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Russian and Greek, TAC2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5049 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 25 of 99 14 January 2013 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Не за что. No, it can be used with inanimate nouns as well, but here it doesn't sound right. I'm happy to be useful and to apply my knowledge somewhere. I'm not a philologist or a language teacher, but I have always been interested in the Russian language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4632 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 26 of 99 24 January 2013 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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It’s high time for an update. I want to log more regularly, but the last couple of weeks have been very hectic, and I did not want to come here just to write that I have not done very much. The last few days have been somewhat better though. I’ll try to log more often, at least once a week. This is what I have done so far.
RUSSIAN: I’ve been using Assimil Le Russe more or less every day. I have concentrated on the audio, listening repeatedly to many lessons and done some shadowing. I am currently at lesson 48, so no problem with reaching my target of revising up to lesson 50. I’ll probably go beyond that. I have also concentrated a lot on acquiring vocabulary. This I feel is still my week point in Russian, it takes an effort to make it “stick”, much more than I remember from learning Spanish or Italian, but maybe it is the age :-) I am also on the last lesson of Colloquial Russian. The language here I find pretty complicated. The lesson introduces the gerund, which does not seem too difficult per se, but when they pack the text with gerund forms, it takes some time to figure it out. As for grammar, I have concentrated on the new grammar elements in Colloquial (participles and gerund), and so far have not done much with verbs of movement or declension of numerals, which were part of my January goals. I’ll try to catch up on that next week. I discovered that Komsomolskaya Pravda has a nice app for iPad, and it is free! It has a number of news articles every day and also lots of videos. Obviously the language is far too advanced for me to make much sense out of – extensive use of a dictionary is required – but when I am tired of repeating course book lessons, I like to have a look at real native stuff. Yesterday I struggled my way through the first few paragraphs of an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is visiting Moscow. I have not had the time to sit down and write something in Russian (apart from doing a couple of exercises in Colloquial), so that is on the agenda for the next couple of days. GREEK: Not much progress I am afraid. I have done Assimil up to lesson 8, but I must say that Assimil’s Greek course doesn’t inspire me much. In February I will try to set myself some clear goals for Greek, and I must return to the Langenscheidt course, which seems much more interesting to me than what Assimil can offer. It is really striking how different the two Assimil courses are (Russian and Greek). The dialogues in Russian are often fun, they have a punchline or a twist which makes you remember the text and the words more easily, while the Greek course is sometimes just plain boring. 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 27 of 99 30 January 2013 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm glad it's not just me. I'm finding the Assimil Greek dialogues very uninspiring as well. When there is a bit of humour, it's very childish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4632 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 28 of 99 01 February 2013 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is already February (what happened to January?), and time for an update and for setting new monthly goals.
January was very hectic, but I managed to squezze in some time here and there, so I am overall relatively satisfied. I do wish I could have spent some more "quality time" with my languages though. So here are the goals and how I performed: "Colloquial Russian: Revise lessons 18 to 20 in the first book. Start on first lesson in book 2." I have gone through 18 and 19 pretty thoroughly, but still not really done with 20. Did not find time to start on book 2. "Assimil: Work through lessons 35 to 50 (mainly as a listening/shadowing exercise)." This went better, I have done loads of listening this month, and I am actually on lesson 56. I have even done a few of the written exercises. Grammar: Active and passive participles - think I've got them, but need to consolidate. Gerunds - the same, need to do some exercises though. Review verbs of motion - not done as much as I had hoped, I still struggle a bit to memorise them all. Review declension of cardinal numerals - this month's omission, carried over to February. I have also tried to read a few short articles from Russian newspapers online. Nothing memorable, but a good exercise in struggling with the real thing. I did not establish any goals for Greek. What I have done is to work on Assimil up to lesson 9, and I am on lesson 3 in Langenscheidt. February goals: They are a bit more ambitious due to the fact that I am off to the Caribbean for a two weeks' holiday the second half of the month - two weeks in the sun with lots of time to study! Russian: Assimil: Lessons 50 to 70. Colloquial: Finish book 1 and do the first three chapters of book 2. Grammar: Revise nominal cases: Declensions, prepositions governing different cases etc. Declension of cardinal numbers. Irregular verbs and verbs of movement. Continue to read a couple of news articles. If I feel really inspired, I will start reading a small Russian e-book I have on my Kindle, Совиный Беспредел. It seems to be a children story, and from a quick glance at it the language does not look to complicated. Write at least three small texts in Russian. Greek: Langenscheidt: Lessons three to six, revise vocabulary of lessons one and two. Assimil: Do lessons 8 to 13. I see other people keep good track of the time they spend on each language. I have decided not to do that. Although it is obvious that the more time you spend, the more you learn, I also think it is important to distinguish between quantity and quality. As mentioned, I have spent a lot of time listening to Russian, and of course it is useful, but part of that time is whilst doing other things, so I really would not count that as actively studying. I just put in the time I can, and the I'll wait to see what the outcome is in the end. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4632 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 29 of 99 07 March 2013 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been away from my log and indeed from HTLAL for a long time. The first couple of weeks of February were very busy, and then I went to the Dominican Republic for 15 days, being far away from any computer (there were computers at the hotel, but they charged 5USD for 30 minutes, which I was not prepared to pay, and the free wifi basically never worked).
