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Josquin’s TAC 2014 - Катюша, Celts, 旅立ち | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Irish) | Hungarian | Portuguese | Korean | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4836 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 161 of 227 08 August 2014 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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FRIDAY, 08 AUGUST 2014
I'm on holiday at my mother's right now, taking a break from my dissertation. I planned to do more studying and even registered for the 6WC, but there are a thousand distractions which keep me from doing anything serious. Last weekend, I was at a wedding in Northern Germany, yesterday, I was at the zoo, and the rest of the time I keep talking to my family. Additionally, I couldn't take all my books with me - otherwise my suitcase would have burst -, so I'm limited in my choice of resources. Português I have finished unit 5 in Portugiesisch mit System. I'm doing all the exercises now, because I really want to learn Portuguese. I haven't studied this diligently for a long time, because I mostly skip exercises or only do them orally. Also, I noticed I'm getting a better feel for pronunciation. Unit 6 deals with direct object pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and some idiomatic expressions. The main topic of the unit is doing groceries. Gaeilge I've made good progess in Teach Yourself Irish. I'm on unit 8 now, which deals with the prepositions "le" and "de", plural adjectives including lenition after masculine nouns with a slender final consonant, and the use of "cuid". In unit 7, I encountered the present habitual for the umpteenth time now, but I'm confident I can finally progress beyond this level. All in all, Teach Yourself is a well-designed course with a lot of useful grammar and vocabulary. However, there could be some more and/or better exercises. Well, theoretically, I could use Basic Irish for practising single grammar points, but unfortunately I don't have it with me right now. @Cristina: Thank you! Yes, wanderlust seems to be my constant companion. ;) @Liam: Go raibh maith agat! Mise freisin. Edited by Josquin on 08 August 2014 at 7:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4836 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 162 of 227 10 August 2014 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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SUNDAY, 10 AUGUST 2014
This has been a productive weekend, although it could have been more productive. I managed to study a good deal of languages yesterday and I decided to take up Korean! My Sunday was mainly spent searching for good study materials and making a study plan. For the details, see below! Русский As I'm still at my mother's, I don't have any Russian texts with me. I read some articles about the conflict in Ukraine on the website of Аргументы и факты and listened to some episodes of RussianPod101. I noticed the intermediate episodes were too easy although I might learn some vocabulary and idioms from them, so I listened to the so-called "advanced audio-blog". Nice texts but not very difficult either. The real challenge, however, is understanding years when they are read out at full-blown speed. Português I finished unit 6 in Portugiesisch mit System. Portuguese has an interesting way of using direct object pronouns, which are generally clitics, but can appear freely in negations, questions, and in combination with some adverbs. Also, verb forms ending in -r, -s, or -z lose this consonant and the enclitic pronoun changes its form as well. I haven't seen anything like this in my other Romance languages! 日本語 I don't have any Japanese materials with me either, so all I could do was listening to some episodes of JapanesePod101. The grammar section introduced potential verbs, so it was mainly repetition for me. There's always a lot of new vocabulary though. 한국어 So, I decided to take up Korean! I dabbled in this language some while ago and it has always been on my radar, but now I'm getting serious! Apparently, there aren't a lot of good textbooks out there, so - after doing some research - I decided to use the following approach: learn Hangeul with Korean From Zero, then go on with My Korean and Lextra Koreanisch, a German resource which isn't supposed to be great but okay. After having gotten a solid base in grammar and vocabulary, I will go on with Talk To Me In Korean. I decided not to make it my main resource, because I prefer a textbook for doing grammar and exercises. If I should get really serious about Korean, I might also get Elementary Korean, which seems to be thorough but dry. So far, I have started learning Hangeul and some basic expressions. 안녕히 계세요! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4836 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 163 of 227 11 August 2014 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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MONDAY, 11 AUGUST 2014
The holidays at my mother's are doing me good. In fact, all my enthusiasm for language learning has come back. Probably, the work on my dissertation, which usually occupies me, is enough brain work, so I don't have much mental energy left for extensive study sessions. Now that I'm on vacation, I could occupy myself with languages all day! Português I have worked through unit 7 in Portugiesisch mit System. I learnt how to give directions in Portuguese and how to use the verbs "subir", "descer", and "seguir". Additionally, I learnt how to form the imperative, the conjugation of "saber", several prepositions of location, the colours, and the plural of words in -ão and -l. Although the plural ending of a word which ends in -ão is unpredictable if you only know Portuguese, knowing Latin (or Spanish) comes in handy. Words which stem from a Latin word ending in -anus form the plural with -ãos, words with the Latin plural -ones have the Portuguese plural -ões, and words with the Latin plural -anes form the plural with -ães in Portuguese. Unterstanding grammatical phenomena through etymology is fun! 