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I’ve signed up for HSKK!

After 38 days of every day revision with Memrise, I feel like I’m finally all caught up with Unit 1 and can now move onto revision of Unit 2 🙂

Last week I was pretty good with Korean – I had 2 language exchange calls, wrote a small text in my notebook, and got through Unit 1 of this book, revised 8 grammar patterns and did a test at the end of the unit, which was very hard, but I got just 2 questions wrong (out of 12), so I feel pretty good about it!

However, yesterday I did 2 crazy things which I was not planning to do – I signed for HSKK, the oral Chinese speaking test, intermediate level. I checked mock tests and they seemed quite manageable, however, as I started reading more about the test I got a little bit more intimated, but I don’t wanna turn back, I want to have a go! Even if I fail, there’s another one in June and the test fee is only 20 euros (unlike English certificates, which can cost from 200 to 300 euros). So now I have to go through the HSK 3 and HSK 4 vocab, as well as schedule some practice sessions. Fun, fun fun!

I think I mentioned here a few times that my Chinesepod subscription ended last week and I was not planning on renewing it in order to save money. However, yesterday I got a newsletter from Du Chinese with a very good discount thanks to Chinese New Year, so I couldn’t resist and bought a one year subscription 🙂 Du Chinese is a website mostly for learning how to read Chinese characters, and even though one year ago I kept saying that reading characters is not for me, I feel like I can finally start working on it. Actually, I really want to learn to read and write in Chinese and I hope that with DuChinese I will be able to get a little closer to that goal.

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So… how many languages do you speak?

There is no more confusing question that this one for anyone who is multi-lingual.

The thing is, I speak freely and fluently just 3 languages – English, Russian and Slovene. I don’t have to think what I want to say in these languages, the words come to my mind naturally and I can feel super relaxed while conversing in these languages.

Then come the rest of the languages in which I can speak, but with more difficulty – Italian, Spanish, Korean, and recently Chinese. To be honest, I keep mixing Italian and Spanish, so in order to get myself in the “flow” of either of these I need to speak for like one hour straight and then the fluency comes back to me, I get in the “flow” and stop thinking which word should I use – “fare” or “hacer” and so on. Korean and Chinese – well, they are extremely difficult languages, and I often feel difficulty expressing myself on some topics even after weeks and months of studying – some things are easier, some things are harder. I can speak them, I can easily hold conversation about myself, my life, general topics, but I’m definitely not fluent.

I also leave Indonesian out – I only finished A1 and know just some super basic stuff, so I can’t even say I can speak it, because what I can do for now in this language is super limited.

And then there are passive languages – like Serbo-Croatian. I was exposed to it quite a lot through my dad, who speaks it well, so I understand almost everything, I can read subtitles if we’re watching a movie in a language I don’t know. But I can’t speak it. It is not an active language for me, it is a passive one.

So how do I answer to the question – “so, how many languages do you speak?” Do I say 3 because these are my most fluent ones? Do I say 7? Or do I say 8 and include Serbo-Croatian (which I can’t really speak?)

And this is why I always get confused what would be the best reply when I get this question 🙂

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Chinesepod

So my Chinesepod subscription is expiring in middle February, and few weeks ago I decided that I need to make a good use of it before it expires. Since then I’ve been crunching their podcasts on a pace of 2-3 lessons a day (and they are usually 15 minutes long). The upside – I practice listening more and learn lots of new vocabulary. The downside is the vocabulary itself, since I’m such a hoarder I kept adding all the new words to my word lists, so now I have almost new 200 words added to my Memrise course just in a space of a couple of weeks and I have no idea how many more will I add until February. Being overwhelmed by lots of new vocab was what hindered my Korean progress, but now I try to not get anxious about it and just keep pushing forward. Challenge accepted 🙂

I do feel kind of guilty for not using Chinesepod much during the year and just waking up to it now, but to be honest until we took HSK 2 exam end of October our level was too low to take advantage of more interesting intermediate and pre-intermediate levels, and these levels are much more enjoyable than the beginner ones. So now that I finally came to like it I am faced with the time pressure of using it as much as possible until February 🙂 But now that I think of it – I will probably have to extend it if I want to try to have a go at their advanced levels after finishing Intermediate ones, but let’s see how it goes 🙂

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Chinese vs Korean

Yesterday I had a call with my Korean friend Tiffany to practice Korean. It went quite well, however, I noticed something interesting – I wanted to use Chinese grammar to say “I have a friend” – In chinese it is “I – there is – one – piece – friend” with a counter word, but in Korean the word order is totally different, the verb goes at the end and there is not counter word – it is just “I – friend – there is”. I got so confused for a moment, but luckily I remembered the correct way quickly.

It got me thinking that now my Chinese is starting to overpower Korean and that probably I should practice Korean more or maybe even come back to Korean books and start learning again, because right now I’m just keeping it in maintenance mode. I also thought how I’m still not satisfied with my Korean. I can talk in Korean non-stop for one hour, but it’s not fluent, I have to think what I’m going to say, sometimes I get stuck. In other words, it’s far from perfect.

So last night I was again dreaming of going to Korea to learn the language properly. I even started checking out different visa options etc. We’re in the middle of the pandemic so of course it’s not gonna happen any time soon, but we all have dreams and aspirations, and this is one of mine. However, as soon as I start to think about it the second voice chimes in: “and what about Mandarin? You have to take it to fluency as well!” and I just get overwhelmed 🙂

But I think that luckily I’m still young and with the right planning and cooperation from my hubby we might just be able to pull it off 😉