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Hříbeček’s TAC 2012 - Team *jäŋe/*ledús | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 25 of 62 02 April 2012 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Recently I've felt like my working standards have been slipping and it's all because of languages. Anything other than working on languages almost feels like a waste of time (including updating this log!).
Yesterday I was unintentionally staring at my wife and she asked me what I was thinking about. I didn't want to tell her and started laughing and so she became a lot more curious, I realised I had to tell her and told her that I was thinking about the difference between the Hungarian words "haj" and "csnak" (boat)! She rolled her eyes and said "they say that men think about sex every six seconds, but with you it's languages!" She's partly right, but I'd say it's much more often than every six seconds with me. :)) From the outside it looks like I have lots of free time and am quite lazy, but in reality I have two full time jobs - teaching and learning languages. Only a few people know about the language learning intensity, so to everybody else I seem quite lazy. LANGUAGE UPDATES In Hungarian I've been working more on my pronunciation and posted another video for corrections on youtube; still some work to do, but I'm very content with the fact that I'm at least very understandable to Hungarians. In Czech I've realised another way to improve my comprehension - comedy shows. Generally I think my understanding of Czech is at a high C1/low C2 level but when watching some comedy shows this weekend I struggled a bit to understand some of the jokes, especially because they often spoke much quicker than normal and the Czech in-jokes didn't help. So I'm going to both print out written jokes and watch more comedy shows. As always I feel quite low about my speaking, every mistake is like someone stabbing me and leaving a wound in my brain (this makes sense to me anyway). My personality is the problem here, too sensitive. I'm looking forward to starting with Polish and Croatian, they will both be just wanderlust languages for me before my 2 holidays to Poland and Croatia, but I hope they at least leave me with much better permanent passive abilities in those languages. OTHER A couple of nights ago I had a very weird language based dream. I was having a Czech lesson with Graham Hughes from "the Odyssey Expedition" as my teacher! He couldn't even speak Czech in the dream (or in real life I imagine) and was using an English Headway Pre-Intermediate book to teach me! In the dream I kept speaking Spanish and Hungarian by accident and fighting to remember how to say the same sentences in Czech. So probably the first time I've ever had a dream in 4 languages (including English)! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 26 of 62 02 April 2012 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just dropping by unintentionally but I see you like Graham Hughes - for which I give you a massive load of props right here. As far as I know, he doesn't speak Czech (Just Franglais and Spanglish).
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| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 27 of 62 03 April 2012 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, Graham Hughes is a legend for me. He has the most interesting blog/website on the internet for me, I think the only sites I check more often are HTLAL and BBC. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 28 of 62 03 April 2012 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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He's also got the most interesting goal in the world...
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| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 29 of 62 12 April 2012 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for an update from me because for the next 2 weeks I'll be very busy with visits from my brother and cousin. The problem with this is that I will be doing very little in Hungarian and Spanish during that time, in contrast Czech will play an even more important role than usual as I'll be translating a hell of a lot over the next 2 weeks. I get a real buzz from translating, I doubt I'll ever reach such a level but I think interpreting would be my ideal, dream job. Becoming a translator is a more realistic and very possible goal.
CZECH Koupil jsem si novou knihu - "Mui, kte nenvid eny" od Stiega Larssona, u jsem peetl sto padest stran a musm ct, e je to skvl pbh. ene m z kapitoly do dal kapitoly a kdy pracuju a netu, vdycky se tm na dal pileitost st. Tak se tm na pt tden, protoe tady budou mj bratr a bratranec. Vzal jsem si dva voln dny ze koly a u jsem naplanoval pr zajmavch vlet. Planuju s nimi moc sportovat, protoe o velikonocch jsem musel jst tolik okoldy, e jsem bohuel a moc ztloustnul. Moc se tm na "6 week" vzvu, mj cl bude pekonat mj rekordn poet v etin, mslm si, e je to 74 hodin, tak to nebude snadn, ale asi to zvldnu. HUNGARIAN Sokat nem csinltam magyarul, de minden nap legalbb valamit tettem, plda hallgattam a rdit vagy beszltem magammal. Nztem is prszor "Seherezad"ot, azt hiszem, hogy rtem taln huszont szzalket, ez nem sok, de sokkal tbb, mint tavaly. Kisfrccs mg a kirlyn hallgatsban, s remlem, hogy a jvben n is majd tudok hallgatni olyan jl. SPANISH En espaol no he hecho nada, solo un poco habl con mi mujer en espaol y escrib unas oraciones a mis amigos en Belize por Facebook. He decidido, que en Noviembre quiero hacer el examen B2 de espaol - el DELE. Hace uno o dos aos quera hacer el C1, pero desde ese tiempo me di cuenta de que no tengo la motivacion para estudiar tanto en espaol, cuando prefiero pasar mi tiempo en estudiar hungaro o checo. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 30 of 62 28 April 2012 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
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My intensive 2 weeks of visits is over and now I can get back to normal studying life. I had a great time translating between English and Czech and for several of the days it was literally non-stop because we were with my Czechs friends at their cottage and the conversations were obviously constant. The biggest difficulty was the morning after drinking the night before; translating to English was fine but translating. into Czech became a lot harder and more tiring.
