De volta à ativa

Olá pessoal!!

Não posso nem pedir desculpas pelo sumiço pois eu simplesmente abandonei o blog por anos.
Percebi o quão difícil é manter um blog por anos e continuar escrevendo tópicos relevantes e interessantes. Porém, em relação a línguas finalmente consegui me organizar a fim de estudar vários idiomas numa mesma plataforma.

No momento estou estudando 5 idiomas ao mesmo tempo: chinês, coreano, sueco, francês e holandês...


Se conseguir disciplina o suficiente para continuar escrevendo estarei compartilhando...

Até a próxima!!

Hey folksl! 여러분 안녕 하십니까?

As you can see I just can't study ONLY one language at a time.
Specially when it comes to Korean I think it's a good idea to start studying again since I first started learning this interesting language back in 1998.

Since I know Japanese, which also belongs to the ALTAIC languages along with Korean, things get much easier because I'm already used to the SOV (Subject + object + verb) structure and also due to the fact that Chinese characters aren't used in Korean (at least one doesn't have to know 2000 characters to learn the language well as it is the case with Japanese).

In order to illustrate things better here comes the Korean alphabet:



14 consonants:

ㄱ(k,g) ㄴ(n) ㄷ(t,d) ㄹ(r,l) ㅁ(m) ㅂ(p,b) ㅅ(s) ㅇ(ng, vowel marker) ㅈ(j) ㅊ(ch) ㅋ(aspirated k ) ㅌ(aspirated t ) ㅍ(aspirated p) ㅎ(h)

10 vowels:

ㅏ(a) ㅑ(ya) ㅓ(ɔ) ㅕ(iɔ) ㅗ(o) ㅛ(io) ㅜ(u) ㅠ(yu) ㅡ(ɯ) ㅣ(i)


The simple fact of knowing these letters will help you reading a lot of things in Korean. As far as I know I only say Chinese characters when I went to Pusan, which is written like 釜山 but can also be written like 부산.


I also take this opportunity to introduce you books that helped me learning Korean.






Cheers!! 감사합니다!

Taking French to the next level

Ça va? How are you?
As you might already know I'm working on my French in order to make it fluent so that I can work using it but lack motivation since I live in Japan and have nobody to talk in French. Due to that I decided to prepare myself for the DELF certificate, which will certify my French isn't just "ok", rather that it is accepted internationally.

The book I'm using right now is as follows:



It's an excellent book for consolidating one's grammatical knowledge in French and has the keys for all exercises, which will allow you to check your progress.


Au revoir!!

Studying Chinese?

大家好！Hi everyone!! These days I've been really motivated to study Chinese and have heard Chinese Pod almost everyday but feel like I need some grammar background to consolidate what I have learned. Having said that I'd like to introduce you to books I've studied recently:



After studying Chinese for 2 full years (1 year in 1993 and another in 1998) I realized I had difficulties forming basic sentences and needed an extra boost to understand the structure better. This grammar book has clear explanations and tons of examples that help the student to take his Chinese to the next level!!!


Since speaking a language can't be based ONLY on the knowledge of grammar, one must also develop his/her listening skills and this book helped me raise the bar when it comes to listening. However, since it has a vast vocabulary per lesson it would be advisable to read the book more than once, which I intend to do soon!!!

再见 (zaijian)! See ya!!

Material suggestions for studying Dutch

Hoe gaat het met u? (How are you? in Dutch)
I don't know if I have already posted about this but I'm working hard on My Dutch in order to read Anne Frank's diary in Dutch since I first read it in German.

I first studied Dutch in 1998 before I entered the graduate school of Osaka University and used the following book:


It's a very concise textbook with a good explanation of the grammar in addition to tons of examples and texts. I'm done more than half of the book and could already risk reading some book in Dutch.



However, studying a language without a good dictionary is like running without warming up first. In other words, you will stop in the middle of your practise. This dictionary is pretty reliable and is Dutch-English English-Dutch so it will help you get to a level where you will be able to use a monolingual Dutch dictionary.

Anyway, in the next posting I'll be sharing about books for studying Chinese!!

Dank u wel en tot ziens!!! Thanks and catch you later!!!

Sorry for the absence

Hey folks!! I really apologize for not posting for a long time but life in Japan can be really busy. Also, I have decided I'll stop being greedy and will dedicate to only 3 languages (French, Dutch and Chinese) until I can get a satisfactory result.
From these 3 I have only studied 2 (Chinese and Dutch) because I have 2 goals for this year:
1) To be able to pass a certificate in Chinese, which can be the HSK （汉语水平考试）or any other certificate offered in Japan.
2) To read Anne Frank's diary (Het AchterHuis), which was the main motivation for me to start studying Dutch back in 1998.
As for French, after listening to it for many hours on the train on my way to work I'm capable of listening well and conversing to people but still lots of things to work on the written part. Well, as the Japanese proverb says: If you want to get the baby tiger, you should enter the tiger's den!!「虎穴に入らずんば、虎児を得ず」.
Oh yes, about studying Chinese I'm getting some good results from listening to Chinese Pod, which has been boosting my listening skills in addition to help me remembering what I started learning in 1993 and then again in 1998. I believe that CONSISTENCY leads to fluency and must therefore concentrate as much as I can.
Anyway, it's almost 3 am and I think I'd better take a nap!!!

Tot ziens 再见 Au revoir おやすみなさい　

I started studying Russian again!!

Last week I said I had started studying Polish, Swedish and Finnish but yesterday I felt an unbearable DRIVE to study Russian again as I saw my book collection from the publisher 白水社 (Hakusuisha), which publishes language manuals in languages as rare as Vietnamese, Icelandic, Ainu (Native Japanese language) and Croatian.

In addition to the Japanese textbook I also found the book "Russian in exercises":


and "Oxford Russian Dictionary":

I also found my Russian-Japanese dictionary (русско-японский словарь), which has about 260.000 words and TONS of examples. I guess I won't need a Russian dictionary for a while.

Well, after almost ten years without studying Russian I got lots of catch up to do so
до свидониа!