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Solfrid Cristin’s way TAC 2011 Team Ohana | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 121 of 221 24 May 2011 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I am still on lesson three, so I am afraid I am not terribly advanced yet. :-) This has been a really good day - both language wise and in general. I was served breakfast in bed by my children and my husband, and got lots of nice birthday presents, including a Greek course in Swedish from my husband. Today I also found out that two days after I get back from Greece, my job sends me to Poland for two days, and the day after I come back from Warsaw, I had already planned a trip to Barcelona with my daughters. I also said yes to going to Turkey for a week in November today. One week travelling around Turkey with two meals a day and all other expenses included for 300 dollars was too good an opportunity to miss. I realize that we will be staying at extremely modest hotels and that it will be cold in Turkey in November, but it is bound to be warmer than in Norway, and in any event my definition of warm weather is when I do not need to wear wollen leotards.:-) I have never been to Turkey, so I am still excited to go! And my friend from Peru invited me out for dinner tonight, so I got to talk Spanish for two hours. My only problems now are: - How will I get time to learn more Greek before Friday? - Will I be able to revive any of my Polish on the way to Poland? - Will I have the capacity to learn any Turkish before I go to Turkey? - How will I find time to continue with my Russian? - How will I get enough vacation to cover those trips that are not work related? - And last but not least - where will I get the money to pay for the trips that are not work related? (I see triple shifts coming up whenever I happen to be at work, and very little summer vacation...) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 24 May 2011 at 9:15pm 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 122 of 221 31 May 2011 at 6:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I had planned to finish the tale of my Ukrainian journey, and then say a few words about the trip to Belgium
before saying anything about Greece, but sine I have two other trips coming up next week, I think I'll just jump in right where I am and come back to the Ukraine trip later. Hm. Greece. I LOVE Greece. Somehow I have always known that I would, since I love Spain and Italy so much. I am genetically and legally Nordic, but my blood and emotions are all Mediterranean, so I feel right at home. I also love the Greek language. I know it is considered quite difficult, but either I have not understood it's complexity yet because I know so little, or people are just put off by the foreign alphabet. Where learning Russian feels like wrestling a bear, learning Greek feels like drinking sweet wine in a long dress by the sea. The Greeks are also ready to speak a few words of Greek to you, and get really excited that you can say a few words back. I have already received two compliments for my Greek pronunciation, but I realise that they are probably just not used to anyone learning more than the 10 standard words. Since I can do 40 I am king of the world. I use what few words I can all the time, and they are really good at answering back in Greek. They do not turn to English until I am lost. Which means thar they will speak Greek with me for almost 30 seconds at the time :-) We are lucky in that this is not a Scandinavian resort, there are people from all over the world. I hear English, German, French and a lot of Russian spoken every day. Yesterday I signed up for playing Petanque on the beach, but when I realised that all the other players were a big group of loud, drunk, obnoxious Norwegians I said to the organiser: Today I am French, ok? He went along, but I hadn't counted on the curiosity of one of the ladies, who wanted to know where I was from, and I then had to say that, yes, I was French,but I could speak English, and I came from Orleans. They didn't suspect a thing, because just one of them spoke French, badly, so I just kept speaking French to the organiser and I had no problems pulling that one off. It was only later that I realised the position I had put us in, because since they were so many, and I did not remember how they all looked like, my friend and I had to speak English every time we went to the beach, because they were scattered all over. In the evening there was Karaoke, and we listened to a lot of Russians singing Russian karaoke. Some of it was so bad that the DJ begged my friend and me to sing, but after one drink I had had too much alcohol to sing karaoke, and she had not had nearly enough. At least I was able to compliment the one lady who knew how to sing in Russian :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 31 May 2011 at 9:15am 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 123 of 221 19 June 2011 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I think I'll start commenting this in full, as I promised ellasevia I would. Like I said in your log, they are teenagers, which means that when I do something they are happy with, I am the best mom in the world, and when I yell at them for not making their beds or tidying their room, I am the worst. Right now they are pretty satisfied, since I just took them to Barcelona to see their heroes from the series "Vampire Diaries". They got to kiss and hug Ian Somerhalder who they worship, and he even complimented them both. Their friends think their father and I are pretty cool, and my daughters think we are walking embarrasments (particularly when I start singing or dancing in public - though I kind of understand that :-). Anyway, they do not get to go to any country they want if they learn 100 words. I couldn't afford that:-) I have promised them for some time that I would take them to Greece, and I just wanted to make sure that they actually learned something before we went there. Otherwise I am travelling so much now that I have difficulties keeping up this log, or even study much languages. I try though. In Greece I skimmed