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TAC’13 Pax Team (ita+cat) / Assimil Exp. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5885 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 1 of 261 23 December 2011 at 6:07am | IP Logged |
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After more than thousand days as a member of this amazing forum, I've decided to start my own language log. I've also decided to become a Pro Member and this is the way to say "thank you" for so many helpful hints I've found here.
I'll keep this as the first message on this thread, with the hope that it will grow, information will be added and this log will help me to learn other languages, beyond those I already know and those described next. This has been my log for the 2012 TAC, during which I've studied German. It will also be my personal log during the Assimil Experiment besides our Group Log. Here is the beginning of my reports for the Assimil Experiment. This is also going to be my log for TAC 2013 and I'm going to be a member of the Pax Team. ************************************************************ *** This is the list of useful links collected in our German Team Thread that I'll copy here: Useful Links for German Online Dictionaries: Linguee Verbs Valency Duden Lexipedia Langua.de Beolingus Leo Hueber Canoo WordReference.com Reverso Verb conjugators: Deutsche Verben Verbix Online Grammars: Grammis 2.0 DvG Deutschplus Podcasts: Deutsche Welle Bayerischer Rundfunk alpha-Centauri WDR Phonetics: UIowa IPA typing Music: Golyr Books, stories, videos usw.: Sprachprofi's list 1000-Maerchen.de Neanderpeople Lots of Books MyVideo ZDF Miscellanea Redensarten Memrise LangMedia HTLAL Thread Questions and answers ************************************************************ *** Useful Links for Catalan Phonetics Els sons del Català Audio and Video Televisó de Catalunya Miscellanea List of Proverbs ************************************************************ *** Useful Links for Italian Online Dictionaries: WordReference Etymology: Etimo.it Edited by Flarioca on 03 March 2013 at 10:18pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5885 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 2 of 261 23 December 2011 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
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During the last years, it became impossible for me to study languages more deeply, even reading English became rarer, due to a wonderful event in my life: The birth and initial months of my son, a healthy 2 years old boy.
Now, I'm back at semi-full strenght. Actually, my son's birth made me restart another area of study, namely, genealogy, mine and my wife's. I've always known that we have a German branch, from Lübeck, about which my family already knew lots of things. However, it is always possible to go further and that's what has happened. New discoveries introduced me to the early history of Lübeck and the Hanseatic League. Dozens of books and even thesis appear ... and it brought me back to language learning. It was soon very clear that I needed to improve my German. What I knew, was not enough to read all those books efficiently and even much less than enough for a future research in loco. During the last seven months I've been studing German with renewed motivation, faster pace and at a higer level. It is true that it was and still is necessary to review things that you learn during your first six months studying this language, but that's ok and true even in my beloved mother language (well, maybe not really what I've learned during my first six months, but you got the idea). In the next three months I'll have more free time and that's why this is the perfect moment to start this log. My plan is to write here almost every day, at least, a small paragraph auf Deutsch, and also another one in Lang-8. Below, let me describe my previous German experience, present level, methods and resources, besides how and why Italian, Korean and Turkish will come along. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5885 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 3 of 261 23 December 2011 at 6:12am | IP Logged |
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The first time I studied German, I had a reasonable level in English, and could easily read and understand Spanish, but still spoke what is called "Portunhol". At that time, the only other languages I had tried to study were French and Russian. The main reason to learn German was because I was wondering about going to Germany as a PhD student.
