I realize that I need not write the English meaning alongside the sentences/phrases/words or even letters that I copy down. It's an i+1 question, you see. If I choose text which I have a handle on, text that is guessable, then I'm only wasting time (on English) if I also write the meaning.
So from today on, I shall never do so. The corollary, of course, is that I should never copy completely unknown - nor completely known - language samples.
I got side-tracked on the Internet today, as one does. I ended up searching for Herge books I read at the age of 6, in Holland. The Tintin ones are easy to find. But I knew he'd done a few books with other characters.
Eventually I hunted them down. I was able to download them from the Internet Archive (see link below). They are in French, so I'll enjoy them in that language.
Internet Archive
Watching the 5th season of Prison Break, I was pleasantly surprised that I could read the name of one of its characters in Arabic. Gratifying, that.
I've added a little something extra to my French repertoire - a movie. On Youtube I discovered by chance the 1931 film: Bad Sister. with Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogarde, etc.
I added it to my French channel. The movie is in English, but it has French subtitles. Something to spice up my regular fare!
I realized recently that my Russian needs a little boost.
I'm happy with the alphabet. I've a ton of books for when I get to the intermediate level. However, I'm not happy (never have been) with the step-by-step approach of each and every 'how-to' guide. And to tell the truth, the stuff that I have is a little stodgy.
And so I did an online search to see what else I could find, and I came across some resources - Sherlock Holmes makes a reappearance! - prepared by Kristina Malidovskaya from Boost your Russian.
In line with my principle of using a number of various approaches, I believe that I'll follow some of her advice. I especially like the look of the simple news stories that I saw.
I'll explore Kristina's Youtube channel to start with. It's slick, certainly, but it appears natural too. It's bound to bring my Russian to life!
There's a place for Memrise. For several languages, I need to become familiar with different alphabets and/or writing systems. And so for Greek, Korean, Russian, Hindi, Taiwanese, and Burmese, I've made a start on various courses.
I've also revived an English group I'd once started for my Level 2 English students. I'm inviting them to give it a go.
(For some reason, Memrise doesn't load on my old computer.)
It would be a shame if I didn't include Afrikaans in my swag-bag, the reason being that I can already make out much of the meaning, as I discovered when I dipped into Trekkerswee and listened to the trailer of Dis Ek Anna. And so without any further ado . . .
(Found a modest source of Afrikaans literature here.)
I managed to down load a large Turkish Language Learning Pack from the Internet, so it would be a shame if I didn't dabble just a little. And so I'll read through Lewis V. Thomas's book. See how far I get.
I once had the idea of reading 200 books simultaneously, a page at a time from each, planning and pacing in order to complete the last page of every book all on the same day, thereby claiming some sort of world record.
I could still do that.
And wouldn't it be cool if every book was in a different language?
I guess I really ought to round off my current batch of languages, 25 in all (26 if you include English), with Gilbertese/Kiribati. After all, three of my children are half I-Kiribati.
The above-illustrated resource lives online here. I'll read through the chapters to activate 10 years' worth of previous exposure.
No, I haven't started Farsi yet. But I'm greatly tempted. First, because half of the members of my class speak it. Second, because of what I read online just now:
No, they are completely different, and not even related. (Persian is Indo-European, like English, French and German; Arabic is Semitic, like Hebrew). They are written with the same alphabet, yes. English and Italian are written with the same alphabet; they are still very different languages.
And also:
In fact, Farsi is not only in a separate language group from Arabic but it's also in a separate language family. Arabic is in the Afro-Asiatic family while Farsi is in the Indo-European family. Coincidentally, Portuguese is also in the Indo-European language family, but it also differs from Farsi in many ways.
