bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 33 of 160 05 August 2009 at 4:48am | IP Logged |
What do you do when you want to improve drastically and fast?
It has suddenly become a matter of paramount importance that I become better at Arabic.
I had a similar situation a few years ago with Chinese, and I solved the problem by
studying doggedly from my textbooks and, more importantly, trying my best to simulate
an immersion environment. I didn't really watch movies or speak to my friends in
Chinese or whatever, but I forced my mother to speak only in Chinese to me (I'm
half/half, but I refused to learn Mandarin as a little kid and my parents never spoke
it around me, which is why I had to start learning so late), and I think that really
helped. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to make my family members speak only
Arabic to me, as none of them know Arabic!
ETA: I'm not seriously asking for a magic solution, although if you had one that'd be
great; I'm just venting my stress. I'm not too horribly worried about it all. I think
if I continue studying at a steady pace, I'll probably understand enough for my
purposes, anyway.
Edited by bouda on 05 August 2009 at 5:05am
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 35 of 160 05 August 2009 at 1:57pm | IP Logged |
I recently - read: yesterday - started using lang-8 due to the recommendation of
togda.blogspot.com (sorry, I don't know if you have an username here!), and it's been
really helpful to me. I have gotten one correction thus far. I was pleased to find that
I didn't have as many mistakes as I thought I did, but there was still a lot to
correct! It seems like right now I need to work on:
- checking my spelling. There were two basic words that I was spelling in a funny way.
- there is some new, useful vocabulary in the correction that I should learn so that I
don't have to express myself like a tongue-tied caveman.
- now that I'm looking at my entry, I can tell that while I was generally trying to
think in Arabic while writing this, insomuch as I am able to, I did slip back into
translating from English (as opposed to drawing from my knowledge of Arabic, if this
makes any sense), which made some of the sentences a little strange.
Will post corrected copy on my blog later so I can access it easily.
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 36 of 160 05 August 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
Having a hard time finding good Arabic language online bookstores with nice covers and nice prices. I know I'm asking too much. Right now I'm using alkitab but the shipping is $6 for the first book, no matter how thin or light it is!
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snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5729 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian
| Message 37 of 160 05 August 2009 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
Hi bouda! I'm the poster from togda.blogspot.com. I follow many of the language logs on this site, although I don't post that frequently. On these types of forums I tend to be more of a lurker than a poster. :)
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 38 of 160 06 August 2009 at 12:46am | IP Logged |
What is your username from? Does it have a meaning or is it just sort of random?
I know what you mean about lurking. I lurk on a lot of blogs and threads too. I mostly
just post here in my language log - that way I can delude myself into thinking I'm doing
something useful!
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 39 of 160 06 August 2009 at 1:30am | IP Logged |
TO DO TODAY
memorize three chapters
watch that movie I borrowed so I can return it tomorrow
write first draft of presentation (should be easy)
DOUBLE CHECK ^^^^^^^^^
make up: 6,7, 17, 18
2, 6, read 339
decide what food to bring for the party!
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snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5729 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian
| Message 40 of 160 06 August 2009 at 1:41am | IP Logged |
My username is actually s novym godom (с новым годом), and it means "happy new year" in Russian. I actually started using that name on forums and sites during the new year of 2006 when I wanted to start using a different username for my things.
Togda (тогда) is a Russian word meaning "then" in a lot of different senses. It means the conditional "then" as well as the meaning of "at that time" or "back then". It's a pretty common word in Russian. I chose it because I wanted my username on Blogger to be a short name (5-6 characters), and I wanted it to be a Russian word that people would recognize.
My livejournal username (aitqandai/айтқандай) means "by the way" in Kazakh, although that blog is being used to store my Russian texts.
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