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Small Expectations

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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5158 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 313 of 431
19 March 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged 
Tixhiidon, I know could browse back, so I hope you don't mind if I ask here: Which was your first text/reading resource for Georgian?
1 person has voted this message useful



TixhiiDon
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Japan
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Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian
Studies: Georgian

 
 Message 314 of 431
19 March 2012 at 11:32pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
Tixhiidon, I know could browse back, so I hope you don't mind if I
ask here: Which was your first text/reading resource for Georgian?


Hi Expugnator. The first Georgian texts I read were the big collection of dialogues in
Georgian Language and Culture: A Continuing Course, by Kiziria and Aronson, and a short
novel by David Turashvili called ჯინსების თაობა (Jeans Generation), which I read side
by side with its English translation, called "Flight from USSR".

The dialogues are really fantastic. There are about 100 pages of them, and they tell
the story of a guy who goes to live in Tbilisi for a year. Unfortunately, the book is
difficult to get hold of and quite expensive, but it would be possible to download only
the part including the dialogues from Uz Translations, which of course is not strictly
legal, so I'm not recommending that, but just saying it's possible......

The novel by Turashvili is available in Georgian from a site called
fromrussia.com, and the English translation is
available from Prospero's Books, a foreign
language bookstore in Tbilisi. So it's all a bit complicated and costs a lot of money
in postage, but sadly we Kartvelologists don't have much choice in the matter.

It's also possible to buy a couple of novels by a writer called Nodar Dumbadze in
Georgian from fromrussia.com and in English from Amazon. So this would be the cheapest
option! However, his writing is quite difficult to understand so it's hard work even
with the translation.

EDIT: Just remembered. Another great reading source is the
რადიო თავისუფლება website. Lots of
interesting articles on there, often with accompanying audio that is almost identical
to the text, so you can do a kind of L-R exercise. Also some nice short videos showing
people giving their opinions on various issues on the streets of Tbilisi.

Edited by TixhiiDon on 19 March 2012 at 11:51pm

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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5158 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 315 of 431
20 March 2012 at 12:25am | IP Logged 
I do have Continuing Course from Kiziria and Aronson, but since they refer so often to Aronson's grammar, I think I'll start with the newspaper reader. I planned to use the Continuing Course as an intermediate textbook, not only as a reader. I do like the dialogues!

Radio Tavisupebla is bookmarked! I think that once going past the newspaper reader, I won't have much trouble understanding their texts.

Since I don't have means of getting a specific novel, I'll stick to what I could find around there, but this after I'm using to reading news articles.
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zecchino1991
Senior Member
United States
facebook.com/amyybur
Joined 5250 days ago

778 posts - 885 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian

 
 Message 316 of 431
20 March 2012 at 1:39am | IP Logged 
TixhiiDon wrote:
Kartvelologists

I love that!

By the way, thanks for all the info, it really helps me. There are a lot more resources
than I thought for Georgian...
1 person has voted this message useful



TixhiiDon
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 5456 days ago

772 posts - 1474 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian
Studies: Georgian

 
 Message 317 of 431
09 April 2012 at 1:09am | IP Logged 
Just grabbing ten minutes of peace in my suddenly ridiculously busy life to write a quick update. The reason
for said ridiculous busyness, by the way, is that my family are here from the UK for a visit. They are leaving
on Sunday, but before then, on Thursday morning, to be precise, my life will be completely upturned by the
arrival of my new puppy Juno. I'm not sure how my Georgian will fit into this new regime at Chez Tixhiidon,
but I certainly don't intend to abandon it completely.

The quick update is to inform Zecchino and Expugnator and anyone else who might be interested that
suddenly a whole new bunch of Georgian and Georgia-related apps have turned up at the Apple app store.
Most are not free, but all are very cheap.

First is a Georgian keyboard app called iGeorgian, which, despite having a weird keyboard layout, will remain
useful until the powers-that-be at Apple HQ realize that there is another Georgia besides the one that
contains Atlanta and that this other Georgia has its own alphabet and even a few iPhone and iPad users.

A Georgian cookbook in English called, rather unimaginatively, Georgian recipes, is quite nice too, but
doesn't hold a candle to Please to the Table (tried to do a link and it didn't work, so look it up on Amazon),
which is without question the greatest Russian/Soviet cookbook ever created.

Another great book, and ideal, I think, for Georgian learners needing a few simple texts to start reading native
materials, is Lado Asatiani, about the short-lived but much-loved (apparently - i hadn't actually heard of him
until i bought the app yesterday) Georgian poet. There is a short biography, the poems themselves, and a
collection of letters. I'm not a huge poetry fan, but beggars and Georgian learners can't be choosers, and so
far it looks pretty good.

This being Georgia, there were also a few collections of Orthodox Christian prayers, but I'll leave those for
people so-inclined.

And one warning. There is a dictionary on there called, uh, Dictionary. And it's only English-Georgian, so not
a great deal of use to the Georgian learner.

I'll be back soon with a report on how little Juno has turned my life upside-down. Maybe I'll try to write it in
Georgian next time, just to persuade myself that I am still making a proper effort to learn this lovely language.

Edited by TixhiiDon on 09 April 2012 at 1:10am

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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5158 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 318 of 431
09 April 2012 at 9:48pm | IP Logged 
I've checked those apps now, thanks for the suggestions, Tixhiidon. I tried to find them "at the other side", if you apple users know what i mean, but nothing yet. I'll keep an eye for more language-related ones.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5158 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 319 of 431
10 April 2012 at 10:23pm | IP Logged 
Tixhiidon, when writing Georgian, do you do Georgian normal, cursive, ligated handwriting or do you write it as if it were printed letters?
1 person has voted this message useful



zecchino1991
Senior Member
United States
facebook.com/amyybur
Joined 5250 days ago

778 posts - 885 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian

 
 Message 320 of 431
10 April 2012 at 11:30pm | IP Logged 
Thank you so much for the suggestions! I got the poem one and the keyboard.

TixhiiDon wrote:
beggars and Georgian learners can't be choosers

I like that. :P


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