|
 |
Solfrid Cristin’s way TAC 2011 Team Ohana | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| nogoodnik Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 372 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew, Russian, French | Message 105 of 221 20 April 2011 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||
|
YAY how exciting! I look forward to hearing about your trip to Ukraine so that I can live vicariously through you :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6680 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 106 of 221 22 April 2011 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Hello there! I just wanted to say hello from another language enthusiast in Norway :) And... to make a comment on Norwegian education, which I saw you wrote about in the College-thread. UiO is not... very impressive when it comes to language studies, and I would "de-recommend" it to anyone looking to study Russian. The University doesn't produce students that can actually USE Russian. It creates possible future students, but results are extremely meagre, and their study abroad options are pitiful. I would send anyone interested in Russian to Stockholm, for example. They seem to have a much more varied program. So all is not ideal here ;)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 107 of 221 02 May 2011 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | ||
|
@ Kuikentje: Always happy to be the source of mirth. :-)
@ ReneeMona: Thank you for the greeting. Perhaps we can have a common birthday party next year on the forum? @ Fasulye: Thank you, I know that it is a privilege to travel, and I really do what I can to make the most of it. @ Teango. Ha, ha! I doubt that, but thanks for the vote of confidence. @ Nogoodnik: I'll tell you all the details as soon as I find the time. @ Tricoteuse: Hi, and thanks for stopping by. I am sure you are right. I have never learned the languages as such at the University. I knew my 3 main languages before I started there. It does however give you a good foundation, or reinforcement - whichever you need. To really learn the language well I think you need to travel to the country. Otherwise - I’m back… And I have so much I would like to share from Ukraine, that I think I’ll take it in installments, or the post will be far too long. But first things first. I’ll just focus on language studies for now. RUSSIAN Wednesday last week was a day off for me, so I had a really effective day for language studying. First I decided to tackle my angst as far as writing and reading Russian goes. Having dyslexia and studying Russian is a really bad combination, so I have relied mostly on Pimsleur and TY Russian. Good for my listening comprehension, and to teach me to speak, but really bad for my other skills, so I decided to simply start copying Assimil lessons from the beginning, and just keep doing that until I lost my fear of writing. Consequently I copied and repeated lessons 1 and 2 in Assimil for 45 minutes, then I did the same with lesson 30 for another hour (in order to also have some kind of general progression). Then I had lunch, so I listened to lesson 6 of Talk Russian for 15 minutes before I went to the basement and folded clothes for half an hour while I listened to lesson 27 of Pimsleur (for the umpteenth time…). Then I went into the garden to do some gardening and listened to a medley of anything Russian I had on my iPod (mostly the Norwegian book Sosedi and TY Russian Conversation). I kept doing that for 3 hours and a half at which point I was fed up. GREEK I then went to the library and borrowed a few Greek courses. Yes!! I am giving in to my wanderlust, and will try to learn a little bit of Greek on the off chance that I will go to Greece this year. All my friends have been to Greece, but since I was always studying languages, I chose to go to countries where I could practice my languages. Now my best friend wants us to go to Greece, so if I can scrape together the money, and my boss let’s me take the week off, I am hoping to go at the end of this month. And I have already fallen in love with the language! It sounds so incredibly full of love and sunshine, and so pleasing to the ear. I do not need all my fingers to count the words I have learned yet, but I adore listening to the language. It is like elfish. The hard part is the new alphabet. I am just coming to terms with the Russian one, and really did not need another alphabet close enough to confuse me even more. But I cannot resist the siren call. :-) I borrowed 4 different Greek courses at the library (yes, I know I am a bad person for taking 4 of the 5 courses they had, but I do not think it is a very high turnover, and I needed to find the right course for me). The one I think I will follow is called “Greek PDQ, quick language course, Linguaphone”, but it does not resemble any Linguaphone course I have ever seen. It is just one thin little book, and they switch between English and Greek on the CD. My ambitions for Greek are extremely modest, I just want to be able to greet people in polite Greek, count, order a coke, ask for directions and understand the most common signs. (Which actually comes close to some people’s definition of fluency, but as all serious language learners now, is just scratching the surface). My goal? An intermediate A1? I am a bit confused about the pronunciation of the letter a. In my book they say it is like the a in “cat”, which in my head does not correspond to the sound given on the CD. There the a sounds like a “European “ a, like in German “Mann”, or Spanish “mar”. Ellasevia, can you help me out here? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 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 108 of 221 02 May 2011 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Χάρηκα πολύ να ακούσω ότι θα μάθεις Ελληνικά! Είναι τόσο ωραίο ό,τι έγραψες εδώ για τη γλώσσα. Θα χαιρόμουν να σε βοηθώ. :)
As for your question about the pronunciation in Greek, the Greek 'α' equates pretty well with the Spanish 'a'. I don't know what kind of English the pronunciation guide in your book is using, but it's definitely not the sound in 'cat,' at least not the way I say it. I don't think the individual letters of the alphabet themselves should post all that much trouble for you now that you've become more comfortable with the Cyrillic alphabet, as most of them are either similar or the same as letters in the Cyrillic or Latin alphabets. The most difficult thing for you will probably being the spelling. The alphabet and spelling are based on Ancient Greek, but the modern language has changed significantly since then so many sounds are all written the same way and even Greeks struggle with the crazy spelling. For example: η, ι, υ, ει, οι, ηι, and υι all represent the exact same vowel sound, which is the same as the Spanish 'i'. One spelling detail is easier than in Russian, however, and that is that stress is always marked in Greek! That means that if you see a word written, you will immediately know how to pronounce it correctly. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for hearing a word and knowing how to write it... Καλή τύχη! Edited by ellasevia on 02 May 2011 at 2:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 109 of 221 02 May 2011 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Thanks ellasevia, I knew I could count on you!
