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Total Annihilation Challenge 2010 anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-03, 13:34
by '''
From now on this thread is dedicated to discussion on TAC 2010, there is a new thread for generalised TAC discussion but don't take it too seriously. Nonetheless, next year we won't use this thread any more so anything you want considered for next year or the year after put in the TOTAL ANNIHILATION CHALLENGE INTRODUCTION thread. thankyou.

GENERAL TAC INFO

As some of you may know (and I recently learned) HTLAL has an annual total annihilation challenge whereby forumites sign up and have exactly one year to learn whichever languages they wish (preferably two or more). Contestants keep logs and at the end of the year, the person who has acheived the most, or overcome the most or hardest boundaries, but not necessarily the person who learns to speak all their chosen languages to the highest level, wins. The victory is only nominal of course but the competitive atmosphere helps keep people on track, since one year is a long commitment to keep.

Obviously we could all go to HTLAL and do the challenge there, but since I don't like that place anymore and many people here don't have accounts over there, I was thinking we could start our own TAC.

I know it's short notice but if we get at least half a dozen willing participants (you can do the challenge simultaniously here and there) settled and sorted by new year's, we could run the contest from 2010/01/01 00:00:00 to 2010/12/31 24:00:00 giving us one callendar year (or until 2011/01/01 6:10:48 for one solar year).

The idea is simply to set yourself some goals and go for it for one year, tracking your progress as you go. It doesn't matter what you already know, what you acheive or how you acheive it, the important thing is that it keeps you motivated for a year (which for the langwhores among us would be unprecedented) by the end of which you should see some decent results.

TAC 2010 Participants list

EDIT: using Nequitan's/Nendur's/my lists cos i'm lazy

List of languages by number of participants:
[flag]fi[/flag] Finnish 11
[flag]de[/flag] German 11
[flag]ja[/flag] Japanese 11

[flag]es[/flag] Spanish 10

[flag]nl[/flag] Dutch 9

[flag]is[/flag] Icelandic 7
[flag]zh[/flag] Mandarin 7
[flag]fa[/flag] Persian 7

[flag]pt[/flag] Portuguese 6

[flag]fr[/flag] French 5
[flag]sv[/flag] Swedish 5

[flag]ar[/flag] Arabic 4
[flag]he[/flag] Hebrew 4
[flag]hi[/flag] Hindi 4
[flag]ru[/flag] Russian 4
[flag]ko[/flag] Korean 4

[flag]ga[/flag] Irish 3
[flag]la[/flag] Latin 3
[flag]no[/flag] Norwegian 3
[flag]el[/flag] Modern Greek 3

[flag]ain[/flag] Ainu 2
[flag]grc[/flag] Ancient Greek 2
[flag]en[/flag] English 2
[flag]eo[/flag] Esperanto 2
[flag]et[/flag] Estonian 2
[flag]it[/flag] Italian 2
[flag]mi[/flag] Maori 2

[flag]sr[/flag] Serbian 2
[flag]tr[/flag] Turkish 2

[flag]af[/flag] Afrikaans 1
[flag]hy[/flag] Armenian 1
[flag]bn[/flag] Bengali 1
[flag]bg[/flag] Bulgarian 1
[flag]ca[/flag] Catalan 1
[flag]noflag[/flag] Classical Maya 1
[flag]cs[/flag] Czech 1
[flag]da[/flag] Danish 1
[flag]fr[/flag] French - Colloquial 1
[flag]noflag[/flag] Gothic 1
[flag]hu[/flag] Hungarian 1
[flag]id[/flag] Indonesian 1
[flag]lv[/flag] Latvian 1
[flag]lt[/flag]Lithuanian 1
[flag]noflag[/flag] Mirandese 1
[flag]noflag[/flag] Old Norse 1
[flag]noflag[/flag] Quenya 1
[flag]ro[/flag] Romanian 1
[flag]bs[/flag][flag]sr[/flag][flag]hr[/flag]Serbo-Croatian 1
[flag]noflag[/flag] Solresol 1
[flag]es[/flag] Spanish dialectology 1
[flag]tl[/flag] Tagalog 1
[flag]ta[/flag] Tamil 1
[flag]th[/flag] Thai 1
[flag]ug[/flag] Uyghur
[flag]yi[/flag] Yiddish 1

