French project progress

Answer to the last comment: My French is going slow! Same for Mandarim.

I recently noticed that my last post was misleading.
The trick sentence is "Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin". This could give the impression that I actually learned French, but that is not the case. I'm just taking it slow. Once a week I listen to 1 hour or 2 of French. Maybe a bit more. 


For instance, yesterday I watched the move "Decalage Horaire" with Jean Reno and Juliette Binoche. Btw, I strongly recommend it. It was a very nice movie. 


I watched it half with subtitles, half without. I could understand a few complete sentences already hearing for the first time, but its not something substantial. 


I'm more around the "catch a few words" phase. I still simply can't process half of what I hear. I still can't identify some sounds as words. French sounds are still not natural for me.


For instance, the word "danger" meaning danger =D. Right now I can't remember if it is more like "donger" or "danger" or "denger".


Ah, I started making sense of some things, like when verbs end with "i" its the past form. But I'll worry more about this later, I'm still not ready for it.

Japanese great success

I could talk! Yesssssss!

This week I was helping in the organization of an event, and there were a few japanese presenting their papers. I could talk a bit with them about their work and tell a bit about the city I live. Easily! Hurray!

Mandarin project begins!!

Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin.

I think I'll have more success now because I'll manage to do the study from Chinese to Japanese, that's it, I won't abandon Japanese, like I was more or less doing with French.

So for 1 week I watched Taiwanese TV and I'm already getting used to a few sounds. Unlike Japanese, Chinese sounds are really different from Portuguese and I'm finding them quite challenging to get used to.

Well, I grabbed this sentence pack (http://smart.fm/lists/132095) from last.fm and used the anki plugin to withdraw them. I now have a deck with 540 cards with 2 models.

Reading: Chinese sentence -> Japanese translation

Listening: Chinese audio sentence -> Chinese with Japanese translation

Handbook of Bilingualism

This is a book recommendation for those wanting to learn about second language acquisition.
It is not about learning languages it is about how people learn languages.

Check it by yourself and be surprised on how much it tunes in with AJATT and Kaufman's views.

It is really fun how it debunks old research, specially about grammar based learning and the critical period hypothesis.

The first chapter is about learning vocabulary!
One thing that I found really interesting is that it says that each word generally has about 25 meanings and more than that, these meanings evolve with time.

There are 2 chapters that talk about brain function and have pretty pictures of brain imaging comparing Early Second Language learners and late second language learners with poor or great skills. It seems the brain gets less and less active with the improvement in skill in the language.
The book didn't got to this conclusion, but isn't it maybe the vocabulary solidifying?

Btw, the link is here:
http://tinyurl.com/o5tjvb

Final Fantasy XIII news and Famitsu

If you like games you might like to follow a few new sites to be aware of what's going on in the scenario.

This generation, for the XBOX 360 and the playstation 3, unarguably the best games are coming from west, so for most of the games you'll want to read the news in English, as they were written, not a clumsy translation to Japanese.

But there are still many Japanese titles you don't want to miss, one of them might be Final Fantasy XIII. So, welcome to Famitsu:

http://www.famitsu.com/review/title/0000/0000/0001/9553/

Btw, the thing I don't like about it is this:
※詳しくは週刊ファミ通2009年9月10日号（2009年8月27日発売）をチェック！

Does someone know a better source of news?

New, blank anki deck + New anki kicks ass

I just created a new, blank anki deck. I still have my old one somewhere, but it's been some time I don't open it anymore. There still vocabulary I'd like to use anki to learn so I threw that out and created a new one.

Btw, new Anki ROCKS!!!
This new reading generation system + furigana is AWESOME.
5 stars of 5.

Also I read the first volume of Kimi no Todoke. Even if you don't like Shoujo manga (like me) it is very entertaining. I give it 4 stars of 5.

Claymore chapter 94

Wheew, very tense. When will this act come to an end? And how?