Plan for the month of June

After six months and 18 days, I am not making progress in Korean. I am not learning Russian. I have not taken my first steps into programming. I have read less than 10 books. The results speak for themselves - I have failed as an autodidact and as a language learner. 

I have five months and 12 days left before 2014 ends. I want to make the most of this time. 

Instead of making long-term, vague plans, I will focus on concrete short-term goals. I do not know what I will do in July but here is what I plan to do in June: 

Books I will finish:

• How Music Works; John Powell
• Dragon's Egg; Robert L Forward
• On Writing; Stephen King
• Is That A Fish In Your Ear?: David Bellos

 Languages:

• Assimil Chinese with Ease (revision of first 40 lessons)
• Assimil Russian with Ease (one lesson a day)

Mathematics

•  No plan. 

Computers

• Head First Programming - Beginning Programming With Python  (three-four lessons)

I will write another post on June 30. It will be my report card.

Difference between -시- and -ㅂ니/습니-

I was about to put this question on a few Korean language forums when I discovered this: 

I can say 어떻게 지내십니까? but not 잘은 지내십니다.

Vive le Assimil!

This was a pathetic week, and today's plan

It was a bad bad bad week. I didn't learn anything new. Nope. I had finished Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane last week. This week, I read nothing (if you don't count still unfinished The God Delusion). I didn't make any progress in C++, Korean, Writing, Mathematics, and Logic. This was a poor week. 

I am feeling so bad. I have spent three hours watching pornography, one hour walking, and just 30 minutes studying. Those 30 minutes' learning can be summed up in one sentence: Grâce à cette phrase, vous avez déjà un aperçu de la façon dont le coréen, et les Coréens, fonctionnment : il faut éviter au maximum de parler trop directement et surtout de désigner quelqu'un. This is pathetic. 

It is already one o'clock. I have no idea where half the day has disappeared. 

I don't want to spoil what remains of today. Parmod is coming. I will spend a couple of hours with him, fooling around. Then I will go to the library. I will see there what I want to read. It can be history, or logic, or literature (Franz Kafka), or I-don't-know-what! I shall be home before 16:00. I plan to these things in evening: 

• To complete chapter one of C++: A Beginner's Guide
• To learn two chapters of Le Coréen Sans Peine and to revise of Sogang University's first five lessons in Novice One
• To make a plan about how to learn mathematics and logic
• Talk with Anjuta and Eduardo
• To learn blog and business writing in English

When all this is done I will write again.

Assimil Le Coréen sans Peine - Do or die!

Assimil creates the best language courses. Don't take my word for it. After all it is coming from the fingers (mouth?) of the world's worst language learner, or, to borrow from Anthony Lauder's Budapest address - a polynot. I am trying to change myself - turn myself from a polynot into what Alexander Arguelles calls a polyliterate. 

I want to read works of literature (good and bad) from across the world in their "original tongue of composition." I have been wanting to do this for a long time. Many years have passed and I have nothing to show. Nothing. Zero. Pathetic results. The signs are clear - I need more than a wish to learn. I need to study and be persistent in my efforts.

Language hopping is the root of my failed efforts. I have decided not to pick up another language until I have reached at that level in Korean where I can read newspapers and books without turning to dictionary on every second sentence. This time I will not be in hurry. I will be patient. Following Alexander's suggestion, I am already using several courses. One of them is Assimil Le Coréen sans Peine.

I have just downloaded the course. I am impressed. It is very detailed. The first sentence of the first lesson is 김철수입니다. It is accompanied by this three-paragraph explanation:

입니다: "c'est". Vient de 이다 "être" ㅂ니 est un suffixe de politesse. Sa présence indique que l'on s'adresse à son interlocuteur de façon polie (cf. vouvoiement en français). En français, nous avons toujours besoin d'un sujet, cf. "ce" de "c'est"; en coréen, comme nous le verrons, le sujet est facultatif. attention! En coréen, quand le son ㅂ est au contact de ㄴ, il se transforme en ㅁ. c'est pourqui ce qui, orthographiquement, s'écrit 입니다 se prononce 임니다.

