A Site with Potential: Govoluble

Over the past week, I've been exploring this new website: Govoluble. It's like lang-8 and italki rolled into one, with some additional features that I appreciate.

Like lang-8, you can submit your writing in your target language to be evaluated by other users. It has the added bonus of being able to add audio to your submissions, so that you can get practice speaking your target language in a less terrifying situation than speaking one-on-one with someone.

Like italki, you can meet language partners and arrange meetups to speak with them.

However, one of my favorite features of this site is that you don't need another program, such as Skype, to talk to the people that you meet. Your language exchanges, both text and video, take place through the site. I have found having to use Skype to generally be the dealbreaker for me, because I'm not logged into Skype normally so I miss when my language partners might be on.

You can also schedule either text or video sessions for designated times, and interested people can accept them. So you can get partners that can meet you on your schedule, and it saves a bit of overhead with trying to set up times to meet with people. You designate how long you want the exchange to last. When you are in the chatroom, it will tell you which language to start with, and count down the time to switch languages. It also provides topic suggestions for the tongue-tied. You can correct text in the chatbox itself.  I've had one successful meetup so far, and it was a pleasant experience.

I will note that the site is still fairly new, but the owner of the site has been very responsive to all my feedback so far, and I anticipate it will become better in the future.

And it's all free, so give it a try!

Not Dead, Just Not Posting: 3/15/15 Progress Report

Haven't been posting much here, but I'm still on the language learning train. Well, I say I'm on it, but it's more like I fell off, got stuck on a piece of the frame and am getting dragged along the tracks. I think it's fair to say that I've managed to climb back on. Sort of. I'm hanging to the hitch and panting while the tracks zip by underneath...

All right, I think I've beaten that metaphor to death.

General
The alternating-day rotation seems to be working out fairly well, all things considered. I'm starting to feel like French should get another day, but that would mean taking a day away from German or Danish, and I'm not prepared to do that, yet.

I notice that I have an overwhelming urge, when I can't remember a word in one language, to substitute a word from another (non-English) language in it. It probably doesn't help that I'm not learning all the same words in all the languages, so my mind helpfully reaches for the non-English equivalent it can think of.

I also keep thinking I'm going to take two weeks some time to do Toki Pona, just because.

French
Duolingo modified their French course, so on my French days I spend a lot of it trying to complete all the new lessons. I've slowed down on adding new words on Memrise. Instead, I watch Futurama and French Ted Talks, mostly. I do sometimes play Runescape in French on my off days, and I had my first spontaneous conversation in it last night.

I was killing black dragons. Along comes another player who is attempting to steal my black dragons. I panicked, slightly, before going, "Look, I know enough to tell this guy I have only three left. I can do this."

Me: "J'ai 3 plus."
Other guy: "Okay."
<get my three kills>
Me: "Merci."
Other guy: "Derien."

May not seem like much, but I didn't use Google translate for any of it. I successfully communicated (and got what I wanted) from another person in another language.

My French day is refreshing in a way. I realize just how much I know of it compared to German and Danish, and I feel slightly better about my ability in it.

German
Learning German is like hunting for Easter eggs. Or lost toys. Every now and then I will encounter a word I know from my childhood. Striking examples include "kaputt" and "badezimmer." I am also more rapidly able to pick words I've learned from stories and songs.

When I was a teenager, I had a stint at learning High German in school. Learning German now is like meeting an acquaintance and getting to know them.

Danish
Danish remains somewhat exotic and confusing. I am apparently familiar enough with the sound that I can recognize it being spoken by my coworkers, but it has French's problem in that what you hear is often not what you write.

My main focus has been on learning vocabulary from Copenhagen Cast by entering it into a Memrise course. I'm not progressing on it as fast as I would like, as there are (plenty of) days where I don't want to clip audio files for the Memrise course.

Why I Started with French

Okay, I didn't really start with French in terms of language learning, but it was the first language I actually made any significant progress on. A group at my work started meeting after hours to learn French, and I figured why the hell not. As with many things in my life that I've thought this about, it certainly ended up being a bigger deal than I anticipated.

The group started off using the free course from Open Learning Initiative. I ran into a problem early on with remembering the vocabulary. Not to mention that French can be really, really, unintelligible to the untrained ear. So yea, while I kept going to the weekly meeting, I wasn't doing enough outside of class to keep up with it.

Around the end of 2013, I read the book "Mindset: the New Psychology of Success" by Carol Dweck. I go on at length about what I got out of that book here, which rather changed my approach to language learning. Rather than just assuming I wasn't any good at it because it didn't come easy, I was going to spend 2014 seeing how far I could get with something I've always wanted to do, which was language learning. And since I was still in the group for French, it seemed as logical a place to start as any. And it wouldn't be a reflection of my self worth if I still wasn't fluent by the end of the year. After all, I was just in it to see how far I could get.

So, I started with French because I was learning it already. I've been told repeatedly that French isn't the easiest language to learn, but I don't always take the easiest path. And I've managed to keep up the language learning habit, which is probably the best thing I've done in 2014.

Learning French has opened a whole new world for me. I can't wait to prod at the boundaries of my understanding in all three languages.

Trawling the Net: Link Collection 3

I realize I haven't posted for a bit. No worries, I've still been collecting a smattering of links for ya'all to peruse.

General
Reverso Really cool site that lets you look up a conjugated word to find the original form. Covers German, French, Spanish, and English.
The Bible in over 1600 languages. Some have audio.
Great Language Game how many can you recognize or guess at?
Amazon.com -- great if you have a Kindle. Can usually find some for free or really, really cheap.
Ted Talks -- You can filter by language. You might only get subtitles for some languages.
ItchyFeet a lovely little comic on language learning and travel.

French
Audio and pdf for the first four Harry Potter books
Madagascar 1 in French
70 Ted Talks with French audio and human-translated subtitles

German
Sweet and Easy Cooking channel -- Has a lot of desserts, not surprisingly.
RTL Number of free shows in German.
German stories for children with subtitles
German documentaries
German lectures

Danish
A funny vid about Danes and Danish. Not especially instructional but funny.
Danish Disney songs on Youtube