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Mick’s 2012 log Teams *jäŋe / *ledús & Žá | ||
Tags: Scriptorium | Afrikaans | Wanderlust | Thai | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Teach Yourself | Hindi | Intermediate | Finnish | Polish | Swedish | Verbs/Conjugation | Multilingual | Beginner | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Grammar | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5917 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 33 of 108 20 April 2012 at 11:58am | IP Logged |
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Ag! Ek kan dit skaars glo, maar ek het niks hierdie maand in my journaal geskrewe nie. Hoekom? Daar is geen goede antwoord nie. Ja, ek is somtyds besig men ek het in ander forum draade boodskappies geskrewe. Was ek met hierdie journaal geblaseer? Nee, ek was buierig. Ek kan nie hierdie gevoel begryp nie, ek het sommige tale gestudeer dus kon ek iets hier geskrewe. Ek onthou dat ek ook veel Youtube polyglot videos het gekyk. Miskian dink ek dat ek wou nooit weer so veel polglot videos kyk nie om dit was 'n sleg begrip te hulle kyk. Ja, die beste polyglot videos is inderdaad baie inligtend en inspiratories men hulle is ook 'n distraksie of ek kyk die videos en leer geen tale nie.
Ek moet vir die volgende 6WC aanmaak sedert die 6WC sal in omtrent twee weke begin. Ek sal pools leer. Ek het alreed Teach Yourself Polish gekoop en ek sal dit gebruik men natuurlik sal ek meer helpmiddels hoef. I can hardly believe but I've written nothing in this log this month until today. I don't have a good answer. This time it wasn't boredom or laziness but moodiness. I don't understand why though, I did do some language learning and could have written something here. I remember watching many of the YouTube polyglot videos. Maybe I shouldn't watch so many of them. Yes, the best polyglot videos are informative and inspirational but they can also be distracting especially if I watch them and don't learn languages. I have to prepare for the next 6WC, it begins in about two weeks. I will be learning Polish. I already have TY Polish and I will use it but I need more resources. Goeie nag Mick Edited by mick33 on 27 April 2012 at 10:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5917 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 34 of 108 21 April 2012 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
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Friday I focused on Thai and I will give some of my impressions thus far about the language. Thai sounds very musical and has a unique rhythm that is hard to describe but very pleasant to listen to. I'm still learning the alphabet, but I just figured that there are 3 consonant classes: low, mid and high though I'm unclear about what these classes mean. I've already mentioned that Thai has 5 tones and I could only recognize 3 three of them (I can't find the post but I don't care). Now I can occasionally hear all 5 of them but not consistently. It seems that for me to learn and remember how the different tones sound I will need to spend months listening to spoken Thai, and that may be just for the tones; understanding words and phrase could take even longer but I hope it won't. Another thing I'm just now fully grasping is how important it is to get the right vowel length, Thai pronunciation isn't only about mimicking the tones. Some of the vowels have very long lengths so I must focus on keeping the sounds pure since my natural tendency when drawing (or drawling) out vowels is to make them diphthongs.
The really weird thing is that, as I once wrote about Finnish, these challenges motivate me to learn more Thai rather than give up in discouragement. In fact, I think if Thai were easier I might have lost interest in it already. I don't know much about Thai grammar yet, but what little I've read suggests that Thai is very analytical, and that basically means adding more words to sentences rather conjugating verbs and/or inflecting nouns to express subtle changes in meaning or what time something occurs. Analytical grammar might be easy, I don't know yet. I'll list some vocabulary in another post, but that will probably be sometime next week. After I get some sleep Saturday will be very busy, but not because of language learning. นอนหลับฝันดี Mick Edited by mick33 on 23 April 2012 at 10:11am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4659 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 35 of 108 22 April 2012 at 10:28am | IP Logged |
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It's good that you've noted the existence of the 3 consonant classes - they are essential for determining the tone. You also know about tone marks, right? The important ones are อ่อ mai eek, or first mark, and อ้อ mai thou, or second mark.
To determine the tone of any syllable, you look at both consonant class and tone mark. For example, a low class word with no tone mark, like ฟัน “tooth”, has mid tone. But a high class word with no tone mark, like ฝัน “dream”, has rising tone. With the addition of tone marks, you get different tones. Low consonant plus mai thou gives you a high tone: น้ำ “water” is high in tone. High consonant plus mai thou gives you a falling tone: ห้า “five” is falling in tone. There are basically six possibilities for each combination of consonant plus tone mark. Two classes (high and low) plus three tone marks (including the zero mark) give six possible tones. Oh, but there are actually five – this is because low consonant plus mai eek and high consonant plus mai tou both give the falling tone, so these have merged. What about the middle consonants? They sometimes pattern with the low ones, other times with the high ones, so they don’t add to the total number of tones. This is probably a bit hard to follow, but it’s really an ingenious system once you understand it. The way I learned was by using David Smyth’s Teach Yourself Thai, and I highly recommend this as a clear introduction to the topic. The parts on this are interspersed through the first 7-8 lessons of the book. It’s really crucial that you get this, if you want to wean yourself of romanization. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5917 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 36 of 108 23 April 2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, viedums! Your explanation wasn't hard to follow at all, it's very useful. I was vaguely aware of the tone marks, but hadn't really looked at them yet. Edited by mick33 on 23 April 2012 at 10:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5917 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 37 of 108 28 April 2012 at 11:08am | IP Logged |
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I almost missed noticing it, but I reached 1,000 posts 4 days ago! After I realized that I had indeed made 1,000 posts, I decided to celebrate this milestone by doing what I usually do, give in to language wanderlust again. Inspired by DaraghM's thread about a wanderlust voucher, I'm dabbling with Hindi (and other languages of India like Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and so on) this week. I will not learn Hindi to a high level because this wanderlust must stop by 1 May* so that I can focus on Polish and my Half Super Challenge to read 50 books and watch 50 movies in Spanish by 31 December 2013.
My dabbling with Hindi is mostly to learn to write the alphabet, then to find out what learning resources are availiable online if I ever do decide to learn it properly. From reading a few old threads on this forum I had gotten the impression that there aren't many resources and I was determined to find some. There are some sites, not as many as I had hoped to find, but I Speak Hindi and University of Pennsylvania Hindi page look fairly good. Learn Hindi Online will teach me the script and pronunciation with a little grammar too. If, or when, I actually learn Hindi later on I'll need more resources, but the links above should keep me occupied until Tuesday. Wanderlust aside, I also read some Swedish articles about the proposed third gender pronoun I already wrote about here and listened to a bit of spoken Thai on TV5 and a few YouTube videos. *Yeah right, everyone reading already knows I'll probably dabble with Hindi a few more times, to say nothing of other languages :).* Hej då Mick Edited by mick33 on 30 April 2012 at 8:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5342 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 38 of 108 28 April 2012 at 1:57pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Mick
I too will have Polish as my focus language for the 6 week challenge. I'll try to write here in Polish to give us both practice. Maybe we can make it a small competition - who can do the most Polish, it will motivate us even more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6590 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 39 of 108 28 April 2012 at 2:06pm | IP Logged |
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Oh you too? Wonderful:)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5917 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 40 of 108 29 April 2012 at 4:02am | IP Logged |
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@hribecek: A small competition is a good idea, I'll do it!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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