Mandarin, Russian and Korean - and Resolutions
Random notes:
* The Language Geek points out a lot of Russian material at the Princeton website. If you're learning Russian or plan to, check it out.
* I've found myself at the earworms site several times looking at Rapid Chinese. Last nitght, I bit the bullet and bought through audible.com. Love the CD, hated the experience. First I made sure iTunes was working (I use MusicMatch Jukebox) so I wouldn't have to fuss with audible's downloader. Then it made me download it anyway. Then I had to use iTunes anyway to burn the CD, since I couldn't get the permissions to work anyplace else. Bottom line: in the future, it shouldn't be too difficult to get material through audible.com, burn it on CD, etc. But the process was another reminder of why folks doing the DRM content management thing are as much a bane for everyday users as they are a joke to those truly interested in pirating. earworms makes a nice product, and it's nice that audible makes it available, but the nonsense involved in getting these things set up suggests that they think of us as underpaid employees liable to raid the storehouse, not paying customers.
* On the upside, Rapid Chinese is a delightful product. I need to get a Rapid Program for a language I haven't studied, because I don't know if it works, or just does a nice job reinforcing. But I do wish there were a Rapid Korean right about now.
* Korean is a rough slog. As I look toward the end of the six-week challenge, there is no doubt that this is a language that has knocked me on my patootie like no other since Sanskrit. But I'm beginning to like it, and to see its reason.
* Resolutions: April was not a good month for the resolutions. Spanish and Italian slipped my attention for the most part. German slipped off my radar screen altogether. While I continued listening to Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Uzbek music, active study was nil. On the other hand, Mandarin keeps pulling me back, and the six-week challenge caused me to set my sights evermore to the East. I love the crack (which I first ran across in Rushdie's Ground Beneath Her Feet) about disorientation as the loss of the East - which it is, literally, for sailors who can't figure out which way precisely is east as they navigate by the stars. In my case, though, it's finding the East again which has thrown my studies off course.
Maybe May will be better. May-be.
* The Language Geek points out a lot of Russian material at the Princeton website. If you're learning Russian or plan to, check it out.
* I've found myself at the earworms site several times looking at Rapid Chinese. Last nitght, I bit the bullet and bought through audible.com. Love the CD, hated the experience. First I made sure iTunes was working (I use MusicMatch Jukebox) so I wouldn't have to fuss with audible's downloader. Then it made me download it anyway. Then I had to use iTunes anyway to burn the CD, since I couldn't get the permissions to work anyplace else. Bottom line: in the future, it shouldn't be too difficult to get material through audible.com, burn it on CD, etc. But the process was another reminder of why folks doing the DRM content management thing are as much a bane for everyday users as they are a joke to those truly interested in pirating. earworms makes a nice product, and it's nice that audible makes it available, but the nonsense involved in getting these things set up suggests that they think of us as underpaid employees liable to raid the storehouse, not paying customers.
* On the upside, Rapid Chinese is a delightful product. I need to get a Rapid Program for a language I haven't studied, because I don't know if it works, or just does a nice job reinforcing. But I do wish there were a Rapid Korean right about now.
* Korean is a rough slog. As I look toward the end of the six-week challenge, there is no doubt that this is a language that has knocked me on my patootie like no other since Sanskrit. But I'm beginning to like it, and to see its reason.
* Resolutions: April was not a good month for the resolutions. Spanish and Italian slipped my attention for the most part. German slipped off my radar screen altogether. While I continued listening to Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Uzbek music, active study was nil. On the other hand, Mandarin keeps pulling me back, and the six-week challenge caused me to set my sights evermore to the East. I love the crack (which I first ran across in Rushdie's Ground Beneath Her Feet) about disorientation as the loss of the East - which it is, literally, for sailors who can't figure out which way precisely is east as they navigate by the stars. In my case, though, it's finding the East again which has thrown my studies off course.
Maybe May will be better. May-be.
1 Comments:
I checked out the Rapid Language thing, and I must say... I hate it. I don't think I could ever use that actively. To each their own, though!
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