Rien dans le verbe coréen n'indique la personne. Quand il est indispensable de la préciser, on l'indique par un pronom personnel ou d'autres moyens que nous verrons ultérieurement. Dans la mesure du possible, on évite de se désigner et de désigner les autres.

La plupart des noms propres coréens se composent d'un nom de famille d'une syllable (김) suivi d'un nom personnel (prénom) de deux syllables (슬솔), ou, plus rarement, d'une syllabe. 김 et 이 sont les noms de famille les plus réandus, à tel point qu'un dicton dit: "Quand on lance une pierre, si elle ne frappe pas un 김, elle frappe un 이". Dans les ouvrages en langues occidentales sur la Corée, on a recours à toutes sortes de transcriptions pour noter les noms propres coréens. Pour 김, la plus courante est Kim; quant au nom 이, trancrit le plus souvent Yi, il es aussi américanisé en Lee... ou Leigh!

N.B. La prononciation du coréen entre parenthèses es notée "à la française", donc gu devant i, é ou y se prononce comme le "g" de "guimauve."

Even my Korean teacher could not answer why ㅂ is pronounced as ㅁ in some words. Assimil makes it clear.

Now I have a course of conversation, a Sogang-university course and Assimil with me. A helpful native speaker is also assisting me. If I fail this time, I will give up language learning. It is not just my cup of tea.

Time to invade Korea, bombard Argentina, and annhilate China

I have come a long way since as a child I had to wait for a whole month to save INR 20 (US $0.40) to photocopy a Spanish course from the 1955(?) edition of Practical Knowledge for All. I have the internet for more than three-and-a-half years now. Despite a wealth of language learning materials available, I have failed to learn any language. I have tried Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, French, and what-not! The results have always been disappointing. So I have come to a decision: let's start a battle on several fronts, and see where it goes from there.

Learning from past mistakes, I am not going to give up on Chinese  for some other language. I have have a bad habit of quitting languages I am learning and lap for new ones. Chinese is going to stay. I am merely going to attack on the Korean front and the Argentine border. 

My goals are quantifiable - to finish Assimil Spanish without Toil before January 1, 2014. To learn all the material in Novice Korean 1 and Novice Korean II during the next three months. As to Chinese, the goal is to finish all the 105 lessons of Assimil Chinese with Ease (paid).

Overwhelming though it is, I think I can do this with perseverance. I have learnt some time management techniques from Alexander Arguelles - a hyper-polyglot, autodidact, and my new hero. He provides invaluable advice on language learning.

I have been learning Chinese using his time management techniques for the past five days, Spanish for three days, and Korean for just one day. The technique is simple - stop studying before you yawn. I am studying in intervals of 15 - 30 minutes. I woke up at four today and learnt Chinese for 30 minutes and Spanish for 10 minutes. A lesson with a native Korean speaker took three-and-a-half hours. It was an exception. I will study Korean everyday for 45 minutes, Spanish for 20 minutes, and Chinese for an hour. 

The key is to divide this time into smaller and shorter intervals. It has twofold advantages - (a) I do not get bored, (b) a bad day cannot ruin all day's study because the study period has been divided into three or four parts.

One more change that I have incorporated into my study habit is to forgo computers and turn to paper. I am writing Chinese characters, learning to put the grave accent on the right vowel, and practising the stroke order of Korean jamo. I am using this laptop only passively - I read from an ebook and practice on a notebook.

In addition to these three languages, I am also thinking of spending 15 minutes each on Esperanto, Punjabi, and Urdu. Although I am not sure if I can do that. 

As for English, my whole day goes with this language mostly reading. I will have to cut down on useless browsing, porn, self-pity, day-dreaming and sleep and focus on writing (in English), literature, philosophy, mathematics, logic, computer science, programming, and languages! I want to be polyliteratre, not just polyglot.

Finally, I will publish my weekly progress report here.