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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 9 of 646 05 May 2012 at 10:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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SATURDAY, 5 MAY 2012
Góðan daginn! Ég ætla að skrifa svolítið á íslensku núna þannig að allir vinirnir mínir geta séð að ég tala virkilega þetta mjög fallega tungumál. Auk þess vil ég æfa mig áður enn ég byrja að læra rússnesku. Ég byrjaði að læra íslensku í júní 2011 með bókinni Colloquial Icelandic eftir Daisy L. Neymann. Það er mjög góð bók og ég mæli með þeirri við alla nemendurna íslensku. Margt manna segir að það sé ómögulegt að læra íslensku, en ég segi að það sé ekki eins erfitt og margir halda. Ég get ekki enn talað íslensku svo gott af því að ég þarf hugsa svo mikið. Mig vanta stundum orð, en ég get sagt það sem ég vil segja og ég skil mikið. Mér finnst voða gott að lesa á íslensku líka. Ég get einnig skrifað á íslensku og það er líka mjög gaman. Jæja, ég vona að þið líkið bloggsíðuna mína og ég mun skrifa bráðum aftur. Bless! I wrote just a little paragraph to practise my Icelandic before I get started with Russian. I said I had been learning Icelandic with the help of Daisy L. Neijmann's Colloquial Icelandic since June 2011 and that I really recommended that book. Despite a lot of people saying it's impossible to learn Icelandic, my opinion is that it's not as difficult as most people think. Unfortunately, I cannot talk in Icelandic so well, because I need to think so much and sometimes I'm out of words. But I can express myself and understand a lot. I like reading in Icelandic very much and I can also write in Icelandic - as you can see here! I hope you like my blog and I will write again soon. Bye! Edited by Josquin on 07 May 2012 at 8:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 10 of 646 06 May 2012 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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SUNDAY, 6 MAY 2012
So, I won't be doing much today, perhaps reading a bit of Icelandic and looking up some vocabulary. But tomorrow is going to be the big day: My Russian course will arrive and then it's vertu blessuð Icelandic and привет Russian! I am really excited and can't wait to get started. I am curious as how my studies will go. I think, in the beginning, pronounciation and retaining the Slavic vocabulary will be the main hurdles I have to tackle. After that, I can start thinking about declensions and verbal aspects. The Langenscheidt course has a good reputation for being very thorough and straightforward, so I think I made a good choice. Thanks everybody for your encouragement. I appreciate it very much. I'll tell you tomorrow how my first Russian lesson went. See you then! Edited by Josquin on 06 May 2012 at 12:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 11 of 646 07 May 2012 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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MONDAY, 7 MAY 2012
After taking leave from Icelandic yesterday - and what a leave it was! -, my new Russian course from Langenscheidt arrived today. But before I get started on my first experience with the Slavic languages, let me tell you about yesterday. At first, I listened to one of the two CDs of Colloquial Icelandic without reading in the book and was surprised how much I got of the dialogues and texts. Of course, I already knew the texts, but it showed me that my understanding of the spoken language has become quite good. I wouldn't get a word here and there, but that were mainly more complicated words which I did not know anyway. After that, I took E. V. Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse and read various excerpts from ancient Icelandic sagas and myths. Again, I was surprised how well I could understand the texts with the help of the glossary at the end of the book. I especially delved into Brennu-Njáls saga and enjoyed the process very much. I regretted a little bit that I had to take leave of my Icelandic studies now that my Icelandic has really taken roots. But today, I started with Russian - as promised. I read the introduction to the Russian pronunciation and the alphabet and the first unit. I learned about the difference between 'hard' and 'soft' consonants and about the reduction of vowels. Moreover, I learned the rules for noun genders and plural endings. I am going to repeat that tomorrow. At last, I practised pronounciation with the CDs of the course. There are special pronounciation and listening exercises as well as recordings of the dialogues. I listened to the pronounciation exercises and repeated after the speakers, then I shadowed the first dialogue. That was it for today. I did not write down any vocabulary yet. Perhaps, I will copy the first dialogue by hand tomorrow. I am not a friend of learning isolated vocabulary, by the way. This way of learning worked quite well for Icelandic, but perhaps Russian needs a different approach. We will see. Edited by Josquin on 07 May 2012 at 8:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 12 of 646 08 May 2012 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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TUESDAY, 8 MAY 2012
