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Chung at work / Chung pri práci | ||
Tags: Azerbaijani | Uzbek | Turkic languages | Uralic Languages | Slovak | Comic Strip/Cartoon | Serbian | Serbo-Croatian | Ukrainian | Croatian | Endangered Language | Linguistics | Hungarian | Finnish | Turkish | Polish | Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7153 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 513 of 541 01 July 2015 at 1:26pm | IP Logged |
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I've recovered sufficiently over the past few weeks so that I'm now able to get back to studying. Not a moment too soon as well considering that today is the last day to start studying Uzbek for the Turkic challenge.
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| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6058 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 514 of 541 01 July 2015 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
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I'm glad to know you're feeling better, primarily for your sake (of course), but also
because there's something missing in the forum when you're not posting. I wish you a full (and speedy) recovery. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7153 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 515 of 541 01 July 2015 at 11:41pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you, Luso.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7153 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 516 of 541 02 July 2015 at 1:15am | IP Logged |
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Over the past couple of months, I cut down significantly on my studies as I dealt with some health problems. Nevertheless, I did make some progress and decided to change my tack in a couple of languages.
--- FINNISH I've worked through units 8 to 10 in Ymmärrä suomea!. I also tried to continue working through Unit 2 of “Finnish for Foreigners 2” (I've been stuck there since last December) but couldn't get it going. A couple of things that I realized on my last trip to Finland was that my lexical stock is unsatisfactorily small while my ability to express myself at least semi-spontaneously in Finnish is similarly unsatisfactory. Working with Ymmärrä suomea! isn't unpleasant but I do need more than just listening-reading and doing a short multiple-choice quiz about the text. I thought that working with “Finnish for Foreigners 2” would be good in this respect although it’s getting a little dry and it does introduce more structures that are typical of written rather than spoken Finnish, not to mention that I still feel that my grasp of some of the basics in “Finnish for Foreigners 1” isn’t as strong as I’d like. Thus I've decided to go back a bit, and work through the last two volumes of Suomen mestari. These are meant for people at CEFR A2 and I do like that in Suomen mestari 3, the voice actors use colloquial Finnish rather than written Finnish. There's no shame in review, and for now I'm happier working toward being solidly at A2 than trying to move onto B1 with a shaky foundation. It rather bothers me that I can analyze a Finnish sentence or explain (in English) some bit of grammar better than I can talk or write (in Finnish) about what I did yesterday without a lot of hesitation. 
(From Upea ilta via Musta hevonen -sarjakuva) 1) “Yesterday evening was great!” 2) “Dinner by candlelight... Some dancing... A walk along the shore...” 3) “Too bad that I was by myself.” Convention for unfamiliar vocabulary in the comic strip (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular, partitive singular, partitive plural) VERBS: 1st infinitive (1st person singular present tense, 3rd person singular past simple tense, active past participle) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** KOREAN I've been working steadily with Korean Made Easy for Beginners and have finished Units 5 to 7 since the last update in March. It's piddling progress but I'm not complaining. At some point this year, I'm also planning to start using “Reading Korean for Beginners” and “Writing Korean for Beginners” published by Hollym. Although I do like “Korean Made Easy for Beginners” quite a lot (and have ordered “Korean Made Easy Intermediate” by the same author), I do wish that there were more exercises. I was alerted to Hollym's books after having read this blog entry and after checking out reviews on Amazon, promptly ordered a second-hand copy of each for about $20 on Amazon Marketplace. Even though my pace in the language is moving glacially, I derive some encouragement while reading druckfehler's and Evita's logs. I'm in this one for the loooooong haul. :-) *** POLISH My evening classes in Polish ended a couple of months ago and since then I've done only a bit of maintenance work with the language (mainly browsing a few Polish websites). I don't feel that I got that much out of the course, although in the last month of the course I was preoccupied by my health. For lack of anything better, I'm likely to go back to “Kiedyś wrócisz tu... część 1: Gdzie nadwiślański brzeg” and continue working on Unit 4 which I started over a year ago. 