During one year, I had semi-intensively studied at a school linked to the Goethe Institute. However, my plans changed, and my German knowledge remained at a lower intermediate level. After that, from time to time, I have done some self-study, besides an otherwise frustrating weekend immersion in a University in the State of New York (which I won't name). Anyway, during the time between my first attempt at German and the last six months, I've never studied German again with any specific goal and enough discipline. However, in this period, I've improved English and Spanish a little, learned French and Esperanto to a good level and a bit of Italian, besides dozens of wanderlust months in many other languages (Latin, Ancient Greek, Mandarin, Arabic, Romanian, Korean, Russian, Hungarian, Guarani, Quechua, Lojban and Basque, at least). The material I've studied thoroughly during my recent attempts to learn German are: "Ultimate German Advanced" and "Marktplatz", the first one from Living Language, the last from Deutsch Welle. Great stuff, from my point of view. Ultimate German Advanced Marktplatz During the last six months, I've also got a daily reading dosis from Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Deutsch Welle and Frankfurter Rundschau. At least three times a day, I choose one of my RSS feeds from those senders and try to read the whole report. Besides listening to the forementioned courses, I've more than 400 German songs, and I listen almost every day a random sample of them. My favorites are, in order, Annett Louisan, Cabaret Classics (specially Marlene Dietrich and Heinz Rühmann), Yvonne Catterfield, Reinhard May, Klaus Lage and Roger Cicero. Once or twice a week, I also spend some 30 minutes listening to German news in HR Info, from Frankfurt. Thanks to Zenmonkey, I've also started to listen to BR-online podcasts. HTLAL thread - German podcasts BR-online Summing up, at this moment, reading and listening are at an upper intermediate level, but writing and speaking are at an unknown state. I'll explain below my plans, methods and resources. My goal is to reach C1 level by the end of 2012. ************************************************************ ******** This is going to be the place to collect some of my preferred etymology wanderings (somewhat edited) through this log. I'll number them, for my own records and memorization issues. Main sources: * "Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen" DTV (2005). * "Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch" online. 1) The German word steigen and the Latin vestigium (Portuguese vestígio, same meaning) come from the Indoeuropean root *steigh-. 2) The Indoeuropean root dek is the origin for the Latin word decent (same meaning in English, decente in Portuguese) and the German word zechen, which means to booze :-)) 3) Venus (Roman goddess of love, beauty, sex and military victory) and wahnsinnig (German for crazy, incredibly, insane, incredible, terrible, maniacal, delirious, maniac, frenzied and demented) share the same Indoeuropean root. 4) The Latin word saevitia (from which we still use sevícia in Portuguese) and the very important and used German word sehr, both coming from the Indoeuropean root sai- 5) Latin totus (from which we get Portuguese todo) and German Deutsch (meaning people in old German) come from the Indoeuropean root -teu, meaning swell. 6) The Indoeuropean root for "halt". Both main possibilities are interesting. One is kʷel-, meaning "to turn", which is the root for the Latin words colonus (farmer), inquilinus (tenant) among others, all with very close portuguese equivalents. The other possibility is kel-, meaning "to drive, force to move quickly", the root for the Latin word celer (fast) among others. 7) The very important German word drehen (turn, rotate, spin) comes from the Indoeuropean root ter-/terə-/trī-, which is also the root for a huge number of Latin words like tribulare [Portuguese atribulações (tribulations!!)], triticum [Portuguese trigo (wheat)] and tetricus [Portuguese tétrico (dreadful)]. It is also the root of tribology (Portuguese ... tribologia!). This is also the root for other German words like drechseln, drillen, drücken and drohen!! 8) The German word schön (beautiful, nice) shares the same Indoeuropean root keu-, skeu- (meaning to notice, observe, feel; to hear) with the Latin words caveo, cautum (be careful, take care), which are the roots for some Portuguese words, even some family names, one of which I do bear. 9) Schließen comes from the Indoeuropean root klēu-/klāu-, which is also the root for Latin words like clausura and clavis, with many derivations in Portuguese (z.B., chave and clausurar) and English (z.B. close and clause). 10) The German word fangen, which among others has Gefängnis (prison) and anfangen (to begin) as related terms, comes from the Indoeuropean root pak-/pag-. This is the same root for the Latin words pacisco, pactio and pax, which give us the Portuguese/English words paz/peace and pacto/pact, for instance. 11) The word Schicht comes from the Indoeuropean root skei- (to cut, separate) which is also the root for the Latim word scio (knowledge), which gave us the Portuguese ciência and English science. Edited by Flarioca on 14 October 2012 at 4:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5885 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 4 of 261 23 December 2011 at 6:14am | IP Logged |
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After rescheduling my daily duties, I've got more than three hours for language studies. Every 10 minutes in the middle of any other things will count. I'm a happy owner of an iPhone, the ultimate gadget for tech-geek language learners, and many of my activities will be based on this resource. For instance, Ankiing.
