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Tarvos - TAC 2015 Pushkin/Scan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1321 of 1511 05 January 2015 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Vinferie og ekstrem kunst
A lot of Svorsk in there, but I managed in Norwegian. It's about how you resolve two thoughts that seem to be radically opposed in your head, and about how a TV series episode I saw mentioned it. It is funny. It's in Norwegian Bokmal btw @Sooniye: Tack för kommentaren :) Always very pleased to hear people read my things Edited by tarvos on 05 January 2015 at 1:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1322 of 1511 08 January 2015 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Jesuischarlie
Few things piss me off more than islamic extremists blowing people up. Don't read if you don't like reading my hatred. It's in French. Fitting. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4657 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 1323 of 1511 09 January 2015 at 6:51am | IP Logged | ||
Tu as parfaitement raison. C'est à ceux qui se sentent tellement offensés par des simples dessins d'apprendre à, comme on dit en anglais, "get over it!" On ne cède rien aux lâches qui détruiraient la liberté d'expression et les pays qui la revendiquent. Edited by tastyonions on 09 January 2015 at 7:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1324 of 1511 09 January 2015 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Merci tastyonions!
D'ailleurs j'ai corrigé quelques fautes grammaticales, qui apparaissaient à cause de ma monologue interne... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1325 of 1511 11 January 2015 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Как заполнить визовую анкету Китая
On how to fill out a visa application form for China, all in Russian! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1326 of 1511 13 January 2015 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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A Russian Retrospective: 3,5 Years of Study
A critical reflection using the engineering mentality Some 3,5 years ago I started learning Russian (3 years since I started this log). It's time for a look back at certain choices I have made during this process, and what I think about these choices. Certain choices were beneficial; certain choices were not. This blog entry is a retrospective analysis of my choices. We're going back to the fall of 2011, when I started my Russian journey, and signed up for an evening class in the Hague. This is the second step in my road to polyglottery (the first was laid in Brussels). This is the moment where I decided to learn a foreign language that I had no connection to, no personal feelings for and no knowledge about. I literally did not know a single Russian personally and I hadn't even ever heard a word of it spoken. I went in blind, a complete beginner, and started where everyone starts when they're not autodidacts: by taking a class. Moment 1: Classroom Education And that did not actually turn out as bad as I thought it would be. At that point, I had no idea what the culture and the people were like. I really got to ease myself into learning the language and build up confidence by showing I could do things the traditional way. At a certain point, however, I found myself doing the same thing I did in my school days, and that was move ahead. I did get frustrated with the lack of pace after a few months. Some might have given up. Some might have said classroom education is not for me. I'm bored. But I had a problem. The problem: I was going too fast for most people. I could handle more than they could at that point in time (this was often a feature of my language classes at school, where I was always leaps and bounds ahead of other students when it came to foreign languages - I don't know why that was. It may have had to do with the fact that I already had one squarely under my belt. It may have had to do with good memory. I don't know.) Problems need solutions, and I decided not to drop out, but to finish my course and add my own skills on top. I would be miles ahead at the end, but I could always move up a few levels or take a test and see how far I got. In the end, I decided to stop Russian formal education and moved on to French (eventually the same thing happened and I haven't taken any formal language education in the classroom style since. I've used tutoring, but that's personal and a different ballgame). And it worked. I got my Teach Yourself Russian and I worked through it on my own, and I got farther and farther ahead. Then I found this forum. But the key is: engineering mentality. I had a problem (group classes set a pace that is too slow) and I solved it (become my own boss and set a faster pace I'm comfortable with). It had results. Moment 2: The Decision To Find Penpals I credit this as the main thing I have done in my Russian learning and I will tell you why. I loved the grammar learning and reading about the Russian language and culture but I had no reality. I had to find friends, to meet people, to do things. I needed a bond with the people. I decided to find penpals and literally the first person I ever talked to in Russian on InterPals would later become the person that picked me up after a 50-hour train journey in Tomsk. One of the first few would be the one that lodged me. Several people have become my friends through the internet and in real life and Russian has become the main social language I use apart from English and Dutch (I speak it more often than French). Again, it shows a trend: if you have a problem (no personal connection), you need to solve it (find a personal connection with people). The amount of people I have exchanged messages with in Russian numbers in the tens, maybe the hundreds! I am sure that it's more than 50! Not all of those have been regular, but for regular people we're looking at 5-10 anyways. Over a longer period of time is definitely 10+. And keep in mind, I used to sit behind my computer with my dictionary trying to decode messages. I would not understand half a sentence (sometimes not the grammar, but usually also vocabulary) and I would use google translate to figure it out. And also keep in mind I might have searched for people locally. But I'm not the most outgoing person, so the internet thing was ideal and it worked. 70% of my Russian has been learned this way and it's my motivation to keep going. Moment 3: Ditching Grammar There's no getting round the fact that Russian cases and verbs can be a nightmare but at a certain point you need to ditch the textbooks and grammar approach. Especially in my first year, I spent a lot of time with the grammar and revising rules. In effect this was a great thing to do because I can dream the tables in my sleep and I also know why they are used. But grammar is not enough. I did have some vocabulary and context, but it wasn't enough - I needed more context. That was the point that I decided "enough is enough" and I put aside the grammar books. I recently bought a gigantic grammar in Dutch, but it's to check all the small details now that I can safely deal with most of the important aspects in Russian. Grammar is necessary, and in Russian you do have to put effort into this - but it's not the be all and end all. And for f**ks sake don't start with it! Vocabulary first. Moment 4: Pronunciation One thing I didn't do instantly but realised on time is that pronunciation is key, and I had a problem: I couldn't roll my rs. At all. I had tried when learning a bit of Romanian for a girlfriend and I couldn't and had been made fun of. So a few months in and my r still sounded like a Jewish Russian speaker. I had to change that. Eventually I asked my mother (who can roll her 's and is a speech therapist) how you did it, and because I work as a postman, I had loads of free walks to practice rolling my r. So I used to go around town merrily saying "krentenbrood" to myself 500000 times until I got the sound right. It took me two months, but after that I could pronounce it properly. And I still can't pronounce the r properly in маршрутка. I paid less attention to soft/hard consonants, but eventually I worked around that problem too. My Russian is much better now that I have given the pronunciation the time it deserves. Lesson learned: pronunciation is important. I have done pronunciation first in every language I have actively studied ever since, and I've also cleaned up my French. Moment 5: Reading This is the last decision, and it's been the one I've put off the longest - read more in Russian. At a certain point I could talk fine, I could function, and I understood what people were talking about when they spoke to me - but I couldn't read or understand complex things. This happened a few months ago and I've worked on my reading and listening since - and my vocabulary has improved immensely. That was the last real step I needed to become a confident and fluent speaker. All I had to do was find the right material to read and listen to. It took a while to understand that at higher levels reading, not speaking, is the crucial skill. I hope you find this post informative and that it inspires future learners of Russian on team Pushkin. Edited by tarvos on 14 January 2015 at 8:06pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 1327 of 1511 14 January 2015 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||
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It inspires even me :P
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 1328 of 1511 14 January 2015 at 10:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I think the idea of "speak from day 1" is subservient to the idea that you need
to solve your most immediate problems first. I speak sooner because it does two things: 1) it allows me to get out of the books and therefore feel like I am a human being in contact with other human beings, which for me is the key motivation to improve at the beginning and 2) if you don't know the alphabet/writing system or even if you simply have little vocabulary a fat lot of good reading is going to do you. You're not going to understand, so you're better off improving listening and speaking first. By training other skills a bit first you can lift a few pieces of the veil, which makes reading (especially extensive reading) much more enjoyable. I find intensive reading a very annoying process, and that's pretty much the point of textbooks for me. In essence it's all about concretizing abstract notions into approaches that translate to the real world. I do use theories but more in the sense that I use a theory that fits practice - I don't practice to fit theory. This has a downside - I can be sloppy, especially in the beginning, but that is not something that bothers me. Programmers put out programs when they work at a certain release date - you can always patch and bugfix later. That's how I approach languages as well. Edited by tarvos on 14 January 2015 at 10:56am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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