Regarding my other languages, there is very little to say. A few Spanish sentences in a pub once and a few 15 minute sessions of chatting to myself or listening to my TY Hungarian CD. I'm really looking forward to getting getting back into Hungarian properly again. I actually kind of had a Slovak lesson, my Slovak student/friend taught me several Eastern Slovak slang words, plus I learned that 'izba' means room (completely different to Czech 'pokoj'). My new Eastern Slovak words/phrases - TAMPERLK - Shot (of eg. vodka) DAVAJ HET! - Come on! IDZ HET! - Go away! RACKO - Good looking guy/boyfriend Plus a general slang word for dog - HAVKO (pronounced HAUKO) My other exciting news (for me) is that I've booked a trip to Poland for the weekend in June and a week in Croatia and Bosnia in August, so that means that I have even more motivation to study those languages. I've bought a Polish course pack - LEDA Poltina (nejen) pro samouky. Its a course for Czech students of Polish and seems to be very thorough and in the style of Teach Yourself. So far I've only studied the pronunciation differences between Czech and Polish. I'm very excited to see how fast I can learn Polish, having Czech as a base already. I believe it will be really quick, much faster than Mandarin and Hungarian I'm sure. Polish will be my target language for the 6 week challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 31 of 62 09 May 2012 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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CZECH VS POLISH
So Ive started studying Polish and its been a nice experience so far. My previous big language projects over the last few years have been on completely new languages from different language families Mandarin and Hungarian and of course I had slow progress and am still really struggling with especially the listening side of things in Hungarian (I gave up Mandarin due to lack of time and desire). So Polish is a breath of fresh air in that respect. I already understand a fair amount thanks to Czech and there are so many similarities that my learning progress is so much faster. It feels like learning Esperanto or Toki Pona so far! I should also say that the Czech LEDA series is really good, I like the fact that all of the dialogues are part of one long story through the whole book, it makes it more memorable. Polish sounds really funny to me, Id heard it several times before but never really took much notice. Slovak sounds to me like the speaker is a Czech with some kind of speech impediment whereas Polish sounds like Czech which is seriously malfunctioning! It almost seems like the speakers are having fun making up the Polish accent. So far Id also say that Polish seems a bit easier than Czech. The verb conjugations are a bit more regular, there are a hell of a lot less long vowels and maybe there are a few more words borrowed from English. This is just an early impression though. The difficulties for me are things like the difference in use of the word pan and some of the pronunciation too 3 different ways of writing (and at least two ways of saying) the sh sound for example. I would say vocabulary is the same, similar or recognizable from Czech (or Slovak and English) in at least 80% or more of cases. Here are words that I dont recognize from any other language Cze Hi Tani cheap Trudny Difficult Kochanie Darling Wochy Italy Duy Big Kurtka Coat Tylko just Przepraszam Excuse me Apteka Pharmacy Ciastko Dessert Pasjonujcy Exciting, interesting (I suppose its similar to passionate) Rachunek bill Sok Juice Kelner Waiter Dlaczego Why? Dzi Today Nawet Even Powtrzy Repeat Tgi Strong Brzydki Ugly Hopefully writing those out will help me remember them. There are also some funny false friends between Polish and Czech, Ill write them next time as a practice activity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lapislazuli Tetraglot Senior Member Austria Joined 7037 days ago 146 posts - 170 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, ItalianB1 Studies: French, Hungarian, Esperanto, Czech | Message 32 of 62 10 May 2012 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your comment in my log.
I find it interesting, what you write here about learning Polish, after having learnt Czech. I guess it must help you a lot here to know Czech already. I started with Czech recently and I am currently finding it kind of helpful, that I actually played a little with Russian a while ago - being otherwise new to Slavic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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