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TAC 2013 Team Sparta’s Greek Team Thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5327 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 17 of 231 15 December 2012 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
So it is finally time to introduce myself. My name is Cristina, I am a 50 year old Norwegian mother of two and wife of one and I work in the railway sector, within international affairs. I have been interested in languages for as long as I can remember, and studied English, French and Spanish as part of my University degree. I have also lived a year in France, and three years in Spain. I learned what in Norwegian is called “school German” for two years and I am trying to learn that better. In my late 20ies I decided to learn Italian, and I could use that with ease for years, but the last couple of years I have noticed that my Italian is deteriorating at an alarming speed , so that needs to be fixed. The last three years I have been trying to learn Russian, which I love, but which is turning out to be a lot more difficult than I imagined. I have dabbled in about 20 languages, but up until two years ago, Greek was not one of them. Two years ago I did however go to Greece for a week with a friend, and decided to learn a little bit of the language first. On some level I have always known that Greek would be a language that I would love, but I was not prepared for this mind changing experience it was to get to hear Greek the first time. I can say in all honesty that I find it to be the most beautiful language I have encountered, and as soon as I started listening to it, I thought: Wow! This is the language of my soul. I also felt so home in Greece – the Greek’s happiness and care freeness is a striking contrast to my own culture, which is all about work first and pleasure later. The fact that I have always felt 100% at home in Spain and Italy, and that these cultures are similar, probably also had its influence. I met this Greek girl, who I got such a great connection with that she said: “I never thought that when I would once find my soul mate, it would turn out to be a 50 year old Norwegian woman”. Now unfortunately my great enthusiasm for the language did not mean that I learned much. I did a two-three week’s sprint in 2011, when I learned the first 8 lessons of a Swedish book called “Nygrekiska”, but then I left it. I learned the alphabet, simple greetings and some words, using the mentioned book, and “Talk Now, Greek” (a CD ROM with simple words and expressions). I try to learn a bit of the language when I go to a new place, and over the last 18 months I have always had some project, in addition to my Russian which remains my main focus. I originally made Greek one of my focus languages for 2012, but after seeing that I had done nothing with it, and in fact forgotten absolutely everything I had learned I decided to just have it as a dabbling language in 2013. And then the idea of Team Sparta came, and the rest is history. Now Greek is back among my focus languages again, and I hope to learn a lot during 2013. So I am afraid that I cannot present you with a long time interest (other than a keen interest for Greek mythology when I was a kid) nor in-depth knowledge of the country (one week to Crete does not really count) nor in fact at present any knowledge of the language whatsoever (all is forgotten). I do however have lots of enthusiasm! As for goals I will keep them realistic, because every year I think that I will do more than is possible. I want to learn the alphabet again and reach an A1, and be able to answer simple questions about myself and to do “tourist Greek”. If I were to be able to reach an A2 I would be over the moon. I plan to use a wide range of material, but for team Sparta purposes I will make sure I find the Assimil Greek (which I suspect is still in its package at work…) . So I look forward to a year where it should be very easy to spot my progress , and I am very happy to be a part of this team! Go team Sparta! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5949 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 18 of 231 15 December 2012 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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What is this?
Good luck with your learning efforts, Spartans, I will be following your heroic efforts with interest. Watch out for Xerxes, though you will know this by now, and remember: at the end of the TAC, come back either with your shields or on them! I do not seek admission to your select team of warriors but I was sorely tempted to at least attempt to shadow and parallel your efforts silently much like Ephialtes in the movie 300, jumping out from behind a rock down the road and trying at that point to join your adventures. However, I have just consulted the Ephors and was informed this is not in the stars for me: again much like Ephialtes, the likelihood is that I would soon be tempted away from the noble cause by the offer of trinkets and other seductions. Have fun annihilating! Spanikopoulos Edited by Spanky on 15 December 2012 at 9:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Saga Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4357 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Greek | Message 19 of 231 15 December 2012 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||
Guess I need to clarify :) No, I'm not a guy. Yes, I do know what a Saga is, and yes, I've indeed taken it from somewhere else. In fact, I took it from a story I've been writing. One characters' name is Saga (at least the short form). And come to think of it, he is a male ... and nothing like a Spartan ... Doing Skype sessions sounds rather interesting and considering the choice of languages, that we are studying, this seems a very good idea. I have to admit, though, that I've only ever used it once when I wanted to find out whether it really works and how. I read in another thread that it is not possible to do video chat with several people. That would suit me fine, actually, because I am a rather shy person and I'd prefer to concentrate on speaking and/or writing rather than thinking about how I and my room may appear to others. Video seems rather distracting. While looking through my Greek material I've noticed a couple of useful websites for learners, which I'd gladly share. Just wondering if we can dedicate one post of the team thread to collect such things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5759 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 20 of 231 16 December 2012 at 3:26am | IP Logged | ||
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@ Solfrid Cristin -
