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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 270 02 January 2012 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, I remember. We only had three TV channels. :) I have to say that my parents never took the light bulb out of my room to keep me from reading. I remember many late nights (early mornings!) in high school with a good book, though! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 18 of 270 02 January 2012 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
When I was a kid, I lived outside of a tiny town that had a tiny public library. My mother was a volunteer librarian there two nights a week and I would go with her and sit and read books the whole time. It was a tiny library, but it was the only library I'd ever been to, and in my naive child-mind, I thought a library was a place that had a copy of all the books there were. Well, I read so much and so fast, I thought surely I would get through all the books there were by the time I grew up, and then what would I do? I thought that I would have to become a writer myself, so at least future generations would have more to read. (I was a very altruistic child.) 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 19 of 270 04 January 2012 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In comment to your fast reading, I've always been the same way, too. And I love to read! I practically lived at
the library during m school days:) And I still check-out books from the university library. Kind of makes me hopeful that L-R would be really enjoyable. I bet it was loads of fun with all of you sitting around learning different languages at the same time :) kind of like here on the forum. But then my competitive me starts waking up in situations like this and I have to remind myself to focus on what I'm doing, this isn't a speed contest:) On a side note, I think it's extremely brave of you, battling your dyslexia, and knowing that many languages. It can't be easy, and I really respect the effort you put so much into this. This tells me that I need to up my game since I have no excuse! Best of luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ummagumma Senior Member IrelandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5254 days ago 217 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 20 of 270 04 January 2012 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Solfrid Cristin
i suffer (badly) from dyslexia so it's great to see another member who has learned so many languages - there's hope for people like me yet. I hardly ever mention to anyone that I have dyslexia. From growing up I have always struggled with my native English and reading/calling out numbers. I fell behind in the early school years but caught up and manage to get good school results in the end and get a 1st class degree thereafter. It helped me to concentrate my efforts on science/maths subjects. I have however learnt to just get on with it and not use it as an excuse. I do get frustrated though with learning my one foreign language - German. When I read I never pick up/internalise the grammar (ie. adjective endings, articles) and the spelling of the words. It's like hitting my head against a brick wall! What can you do only carry on trying! Happy 2012 Paul 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6238 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 21 of 270 04 January 2012 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes! 2012 is here and Team Sputnik has been let loose. Thank you very much Solfrid for
organizing the team in such a brilliant way! Yes, Russian is really hard - in comparison with those Germanic and Romance languages on your list. Like you I've been struggling off and on for several years and considering that, my progress is ridiculously minor. What's remarkable is that I rarely feel frustrated about it, it's such great language to spend time with even on a basic level. So on the one hand, let's just accept that it will take time and we need a long perspective on this project. BUT on the other hand, this year will be a much better year, thanks to regular studying and close team co-operation! And Greek is a great choise as well. I was hoping to break into it in preparation for a couple of wonderful weeks spent on a few small Greek islands last summer, but I had a terribly busy spring and didn't get very far. But I really want to come back to it. And isn't it great to be able to write in three different alphabets! Hm, you've already tempted me with Icelandic, now my Griechisch ohne Mühe is staring longinly at me from the bookshelf ... Viel Glück! /aloysius 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 270 09 January 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Woodsei: Thanks for the encouragement! I worry that I am all over the place and not focusing enough, but I hope it will work out. As for the dyslexia I was fortunate in that I only have trouble writing, not reading, and in that it went undiagnozed until I was 20. By then I was half through my language studies, something which I might otherwise not have dared to do.