During the last weeks, I wondered if it wouldn't be nice to study other language(s). Improving Italian was the first obvious choice. However, I can read and understand it better than German! Maybe almost as good as my other languages. Well, I've decided to buy a better Italian grammar book, started reading books (besides a daily dosis of rss news) and also decided to write here and in Lang-8 a weekly text in Italian. However, I still needed another language, as a reward for seven disciplined months of study amidst job, baby and other language study hindering activities. Since I already owned the book "Ungarish Grammatik", by Tamás Forgács, studying Hungarian wouldn't qualify as wanderlust but as "legitimate use of my present target language", besides Assimil and a good "mantaining French" reason. However, while I was collecting resources and choosing the way I would handle my Hungarian journey this time, for unknown reasons, I started to find lots of Korean stuff. Let me tell you that while I was learning the fascinating game of Go, since Koreans are now the best players of this game, I bought some Korean language stuff, even a bilingual Korean-English book, "100 Tips for Amateur Players", by Youngsun Yoon. Then, I realized that among the many languages I would like to start studying, the one which could be more useful in the near future would be Korean, for I hope soon to enjoy many hours playing Go with my boy and improving my game! The fascinating Hungarian language will stay on my wish list. At this moment, my main tools to start studying Korean will be: For hangul and phonetics: Learn the Korean Alphabet Korean Wiki Project IPA Phonology Korean phonology Books: - Integrated Korean - Beginning 1, by Y-M. Cho, H. S. Lee, C. Schulz, H-M. Sohn and S-O. Sohn. Text + workbook + audio. IK - Sounds of Korean: A Pronunciation Guide, by M. Choo and W. O'Grady My goals, by the end of 2012, are: a) To read hangul easily. b) To get a basic vocabulary of 1000 words. c) To understand and correctly spell all these words. d) To get the main idea about Korean grammar. I love grammar. By the way, as far as I have seen, mnemonics for Korean words come easily (in Portuguese, at least) and with lots of fun. I'll possibly report it here. Then, during the last few days, I've met three resources I would like to test: Mango Languages, Critical Languages Series and Bussu. The last one has an iPhone series, and that really adds to the motivation. Mango CLS Busuu The only choice that would allow me to test all those was Turkish. Fortunately, this is a language on my wish list, its sound is great to my ears, its grammar seems fascinating and Turkey is a place I would definitely love to visit. I'll start with Mango, if I don't like it, try CSL, if I don't like it, try Busuu. One month (30-50 minutes each day), at least, will be allowed for each method before giving up and trying another one. It also seems that Mango is limited to the beginning stage, whereas the others claim to go further. My main first goal in this case is to see if any of those methods works for me. Though it might be said that my wanderlust has broken the limits of reasonability, so far, I've been able to keep my German studies with absolute priority over the others. Edited by Flarioca on 25 December 2011 at 3:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5885 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 5 of 261 23 December 2011 at 6:18am | IP Logged |
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At my present level, my two main tools to study German are Learning with Texts and Anki.
Learning with Texts HTLAL - LwT Thread Anki In my opinion, these two are amazing tools, specially at intermediate and advanced levels. Everybody here already knows Anki and flashcards. So, from time to time I'll talk more about LwT, which is already a wonderful tool, but could be improved, of course. It must be emphasized that LwT allows you to build an Anki deck easily, from the material you are reading/listening. It means, your Anki deck will come from words in context, which easily allows reinforced contact with those words, by relistening them while driving/walking/etc, for instance. But that is not the only feature that makes me a LwT fan. Besides the LwT deck, I also have others, for instance, one with German/English false friends. The text I'm starting to read and listen is "Effi Briest", by Theodor Fontane. Effi Briest - Project Guttenberg Effi Briest - Librivox As I've already said, I'm also reading and listening other stuff, but Anki and LwT get most of my time. My preferred grammar books at this point are: "A Morpho-Syntactic Review of German", by F.E Donahue and "Deutsche Grammatik", by H. Pahlow. I also have some other (a lot, it must be said) books, but most of them are just resting on my shelf. From time to time, some of them might come into usage and it would be useful to read other people's opinion about them. By the end of february, I'll try to find a good tutor for German from our local Goethe Institute branch. The main goal is to improve speaking, but writing will certainly be included. Of course, at any time, I would be glad to help anyone learning Portuguese and this thread may also be useful in this way. I would greatly appreciate any comments, suggestions or corrections on the preceding texts and even more on the future ones. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 261 23 December 2011 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
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I'm just curious about your picture - which culture produced that round tablet?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5885 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 7 of 261 23 December 2011 at 2:18pm | IP Logged |
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Iversen
It is slightly embarrassing to say that I've lost the source for my HTLAL image. That may force me to change it ;-)) Anyway, it is one of the Tărtăria tablets, which apparently comes from an early indoeuropean civilization and may be close to the beginning of writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5885 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 8 of 261 24 December 2011 at 4:30pm | IP Logged |
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Heute schreibe ich meinen ersten Eintrag. Es wird ein einfach Satz sein, weil heute Feiertag ist, aber auch weil ich kein Fehler machen will, obwohl es ist klar, dass das weder möglich noch wünscheswert ist. Man Fehler machen muss, um Fremdsprache zu lernen.
So, ich wünsche Ihnen frohe Weihnachten!! Wenn Sie kein Weihnachtfest lieben, wünsche ich Ihnen auf jeden Fall ein schönen Tag. Correted version (thanks to laempchen, from Lang-8): Heute schreibe ich meinen ersten Eintrag. Es wird ein einfacher Satz sein, weil heute Feiertag ist, aber auch weil ich keine Fehler machen will, obwohl es klar ist, dass das weder möglich noch wünschenswert ist. Man muss Fehler machen, um eine Fremdsprache zu lernen. So, ich wünsche Ihnen frohe Weihnachten!! Wenn Sie das Weihnachtsfest nicht lieben, wünsche ich Ihnen auf jeden Fall einen schönen Tag. Edited by Flarioca on 25 December 2011 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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