I am well aware that some of us may not be able to write a sentence yet. All the stuff I can write, I have never really practised actually pronouncing, so it may well be a train wreck when I actually open my mouth. I did not by any means say that you should be able to write sentences - you don't even have to keep a record of what you can do now right here. It was just some gentle advice for you to write *something* down, whether it's a paragraph caked in spelling mistakes or just individual, badly spelt words that simply indicate that "at the start of the challenge, my Greek was in this state, with badly spelt words and no sentences" - so you can see the awesome leap forward you'll have made by the end of the year. And we will all help each other to attain whatever goal we want out of this year. I for one will help anyone with anything Greek, Russian or German-related that I can. @ embici - I apologise if I misinterpreted the languages you mentioned in the Organisation Thread as something you didn't intend. Anyway, welcome to Team Sparta and I look forward to studying with you and the rest of the team this year! You seem to have quite a range of materials, which I will be checking out. @ Saga - welcome to HTLAL and welcome to Team Sparta! Japanese and Greek are definitely two very worthy languages and I'm impressed that you're using Ελληνική γλώσσα, I will be looking into that myself. @ Solfrid Cristin - I would be very happy to be the leader of Team Sparta so long as the rest of the team concurs. Despite our being Spartan and Sparta having been an oligarchy, we should adopt Athenian democracy here. As some of you may have noticed, I am somewhat of a laconophile - someone who has a love or admiration for Doric Sparta. Our word "Sparta" in English comes from the Ancient Greek dialect of Doric or Dorian, which is the Ancient Greek dialect of one of the four ethnicities into which the Ancient Greeks considered themselves divided. On a separate note entirely, that was a nice introduction :) @ Saga: Thanks for the suggestion regarding a resources post, I'll get to work on that when I have a bit more time. If anyone has any suggestions for resources either Internet or book-based, let me know either here or by PM. Also is there a way to insert a post in between two previous ones? The most logical place I can think of to include a resources bank is right at the beginning along with the team introduction. I am however not at all technically-minded. @ Spanky - thanks for the encouragement! I really enjoyed all the references to Greek culture in there. I am determined for Team Sparta to succeed in the coming year, but not with such a cost to the team that it could be called a Pyrrhic or Cadmean victory! Go Team Sparta! LanguageSponge Edited by LanguageSponge on 16 December 2012 at 3:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4603 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 21 of 231 16 December 2012 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great posts and great enthusiasm. I can't wait until January 1.
Great job pulling all this together, LanguageSponge. While I've been on HTLAL for several months, I've never paid much attention to the Language Logs before (sorry!). I'm not really clear on what I'm supposed to post here and what I'm to post in my personal log, and, if a personal log is even necessary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5759 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 22 of 231 16 December 2012 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi embici,
Okay, I'll try to clarify this as best I can. If I leave anything unexplained please let me know via PM. Also, don't worry about not having paid attention to the log section before now - my guess is that many of us don't unless we have a vested interest there, like one of our logs or that of a friend. So, getting down to explaining the purpose of this thread for you: This thread is for us, members of Team Sparta, to use with a view to organising resources we might use or want to use on the Challenge, organise possible Skype conversations, organise mini challenges within the team and, especially before the challenge starts, is a place where we can get to know each other better and therefore start to form stronger ties as a team, thereby increasing our chances of sticking it out until the end of the year. It is very important we try to make these ties as all too often, teams' numbers begin to gradually dwindle down as the year wears on, and without those strong ties, any team is more likely to fall at one hurdle or another. This thread is also a place where we can theoretically air any concerns we have although I imagine in practice this is more usually done via PM. The team thread tends to be a place where members of other teams look in to wish us good luck. In addition, when the awesome power of Team Sparta commands them to do so, it is also the place where other teams come to tell us how awesome we all are. Also, the personal log is a lot of the point to the TAC. It allows you to keep track of your progress throughout the year and therefore at the end, you can see how far you've come. I am sure that for some of us, our old logs for previous TACs have become fond memories, reminding us of what we once found difficult or the challenges we faced in a particular year, like a diary. Also writing the TAC log allows us, your team mates, as well as members of other teams, to drop in giving hints, tips, resource suggestions, corrections and words of encouragement when you need it. It's also a really good feeling when you get a nice comment from someone on your log because you feel like someone else is interested in addition to just yourself. I hope those two reasonably lengthy paragraphs clear up your questions :) If not, as I said, feel free to ask more! Also, and this is for everyone: Firstly, in post 20 here above I asked whether there was a way to insert a post in between two already existing ones, as to my mind, early on in the team thread is the best place to include a resources bank, which I will organise as we suggest or discover more. If inserting a post is impossible, I'll just edit the first post. This is a pedantic little quirk of mine - I would just prefer the grand team introduction to be in a separate post to the resources bank. Secondly, I am in the process of drawing up a list of mini challenges for us to use and possibly do together. Some are intended to be individual and some collaborative while others are designed to be competitive. This is taking me much longer to do than I intended as I am also drawing one up for Team Mir, not to mention the rush to get things done at work before the Christmas Break. In any case it will undoubtedly be done before the Dawn of the New Year, otherwise known as Day One, and my return to China from England. Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 16 December 2012 at 4:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5327 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 23 of 231 16 December 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I couldn't have explained this better myself :-)
I doubt that it is possible to insert an extra message, but if it is any help I can give up my first post which is nr. 5 and at least on the same page - it was not saying anything important anyway. Alternatively you could just write it anywhere, and simply reference to the number of the post and the page number at the end of the first post - if you do not wish to mess up the post itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5327 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 24 of 231 17 December 2012 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I have started my new log for 2013
My log 2013 Feel free to visit! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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