I am actually quite enjoying finding words that also exist in other languages. I think I read somewhere that 10 % of the Greek language existed in most other European languages, so there is always somethings you recognize. I also liked that the words for bed were almost the same in Russian and Greek. I never understood why the Russian word for bed was so much like the French word for a tie (cravate), but since it is the same in Greek I suppose it is unrelated to the French word and comes directly from Greek. GREEK I have done quite a bit of Greek today. I have listened through the first two chapters of my book, I have copied about half the words from those two lessons, and I have written down all the letters of the alphabet and the letter combinations which make all the sounds. I have also listened to the first lesson of Teach Yourself Greek. I had not planned to spend any money on Greek materials, which is why I borrowed the courses at the library. But as usual I fell into temptation and bought a CD ROM, EuroTalk Interactive Learn Greek. The shop assistant said in a worried voice that it was really very basic, and I assured her that that was SO not a problem. In fact it is really refreshing to start at a total scratch with a new language. It is sort of liberating to be a total beginner – no pressure. RUSSIAN I cannot really say that I have done any Russian today, except when I went for a walk with my daughters we took turns counting in Russian, and reached 67 before they lost interest. Ok, not much, I admit, but I waited to start with Greek until I had been in Ukraine, in order not to mess up my Russian, so now I feel I deserve a little break. I will go to Tallin and St. Petersburg for two days in August, which is my next mark. I will then be travelling with my in laws – the entire extended family (20 people) who will expect me to translate to or from Russian whenever they need it, which means I have some really serious studying to do over the next couple of months. The trip to Ukraine –Day 1 - Monday Did I mention the good part about cheap flights? It gets you were you want at an affordable price. Did I mention the down side? It may not necessarily get all of you, or all of your luggage there. The airline had changed our tickets, so that instead of changing planes in Munich with two hours in between, we had to change in Copenhagen and Munich with 30 and 40 minutes in between. In Copenhagen that was not a problem, as there were no delays and 20 meters from one gate to the other, in Munich we had a delay – and we had to cross the airport. Now this being in Germany, there was a gentleman waiting for us with a mini bus that drove us to the passport control, and then led us to our flight – just minutes before the gate closed. I was duly impressed by that. When we got to Kyiv however – my suitcase was lost. And going through Ukrainian bureaucracy is no pleasure. We were therefore an hour late for our rendezvous with our Ukrainian driver. Not trusting myself to explain over the phone, in Russian, that my suitcase was lost, I hoped he would just be there when we got out. Which of course, he was not. So there I was – alone with a phone, a Russian/Ukrainian speaking driver on the loose, and a family who as always expected me to fix the linguistic part. On the phone I managed to understand that he was still at the airport, and I tried to explain that we were waiting for him, at the exit, on the left side of the doors, but did not understand the answer, but after a while he came running. He had been at the wrong exit, and was more and more worried that we would not turn up at all. We had a brief conversation, where I asked him whether we could expect a two hour drive, very smug because I had remembered to use the genitive singular for hours after the number 2, not so smug when he answered, and I realized that what I had actually asked him was whether we could expect a two year’s drive… Well, details, details :-) So ready for the next challenge: Get five people and three suitcases into a tiny car. The people were no problem, my daughters are fairly slim, but even if we had relatively small suitcases (two medium sized ones and one carry on size) they would not fit. I decided that this was a practical and not a linguistic challenge, and left my husband and the driver to deal with it, thanking my creator that my suitcase was lost, or we would simply not have been able to fit into the car. After a 10 minutes wrestle with the suitcases, they did finally make them fit, and the driver started the car. That is, he tried to start the car, which quite clearly had no plans of cooperating, as it refused to start. The driver, who was getting more and more frantic, finally said: What a nightmare! And then the car started and we were on our way towards Zolotonosha. The driver, however, seemed determined to make up for lost time, and drove like a madman, only slowed down by the many holes in the road. My daughters asked why he had a crucifix in the car, and I answered that we probably needed it… Getting to the village meant scenes of joy, as we met our Ukrainian friends again, and I was quite happy to see that I could communicate a bit easier this time. We still needed translation a lot of the time, but now I could at least chip in now and then, and could communicate with them when the oldest daughter, who is the only one who speaks English and French, was not there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5337 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 110 of 221 03 May 2011 at 6:47am | IP Logged | ||
Haha, that would be awesome! You get the food and I'll arrange the bounce house. ;-) I hope you're going to write similarly detailed accounts of the rest of your days in Ukraine because I really enjoyed reading this one. Good luck with your Greek! I'm a little jealous that you get to start from scratch with the alphabet. My main problem with it is that I can't stop pronouncing it the way I was taught in my Ancient Greek classes in high school so I sound very strange when I speak Greek. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5472 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 111 of 221 04 May 2011 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Are you just starting to learn Greek? I'm impressed!