List of current participants and their respective languages:
''': ar de fa fi it nl
avi_87: de fr sr sv
Bizet: de nl
bryonj2255 & Sean of the Dead: grc lv nl no tr
Byzantophile: grc
Caius: ar ja
ChanahEmiliania: pt cat
csjc: fi fr is nl sv
culúrien: es de
Danial: fi id ja nl no th zh
Eginhard: ain ga
Élan: fa ug
etoile: el es ja ko
Fiona V.: es nl ru
frugalmeister: hi
hashi: et is mi
Hassan Zia: fa
ILuvEire: fi he pt
Jayan: da de fi
Jaybee: de he fa
Karavinka: Gothic is zh jp
Kenny: bg es la nl
Kuba: fa ga he hy yi
Lada: de tr
lichtrausch: ja
linguaholic: cs
lumiel: en et ja la
Lundgren: is zh
Meera: bn fa hi ta
Mefi: ru ge es
Merlin: fi hu is
mikael: de es fr
Milootis10: ja ko zh
Narbleh: fr-col eo es
Nendûr: fi grc ko
phaed: fr de
Polarkreis: sw fi Mirandese
Renaçido: ar es-dialects myn-classic zh
Riptide: es li ro tl
sergiolopes: de el
Smitty: hi zh
Stawrberry: fi he pt
Struthiomimus: ar ja solresol
Taydr: fi ja mi
TheKickInside: fa hi nl pt
tomh: is sv
Trapy: ain sr zh
Veqq: af de es fr ga hbs la nl no ru sv quenya
Vortex: ru pt
Weerwolf en
yersi: es fr it ja ko pt
邪悪歌: fi is ja

Notes:
1. "Arabic" has been assumed to be Modern Standard Arabic.
2. Icelandic and Old Norse are treated as the same language.
3. "Greek" has been assumed to be Modern Greek.
4.The language codes are neither Unilang's nor ISO's, but just the first three letters of the language in English, except for Latin which is lati and Latvian which is latv.
5. ANC=ancient, COL=colloquial, DIAL=dialects.


Please tell me if there are any mistakes.

This list was updated on 2010/1/2 14:30:?? GMT .

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-03, 15:30
by Caius
I'm down.

I'll be tracking

-Arabic
-Japanese

Will we have a thread for logs? Monthly meetings via skype, IRC? Let's get some details, Maggy.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-03, 16:12
by '''
Not everyone's on the skype, the way they did it in HTLAL is each user starts their own thread usually titled with their name, TAC2010 and the languages, and if we're lucky we can get a forum for it, but keep your log within a single thread (lang specific practice threads don't count). Otherwise someone coudl explain this blog thing to me and how it differs from a thread and we coudl try that.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-03, 16:52
by linguaholic
Like the idea! I don't know for certain yet, but I think I'd be in. And having a seperate forum or using the blogs sounds like a good idea to me.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-03, 17:38
by Kenny
Seems like a pretty decent idea, count me in. :) Not sure about which language(s) to do though.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-03, 18:01
by '''
ja I have the same problem but we'd best hurry if we're to start by new year's

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-03, 22:27
by densou
''' wrote:total annihilation challenge


at the first glance, I thought it was a videogame contest. (TA was a well-known RTS -Real Time Strategy- Pc Game)

pardon

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 7:48
by '''
too late, you posted, now you have to join.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 8:03
by Karavinka
I'm In, though just one language.

- Old Norse/Icelandic

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 9:32
by csjc
Karavinka wrote:I'm In, though just one language.

- Old Norse/Icelandic


:D

I'm in for Dutch.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 17:39
by Veqq
I'm doing the one on HTLAL for... Dutch, German, Russian, Swedish, Indonesian and Spanish. Though Mainly the first 3 for now (and Spanish but that is different,tis for school,) then at some point I will get more time to do them all, though on the weekends I will still do a little Indonesian and Swedish.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 17:53
by Æxylis
I think this'd be fun...
I'm not sure exactly where to post progress.
I think I'd like to go with Swedish and Arabic (MSA)
I'm not too worried about Japanese at this point because I know it to a decent degree already and I mainly use it for reading video games and whatnot... It's just kind of more of a tool for personal interest moreso than a language I'm actually interested in studying in depth.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 19:13
by '''
Ok guys, for the challenge itself, only list those langs you're going to really commit to and cover ground in. By all means study whichever languages you want on the side, but the challenge is all about really working on your langs for a year and trying to make serious progress, if you're not fully into a language it probably wouldn't be worth reporting on your progress every few weeks. I'll be doing 4 langs at uni during the comming year but I probably won't do most of them for the challenge (still working away at that shortlist, oh how promiscuous I am). Don't do too many either, if you can keep on track with 10 then go for it but the first time it happened on HTLAL apparently all but 1 person just dropped out, so really do something you think you can honestly go with for a whole calendar year (it's ok if you drop some later on if they're weighing you down)

