Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

TAC 2013: Korean & Arabic

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
51 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 46 7  Next >>
JohannaNYC
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4443 days ago

251 posts - 361 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English*, Italian
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian)

 
 Message 33 of 51
17 March 2013 at 11:33pm | IP Logged 
Maybe you should just speak to your husband in Arabic and if he responds in English
pretend you don't understand what he's saying. Of course, you might really not understand
what he says in Arabic, but I think that should let him know how serious you are about
enlisting his help.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Haksaeng
Senior Member
Korea, South
Joined 6189 days ago

166 posts - 250 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine)

 
 Message 34 of 51
24 March 2013 at 10:39am | IP Logged 
This week in Korean, I focused on watching the drama 무자식 상팔자 (Childless Comfort). I watched Episodes 10&11 as usual with subtitles, but beginning with Episode 12 there are no subtitles available, as far as I can tell. So I was forced to watch Episodes 12-18 without subtitles.

I was not happy when I discovered my beloved subtitles had disappeared, but I suppose this was rather fortuitous, since I wouldn't have given them up willingly. Also, having seen Ep 1-11 fully subtitled, I know all the characters, their personalities, and I'm up to speed on all the sub-plots. That makes understanding the later episodes much easier.

Episodes 12-18 have been a rocky road. There are a few things happening now that I don't understand at all, and everything is at least a bit fuzzy. Some subplots are clearer than others. I basically understand NOTHING that the grandfather says, but the grandmother speaks slowly and enunciates clearly, so I love it when she says something.

This is a family drama and includes characters from several different generations in a close-knit family outside of Seoul. I recommend this drama for anyone who wants to avoid dramas centered around love stories.

In addition to watching the drama, I also attended my Korean class as usual three mornings this week, studying the Sogang 5B book, Chapter 3. Besides that, I listened to lessons for a few hours on LingQ twice during the week, and did another GLOSS lesson for this month's Asian team challenge. This time, I happened to choose a GLOSS lesson that focused on reading and didn't include any listening component, so it was extremely easy. Reading is so much easier than listening to Korean.

In ARABIC, I listen to some of Maha's Arabic YouTube videos, watch kiddie alphabet videos, listen to Fairouz endlessly since my husband can't listen to anything else, and remind my husband now and then to say easy things in Arabic.
1 person has voted this message useful



Haksaeng
Senior Member
Korea, South
Joined 6189 days ago

166 posts - 250 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine)

 
 Message 35 of 51
30 March 2013 at 5:01pm | IP Logged 
This past week I continued to focus primarily on listening to Korean.

I spent a few hours on LingQ. I think I'm not really using it the way it's intended, because I don't visit every day and don't review vocab regularly. I just pop into the site a few times a week and usually look at some vocab that I've stored as lingqs, but I don't do it in a methodical way. And I listen to some of the lessons that I've saved from earlier visits.

I continued with the Korean drama Childless Comfort, watching Episodes 19-23, but then tragedy struck and apparently the broadcaster has successfully removed all the illegally uploaded content. Ugh, so frustrating, since the series goes up to at least 40 and now I can't watch the rest. The station has five or six brief outtakes of each episode and I suppose I'll have to be satisfied with that for now. I watched all the outtakes I could find for Episodes 24 & 25. Disappointing.

Did another GLOSS lesson, Level 2, about the Korean variety show Chatting With Beauties.

Attended Korean class as usual three mornings this week. Also one afternoon I went out to lunch and coffee with my teacher and classmate. Four hours of non-stop Korean chatting. By the end my brain was fried, to be honest. My teacher is so unbelievably generous to do that for us. She also told us that when we are done with the last book in the Sogang series at the end of April, she will design a course to meet our needs, and asked us to think about what we want to learn.
1 person has voted this message useful



Haksaeng
Senior Member
Korea, South
Joined 6189 days ago

166 posts - 250 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine)

 
 Message 36 of 51
07 April 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged 
Another week of mostly listening to Korean.

Aside from my Korean class three times a week (Sogang 5B book, Chapter 4) and the homework assignments, most of my focus was on listening.

I watched 2 Korean movies on YouTube: 파강주의보 (My Girl and I) was an oldie about first love and the girl dies of leukemia, of course. 극장저 (Tale of Cinema) No subs available, so my understanding was imperfect but it seemed to be about a troubled guy and his obsessions and troubled relationships. How's that for vague.