through two semesters's worth of Greek. That is a whole lot less impressive than it may seem like, because they only do 8 lessons per semester, and I only skimmed throught it, as in read through it until I understood the text. I have not actually learned the vocabulary or done the exercises. I did however discover that I do actually adore Greek. I think it is one of the most beautiful languages I have ever come across. I would have had lots of opportunities to speak Russian, had I dared to though. If my two last experiences at fancy holiday resorts are anything to go by, Russian is definitely the language to learn. In both Egypt and Greece, the place was flowing over with Russians that were oozing lots of money. In Greece, we were staying at a place where there were two hotels who shared the same facilities, a three star hotel and a five star hotel. Most of the Western Europeans were at the three star hotel, all the Russians were at the five star hotel. I asked the receptionist to show me one of the rooms at the five star hotel, just to see if it was worth it, but I do not really need a flat screen TV in the room, and a telephone in the bathroom, so I think I am quite happy to go back to the three star hotel. Since it was at a period whith very few travellers it was a bargain. Two days after I came back, I went to Poland, and I was happy to see that I remembered at least a few words of Polish. I was also taken aback at the change in language situation at the organization which had the meeting I went to. The official languages are English, French and German, and until two years ago, all meetings were translated simultaneously into those three language. Then they started using English only, but this year they had added Russian and Japanese. The words I heard most often were :"Hai, arigato" from the Japanese chairman. Weird!! When one of the Russian speaking delegates spoke, in Russian, I caught the theme he was discussing, but none of us understood what he actually wanted, not even after having it translated. A lot of the Poles I met spoke English, which was a nice change from the last time I was there. The day after I came back we left for Barcelona for the vampire convention. I got to speak a lot of Spanish, obviously, but met no Catalans. In fact I did not even meet that many Spaniards. I had not been in Barcelona for 30 years, and the change was scary. Lots of foreigners, and the places who used to be nice and authentic had turned into tourist traps that genuinely made me want to cry. I have not eaten so badly in my life. I was also quite surprised to see that a lot of the Spaniards I met spoke little or no English. The exception was the ones working at the reception, whose English was quite good. After Greece Spain was somewhat of a culture shock, though. The Greeks were so polite and friendly, that they make everyone else look rude and unhelpful. Tomorrow I am going to Sweden. I am going crazy. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 19 June 2011 at 9:18pm 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 124 of 221 19 June 2011 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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that is an impressive string of countries for all of two weeks that you hadn't posted. How's the situation in Greece? Is it as bad as it sounds from here? Worse? Better?
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| 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 125 of 221 19 June 2011 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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We noticed nothing. The only little hint we got was from a young lady who worked at the hotel, who said that she couldn't marry right now, because traditionally the parents of the bride would buy the house for the newly weds, and since her father was out of work, he could not afford it.
Otherwise, there was no indication at all that anything was up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 126 of 221 19 June 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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What an impressive string of travel experiences within such a short time! I have a tendency to do the same kind of whirlwind tours so you won't hear from me that you should have been sitting around 'waiting for your soul to catch up' and similar rubbish.
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| 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 127 of 221 02 July 2011 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||
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@Iversen: I have travelled so much lately, that I am not sure my soul has the capacity to follow anyhow :-)
I enjoyed Brussels, even though the trips up and down were nightmares of chaos, queues and late aircrafts with tecnical problems. It was nice to talk a little French again though, and I met a girl from Malaga at the reception at my hotel so I got to speak some Andalusian. I also got some Swahili books. Curiously enough, they are not among the most common materials in Norway. :-) ------------ So – I have expanded my language selection, just slightly. I have decided to learn a bit of Turkish and Swahili. I have chosen Turkish because, as I mentioned, I will be going to Turkey in November. Swahili I am doing on the odd chance that I will be going to Zanzibar in September. My sister is dreaming about it, and you never know what happens. :-) My goals are very limited though. Russian, which I have been neglecting since Easter, is something I really want to learn. I would at least like to reach a B2 at some point. Greek, which I did on and off from Easter up until a couple of weeks ago, is a language I would love to be able to speak a little bit, so I will keep that on the back burner. My goal would be around A2 by next summer. When it comes to Turkish and Swahili, my goals are only to be able to use the most common tourist phrases, and extremely basic conversation. Sort of a A 1/4 When my mother took us to Spain and France when I was a little girl, she told me that with a basic vocabulary of 80 words you can get by. That is how