@Kerrie: I kind of understand the light bulb thing, since my mom saw that I would just not stop, and I had school the next day. @Brun Ugle:I am happy to see I am not the only one to love books too much. @ummagumma: I know there are so many who struggle so hard with dyslexia, many a lot harder than I did, and I admire them all for continuing anyway. And yes, it is frustrating, but there is hope in the end of the tunnel:-) @aloysius: Thanks, you made me feel so much better! I am happy I am not the only one who finds Russian really, really hard, but really, really worth it! AND THESE ARE THE RESULTS OF THE NORWEGIAN JURY - WEEK ONE Finally a week of focus. Last week I felt I was absolutely all over the place, since I was spreading myself over all the languages I want to focus on, and – all the others … My visitor from Spain left, which means that I do not get the daily doses of Spanish and English conversation anymore, but at least I get a little Spanish on the phone or by personal meeting with my Spanish friend now and then. This week I have actually been able to focus on Russian, and practically all I have done is in that language. The only thing is that I get some French as a fringe benefit, as I have been using a French grammar book for beginners. So I have split the time I spend on it in two, and put part of it under French and part of it under Russian. RUSSIAN Assimil I have continued writing the Russian text of Assimil, and spent an additional 50 minutes on that. I also found a presentation of myself in which I had started writing by hand in Russian, and wrote it into the computer. I had however not written any Russian on the computer for ages, and it felt like when I was 12 years old and signed up for a type writing course at school. I had to look hard to find each letter, so it took me 45 minutes to copy just a few sentences, plus I felt like I was going to throw up. Not the most brilliant of starts… Anki I have also done some more Anki, about 1.h 45 and most of the time I recognized most of the words at a 90/10 ratio, and felt really good about myself. Today I hit the last deck I wrote, and the ratio was still 90/10, but in reverse. Soooo not a good feeling. Pimsleur I have done approximately 1h 15m of Pimsleur. I am afraid I am a bit all over the place with that though, and need to be a bit more structured. At the moment it is more a “which CD happens to be in the CD player” kind of thing. Je parle russe I have found some French based grammar exercise which starts over from the beginning and is simple enough for me to understand. The book is also small enough to be in my hand bag which is really convenient. I have been working on it on the train on my way to work over the last week, and it is nice to get back into the swing of things. Films On Saturday I got what I crave the most: Me time! As both husband and kids were off I got 2 full hours of it. I spent it on films. Since I was self delusional enough to think that I would actually understand something of a film without subtitles, I started out with “The Irony of Fate”, but after 20 minutes I gave up, since I only understood a few words here and there, and definitely not enough to get the story. I then watched a film which I had thought was a Disney film, but which was not. There were no subtitles here either, but in cartoons you generally get most of the action anyway so I was ok, and very proud of myself for listening to Russian for almost two straight hours. FRENCH Since some of my study materials are in French, I have decided to split the time I spend on them to mark the time I am using on French. It is not a 50/50 thing, because I spend more time on the Russian material since I have to study that, whereas I can just read the French part of it quickly, and this week between Assimil and “Je parle russe”, it was a total of 40 minutes. So the totals for this week (including the last days of December which make the numbers look huge) are: Russian: 11 h 30 min German: 25 minutes Greek: 40 min Spanish: 6 h 25 English: 5 h (not including the umpteen episodes of Bones I have watched with the kids lately in English and with English subtitles) French: 40 minutes Italian: 1h 30 minutes Icelandic:20 minutes Mandarin: 45 minutes Ukrainian: 30 minutes Did I mention I need to focus? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 09 January 2012 at 12:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 23 of 270 09 January 2012 at 5:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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"I expected the language as such to be much closer to Russian. It was actually quite
different. I went through the exact same lessons of the course in Icelandic a few days ago, and Ukrainian to Russian was approximately as Icelandic to Norwegian, which means that you get a lot of words for free, and can sometimes understand a whole sentence, based on your understanding of the other language, but it is a new language you have to learn. I had half believed that Ukrainian was almost as close to Russian as Swedish is to Norwegian, but that was not the case. If so many Ukrainians understand Russian, it must more be a case of Russian being such a dominant language for a long time. I doubt that a Russian without previous exposure to Ukrainian would understand all that much Ukrainian." Ukrainians understand Russian well because it is still ubiquitous there. Russians can understand slow Ukrainian, in a live conversation. Fast speech on TV seems unintelligible first, but then you start understanding more and more. I don't know how close Norwegian and Icelandic are but I think they are farther. Russian and Ukrainian syntax is very close. Russian and Ukrainian have similar morphology too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4713 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 24 of 270 09 January 2012 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Nicely done, Cristina! =)
I've watched “The Irony of Fate” about 4 times already. My wife says watching it on New Year's Eve is a Russian tradition, or at least in her family. We tried to play it on our Russian New Year's party, but after 20 minutes (and some beers + vodkas) no one was paying attention anymore. =P Either way, it's a nice movie! All the times I watched it was with English subtitles, because I still don't understand spoken Russian (and most of the vocabulary) so well. Maybe in some months we can try to use Russian subtitles! Edited by fabriciocarraro on 09 January 2012 at 12:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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