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TAC 2009 - DaraghM | ||
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6157 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 169 of 177 30 November 2009 at 11:28am | IP Logged |
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After my brief diversion in Russian, I'm back studying Hungarian full time. The primary motivator behind my Hungarian study is my upcoming trip to Budapest. I'll be heading in two weeks, but just for the weekend. I've been in Budapest in the spring and summer, but never in the winter. I'm looking forward to my first Christmas market.
Resource wise, I'm primarily using the FSI course. I completed unit 7 which had a lot of content, and I've started into unit 8. Unit 8 covers a few different grammar topics. There's some very useful exercises on the verbs that end in -ik, the -bol case ending, and a lot of information on telling the time. Apart from that, I've also used the website Lets Learn Hungarian to brush up on some specific areas. Edited by DaraghM on 30 November 2009 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6157 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 170 of 177 04 December 2009 at 11:09am | IP Logged |
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Regarding Hungarian, I've almost finished unit 8. I'm not sure what's the best way to spend the last week before Budapest. I could start into unit 9, but think I should revise the first eight units to consolidate the material. Even revising FSI is a significant task, as these units comprise at least 14 hours of recorded material.
It's quite rare for two of my target languages to pop up in the one television program, but last night it happened. Our national station, R.T.E 1, showed a documentary about an Irish man who was shot in Bolivia. It's a rather strange case, as this Irish person got caught up with a right wing Hungarian group, who are accused of attempted assassination against Evo Morales, the left wing Bolivian president. Most of the interviews in the program were in Spanish or Hungarian with English subtitles. While reviewing my TAC goals for 2009, I noticed I've left one completely to the end. Somehow I avoided my natural wanderlust, and didn't study any new languages this year. Once I return from Budapest, I'll try out a brand new language. Hmmm. Which one will I choose ? I've a few ideas already. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6157 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 171 of 177 14 December 2009 at 11:17am | IP Logged |
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My trip to Budapest turned out to be very good, even though my language learning was hampered just before heading. Prior to the trip, I'd been doing some pretty intense Hungarian study using FSI, the Carol Rounds grammar book, and even Teach Yourself Hungarian. Unfortunately, during the week I got pretty severe food poisoning, and I was out of action for a couple of days. I'll simple mention that oysters were involved, and I'm still not back to normal.
While I was in Budapest, I found my knowledge of Hungarian was a lot greater than I'd realised, and I could conduct some very simple conversations. While it was mostly touristy stuff, Hungarians seemed surprised I was able to string together sentences in their language. Of all the language courses I used, I think that FSI gave me the greatest ability to manipulate the language, without having to explicitly remember various verb or case endings. While I've enjoyed my Hungarian study, I'm going to take a good break from the language, and will change my profile to reflect this. It's hard to believe that TAC 2009 is approaching it's end. While I seem to have signed up for TAC 2010 by default, I don't feel like fixing my goals for the year just yet. I still have a couple of outstanding goals for TAC 2009 which I'll address over the next couple of weeks. I'll also need to review my original TAC 2009 goals with my achievements, which goals I changed, and any other lessons learnt. Edited by DaraghM on 14 December 2009 at 11:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6157 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 172 of 177 16 December 2009 at 10:42am | IP Logged |
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As can be told from my profile, I've started dabbling in yet another new language, Bulgarian. This wanderlust was actually part of my original TAC 2009 goals. I was tempted to avoid any new languages, but something about Bulgarian kept on nagging at me.
My main resource for learning the language is the Basic FSI course. Like the Basic Hungarian course the audio quality is suprisingly good. The only drawback with the recordings is the speaker talks very fast, which makes it tricky to discern certain sounds. While FSI courses initially tend to resememble each other in format, each one is actually quite different. The Bulgarian course has no English variation drills, like the Hungarian, but does have full translations for every word in the pronunciation drills. This means the first unit alone teaches over 200 words. As a language Bulgarian is quite close to Russian, and the other Slavic languages. While the language is closest to Macedonian, many features remind me of Croatian and Czech, such as the question particles. E.g. ли. On of the consequences of switching from Hungarian to Bulgarian led to my misunderstanding the Bulgarian definite case. In Hungarian, the accusative case is normally created by affixing a -t. However, in Bulgarian the -t\-to\ta ending signifies the definite subject. E.g. кафето е горещо (Bulgarian: The coffee is hot) Iszom a kávét (Hungarian: I drink the coffee) The other difference of note is the pronciation of щ. In Russian this is normally an extened 'sh' sound, but in Bulgarian it's a 'sht' sound. I haven't noticed any other major differences yet, but I'm only at the start of the course. Edited by DaraghM on 16 December 2009 at 10:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6157 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 173 of 177 21 December 2009 at 10:50am | IP Logged |
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And now the end is near ...
