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hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5349 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 33 of 80 16 May 2011 at 11:58am | IP Logged |
@kisfröccs - Thanks for the support!
My system with Teach Yourself is -
1. Just listen to the first dialogue.
2. Listen and read at the same time.
3. Just read very slowly and make sure I understand everything.
4. Quickly flick through the whole unit, mainly checking out the interesting parts.
5. Write down all of the new vocabulary from the unit, but without a translation.
6. Start the unit again and slowly and thoroughly work through the dialogue and all of the exercises.
7. Look at my vocabulary list for the unit and translate the words from the unit (a day or two after I've written them down). If I can't remember what a word means then I check it in the dictionary and then test myself again on it the next day and only write the translation when I feel like I really recognise it's meaning.
8. Shadow the dialogue a few times, sentence by sentence until I can repeat it and remember it.
9. Go through the difficult exercises again until I get all the answers correct.
10. Listen to the dialogues again until I understand everything.
So I have quite a thorough system and it works for me. I plan to go back through all of the dialogues again in the next couple of months to refresh them. I also listen to the CD of the course when driving and walking and I sometimes ask Maxval questions about problems or I do some practice exercise on the Hungarian thread, for example as I did with the Conditional recently and as I intend to do very soon with the Imperative.
I agree that repeating the CDs/tapes is very good for pronunciation; pronunciation is usually one of my biggest problems in languages as I'm quite tone deaf.
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| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5349 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 34 of 80 22 May 2011 at 3:51pm | IP Logged |
A new milestone for me is that I've begun to read a Hungarian book! Okay so it's for children, but still it's a milestone for me and they use the Hungarian words for e.g. 'fern', 'enthused', 'to the base of', 'oak', 'reptile' and many more so it's still a high level for me!
The book is 'dinasauruszok foldjen' (my computer won't let me do Hungarian letters for some reason. It's part of the 'csodakunyho' series. Probably for about 8 year olds. I've got the second book in the series too and intend to buy more in July when I visit the mecca of Hungarian learners - Hungary!
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| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5409 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian
| Message 35 of 80 22 May 2011 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
hribecek wrote:
A new milestone for me is that I've begun to read a Hungarian book! Okay so it's for children, but still it's a milestone for me and they use the Hungarian words for e.g. 'fern', 'enthused', 'to the base of', 'oak', 'reptile' and many more so it's still a high level for me!
The book is 'dinasauruszok foldjen' (my computer won't let me do Hungarian letters for some reason. It's part of the 'csodakunyho' series. Probably for about 8 year olds. I've got the second book in the series too and intend to buy more in July when I visit the mecca of Hungarian learners - Hungary! |
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Remek ! Csak igy tovább :)
Last year, when I was in Pécs I bought a little book of poetry. I'd like to share a poem with you, from Bertók László.
Keletre néz
A legmélyén nincsen határ
minden örökké körbejár
és csak az Isten lába fáj.
A legmélyén nincs ispotály
mert akkor is megy, ha megáll,
és nem gyógyul meg soha már.
A legmélyén nincsen halál,
minden égtáj nyugatra száll,
és minden nyugat egy madár.
A legmélyén is asszony áll,
kezében gyertya és fonál,
keletre néz és sírdogál.
What do you think of it ?
2 persons have voted this message useful
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5349 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 36 of 80 22 May 2011 at 7:33pm | IP Logged |
Kisfroccs wrote:
Remek ! Csak igy tovább :)
Last year, when I was in Pécs I bought a little book of poetry. I'd like to share a poem with you, from Bertók László.
Keletre néz
A legmélyén nincsen határ
minden örökké körbejár
és csak az Isten lába fáj.
A legmélyén nincs ispotály
mert akkor is megy, ha megáll,
és nem gyógyul meg soha már.
A legmélyén nincsen halál,
minden égtáj nyugatra száll,
és minden nyugat egy madár.
A legmélyén is asszony áll,
kezében gyertya és fonál,
keletre néz és sírdogál.
What do you think of it ? |
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Although I do understand a lot of the words, I can't quite get the deep, poetic sense of it to be honest and there are some key words that I don't understand - kelet, ispotaly, gyogyul, nyugat, azzony, gyertya and fonal. (no Hungarian letters right now)
Maybe I'm being slow as usual! From what I can get, it seems to be quite depressing.
The first part is something like -
In the depths there is no limit
it goes around in circles
and only gods feet hurt
Could you explain the rest to me?
1 person has voted this message useful
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5349 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 37 of 80 03 June 2011 at 12:12pm | IP Logged |
No new milestones to report this time, although I'm one chapter away from finishing my Hungarian story that I've been steadily posting on the Hungarian thread.
This may change again (as my plan has already changed a lot since January), but I've currently decided not to learn any new languages from other language families. Hungarian is, has been and will be a lot of work to learn and maintain and I really want to focus on my Czech and Spanish again. Hopefully Spanish from July to October and Czech after that. For the last 13 months I haven't actually studied Czech at all and have improved and maintained it only through natural means like speaking, listening and reading to native material. However I think that I'm the type who really improves through study and I feel a bit rusty on my irregular cases and some other things.
Despite saying this I won't be able to resist learning something new so I'll probably learn another Slavic language like Slovak or Polish. Something which will be easy.
