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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 41 of 62 10 July 2012 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Czech Republic there were 2 national holidays on Thursday and Friday so we spent 4 days on the other side of the Czech Republic in a town called Český Těšín in Moravia. This town is half Czech, half Polish as it is split down the middle by a river which makes the border between the 2 countries. This fact makes it a very interesting case study for languages.
The Czechs there all understand Polish 100% and the Polish people understand the Czechs completely too and a lot of people are either bilingual or capable of speaking the other language. This heavy mixture of the 2 languages has also created a special dialect which is apparently only found in Těšín. It's known as "po našemu", which means something like "in our own way" and even people from nearby big towns don't know about it. The dialect is said to be 55/45 leaning towards Polish but both sets of people can use it without problem. The last time we visited this place, where my wife's aunt, uncle and cousins live and grew up was 5 years ago and I really struggled to understand them. Maybe I understood 25-50% depending on the person, situation and topic. I was already fluent in Czech at that time and understood normal Bohemian Czech very well, but this strong Moravian dialect with it's shortened vowels and strange vocabulary was beyond me. Anyway since that time I believed that my Czech hasn't really improved much and I was expecting another big struggle. However I was delighted to find out that I understood almost everything they said to me. I could distinctly hear the shortened forms and recognised the vocabulary thanks to having studied Slovak and Polish and thanks to 5 years of regular exposure. Suddenly I felt like how I feel in English when for example I hear a Geordie speak or a Glaswegian - I had to concentrate but I could understand. I was really happy to see this evidence of improvement having taken place over the last 5 years, very slowly but surely. Now I can understand about 90% and context usually helps me with the other 10%. The other interesting thing for me was that when my wife or her aunt (they're both from Bohemia) spoke during these 4 days, it was like hearing my native language and dialect, it felt so clear. A couple of times I didn't understand her cousin and my wife had to translate what he had said into her dialect and it was clear. The other great thing about this trip was that I barely heard or spoke English the whole time, which as an English teacher very rarely happens to me. So I enjoyed a seriously intensive 4 days of Czech and Czech dialects. We also visited Poland twice and I got to use a few words of Polish again. Since we got back from the trip, my wife has kind of stayed in Czech mode and has continued to speak to me in Czech. I haven't reminded her that usually she prefers to practise her English, because I want it to keep going for as long as possible! Usually I speak Czech and she responds in English. I've got back into Hungarian since yesterday and am hoping for another skype conversation this week. Spanish has been seriously neglected now for a few weeks, although I did get one email in Spanish yesterday. Edited by hribecek on 10 July 2012 at 12:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 42 of 62 10 July 2012 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's probably where one can mix Czech, Polish and/or Slovak in a sentence, and be deemed to be speaking properly ;-) I have a friend from Karviná and another from Cieszyn and I treat it as a bit of game to see how much I can understand when seeing them or their friends post po naszymu on Facebook.
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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 43 of 62 11 July 2012 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||
That's cool that you know about that dialect and have experienced it, most Czechs I know don't even know about it! Do Poles say that it is closer to Polish or Czech? For students of Czech, Polish and Slovak like me and especially you, it's a great tourist destination. I imagine somewhere like Jablunkov would be an even more interesting melting pot of the three. There's also a small village called Hrcava which is almost on the border of all three. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 44 of 62 12 July 2012 at 12:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't recall from what my friends have said on the subject (if anything at all), but I've read that a judgement about which language is closest to po naszymu depends on the ethnic / national allegiance of the speaker involved. Poles tend to say that po naszymu is closer to Polish than Czech, while Czechs tend to say that it's closer to Czech. It reminds me of Bulgarian and Serbian linguists describing Torlak and to which language it "belongs".
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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 45 of 62 12 July 2012 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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My wife's uncle, who is Czech but a native speaker in both, says that it's a bit closer to Polish.
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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 46 of 62 17 July 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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A few updates to make from the last week or two or more in the case of Czech.