한국어 After going through some materials, I revised my strategy for learning Korean. I will use My Korean as main resource for the time being and maybe complement it with Elementary Korean. I didn't really like the structure and layout of Korean From Zero and I also cancelled my order of Lextra Koreanisch. I don't want to use too many resources in the beginning and, also, My Korean and Elementary Korean look much better than Lextra Koreanisch. Well, maybe I can use Korean From Zero later for grammar studies. I worked through unit 1 in My Korean, which consisted of basic greetings. I guess I will have to repeat the phrases until they really stick though. Hangeul are only taught in unit 2 (interesting approach), but I managed to cover a good deal of that as well. I basically know the consonants and most of the vowels, but I will have to repeat them and, most importantly, practise writing them. It's interesting that Japanese and Korean, while sharing many grammatical similarities, are very different in terms of native vocabulary and phonology. I'm really impressed by all the different vowels of Korean although some of them sound the same in modern speech. However, I already noticed some Chinese loanwords which also exist in Japanese, such as 선생 (先生: xiansheng, sensei, seonsaeng) or 대학 (大学: daxue, daigaku, daehak). I don't know yet to what level I'm going to study Korean, but I'll simply enjoy the journey. Maybe, I'll get back to Japanese after some time, but at the moment I'm happy comparing the two languages and getting a new perspective on East Asian languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4836 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 164 of 227 18 August 2014 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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MONDAY, 18 AUGUST 2014
I'm still at my mother's without any access to Russian and Japanese materials, so I have been concentrating on Portuguese, Irish, and Korean for the last few days. However, there were some events, such as my 30th birthday yesterday, which kept me from studying regularly. I will stay at my mother's until Saturday, then I'll attend another wedding in Northern Germany, and return to my home in Southern Germany on Sunday. Although it was a very nice vacation, it has been marred by some problems with my voice. Apparently, I strained it too much while singing, so now I have to be silent, drink tea, and hum gently in order to massage my vocal chords and get them back into shape. Pain in your larynx is definitely not fun, especially if you enjoy singing as much as I do. I hope to be able to sing again by the end of the week though. What has this got to do with language learning? Well, as I can't practise my singing right now, I have more time for studying the intricacies of Portuguese irregular verbs, the present habitual in Irish, and Korean pronunciation rules. Always look on the bright side of life! Português I have finished unit 8 in Portugiesisch mit System, which dealt with the present progressive (estar a + infinitive), a bunch of irregular verbs (dizer, dar, pôr, ver, vir), the meaning of "dever", adverbs, and the relative pronoun "que". Portuguese is still very pleasant to study and I have finally internalized the pronunciation, although some nasal diphtongs are still giving me a hard time. At least, I'm starting to close my a's, which I used to pronounce opened most of the time in the beginning. Gaeilge Tá Gaeilge liofa agam! Unfortunately not, but I'm making progress. I have reached unit 9 in Teach Yourself Irish, whose main topic is the notorious present habitual. It's not difficult, but I've seen it so many times now that I just can't see it any more. But I love TY, because it actually explains grammar and doesn't simply say: "You don't have to understand this right now. The rules are very complicated. You'll catch it up naturally, etc. etc. blah blah blah". So, for the first time, I'm actually learning the rules of the genitive case instead of hearing: "You don't need to know the rules for this, just learn some fixed phrases." Other than that, I bought myself Collins Easy Learning Irish Grammar, which is very neat and gives a good overview of the language. For uncomprehensible reasons, however, it omits verbal nouns and progressive tenses formed with them. If it had comprised them, it would be perfect! 한국어 I'm still working on Hangeul. I know most of the symbols by now, but reading Korean words is still rather difficult. While the minimalistic design of the letters is genius, it makes reading hard for a beginner like me. Especially the vowels are easy to confuse. Also, I started learning the pronunciation rules for Hangeul and while they're quite logical, they are nevertheless intricate, so it will probably take some time until I can read and pronounce everything correctly. For the time being, I'm relying on romanizations, but I want to get rid of them as soon as possible. It should be easier than in Japanese though where I still tend to mix up some of the katakana. I have read all the horror stories about Korean pronunciation and while I'm in no position to give a final verdict about it, I would like to say that I hear absolutely no difference between normal and tense consonants. Will this change with more exposure to the language? Well, it reminds me of Irish forte and lenis consonants (l and n) where I hear absolutely no difference either. Edited by Josquin on 18 August 2014 at 6:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5339 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 165 of 227 18 August 2014 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Auguri di buon compleanno (anche se in ritardo), Josquin!
Emme 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 166 of 227 18 August 2014 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lá breithe shona dhuit!
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 167 of 227 18 August 2014 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am picturing in my head you walking around the house humming gently:-)
Hope you had an amazing birthday. I think I came the closest I have ever been to a depression when I turned thirty (as a man you do not get the 'tic-tocs' but we girls do.) I remember I swore I would break the jaw of any of my guests who bought me a pepper grinder for my birthday, so wisely none of them did. After having celebrated my 30th birthday six times I did however start to come to terms with it. And of course at this point in time, I would have loved to turn 30 :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 168 of 227 18 August 2014 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
I've celebrated my 29th birthday four times now myself. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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