So I'm still plugging away in the 6 week challenge in around 15th place in the focus language table with about 45 hours study in 5 weeks, plus I'm in about 12th place in the overall language activity time. So I'll be happy with those final positions.
Overall in 5 weeks I've studied -
Hungarian for 44 hours 25 minutes.
Czech for 32 hours 51 minutes (here I only count the times when I'm actively trying to learn from something or practise).
Spanish for 7 hours 15 minutes.
I've finally booked my bus ticket to Hungary, which feels great because I was worried about whether I would actually be going. Still not 100% because there are some difficulties here and I'm struggling to find cheap accommodation in Pecs.
1 person has voted this message useful
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5349 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 38 of 80 14 June 2011 at 3:31pm | IP Logged |
A few milestones this time.
I've finished my first Hungarian book - Dinosauruzok földjén. Although it's a book for Hungarian children, it definitely helped me a lot, I learned many new words and improved my recognition of grammatical forms.
Some words I've now burned into my brain thanks to the book -
Völgy = valley
létra = ladder
domb = hill
fészek = nest
suttog = to whisper
sürget = to urge
agy = brain
fű = grass
kunyhó = hut/cabin
There were several more but I can't remember right now.
I've now started my second book - Lovagok között (among knights)
My second achievement was finishing my 13 chapter story, with a lot of help in the way of corrections from Maxval. This activity was perhaps even better then reading as I really have learned so many words from it and I've also built up a feeling for the meaning of the verbal prefixes - ki.., be.., fel.., le.. etc. because I used them all so many times. I really recommend writing a story as a way to practice and learn and new language. The first time I used a new word it was obviously from a dictionary but then I repeated it several times in context and wrote every chapter twice and this burned the words and grammar into my head.
New words from this story -
Barlang = cave
vízesés = waterfall
alagút = tunnel
majom = monkey
papagáj = parrot
szikla = rock
vad = wild
disznó = pig
ketrec = cage
megöl = to kill
lő = to shoot
zaj = noise
kiabál = to shout/scream
helyiség = room without windows
esernyő = umbrella
irány = direction
arany = gold
There was a lot of opening, closing, hiding, running, being scared and falling in this story so all of the words for those and their possible prefixes were repeated many times too.
6 WEEK CHALLENGE
The 6 week challenge finished with me in a respectable 15th place for my target language (Hungarian) and an even better 11th place for overall language study. There were about 65 active participants.
My timings -
Hungarian 54 hours 7 minutes (49.03% of learning time)
Czech 48 hours 26 minutes (43.88% of learning time)
Spanish 7 hours 50 minutes (7.1% of learning time)
110 hours 23 minutes altogether.
So I averaged 9 hours a week of Hungarian, 8 hours a week of Czech and 1 hour a week of Spanish. In reality I spend more than double that immersed in Czech but I only counted the active intention to learn times. Same for Spanish, I probably used Spanish for more than 10 hours altogether and I listened a lot to Hungarian radio but didn't count any of that because I didn't feel like I was really learning anything.
I even did a few hours of Slovak but didn't count it either.
This information is very interesting to me as I've never actually timed myself before with languages.
I've since felt a little bit lost without the 6 week challenge and I have to remember what it was like to be motivated from within myself again! The last few days I've still kept kind of a similar learning schedule but I've felt a lot more lethargic about it. It is a nice feeling to not have to time myself anymore though.
My main motivation now is my trip to Hungary in July. Then it will be my Spanish exam probably in November and then my ambition to become as good as possible at Czech ready to maybe one day change careers and become a full time translator. The dream.
1 person has voted this message useful
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 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 39 of 80 14 June 2011 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
hribecek wrote:
My second achievement was finishing my 13 chapter story, with a lot of help in the way of corrections from Maxval. This activity was perhaps even better then reading as I really have learned so many words from it and I've also built up a feeling for the meaning of the verbal prefixes - ki.., be.., fel.., le.. etc. because I used them all so many times. I really recommend writing a story as a way to practice and learn and new language. The first time I used a new word it was obviously from a dictionary but then I repeated it several times in context and wrote every chapter twice and this burned the words and grammar into my head. |
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That sounds like an interesting idea, one which I had never considered before. In fact, think I might just have to steal that idea. When you say that you wrote each chapter twice, what do you mean? Did you write it in English first and then simply translate it into Hungarian two times, or did you really write it all and then just start over?
1 person has voted this message useful
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5349 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 40 of 80 14 June 2011 at 8:41pm | IP Logged |
Hi Ellasevia, nice to see you here!
I'll be honoured if you use my idea as I'm an avid follower of your log.
I meant that I write it out twice in Hungarian, the first time on paper and then typed up in order to repeat everything again and maybe correct any stupid mistakes. This particular story I had already written in English for my lower level students as a continuous homework project, but on the Hungarian thread I've also made up lots of other short stories only in Hungarian. I suppose whatever suits you best, but for me creating my own little stories is more fun. I'd say a longer story is better because you repeat the same words more often to drill them into you memory better.
Good luck with Finnish by the way. I guess it means you won't be taking on Hungarian for a long time if you're already studying a Finno-Ugric language?
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