So, as it stands, we have:
myself, Caius, Kenny, karavinkan, csjc, and 邪悪歌 down as definites, plus veqq who will be doing it on HTLAL and I hope here as well. Linguaholic and Jaybee are maybes. In either case that's 6-9 people which I feel is enough so we're definitely going ahead (yay, I was so nervous).


As for progress reports, the idea is you start a thread, for instance, titled:

TAC 2009 ''' (optionally insert langs here)

as I plan to do soon (once I pick my langs) to get the ball rolling. start off your thread by telling us what languages you're going to do, maybe why, how much time you can spend on them, how much you already know, how you plan to learn (school, tutor, family, friends, internets, etc), then what you hope to acheive. When you run, you always run toward something never away. Same applies here, when you learn you should focus more on achieving your goals than putting space between you and ignorance. As often as you feel is relevant, come onto your thread and make another post detailing what you did, what you learned, any acheivements, or just anything you feel is relevant/want to. Others can drop in and give criticisms or encouragement etc but the important thing is that you keep track of your progress.

Make your threads (one per participant) in general language forum and if we're lucky we can get a mod to make us a new forum for it.

Once again, I know it's short notice but I have a fetish for synchronising things with other things, so the challenge will officially begin at 24:00:00 (local time) on the 31/12 (i.e. the midnight where we drink champagne and celebrate the new year) and ends the same time in 365 days. For the langwhores in here this counts as your new year's resolution. It doesn't really matter when you start or finish since a few minutes copared to a year is nothing, it's just there to keep the competitive atmosphere, and so that people can't jump in half way through.

Since we only have 26 days and 18 hrs (my time, GMT +11) before the learnign really begins, let's try and crash uz's servers as we hunt for materials. Hopefully as soon as the contest starts you shoudl have a rough plan and some books (or for my generation, websites) ready.

Also, if this proves to be a success, then the TAC 2011 will begin the moment TAC 2010 ends, so it's pretty back to back. If you plan to do the next year's one be prepared before 2010 officially ends. In case people want to participate but can't make a year long commitment, I was thinking we might also try a "partial annihilation challenge" running from season to season (European seasons, as defined by the first of every third month) or just 90 days, but whatever. We'll see how we go.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 22:40
by csjc
I'll make my own thread in a moment, but I should note also that I'll add Swedish and Finnish to the list, as I plan to study those, too, consistently in the coming year.

Can't wait. :D

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 22:48
by Fiona S.
I'm in with Dutch, Spanish and Russian for sure.

I have a thread on HTLAL but I'll make one here with the same updates. I've already started mine, but if you want you don't have to count my updates till the 1st. :P

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 22:58
by Stawrberry
I'm in for Portuguese and Hebrew. :)

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-04, 23:33
by ILuvEire
Could you put me down? I definitely want to participate, but I haven't decided my languages yet hehe.

EDIT: Okay, I've made my decision, but as I understand it, we've got until January 1st to give our final choices, right? Well anyway, I'm down for Hebrew, Mandarin, and Portuguese. Dankies :)

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-05, 3:14
by Mikael
I'm in for Hebrew and German. I'll make a thread toward the end of the month.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-05, 4:07
by Bubulus
Oh God, this sounds so awesome. I'll try Classical Maya (or whatever you call that Ch’olti’-like language which commonly appears in inscriptions) Godbless it.

Re: Total Annihilation Challenge anyone?

Posted: 2009-12-05, 4:12
by hashi
Does it count if we're already learning the language? I might like to give it a try with the following:

- German
- Estonian
- Finnish

But I guess I have a month to decide?