The good thing is that during my holiday I had a lot of time to study and I met most, if not all of my February goals. In Russian, I got to lesson 74 in Assimil, and I did the two first lessons of Colloquial Russian 2, and started on the third one. The first lesson of the Colloquial 2 is a revision of some basic grammar, the nominal case system and the verb aspects mainly, with a number of exercises. This was a very useful review. It also includes some interesting texts about the attempted "coup" in 1991 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. I did not however manage to write any texts, the sun and the beach made me too lazy for that... In Assimil, I came across the interesting term "новый русский", which is translated as "nouveau riche". Is this really the meaning of it? Apart from that, there were lots of Russians at the hotel I stayed, apparently the Dominican Republic has become a popular holiday destination for Russians - there was even a "Russian supermarket" close to the hotel where all the staff were Russians! To my regret, they did not sell any Russian products though, it was mostly rhum, cigars and Dominican souvenirs. Still, for the first time I had the experience of buying some stuff "in Russian", although my conversation was basically limited to "hello, please and thank you". However, I've come to the conclusion that a young person who wants to work in the tourist industry should really be encouraged to learn Russian, wherever I have been on holiday lately there have been a lot of Russians. I've also managed to progress a bit in Greek, although at a slower speed. I have worked a lot on lessons 3 and 4 of Langenscheidt and revised the vocabulary of 1 and 2. I also did a couple of more lessons of Assimil, but I just find it very boring, Langenscheidt is much more stimulating as a course in my view. For the moment I will not set any goals for March, I might come back to it later, but right now there is a lot of catching up to do at work, and my studies this week have been limited to listening while walking to work and a few minutes of reading in bed before going to sleep. However, I will try to update this log far more regularly over the next weeks and months. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4632 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 30 of 99 12 March 2013 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I have little time for studying, so I have decided that if I want to advance in both Greek and Russian over the next months, I need to structure my studies in a better way. Up until now, whenever I had a spare moment I have just done what I fancied most and the ratio between Greek and Russian has not at all been consistent.
From now on I have decided to have Greek-only days and Russian-only days. Monday and Wednesday I will concentrate fully on Russian, while Tusday and Thursday will be Greek days. I will leave the weekend flexible, as it varies a lot how much I get to study from Friday to Sunday. We'll see in a few weeks if this will make any difference to the progress I make in both languages. As for Greek, I am more or less giving up on Assimil, it is just not motivating and with little time available I prefer to work with the much more demanding, but interesting Langenscheidt course. One thing I have noticed is that already, a couple of French loan words have cropped up in the lessons. I've already seen γκαρσόν in both courses, and I've also come across ραντεβού (from rendez-vous obviously). I am not a language purist, loan words are a natural and often enriching part of a language, and many European languages have borrowed words from French, but I am still a bit surprised that Greek does not have "indigenous" words for these concepts. I would also have thought that the influence of French on Greek was rather limited, and that you would find more loan words from e.g. English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 31 of 99 12 March 2013 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
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There are other words for waiter (σερβιτόρος, foreign word really..the pure greek word is ΤΡΑΠΕΖΟΚΟΜΟΣ, but it's only used to describe a waiter's job in hospitals and places like that ) and rendez-vous (συνάντηση), very commonly used. The ones you mention are also commonly used. I prefer the greek ones myself, but you can use both without a problem!
I have the same problems with assimil German. But I decided to conquer the boredom. After all, it's the first step to more interesting things! Edited by renaissancemedi on 12 March 2013 at 11:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4632 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 32 of 99 12 March 2013 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your answer renaissancemedi. σερβιτόρος must also come from French, just like in Norwegian we say "servitør", frome French serviteur, which doesn't mean waiter but servant. It's one of those "false friends" one has to watch out for. A waiter in French is "serveur".
With Assimil it really depends on the language. I enjoy their Russian course a lot, it is fun and well structured. Anyway, I'll stop nagging about Assimil and just get on with my Greek studies... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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