I watched 4 episodes of 세상을 바꾸는 시간 15분 on YouTube. This is a lecture series of short, 15 minute inspirational speeches. One in particular I understood very well, because the speaker was particularly slow.

I watched outtakes for the drama 무자식 상팔자, since the broadcasting company cruelly removed pirated copies of the drama from all its hiding places online. Boo! I'm keeping up with the basic outline of the story by watching the teasers, of which there are usually 5 or 6 for each episode. I watched Episodes 26-32, teasers only.

I used a Sogang Online lesson (Intermediate Level 3) to do dictation. Dictation is painful, but I always learn a lot from it. It's amazing how much I can't understand while listening. I can listen to a lesson, understand it, but then when I try to write what I hear, I'm missing small, important things. Besides unknown vocab, which is forgivable, I also miss some subtle grammatical things that I only notice when reading.

I'm reviewing some grammatical points by going through TTMIK's grammar lessons and listening to the ones that I think I need to review, brush up on, or acquaint myself with. There's a lot of grammar that I'm shaky on because I learned it long ago and don't hear it often. The TTMIK lessons are kind of long and chatty, which is annoying, but they do provide some good explanations and example sentences. Also, there are PDFs of the lessons.

My listening is improving. I know this is so because I've been watching the Korean drama for a couple weeks and I'm understanding more of the dialogue as time goes by. It's not improving by leaps and bounds, but it's definitely inching up.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Haksaeng
Senior Member
Korea, South
Joined 6189 days ago

166 posts - 250 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine)

 
 Message 37 of 51
15 April 2013 at 9:11am | IP Logged 
This week was below average in terms of my focus on Korean. I felt like I'm running out of steam a little. I was still working on Korean, but not as much as usual.

Aside from my Korean class and its attendant homework and vocabulary work (Sogang 5B Chapter 5) I also read two Korean story books. These were easy to read. They are traditional Korean stories and I want to read and be exposed to as many of them as I can find. I read 까막나라의 불개 about a dark land with no moon or sun. It's a traditional story that explains the phenomenon of the solar and lunar eclipse. Also 백일홍 about a sea serpent that terrorizes a seaside village, a brave man who fights the monster, a lovely maiden who dies, and the beautiful flower that blooms at her grave.

I watched two episodes of 세상을 바꾸는 시간 15분. Watched outtakes for Episodes 33-37 of the drama 무자식 상팔자. Listened one evening to more traditional stories available at Naver Jr. Watched a few episodes of random dramas that were airing as I cooked dinner.

Even when I don't really feel like doing anything much with Korean, I have plenty of things available to listen to. I listen to Korean for at least an hour or so every day as a minimum. Improving my listening ability is an ongoing, everyday effort.
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4698 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 38 of 51
15 April 2013 at 10:24am | IP Logged 
When it comes to Levantine Arabic, what are the differences between Palestinian and
Lebanese? I plan to learn the latter.
1 person has voted this message useful



Talib
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6652 days ago

171 posts - 205 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical)
Studies: Arabic (Egyptian)

 
 Message 39 of 51
15 April 2013 at 1:46pm | IP Logged 
There aren't huge differences between Palestinian and Lebanese, but you may want to be on the lookout for minor differences in pronunciation. I can't think of any examples where they differ, but there are some differences among the various Levantine dialects. For example, the main Palestinian dialect and the Lebanese dialect would pronounce the letter qaaf as 'aaf, so that should not be an issue. However, if you want to travel to other parts of the Levant, you will find that the farmer dialect in Palestine pronounces it as kaaf (which subsequently leads to the letter kaaf being pronounced as chaaf), and there is a significant portion of Jordanians who pronounce it as gaaf.
   

Edited by Talib on 15 April 2013 at 1:47pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Haksaeng
Senior Member
Korea, South
Joined 6189 days ago

166 posts - 250 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine)

 
 Message 40 of 51
04 May 2013 at 8:25am | IP Logged 
Sorry, I have not been visiting my log for a while so did not see your question, tarvos. I asked my husband your question and he (like Talib) thinks there's not much difference between the two, other than a different accent and some vocab differences. His examples were the words for "tomato" and "mana'ish" (it's bread baked with za'atar). It's a noticeable difference but not overwhelming.


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 51 messages over 7 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 46 7  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.7656 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.