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bouda
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5601 days ago

194 posts - 197 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 113 of 160
21 August 2009 at 6:51am | IP Logged 
So, because I'm obviously having problems with whatever I'm doing right now, I thought
it'd be a good time to test L-R and see how it is. I'm not sure if I understand the
concept as I haven't found the original thread yet, but since this is all about
experimentation and finding what methods work best for ME, I don't think that'll be a
huge problem. The main issue is that it is very hard for me to get ahold of Arabic audio.
After a prolonged search I have finally obtained a copy of what looks like the audio for
Mahfouz's Children of the Alley, which I believe I also have in translation as well as in
Arabic in the pdf form. So I'm essentially set. We'll see how it goes.
1 person has voted this message useful



Akatsuki
Triglot
Senior Member
Portugal
Joined 6302 days ago

226 posts - 236 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English
Studies: Norwegian

 
 Message 114 of 160
21 August 2009 at 4:39pm | IP Logged 
A while ago, someone compiled a word document with the L-R concept taken from the original thread. I'm not sure who did this, I think it was Volte but I am not sure (and if it was not Volte then I appologize to the owner of the original file). So the credits go to the maker of this word document and not me.
Anyway, here's the full concept of L-R plus some more information.
Again, this link was taken from this forum.

Hope this can be of some help.
Good luck!

Edited by Akatsuki on 21 August 2009 at 4:39pm

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bouda
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5601 days ago

194 posts - 197 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 115 of 160
22 August 2009 at 9:10am | IP Logged 
Thank you for this! I downloaded it from you earlier today but had to dash to my plane,
so this is my first opportunity to glance at it. It looks very useful indeed. I look
forward to putting it to use!
1 person has voted this message useful



bouda
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5601 days ago

194 posts - 197 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 116 of 160
23 August 2009 at 1:07am | IP Logged 
I'm a little frustrated with my resources right now. I thought I had hit the jackpot
with Children of the Alley - great book, something I'd love to finish reading, have it
in English as well as Arabic text & audio, not to mention it's Mahfouz so it's well-
written too - but I started dabbling in L-R yesterday and noticed that, well, I could
be wrong because my Arabic is still pretty rudimentary right now, but I feel like my
English doesn't really match up with the Arabic. Or rather, it feels like it matches up
in terms of meaning but not one-to-one or anywhere NEAR one-to-one in term of words.

Some discrepancies that I can verify:

- the translator has split the text into paragraphs that do not match the original
formatting
- the English translation looks much shorter than the Arabic text (which is written
smaller as well as being longer); the Arabic audio feels much longer than the English
as well
- I think my English translation is missing the epigraph - okay, so this is minor, but
it's irksome!


I can't be SURE how much the English is condensed, but I really feel like it is. I'm
not sure though. Just from a quick skim, the first few sentences do seem to more or
less match up, a possible few words aside, and again, I'm not good enough at Arabic to
know for sure for the rest of the text.

I guess I'll have to stick with this one because I'm having a really hard time finding
both Arabic audio and Arabic text, let alone Arabic audio and English text. Actually,
finding Arabic audio at all can be quite hard... Now that I think about it, the logical
thing to do is to procure the Quran...

Edited by bouda on 23 August 2009 at 1:13am

1 person has voted this message useful



Akatsuki
Triglot
Senior Member
Portugal
Joined 6302 days ago

226 posts - 236 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English
Studies: Norwegian

 
 Message 117 of 160
26 August 2009 at 4:47am | IP Logged 
Sorry if I'm invading too much but you might find this link useful

Edit: Forgot to add this one: children audiobooks

Please note that all the audiobooks from the links above are completely free of charge and totally legal.
Hope these links can be of some help, and again sorry for invading too much; good luck!

Edited by Akatsuki on 26 August 2009 at 4:54am

1 person has voted this message useful



bouda
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5601 days ago

194 posts - 197 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 118 of 160
26 August 2009 at 5:19am | IP Logged 
Hey! Don't be sorry. I LOOOOVE invaders. When I see my little thread jump up in the forum
list through no contribution of my own, I get very excited indeed. Anyway... thank you so
much for these links! I can't download anything now, but they look very good and I've
bookmarked them for later. You're a lifesaver!
1 person has voted this message useful



bouda
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5601 days ago

194 posts - 197 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 119 of 160
26 August 2009 at 6:59am | IP Logged 
Arabic - read for about an hour yesterday, but other than that haven't done much of
anything language related as much of my day is spent meeting up with old friends, as
I'm visiting my hometown...

I thought about it for a while and decided that, given all the time I'll have at my
disposal in the coming year, it might be nice to start a new language or maybe two (I
know even one is a stretch, but I'm really flighty). I would not study this new
language intensively and use it mostly as a way to take breaks from my main languages,
MSA and Mandarin.

My Mandarin is good enough that I could stop using it altogether and it'd still be
fine. But it looks like I might be tutoring a few people or something so I should
probably continue polishin'.

My MSA is now at, I believe, a low-intermediate level, but my speaking skills are not
where I'd like them, to say the least. But as I will be taking a class, I think I'll be
all right there too.

Possible third languages: I have a LOOOOT of languages I want to learn at some point,
but out of those, the most useful to me would probably be Russian and/or Spanish.
However, knowing me, I'd probably ultimately go for Middle Egyptian (my current
fascination) and/or Japanese.

I may be visiting Japan next spring (my grandmother reaaaaaally wants to, so we might
take her), so it might be nice to gain some basic functionality before going there,
although obviously fluency would be out of the question. I'd probably focus on reading
skills for both Spanish and Middle Egyptian. Russian - my dad's new girlfriend is
Russian, which is both a total turn-off for learning the language (I really dislike
her) and an incentive (I'll probably have to talk to her a lot, and plus, in a petty
way, it'd be fun to show up my dad). Right now the language I'm most attracted to is
Middle Egyptian, but the honeymoon period fades fast, so I don't know whether current
interest is a good way to gauge whether to stick with a language...

Things completely unrelated to languages that I've discovered I like: ice cubes made
from sparkling water (to suck on)

Things I want to do as soon as I get home again: wrap all my books in butcher paper

Things I always buy whenever I start a new language: one basic grammar text and
lotslots of books

Edited by bouda on 26 August 2009 at 8:55am

1 person has voted this message useful



bouda
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5601 days ago

194 posts - 197 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 120 of 160
26 August 2009 at 8:39pm | IP Logged 
I realized today that I - well, I hesitate to use the word 'judge,' but I definitely
automatically place people who speak to me in Mandarin in groups according to perceived
proficiency, something that I don't do with English (my native language) or any of the
other languages that I'm still a beginner in.

I say automatic because if I were actually to judge consciously, I'd hope I'd go by
something more substantial than, say, pronunciation, which is the big kicker for me.
That's not what I wanted to post about though. What I wanted to post about is a new
frontier in judging people for me... a pioneering field... namely, that of judging
people's Mandarin abilities based on their Chinglish.

I can't quite describe how the unconscious processes in my brain work here, but I'm
guessing that Chinglish that is more grammatical in terms of Chinese and that keeps
whole phrases/words in Chinese is elevated in my brain above Chinglish that is
distinctly of the "I've only studied Mandarin for one month so I'm going to use the
three words I know in English sentences whenever possible" variety.

I tried to come up with examples, but it's hard. The only one that came to mind
immediately was someone who was telling me about their appointment at "shi o'clock"
today. Feels awkward to me to divide the Chinese/English that way - wouldn't it be more
natural to say "shi dian zhong" and be done with it? I'll think of some more later.

I in no way condone this judging; I just find it amusing.


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