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Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5495 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 25 of 54 06 February 2015 at 11:53pm | IP Logged |
@Expugnator
The closest thing I've had before to "pão de queijo" is probably cheese scones. I completely murdered its pronunciation the first time I ordered a hot batch out of the oven at the market stall, and must have sounded like a drunken Spanish pirate! Since then, I've looked up the correct pronunciation on Forvo, and I think I've got the pronunciation down now. My wife and I liked these breakfast treats so much that we also bought a big bag of the little fellas to bake at home later - a once a week treat at the market seemed far too long to wait. ;)
Edited by Teango on 06 February 2015 at 11:54pm
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5495 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 26 of 54 13 February 2015 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
Week 6
There was a lot going on in my calendar this week, which is no doubt reflected in the scarce hours spent studying or immersing in languages. However I spent a lot of time thinking about my language goals in stolen moments, and how I could organize my time better to accommodate the tasks needed to achieve them, and I hope to implement some of these strategies soon.
Hawaiian (6h)
Friday's Lā Launa Pū (get-together day) was fun! Sadly there was no kuʻiʻai (poi pounding) this year, but I did get to play a traditional Hawaiian game called ʻulu maika, which involved rolling a flattened stone through distant sticks in the grass, somewhat reminiscent of bowling. I also tried my hand at speaking in Hawaiian to several people, although I completely fell flat on my face when I tried to talk to my previous kumu (teacher) from last term. I think it was from this point onwards that I decided to use my mouth predominantly for other purposes - namely eating all the mea ʻai ʻono (tasty food) on offer!
Irish (1h)
I'm fast approaching Level 8 in Duolingo, and only really twigged today how they present the same phrases in different dialects from time to time. Although a little confusing at first, I think this is a particularly useful feature for people learning Irish.
Russian (1.3h)
Feeling a little disheartened about my listening skills in Russian, I deliberately let the ball drop this week, and indulged in more English speaking series instead for comfort (e.g., Supernatural, Person of Interest, The Walking Dead, Black Sails). Well, they say a little break can often work wonders... o.O
Other (Japanese: 0.1h)
Whilst in the bookstore this week, I picked up a couple of easy readers for French and Spanish, and had to abate a serious craving to start learning Tagalog. I also brought my wife to a fancy Japanese restaurant for her birthday, where we enjoyed our first kaiseki (a traditional multi-course set menu) together. We absolutely loved the combination of fresh and cooked ingredients in each of the courses, their presentation in fine ornate hand-made pottery, and of course, la pièce de résistance, yet another opportunity to try out a few tried and tested phrases in Japanese.
(Total time spent on learning languages this week: 8.4 hours)
Edited by Teango on 13 February 2015 at 3:23am
1 person has voted this message useful
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5495 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 27 of 54 20 February 2015 at 4:27am | IP Logged |
Week 7
I've decided to make some changes to both my study regime and this blog...
Firstly, I'll be posting updates here every fortnight from now on, with my next installment due in a week's time (Weeks 7-8). This makes more sense all round in terms of the time I have available to post online, and the need to switch between languages from week to week. Who knows, given an extended period between updates, I might also amass some more interesting stories or experiences to choose from and write about.
Secondly, I'm shifting my main focus to Russian (i.e., this will proverbially be my major this year). Although I'm not officially participating with Russian in the HTLAL TAC (my focal languages are Hawaiian and Irish for the challenge), Russian is still personally the most important language on my list. I feel I've acquired a good solid vocabulary for basic conversational proficiency, but that my grammar and fluency still leave a lot to be desired. I've also stopped speaking Russian at home with my wife, as otherwise planned at the beginning this year, and have long since reverted back to English. This is largely due to my frustrations with the grammar, which in turn is the result of having never actually completed any Russian course book and formally studied enough grammar. So in an attempt to fill in some of these holes and oversights, I'm going back to basics, and aim to study both "Assimil Russian" and "Living Language Complete Russian" courses, followed by "Perfectionnement Russe".
Thirdly, in an attempt to juggle some of the many languages I love in the limited time available in 2015, I've had to make some tough decisions. The offshoot of this is that I need to shelve Japanese and Spanish for the time being (which is a hard call, considering there are many opportunities to use these languages with all the people from Japan or California in Hawaiʻi), and also sideline a bunch of other languages along with it. The 4 languages remaining for minor study now include Hawaiian (which I'm studying at university), German (which needs de-rusting and ongoing maintenance), French (a language I will probably well need in future, but which I only studied for a year in high school, and that was over a quarter of a century ago!), and Irish (which I owe to myself and family, being half-Irish). I aim to switch between each language every 3 days (excluding Sundays), so that I've studied each one for 3 days in a row every fortnight (and ideally in time for an update here).
In the meantime, I've been busy focusing on Hawaiian over the last week (investing approximately 8 hours between classes and homework), and spent an additional 1.4 hours watching up to episode 46 from season 3 of Kuhnya and maintaining some of my Irish skill sets on Duolingo.
(Total time spent on learning languages this week: 9.4 hours)
Edited by Teango on 20 February 2015 at 4:31am
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4783 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian
| Message 28 of 54 20 February 2015 at 1:54pm | IP Logged |
Удачи, товарищ!
Sounds like a well thought-out plan to me, so good luck with your new study regimen! I understand that trying to speak Russian without detailed knowledge of the grammar might be frustrating, given there is just so much to observe in this language. So good luck juggling cases and aspects once more! You're always welcome at Team Pushkin if you decide to make Russian also your priority language in the TAC.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5105 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 29 of 54 20 February 2015 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
Do join our Team Pushkin, Teango! After all, you'll be doing mostly Russian.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5273 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 30 of 54 20 February 2015 at 9:56pm | IP Logged |
Expugnator wrote:
Do join our Team Pushkin, Teango! After all, you'll be doing mostly Russian. |
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Yes, yes, yes! Pushkinians for the return of Teango to team Pushkin!
1 person has voted this message useful
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6081 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian
| Message 31 of 54 21 February 2015 at 1:45am | IP Logged |
Teango wrote:
The 4 languages remaining for minor study now include Hawaiian (which I'm studying at university), German (which needs de-rusting and ongoing maintenance), French (a language I will probably well need in future, but which I only studied for a year in high school, and that was over a quarter of a century ago!), and Irish (which I owe to myself and family, being half-Irish). I aim to switch between each language every 3 days (excluding Sundays), so that I've studied each one for 3 days in a row every fortnight (and ideally in time for an update here). |
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This sounds like a great plan, one which I might have to try out myself. I'm interested to see how it works out for you! I get Chinese in class every weekday, so in my case I suppose I'd alternate between Turkish, Persian, Bulgarian or Romanian, and Swahili.
1 person has voted this message useful
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4646 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 32 of 54 21 February 2015 at 5:21am | IP Logged |
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Expugnator wrote:
Do join our Team Pushkin, Teango! After all,
you'll be doing mostly Russian. |
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Yes, yes, yes! Pushkinians for the return of Teango to team Pushkin!
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И я согласен.
1 person has voted this message useful
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