I hope you enjoy your stay in Ukraine and learn lots of things. You probably mentionned it already, but where are you exactly? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 112 of 221 05 May 2011 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
Don't be! I am just going to learn a few sentences before I go to Greece. And we were in Zolotonosha, two hour's drive from Kyiv, but I am back home now. SPANISH I went to see my Peruvian friend today, and talked Spanish for an hour and a half. Spanish is a low maintenance language for me, as it needs very little upkeep, but it is nice to enjoy the company of a really good friend and get language practice as a bonus. We also got a good laugh over the cultural differences between Norway and Peru. I am in a training program due to problems with my back, and there is this guy who has really been bugging me (and most of the other girls). He is obnoxious in every possible sense of the word. I had overdone my training the last couple of weeks, so I had been ordered to take things a bit slowly today. He then started having a go at me in a nasty tone, saying “Well if you held these handles you might actually be a bit more efficient in your training, you know.” Now normally I would have just let that one pass, but I got mad, and answered back, “Yes, and if you walked a bit faster on your training machine, you might actually be a bit more efficient in your training, you know”. Very happy with myself for once answering back, and not just taking the polite stand, to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. My Peruvian friend laughed so much she almost cried: “That is your idea of a harsh answer? The guy is lucky I was not around, he wouldn’t have gotten off so lightly.” I also talked Spanish with my daughter as we took our usual evening walk tonight. She is actually getting quite good, but still struggles a bit with the past tenses. RUSSIAN 20 minutes of a repetition of Pimsleur while folding clothes was all I got to do today. GREEK I have now listened to the start of all the four courses I have borrowed, and the “Linguaphone course” and the TY Greek Conversation are definitely the best. I have listened to them for a bit over an hour today. I also really enjoyed my “Talk Russian CD ROM”. It gives me a wonderful sense of knowing a lot of Greek, when I actually know nothing. I went through the “first words” the colors, the food and the numbers, and did the corresponding tests. Yeah – full score on almost all of them! I like how Greek puts the definite article in front of the names. We have that in a few Norwegian dialects too, but it is considered very low class. I wonder if it would have become more prestigious if people knew there was the same phenomenon in Greek. Day 2 Ukraine –Tuesday What never stops to amaze me, is how different living conditions can be within Europe, and how striking the contrasts can be within the same country. The village we stayed in are a 100 years behind Norway in many ways. Women my age, wear head scarves (not muslim ones, just traditional Ukrainian ones with roses on them) and walk around in their slippers and morning gown in the streets, water is being taken from the well and old women –again at around my age - watch over the hens who are let into the streets to get the extra straw of grass. There are street lights with no lights, and the streets are partly made up of old pieces from an abandoned military air field, and partly just clay. Everyone has a dog outside the house which functions as an alarm system as well as an alarm clock. Yet around Kyiv you have some of the best roads I have seen, elegant boutiques and very smart ladies. Computers and mobiles are everywhere. On Tuesday our kids went to school with their friends, and my husband and I strolled into the village market. I had to ask for directions, and was over the moon to get complimented on my Russian by the Russian lady I talked to. She was from Siberia originally, but had lived 26 years in Ukraine. Obviously the compliment has to do with expectations. They do not expect tourists to speak Russian, had I spoken the same amount of English in the US, they would just have shuddered at my horrible English. I think my experience so far can be summoned up as follows: I am humbled by all I have left to learn, proud of everything I have learned, and inspired to continue to learn more Russian. Going home, we stopped by a local little shop, and I was pleased that I was able to ask for what I wanted and that I could confirm that, yes, I loved Ukraine. Since my suitcase still had not turned up, I got to redefine happiness. Happiness is to have been smart enough to pack a little clothes and a tooth brush in your hand luggage, happiness is a T-shirt my husband had forgotten on our last stay, so I had something to wear at night, happiness is to discover that your family members had “borrowed” some of your clothes, which you then get to use. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 05 May 2011 at 12:22am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
