fun resources readily available. Many ordinary dvd’s can be played with a Spanish track, and I’m looking forward to the day when I can go through and watch my Seinfeld dvd’s as a way of studying… Hopefully my Star Trek ones, too. I know they have a French track, but I’ll have to check and see if they have a Spanish one too.

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Total Time Spent on Spanish: 3.5 hours

Beginning Spanish

genghishahn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:27:56 +0000

Well, I decided that I had nothing else to do tonight, so I might as well get started on Spanish. I got the Michel Thomas Spanish set, and I went through disc one. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. I’m having a little bit of trouble not reverting to Arabic all the time after spending practically all of the last year and a half doing it all day, but I’ll get past that with time. I’m really looking forward to progressing through this during my upcoming cross-country roadtrip. Anyway, here’s the time tally:

1.5 Hours: Michel Thomas Spanish

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Total Time Spent on Spanish: 1.5 Hours

Introduction

genghishahn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:11:32 +0000

Hello, and welcome to my first post. I’m genghishahn, just a guy with a strong interest in foreign languages, and this blog is intended as a record of my studies. So far, the only foreign language I’ve learned is Modern Standard Arabic, but I have a long list of languages I’d like to tackle within my lifetime. Luckily, I have some extra motivation in one of the perks of my occupation: I get paid more for every language I can score at least a 2/2 on according to the Defense Language Profiency Test.

Here are the languages I have interest in eventually (and I do mean eventually) learning, in no real order:

Modern Standard Arabic

Levantine Arabic

Egyptian Arabic

Spanish

French

Italian

Mandarin Chinese

Japanese

Persian Farsi

Russian

Urdu

As for why I included these languages, and not others, I have no real answer. It just happens that these are the ones I’m interested in. Anyway, I’m in the middle of a move to Georgia, but as soon as I finally get settled in, in the next few weeks, I’ll start logging the study of my first project, which I think will be Spanish. I’m looking forward to using this blog to help keep me motivated, and hopefully I’ll be able to help others by introducing new resources for them to use in their own studies.