HUNGARIAN I've had 2 more skype conversations in Hungarian, so 3 altogether now. These last 2 have been a bit longer than the first one, probably about 50-55 minutes each. I understand a little bit better now but it's still by far my weakest area; I'm not sure if I understand a bit better because I'm getting used to hearing Hungarian or because my conversation buddy is adapting his speech to my level more, maybe a little of both. The third conversation was really intense, we did role plays for the whole time and if my brain was fried after the first conversation, after the third one it was completely roasted. I admit that I like that roasted feeling though, the feeling that I really pushed my Hungarian to its limit and well beyond. By the end of the conversation I was absolutely tearing Hungarian apart and it must have been so painful for his Hungarian ears. For the rest of the Summer we'll behaving shorter but more frequent conversations, because I'll be in England with shorter but more frequent access to a computer time. CZECH Since the middle of April, when I started following Luca the Italian Polyglot's advice and tried to read as much as possible every day, I've read 11 books of at least 300 pages! That's the 3 Millennium books and 8 House of Night books. I've now started with the Twilight series. CROATIAN I've bought a Czech-Croatian phrase book/dictionary/grammar reference book which I've started to study from ready for my week long trip to Croatia in the middle of August. I only intend to reach a 'get by and understand' level in the language, because this year I've really learned that 3 serious foreign languages (Czech, Hungarian and Spanish) is more than enough for my brain to deal with on a permanent basis. 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 47 of 62 09 August 2012 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wanted to write a quick update while I have the chance.
I haven't been on the forum at all for the last couple of weeks, because my computer wouldn't allow me too, saying that the website was infected with a virus. That was quite frustrating as usually I use the forum every day and usually several times a day. So I've been in England since July 20th which as usual has sapped my language study motivation. However thankfully I've had regular Hungarian skype sessions to keep me going, otherwise I can imagine that I would have been very lazy with Hungarian, as I was last Summer when I was in England. I've now had about 9 Hungarian skype conversations, each one at least for 30 minutes and usually for about 45 minutes. I'm still terrible, especially my listening, but I do think that I can understand a little better than when I started the skype sessions, so it's definitely given me a boost. Both of my conversation partners have been very helpful and I enjoy talking to them. I've also done a bit of Hungarian writing and will be posting another chapter of my Hungarian story tomorrow on the Hungarian thread hopefully. Other than that my only foreign language use has been reading a bit in Czech, maybe about 30 minutes a day on average, plus obviously I've been speaking quite a lot in Czech with my wife every day. Spanish has only popped into our conversations from time to time. I'm getting very rusty and need to somehow refocus on it again. I'm going to Croatia next week and have done a little bit of survival study, but I've decided to learn mainly on the spot, so I'll be taking my phrase book with me and using it at every opportunity. Croatian seems to me to be almost as similar to Czech as Polish is. My next update will probably be in a couple of weeks. 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 48 of 62 23 August 2012 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've just got back from a week in Croatia. My idea of learning on the spot by using my phrase book worked quite well as certain basic phrases are now firmly engrained in my memory as I used them so much. For example (without Croatian letters) -
Hvala - thank you Dobar dan - Hello/good day dovidenia - Goodbye Koliko to kosta - how much is it? Racun, molim - the bill please Kolodvor - station pekarnica - bakery samo malo - excuse me bok - hi mnogo - many jos jeden - one more These are the ones that spring to mind and may not be exactly correct as some of them I only learned from hearing and saying them. Croatian was pretty easy to understand thanks to Czech, although when listening to Croats chatting to each other it was a lot harder obviously. Croatian sounded to me like Slavic with an Italian accent, in fact quite often when I first heard people chatting it took me a few moments to work out if they were talking Italian or Croatian! There were loads of Italians there (Korcula, Dubrovnik and Orebic) so it was almost as often Italian as Croatian. So I enjoyed this relaxed language acquistion method with no pressure on making big progress. I spoke Czech there most of the time, but there were also a fair few Czechs so if we realised this then we usually switched to Spanish to maintain a (hopefully!) private conversation. My Hungarian was seriously neglected and now I need to find the motivation to get going in it again. I had a couple more skype sessions before I left and started to feel like I'm getting worse again, I don't know why. Holidays are great but they always break my study routines big time. I'll write something now but without a Hungarian keyboard as there isn't one on this keyboard. Szabadsagon voltam, de sajnos nem beszeltem magyarul. Emlekszem, hogy ketszer vagy haromszor gondoltam magyarul, csak hogy egy kicsit gyakaroljak, de ez volt olyan alacsony mennyiseg, hogy nem tudom miert azt irom! Most ujra Angliaban vagyok es megtoltok egy hetet a csaladommal es azutan visszamegyek csehorszagba. Nem tudom, hogy idom lesz-e beszelni ezen a heten magyarul skype-on, mert sok tervem van a csaladommal es a barataimmal, de szeretnek legalabb egy uj fejezetet irni a magyar forumban, de nem igerem, mert lusta lettem es nem tudok kezdeni el ujra a nyelvvel. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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