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Cristina’s travels TAC 2015 Team Pushkin

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
297 messages over 38 pages: 13 4 5 6 7 ... 2 ... 37 38 Next >>
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 9 of 297
01 January 2014 at 4:23pm | IP Logged 
@ Expugnator: You can always do a little dabbling you know :-)
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zecchino1991
Senior Member
United States
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778 posts - 885 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian

 
 Message 10 of 297
01 January 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged 
Happy new year! Looking forward to following your new log. :)
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Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
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1232 posts - 1740 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 11 of 297
01 January 2014 at 10:16pm | IP Logged 

I wish you the best in 2014!

I will be stalking you. I mean, I will be following your progress. :)
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Ogrim
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Senior Member
France
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991 posts - 1896 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian

 
 Message 12 of 297
07 January 2014 at 5:26pm | IP Logged 
Godt nyttår!

All the best Cristina. This year I am sure you will make great progress in Russian. Keep up the good work!
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mrwarper
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Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Spain
forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2
Studies: German, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 13 of 297
29 January 2014 at 3:13am | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
From Persian: Non (bread). I actually thought [...] turned out to be of Persian origin. I then remembered having read somewhere that Persian words are common in both Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, Turkish – and evidently also in Uzbek. Although I am very interested in history, I am not familiar with the backstory here. Can anyone tell me why Persian words have had such a big influence on all these languages?

I don't know, but it's always fun to make up some bit of history... I was reading a scientific article about a butterfly that's considered a pest in Iran. Silly me, I thought of cereals* and you reminded me of that paper. Cereals in Persia, Persian for "bread" as a loanword to geographically close languages?

Didn't civilization supposedly start in Mesopotamia, a stone's throw away of, or maybe at some point even part of Persia? And what's one of the very first and thus most important and influential hits of civilization? Agriculture, and the invention of bread...

Now waiting for somebody to show up and say that old Babylonian for "bread" is not even close to 'non'... ;)

* This plant "threatened" in Iran, Calotropis procera, is by no means a cereal but an Asclepiadaceae -- they seem to take their Sodom apples very seriously there.
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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 14 of 297
30 January 2014 at 11:28pm | IP Logged 
Thank you zecchino, Kerrie, Ogrim and mrwarper! I really appreciate you stopping by!

TAC January 2014

You know how you sometimes feel that you should be very happy for something, but you are disappointed
about something else which did not happen, so you can't quite make it?    Well, I am there now. My sister has
been extremely generous and has invited me to go on a one week trip to Turkey with her. And I am really
grateful for that. Unfortunately, we are going there because our trip to Central Asia was cancelled. And much
as I love Turkey, a week at a tourist resort in Antalya does not quite compare to three weeks in Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan visiting 7 places on Unesco's world heritage list, among them Bukhara and
Samarkand. We are both really disappointed, but at least I made sure that we will be going to a place with
lots of Russian tourists, so that I hopefully will get a little Russian practise anyway. It also means that I will
drop my tourist Uzbek and go for tourist Turkish instead. At least I still qualify as an observer on the Yürükler
team :-)

So, here is an update for what I have been doing with my languages lately:

French
We have been watching Castle in French quite a lot, and have decided to make Saturdays our French days,
since my daughters also want to learn French. Unfortunately the conversations usually only lasts a few
minutes, but we are all learning quite a lot from listening to series in French.

English
In addition to using it extensively for my work we watch lots of English series too, and I have a new friend with
whom I speak English a lot. She has an Indian accent on her English, but that is fine. It is useful to get used
to different accents.

I just watched three films in English where other languages were used too, because unlike films in the past,
where people would speak English when they supposedly were speaking French or German, nowadays they
actually bother to make the dialogues in the original language. My all time favourite from a linguistic point of
view, is of course "Inglorious Basterds". French, German, Italian, English - it all comes together naturally.
Love it. Plus it suits my Old Testament sense of justice perfectly. And one of the characters even carries my
maiden name, which is just used by a hundred souls in Norway and about 150 Americans with Norwegian
background. I have no idea how the name ended up as a German film, because it is as Norwegian as it gets.

The second film I saw yesterday, "Jack Ryan" based on characters by Tom Clancy, and there I had the
pleasure of listening to Kenneth Branagh speaking Russian.   Not too bad, actually.

And then I watched "Die another day" - a James Bond film where a little of the dialogue was in Korean.
Obviously I have no idea whether that was genuine, but it sounded good enough.

Spanish

Lots of practice through my Peruvian and my Romanian friends, so no problem keeping that up :-) We also
talk a little Spanish among ourselves at home.

German/ Italian
Nothing to report - hope to do better next month.

Russian
I have tried - with varied luck to tackle the last part of Assimil Russian, but I am struggling so hard. The first
half went fine, the second half is like pulling teeth.

I have started taking lessons again though. I have one teacher that I have had for ever, who must think I am
dimwitted, since she this week taught me how to tell the time for the fourth time and a brand new one who is
absolutely amazed at how good my Russian is. Naturally I much prefer the last one :-). I get to speak a lot,
which is great, but I am taking four classes, or three hours strait each time, and my brain is useless when I
am through. I can manage some sort of conversation in Russian though, which feels fantastic.

Uzbek
I did a lesson from an online course, mainly focusing on the many loan words from Russian, but since I will
not be going to Uzbekistan, I will just drop it.

Ukrainian
I have listened to the first couple of lesson of TY Ukrainian. I wish it were closer to Russian :-)
1 person has voted this message useful



mrwarper
Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Spain
forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5218 days ago

1493 posts - 2500 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2
Studies: German, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 15 of 297
31 January 2014 at 6:47am | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
[...] I just watched three films in English where other languages were used too, because unlike films in the past, where people would speak English when they supposedly were speaking French or German, nowadays they
actually bother to make the dialogues in the original language.[...]

I've seen many older films with real 'foreign' dialogues, I especially remember lots of German officers in (American) WWII films. I guess it all boils down to whether the main, non-polyglot public is supposed to understand those characters -- you can have them speak the "wrong" language or have the public understand them, but not both :-)
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Expugnator
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Senior Member
Brazil
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3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 16 of 297
31 January 2014 at 8:43pm | IP Logged 
Too bad about Uzbek, but at least there's Turkish and some Russian at the plate. Keep the
good work and enjoy your trip!


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