01 Mar 2016
Wow the days have flown past, almost as quick as the guilt has grown for not blogging. I had tonsillitis about a week back, which knocked me out for a few days - but having jumped right back into my Anki deck, I’ve been able to remember most and it continues to grow, with there being about 225+ cards in total at the moment - mostly being vocabularly in the form of nouns and verbs.
I continue to work through the MangoLanguage course, which takes up the bulk of my daily learning time. I’ve continued to exchange voice notes with my cousin who has been incredibly supportive - getting me back in gear during those moments where it dawns on me just how much more work it will take to reach even a conversational level. What has become apparent, is that the minute I step away from the comfort of the Mango prepared sentences, I struggle to form my own, and so I’m going to put more time daily into constructing sentences.
I’ve made a start on a Malayalam Resources page, where I’m curating a list of the best resources I’ve come across on the journey. There’s very little out there, which makes stumbling across a valuable resource all the more difficult. I won’t be including a bunch of poor resources I’ve purchases such as this book, which are either of terrible print quality, poorly paced, little more than a confusing reference, and hilarious in it’s claims of being able to get you comfortable with the language in a number of days. With me as your trusty geinea pig, you can separate the wheat from the chaff and move all the faster for it.
In a previous blog post I tried to remind you all of the hugely beneficial material that can be found on YouTube - and I still hold that belief, but I’ve quickly discovered that the short Malayalam films available are far from the best which the notable industry has to offer. I enjoyed watching Bangalore Days, and although understanding only a word or two per sentence - the expressive acting and music-video like filming made it more than possible to keep up with the plot. The music here is great too - just don’t play it on the commute unless you have the strength to hold yourself from breaking into dance.