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Hříbeček’s TAC 2011 - Team Ő | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6139 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 41 of 80 14 June 2011 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks. I've been following your log all year as well but I must have done so silently up until now.
Oh, I see. That makes more sense now. I suppose writing it out by hand the first time would also be a good way to learn the words and retain them. I need to start thinking of a good idea for a story. What was your story about? Paljon kiitoksia! I'm quite excited to begin working on Finnish since I've been wanting to learn this language for such a long time. I kept going back and forth on whether I should try it or Hungarian first since I adore both (but in different ways), but I finally went with Suomi as it was the one which caught my attention first and because I'm considering applying for an exchange year in Finland for the year after next. I still fully intend to get to Magyar one day too though! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5406 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 42 of 80 15 June 2011 at 9:18am | IP Logged | ||
Ellasevia ! I'm very pleased that you follow Hribecek's log :). Hungarian is a beautiful language and so far he has been doing a wonderful job. He is more advanced than me, and that because he wrote so many letters and stories :). Hribecek, we are certainly making progress in Hungarian and might as well reach our goals by the end of the year. Were are you staying in Crete ? I went there the last 5 or 6 years in a little village near Sitia and I have to say, Crete is very very beautiful ! And the people really friendly, welcoming. This year I will miss it, but Hungary and Croatia will do it as well :). Üdv. Kisfröccs 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 43 of 80 15 June 2011 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Ellasevia - My story was about 2 boys in Costa Rica who have an adventure in the jungle, involving waterfalls, caves, tunnels, bad men, animals and a plot to take over the world!
I don't plan my stories in advance usually though, I think of a basic starting point and then let my imagination run wild and see where it takes me. It doesn't matter if it's stupid and if the plot has holes in it because the only real important thing is using the language. Examples of a couple of my other story starting points are - 1. a man wakes up naked in the snow in a field and doesn't know what happened to him 2. A cat wants to be a dog and the local dog eats all the cats. Stupid but fun stories stick in my mind better and help me remember the vocabulary more. Your plan for Finland sounds fantastic, I wish I'd done something like that when I was a teenager. Learning most of your languages at home must give you a big desire to learn a newish language in an immersion environment. @Kisfroccs - Thanks for the kind words. You're of course right about Hungarian, it has a pull that I've never experienced in another language. Finnish might be the same for Ellasevia. With our Summer plans in Hungarian, I think B1 is a very realistic target for us by the end of the year or even earlier. I'm very curious to see how good your Hungarian will be after your course. Edited by hribecek on 15 June 2011 at 1:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 44 of 80 24 June 2011 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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June is the toughest month of the year for me as I have to do lots of extra paperwork at the end of the school year, plus lots of tests and extra classes so it's been a struggle to get much time for studying in the last week or so. However I've tried to do at least something in Hungarian every day for 20-30 minutes, mainly chatting to myself and reading and On Sunday and Thursday I did over an hour. I think it's much better to do 20 minutes every day than 5 hours in one go once a week. Luckily Czech is a major part of my daily life so it's not possible for me to neglect it even when super busy.
I'm writing today because I wanted to write down an interesting development for my own record. My Hungarian has started to infect my Spanish! I speak Spanish maybe 3 or 4 times a week for several minutes or so in general with my wife or Spanish speaking friends and every time I start, I really have to fight against all the Hungarian vocabulary that enters my head. After a couple of minutes it's okay and I get into Spanish mode, however I find it interesting that it's not Czech that interferes with my Spanish at all, despite the fact that I use that all day. It's a new milestone for my Hungarian I'd say! I guess this mean that Hungarian and Spanish are located in the same part of my brain now. For a long time I had a different phenomenon where my Spanish would interfere with my Czech but never vice-versa. In the last year or so I don't think my Czech is interfered with by anything (except my English wiring). I've also noticed that my English is the worst it's ever been after 6 months of very little usage with other natives and a hell of a lot of foreign language study and use. Now when I sit with other English speakers, I just can't speak naturally anymore. Czech word order or slang phrases appear in English form and I struggle to remember words quite often. So I'm no longer proficient in any language! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5406 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 45 of 80 24 June 2011 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi !
I had this feeling a couple of months ago. I had the impression not being any longer proficient in German or in French, but to speak a mix a the twos. Very disturbing and leaving me wondering if I would be able to regain my strengh in my mothertongue. I still consider French being better than my German though by now they should be around the same level. All of sudden I made horrible spell mistakes in French and in German it was a catastrophe. I felt very bad because something like this almost never happened. Well, some months later I feel like I can separate both languages. I don't know what I changed... And it's good that Hungarian is starting to infect your Spanish :D. I had this in Russian and Italian when I took lessons. Awful when someone asks you like "How are you?" and you respond "Jól, köszönöm". ... -_- I have a milestone too. Today I had some exams and in German I had to analyse a text from... Kertész Imre ! First time in my life that my Hungarian was really useful apart doing conversation. I think the expert was a bit surprised that I had so much knowledge of Hungarian... So even an obscure language like Hungarian can get you somewhere ! I lent Kertész Imre book "Sorstalanság" in the library and I think I will buy it in Hungary, maybe along with the film, so I can work on my Hungarian. The language is quite simple (simplier than Egri Csillagok). I know there's nothing to laugh about it. Here an extract. But the book is not so dark, you have to guess half of what happened. Good luck teammate ! Kisfröccs 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 46 of 80 25 June 2011 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Kisfröccs
Thanks for the support as usual. That's very strange that you were mixing your 2 native languages, I'd love a neurologist to explain how both of our cases are possible! Thanks for the extract too. Regarding you finding a use for Hungarian other than conversation, I too found one because I found out that one of my students is of Hungarian origin and his mum is completely Hungarian. So I'm going to his house sometime soon and will meet his mum and speak to her in Hungarian and eat her delicious Hungarian cooking. My student only speaks basic Hungarian but he understands a lot due to his upbringing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 47 of 80 29 June 2011 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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This will probably be my last chance to update this log until after my trip to Hungary.
I feel pretty good about my Hungarian, my speaking fluency has improved a lot over the last few weeks. I'm still slow of course but the grammar is coming a lot more naturally and I no longer feel like there are a lot of basic beginner level things that I don't know. So my target is to only speak Hungarian and Czech while there, maybe a bit of Spanish when my wife is in the mood. I may resort to English when it's vital that I understand, but only on those occasions. My wife has been very anti Hungarian from the start of my studies and has tried to ban me from speaking it in her presence (I use this as an opportunity to practise when I want to wind her up!) but suddenly with the trip almost upon us, she has completely changed and has been studying hard for the last week or so. She's only studying basic vocabulary and phrases but it's useful for me as she's even learned some words that I didn't know. Part of her motivation to learn is to prove how talented she is at learning languages when she tries. All of this is great news for me because she no longer has a phobia of Hungarian and I can use it a lot more freely at home now. On Saturday, when we were surrounded by various nationalities who between them spoke all of our mutual languages - Czech, English and Spanish, we reverted to basic Hungarian when we didn't want to be understood! Hopefully good times ahead for me now - 5 days of Hungarian in Hungary and then a whole Summer of Spanish is planned, while also maintaining and working on my Hungarian. This time last year I spent most of the Summer studying Mandarin and now I've more or less abandoned that language, so I hope that this time next year the same fate doesn't await my Hungarian! I doubt it though because my Hungarian is a lot stronger than my Mandarin ever was. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 48 of 80 12 July 2011 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hungary and Pecs were just as I had hoped - full of Hungarian! I really felt the benefit of my studies this time, compared to my trip in February when I didn't even try to understand what was said to me. This time I tried and even managed to have several simple conversations with waitors and shopkeepers. The big advantage was that my wife has a phoebia of people thinking she's an English speaking tourist and she wanted many things that I had to ask for in Hungarian.
It was actually a perfect 5 days of intense foreign language useage because we spoke Czech 90% of the time when not confronted with Hungarians and Spanish the other 10% of the time, just to practise. I'd say it was my most intense 5 days of foreign languages ever and quite a challenge. One very strange occurence was that my Czech didn't interfer with my Hungarian but a few times when I then switched to Czech to speak to my wife, I almost used Hungarian case declension. I kept wanting to add a T to my Czech nouns! We also played a great language game every evening at restaurants where I would ask my wife a question in Hungarian and she would answer back in Spanish, guessing on what she thought I might have asked about. It created some funny conversations and was good practise for my question formation in Hungarian. So English was only used on a few important occasions in hostels. The relative lack of English ability of the locals also helped a lot and a few times I tried to revert to English when I didn't know how to express myself but then realised that my Hungarian was better than their English and so struggled on in that. Great immersion. We really liked Pecs, it was very quiet and beautiful and there were lots of nice walks to do in the hills around town. I'll write a more detailed description of my trip in the Hungarian thread and maybe translate it here afterwards. Since we got back I've had very little internet access because I'm now in England visiting family and friends and had a stag weekend to go to this past weekend. So Hungarian has had to take a backseat in the last 5 or 6 days, although I read a bit and chatted to myself for a few minutes yesterday and played the Hungarian/Spanish question game with my wife again for a while. Despite obviously having to speak English with my family and friends, my wife and I have decided to speak only Spanish for the duration of our visit (7 weeks) and today I gave her a 2 hour lesson, which we aim to repeat as often as possible. I also took a Spanish placement test today and scored a C1! I was very pleased with that (although I still consider my level to be B2 in reality) because it seemed like quite a fair test and it helps to convince me to go for the C1 exam in November. My wife scored B1 in the same test which we both think is about right. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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