(From Real Life via Smiech.net) 1) “Whoopee!” 2) “*sigh* - She looks happy. What’s that about?” 3) “I preordered Diablo 2: The Collector's Edition several months ago for her birthday. - That was nice of you.” 4) “Yeah... Only now I have no money for a copy for myself. - Ouch.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (nominative plural, genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 2nd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** SLOVAK As noted here, I’m compiling a list of verbs that use prefixes in derivation or to indicate changes in aspect. 
(From Dr. Pundor 13 via S H O O T Y - Dr. Pundor (2002)) 1) “It's possible that you have a fracture.” 3) “I’ll send you for an x-ray to make sure.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (3rd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** TURKISH I finished working on Unit 32 in “Turkish Self-Study Course 1” and Unit 33 in “Turkish Self-Study Course 2”. I have thus finished the first volume of the series and begun the second (3 volumes in total). I did more more work with what the book calls “present simple” and reviewed the present continuous. Because of the low pace in this series, I’ve also started using “Teach Yourself Turkish” instead of Öztopçu's “Elementary Turkish 1” as the second textbook. I will go back to the latter because of my completist urge but like more the approach of the former since it doesn’t introduce as much vocabulary per unit. Since having started “Teach Yourself Turkish” a few months ago, I’m already at Unit 7. It hasn’t been too demanding since I’ve been exposed to much of the grammar and some of the vocabulary and was often reviewing. *** TURKMEN I did what I could with Turkmen despite my health and my efforts were limited to working with DLI's Headstart2 Turkmen and the Peace Corps' “Colloquial Turkmen” (a fairly good self-contained textbook in my view, and something that I'd recommend to any beginner in the language). It was however becoming apparent that I'm not big on studying online and found doing the tasks with Headstart2 to be rather dull, despite its being a total beginner's best source of free audio material in the language because of the sound quality and attention devoted to letting one match sound and script. In the military module though I felt more though as if I were just cramming a jumble of phrases and words to sounds rather than getting a better understanding of the language. By the end, I finished the modules for sound and script and about half of the military ones. I managed to finish only two chapters of “Colloquial Turkmen”. Despite the setbacks, I'm content with having had a chance to satisfy at least partially my curiosity and have a bit of a bug in my ear for the language, so to speak, in case I'll revisit it. *** UZBEK After my experience with Turkmen, I'm changing the approach and don't intend to rely that strongly on Headstart2. I'll instead work with DLI's Special Forces' 200-Hour Uzbek Familiarization Course which has a partial answer key and supplement with Headstart2 for audio, and Azimova's Uzbek: An Elementary Textbook (I doubt that I'd use it as much as DLI's free textbook despite the accompanying CD-ROM with audio and video since the book has no answer key. If I can find an Uzbek exchange partner to help out though, that could change). *** MISCELLANEOUS N/A ______ 
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| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5829 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 517 of 541 02 July 2015 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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Nice to have you back on the forum, Chung, and I hope your health problems are behind
you. Would you say Written and spoken Finnish differ as much as Written and spoken Czech? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5006 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 518 of 541 02 July 2015 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
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Great to have you back, you were missed!
I hope your health gets fully restored soon. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4580 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 519 of 541 02 July 2015 at 9:38pm | IP Logged |
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I was thinking about you the other day Chung, as someone on Memrise asked me about my
spreadsheet of Croatian vs Serbian vocabulary. I gave them the link, but felt honour- bound to also link them to the post in my log where you analysed why the distinctions shouldn't be taken too seriously :) Glad to hear that things are improving for you and hope that the positive trend continues! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5259 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 520 of 541 02 July 2015 at 9:57pm | IP Logged |
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I am glad to see that your health has improved and you are back posting again too, Chung! Though I don't study your languages, I like your insights and diversity. It's always a pleasure to read your posts.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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