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Embici’s slow road to Greek

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akkadboy
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5401 days ago

264 posts - 497 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish
Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh

 
 Message 89 of 108
18 November 2013 at 4:40pm | IP Logged 
I have a love-hate relationship with Mandarin. This is the first language I tried to learn and everytime I come back to it, it seems to defeat me so easily...So my advice would be a mix of "Sure, go for it !" and "get out while you still can" ;-)

How are your Greek studies going ?

I finished MT Greek recently and found it great. The students aren't as dumb as in the other courses and the teacher places great empahsis an getting pronounciation right. I'm now trying to find a radio with lots of talk, call-in shows but can't find one. Every Greek radio (even the ones labeled "talk") seems to broadcast more music than anything else.
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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4351 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 90 of 108
19 November 2013 at 8:08am | IP Logged 
Try this station

tovima radio

It has music of course, but it's mainly talking, and it's a news channel. So you'll learn the news as well!
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akkadboy
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5401 days ago

264 posts - 497 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish
Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh

 
 Message 91 of 108
26 November 2013 at 11:03am | IP Logged 
That's exactly what I was looking for, many thanks !
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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 92 of 108
26 November 2013 at 1:46pm | IP Logged 
In addition, these stations were recommended to me: ΣΚΑΙ 100.3, ΝΕΤ 105.8 & ΒΗΜΑ 99.5.
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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 93 of 108
20 December 2013 at 7:10pm | IP Logged 
akkadboy wrote:


How are your Greek studies going ?



Excruciatingly slowly, akkadboy. I have really missed the mark in terms of my language goals for 2014.

I'm glad to see that you are also studying Greek. Will you join a team for TAC 2014 with Greek?

I also really liked MT. When you're done that, I recommend Language Transfer as it goes a bit farther.

I think I made it to A2 in Greek, but barely. Considering how long I've been studying, I should be much farther along. I had to take a few breaks along the way (most of September and October) and I found I had to relearn a lot of the material I had studied before. My professional life was turned upside down this year. Instead of spending time studying, I was putting out fires. And things are still not sorted with my job. Hopefully by spring.

I will provide an inventory of my studies soon. I thank everyone who has provided support for my Greek studies along the way.
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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 94 of 108
31 December 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged 
Greek
Michel Thomas: Completed the Advanced course.
Language Transfer: Completed all three levels
Assimil: Got to lesson 58.
Ellinika A: Lesson 12
Spoken World Greek: Lesson 6.
Lessons via Skype: approx. 40 hours. I have definitely noticed progress here. At first
I was only able to have a conversation for maybe 5-10 minutes in Greek. At my best, I
think I went 40-50 minutes with only asking for the odd translation.
Only an hour or two of conversation exchanges.
I started using Flashcard programs for the first time (Anki, Memrise and Quizlet). I do
find them useful, but unfortunately I can't seem to get into the habit of doing them
everyday as I should.
Studying in fits and starts is not the best method for me as my memory is just not good
enough to retain much after a long break, and I've had too many long breaks this year
Nevertheless, I will make Greek my main language of study for TAC 2014.


Spanish
I put more work into Spanish this year than I expected to. Maybe because my Spanish was
a lot rustier than I thought.
Lessons via Skype: approx. 7 hours.
I've been taking one-on-one lessons via Skype which has been helpful in identifying my
weaknesses and working on those. I'm not sure if I'll continue with the same teacher in
2014. She's from Spain and I find I'm not as at ease speaking with her as I would be
with Latin Americans. I tend to overthink my word choices, worried that they're "too
Latin America." I once let out "Orale, que padre!" to express my amazement with
something and it just got me blank stares. I know I should just relax and let it flow
without worrying about such things.
I've also found this teacher has told me some things I've said were wrong when they
didn't feel wrong to me at all. I'd later look it up and find that what I said was
correct, just not used in Spain.
I took a couple of Verbling classes but didn't find those terribly useful. There are
too many people in the classes.
I've done a few hours of conversation exchanges.
conversationexchange.com is the most useful site for those, I have found.
I regularly read news sites in Spanish and didn't keep track of pages read or time
spent on that. I also watched a few documentaries in Spanish.
Overall, this year -- well, mainly the last couple of months -- has meant much more
active use of the language than I've had in a while.

Catalan
Lessons via Skype: 1/2 hour.
Pons Catalan: 2 lessons
A fascinating language. Maybe I'll revisit when I've made sufficient progress with my
Spanish and French.

French
Lessons via Skype: approx. 4 hours.
Verbling's French classes are not in high demand so they're a bit more useful. I've
only taken one, and may continue.
I've been reading French more often lately and making an effort to listen to French-
language radio (Radio-Canada).
It's been a good time for my French. I've had much more exposure this year than I've
had for a long time.


Italian
I've taken several Verbling classes. Again, these classes aren't crowded so they are
useful for the price. I'd like to throw myself into this language which I once studied
way back in high school. Realistically I think I will just dabble in it here and there.

As for other languages I thought I might tackle, Dutch and Swahili were pretty much
ignored this year. I bought Spoken World Swahili and Assimil Dutch and listened to the
first lesson or so but didn't do anything beyond that.

Edited by embici on 08 January 2014 at 2:03pm

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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 95 of 108
31 December 2013 at 5:04pm | IP Logged 
Good luck in 2014, and thanks for being my teammate in 2013 - I am happy you had more success than I did
:-)
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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 96 of 108
08 January 2014 at 2:08pm | IP Logged 
Thank you very much, Cristina, and good luck to you.

Really, your Russian progress is indeed something to brag about. It's inspiring!


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