much she knew of French and Spanish, and she served as our interpreter at a time when Frenchmen and Spaniards spoke little or no English. I looked at a basic course in Greek, which is given at a private language academy here in Oslo. It was for two hours a week for one semester, would cost 300 dollars, and promised you a vocabulary of 100 words. So for this fall that will be my goal for both Turkish and Swahili: 100 words and expressions for each. SWAHILI /FRENCH Resources: - “Le Swahili sans peine” - Lonely planet Swahili Phrasebook I like the sound of the language. I am relieved to see that there do not seem to be any difficult sounds. For the moment it seems to be a matter of getting used to “ng” at the beginning of words, that “dh” is like “this” and a couple of other peculiarities. I can’t quite figure out the “r” but suspect it is close to the Norwegian one. One of my books says you can pronounce it like an “l” the other says you can pronounce it like a “d”. Strange. They seem to have the French “r” as well, but spelt “gh”. Like Turkish, Swahili can have a whole sentence in just one word. Cute but strange. I do not find many similarities to other languages I know, but I have just heard a few words yet. They seem to have “kitabu” (book) and “salama” (hello) from Arabic, and “tiketi” (tickets), and “pasipoti” (passport) from English, but otherwise it is all rather unfamiliar. I am looking forward to greet my colleague with “Hujambo” (How are you) the next time I see him. He is as interested in languages as I am. - I have entered 30 words in Anki, which were the words from lesson one and the words under “basics” from the phrasebook, and I have gone through them twice. - I have listened several times to lesson one and repeated after the CD. - I have done the translation from Swahili to French (exercise to lesson one) - I have filled in with the words in Swahili that were missing (exercise to lesson one) And I chose Swahili/French as the heading for this chapter, because I read the textbook in French, and have chosen to do the translation from Swahili into French. That gives me a little French repetition too. RUSSIAN I have a really bad conscience for my Russian, as I have neglected it since I came back from Ukraine. I took a look at my Anki cards though, and went through 90 words and sentences. It is a start. I have ordered Pimsleur 2, and am waiting for that to get fresh input. 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 128 of 221 03 July 2011 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
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TURKISH
Resources: Teach Yourself Cmplete Turkish Euro Talk Interactive: Learn Turkish (CD ROM ) Turkish is – different. Most of those of you who have any notion of Turkish know that it is an agglutinating language, which means that whole sentences can be expressed by just a few words, or even just one. In addition I recognize precious few words from among the most common ones. And I have not grasped the concept of vowel harmony, but I have not technically started on the first lesson of the book yet, so I guess I will get there. There are some unfamiliar letters, and ways of pronouncing letters too, but I guess I will get my head around that too. Some of the few words I do recognize are “merhaba” and “selam” from Arabic (both mean hello) and words like “pardon” and “jeton”, “otobus”, “bilet”, “tuvalet”, from French and the more common ones of kilometer and doctor. So today I have done the following in Turkish: - Listened to new words under “First words” on my CD ROM, and gone through them a couple of times to try to learn them - Entered these new words in Anki (42 of them) - Repeated the first 20 of them in Anki - Did the “easy game” and got everything right (50 points) - Continued with the “difficult game” and got everything right (another 50 points) - I then went quickly through the “phrases” which was the next option - Did the “easy game” and got everything right, did the “difficult game” and got 46 out of 50 points. At the beginning of the CD ROM they said the goal was to obtain 180 points, and I got 196, so mission accomplished. I guess. They did however not say whether this was meant to be a daily thing, whether one could then repeat the same games to get the same points, or whether you get new points only for doing new chapters. I did however realize that for someone with just medium intelligence it was dead easy to answer right, even if you understood very little. As mentioned, I did the “first words” part rather thoroughly, and understood at least 50 percent of the words before I started on the games. The “phrases” I just looked through though, and only understood a word here and there, but I still got most of it right. As long as you recognize at least one or two words in the sentence you just eliminate the ones that can’t be right. That means that I will still have to repeat this several times before I actually learn it, but that is O.K. I still have lots of time before November. RUSSIAN I decided it was about time I got back on tracks with Russian today, so this morning before getting up I read through the first 7 lessons of “ Assimil: Le Russe”, getting myself used to reading the Russian alphabet again. I also listened to lesson 27 and 28 of Pimsleur Russian in the car on my way to training. In the afternoon I watched a film with Gwyneth Paltrow, “View from the top”. Not exactly Academy Award material, but it was simple enough to be understood, even if I lost most of the dialogue. I looked at it in Russian, with Russian subtitles, so whatever I understand, it is still considered a bonus. SWAHILI - I repeated my first 20 words of Swahili in Anki - I entered some words from the book which were not exactly in the lesson, but which will be used again and again (read and translate, lesson…, fill in the gaps in this sentence etc) SPANISH My daughter is in Spain, and I talked for 25 minutes with my best friend, who she is staying with. Nice to see that I have not forgotten my Spanish. All in all, a very good day’s work! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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