And so I face the final curtain ... I can't believe it's almost a year now since TAC 2009 started. This has been a much more enjoyable TAC than 2008, with a number of people making it to the finish line. TAC 2008 was a very lonely experience towards the end. I've been following almost all of this years TAC's, even those, that have departed for other shores. I'm wondering how many people started the TAC, but then had to pull out ? The attrition rate for TAC can be quite high, and a number of people start well, but find the long road the most difficult part. I think TAC should be treated like a marathon, and not a sprint. If you want to make it to the end, set realistic goals, pace yourself, but don't just stroll along. You need to have a bit of momentum going. However, the most important rule I discovered, is to adapt. If a course, method or technique, isn't working, abandon it, and try something else. I've done this a number of times during 2009, and it's really helped my language learning. I hope, and I've a strong feeling, that TAC 2010 will be the biggest yet. I haven't decided personal goals yet, but I might use some of my outstanding goals from 2009. I'm not sure if I'll return to some courses that got left by the wayside. E.g. Assimil. I also can't decide what languages I'll do in 2010. I'm currently cramming Bulgarian, but that's to satisfy an outstanding goal from TAC 2009. Will I continue it in the new year ? The major goal I didn't achieve in 2009 was Russian. I had hoped to get to a comfortable intermediate stage, but I'm still at the advanced beginner. I've probably a few posts left, in which I'll review my goals, achievements and outstanding work. I've just edited the first page to comment on my TAC 2009 achievements. Edited by DaraghM on 21 December 2009 at 11:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6709 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 174 of 177 21 December 2009 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
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So far I have only read a small Bulgarian grammar and a few text with a machine translation to help me, but with some knowledge of Russian it doesn't seem difficult to understand Bulgarian - the problems lie in the details (including the ь, which in Bulkarian is a regular vowel). You mention the postclitic definite article, but I have noticed that Bulgarian also has an aorist - both things tie it to Greek rather than Russian. However studying Bulgarian after Russian must be a logical development, - those two languages definitely have a lot in common. Good luck.
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6157 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 175 of 177 21 December 2009 at 1:43pm | IP Logged |
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As Iversen points out, the ь is treated as a separate vowel. This initially confused me as I thought Bulgarian was padding between consonants in some arbitrary fashion. The other feature that makes Bulgarian quite unique is the lack of the verbal infinitive. Bulgarian conjugates the verb after auxiliary phrases. However, Bulgarian has very few cases making this aspect somewhat easier than Russian. Edited by DaraghM on 21 December 2009 at 1:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6157 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 176 of 177 22 December 2009 at 12:09pm | IP Logged |
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As I wrap up my TAC 2009 with Bulgarian study, I wonder how TAC 2010 will play out. I've set myself some challenging goals for next year, which I'll hopefully be able to achieve. Due to significant events in 2009, I found my time tracking impossible to maintain, and it stopped almost exactly half way through the year. This will make the next TAC more of a challenge, as I need to resume this discipline.
Here's the stats as they applied from 1st January 2009 to 1st June 2009 Spanish Total: 221 hours Russian Total: 61 hours Hungarian Total: 79 hours Italian Total: 5 hours [EDIT - I just discovered I did some Italian study in 2009, so I didn't really need to take up Bulgarian. On the other hand, I'm glad I did dabble into the language. It'll be my only language until New Years Eve.] These are made up of both pure and passive study. Pure Study: 165 hours Passive Study: 201 hours. Breaking the figures down into daily and weekly. Daily Average: 2.42 hours Weekly Average: 17 hours. That means the total study for the first half of the year was 366 hours. I reckon the second half of the year was slightly less, around 300 hours, but I've no idea how it breaks down by language. Edited by DaraghM on 22 December 2009 at 3:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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