A historical date: Today, 67 years ago, World War II in Europe was over. Today was also the day I applied for admittance as PhD student at my uni. And it was the second day of my Russian studies. I repeated the pronunciation rules and lesson 1. Some of the soft consonants are still a bit tricky, especially дь, ть, and щ. I am still practising the special way of pronouncing them, the other sounds work quite well. I listened to the dialogue of lesson 1 again and tried to memorise some vocabulary, then I repeated the rules for the nominative plural. Plural endings are also a bit tricky as one has to know when to use -ы and when to use -и. Moreover, there are some masculine nouns with endings in -а or -я and then there are some nouns that change their word stems in the plural, e.g. дочь - дочери ('daughter' - 'daughters'). The easiest group is - as in every language - neuter nouns. They end in -а or -я. Additionally, I learned the possessive pronouns мой, твой, наш, and ваш in their nominative singular and plural forms. They are quite easy. I already know how to greet someone, how to ask for directions, and how to say goodbye. Tomorrow, I'll learn the vocabulary - as far as I don't already know it - and do the excercises, then I'll proceed with lesson 2. Edited by Josquin on 18 May 2012 at 4:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5044 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 13 of 646 08 May 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
It seems to me that you underestimate the complexity of forming the nom. Pl. of nouns in Russian. The choice between ы and и is very easy, only several exceptions чёрт – черти, сосед - соседи. There are several special cases: words with suffix ёнок in the sing. have ята (ата after sibilants) котёнок – котята; those which have suffix ин in sing. have е in the pl. боярин – бояре, крестьянин – крестьяне; neuter nouns whose stem ends with “к” usually have the ending “и” яблоко – яблоки, пёрышко –пёрышки, but óблако облакá… Well, there are a number of other exceptions like брат – братья, дерево – деревья, ухо – уши, человек – люди etc. Many masculine nouns, as you mentioned, (and their number is growing) have stressed а (я) in the nom. pl. вечер – вечерá. We did not regard stress however, the most irregular here are end-stressed masculine nouns which can either have stress shift or keep the stress on the stem (there is also a question of a fleeting vowel in all masculine nouns). End-stressed nouns which end with a (я) almost always have stress shift in pl., neuter nouns usually have both stress shifts – either to the ending or to the stem: oкнó óкна, but слóво – словá. And finally, there is a large number of indeclinable nouns. Maybe this all extra, I'll delete the post if you want. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 14 of 646 08 May 2012 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course I do. I have only just started learning. If I had learned all declension patterns of Icelandic at once, I would have gone mad. I still have to look up some forms today. Maybe Russian is even worse in that aspect, I don't know yet. But thank you for your information. There's no need to delete your post, I appreciate every contribution to this log as long as it's not offensive. And perhaps, I'll get to the point one day that I really can use your information. At the moment, it's simply too much. I like to learn grammar bit by bit and not all at once. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4847 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 15 of 646 08 May 2012 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Remember, that for you learning Icelandic, even if it can be a complicated language, was more intuitive that would be for me - at least you had some "German feeling". Like I have with Russian :) The rules have changed :P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4832 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 16 of 646 09 May 2012 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, knowing German was some kind of help as German and Icelandic share many grammatical phenomena. An English person would have had a much harder time learning all that. A Polish person will mainly struggle with the vocabulary, I think. Icelandic vocabulary is very special as it goes back nearly exclusively to Old Norse. Knowing Swedish helped a little bit, but there were still many unknown words. Identifying a word from its inflected form is sometimes pretty hard as well. But now it's Russian, and the game begins anew. My cards look pretty bad as I don't know any Slavic language, but as I wrote in my first post: It is on! Challenge accepted!!! ;) Edited by Josquin on 09 May 2012 at 4:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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