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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 289 of 646 11 January 2013 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
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FRIDAY, 11 JANUARY 2013
So, I'm finally back to studying again. I had so much to do during the last few days that I could barely think about languages, but today I finally had some time for myself. I had to repeat a lot, because the break had been very long and I had already forgotten some things. By the way, thanks again for all your good wishes and encouragement! I hope I can answer your questions in the following report without answering everybody individually. Russian I repeated lesson 16 in Colloquial Russian and did the translation exercise from lesson 15. I've got the feeling that my Russian has become a bit rusty, because I made some stupid mistakes such as using ездить when поехать would have been right or forgetting to use the genitive with у меня не было... So, here is the exercise, but it's already corrected. I only have a question about the last sentence: 1) Пётр Великий основал Санкт Петербург в 1703 (тысяча семьсот третьем) году. Ему нужен был выход к морю, поэтому он выбрал место, где широкая река Нева впадает в Балтийское море. Там он построил крепость, которую он назвал Петропавловская крепость. 2) Если бы Пётр не построил Петербург, у России не было бы выхода к морю. 3) Если бы я мог поехать в Петербург этим летом, я бы посетил все музеи. 4) Во время войны Ленинград пережил ужасную блокаду, которая продолжалась 900 (девятьсот) дней. Многие люди умерли от голода и холода. Но Ленинград выжил. 5) Великий русский писатель Толстой родился в 1828 (тысяча восемьсот двадцать восьмом) году и умер в ноябре 1910 (тысяча девятьсот десятого) года. За свою долгую жизнь он написал много интересных книг. 6) Моей подруге очень понравился Петербург. Она никогда не видела такой красивий город, никогда не видела так много мостов и каналов. My question about sentence 6): The textbook gives as solution Она никогда не видела такого красивого города. Is this correct? Why should it be animate accusative, or is this some kind of genetive after a negation? I haven't really tried anything besides Langenscheidt's Russisch mit System and Colloquial Russian yet. After finishing Colloquial Russian, I'll work with Colloquial Russian 2. Maybe, I'll also get Assimil. I feel it's to early to use native materials such as books or films, but maybe that will change in the course of the new year. Scottish Gaelic Thanks to liammcg for the summary of the definite article. My textbook gives a handy chart, which is useful for a quick overview, but reading your text helped me internalize the single rules. It's very easy to get confused, but I think I'm getting the hang of the definite article. I repeated lesson 5 and 6 in Lehrbuch der schottisch-gälischen Sprache and did the exercises from lesson 5. They dealt with the definite article and the lenition of adjectives. Lesson 6 introduces the future tense of "bi", expression of possession with "air", and the personal prepositions of "aig". Here is the translation exercise I did today: Tha an t-athair trang. Tha a' mhàthair sgìth. Tha a' mhadainn bhrèagha fuar. Tha am biadh math. Tha an t-uisge fuar. Tha an sgoil mhòr snog. Tha a' chaileag bheag a' cluich ball-coise. A bheil an leabhar mòr intinneach? An robh an seòmar beag snog? Bha an seòmar beag snog ach bha e fuar. Additionally, I listened to the recordings of lessons 1-6. Icelandic I even did some Icelandic. I reread some passages in Colloquial Icelandic, especially my favourite text, an excerpt from Brennu-Njáls Saga. I want to work actively on my Icelandic in 2013, so I'll try to cram some vocabulary and idiomatic expressions and additionally consolidate my grammar by doing the exercises in Langenscheidts Praktisches Lehrbuch Isländisch. So, you're going to read some Icelandic here again soon. Moreover, I have found another Icelandic online bookstore besides Eymundsson that ships internationally. I haven't found out yet how much they charge for shipment to Germany, but perhaps this could be a good way to get hold of some Icelandic books and films. Danish I still have to tell you about my vacation in Denmark. It was great! My friends and I took many long walks along the beaches of Rømø and Sylt (Yes, that's a German island, I know...) and visited nice old towns like Ribe and Tønder. Our house was only 20 km behind the German border, but it was nevertheless a very Scandinavian feeling. I didn't get to learn or speak much Danish, but at least I could pay at the counter of the local supermarket without using a single word of German or English: "Hej! Tak! Farvel!" Reading Danish was no problem at all, but spoken Danish is very hard to understand. I still managed to discern some easy sentences ("Du synger så godt!", "Kan jeg hjælpe dig?"), but when I tried to listen to the guide in the Ribe art museum, the only word I could understand was "Danmark". Listening to the radio didn't get me anywhere either. After all, the rumours that Danish can only be pronounced correctly with a hot potato in your mouth seem to be right. It doesn't sound similar to Swedish at all. Nevertheless, I got interested in Danish, so maybe I'll study it more seriously some time in the future. Edited by Josquin on 11 January 2013 at 8:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 290 of 646 12 January 2013 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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Она никогда не видела такого красивого города is the correct version, it is gen. after
negation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 291 of 646 12 January 2013 at 9:40am | IP Logged |
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You seem to be working very hard with your Russian - great! I also look forward to seeing some Islandic
here. I bought that same course enforce going to Iceland this summer, but I did not make it past the 4th lesson. I thought it would be a piece of cake, being Norwegian, but it would actually need some real work, which I did not have the capacity for right then. And yes. You do need the hot potato in your mouth to pronounce Danish if you are a foreigner. I do not know how the Danes do without it :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 292 of 646 13 January 2013 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, Cristina, but I'm afraid it might only look like I were working hard. I did virtually nothing with my Russian over the holidays, and this was the first unit of studying that I managed to do in the new year. But yes, I'm eager to make progress (Is this a Total Annihilation Challenge, or what?), so I hope I can study more in the future. Unfortunately, I have to work, to research my dissertation, and to prepare for a concert, so I don't really have time -- given that I still want to eat and sleep. But after having discovered www.lib.ru and other sites, I really want to get my Russian to a point where I'll be able to read Russian literature.
Yes, Icelandic is a real beast. It's quite different from the Scandinavian languages and requires much more work than Swedish or Danish. It's very complex and irregular, not unlike Russian, so you have to think a lot how words conjugate and decline. On top of that, there's the damn Icelandic purity law that forbids borrowing loanwords, so there's virtually no international vocabulary to help you understand new words. I nevertheless love that language, although I can't really do anything in it. Anyway, if I should dive into Danish one day, I'll make sure to buy two kilos of potatoes with my textbook, so I can practise the pronunciation properly! ;) See you on Skype tonight! 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 293 of 646 13 January 2013 at 5:24pm | IP Logged |
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You're German, so you get a lot of the "simple" vocab for free, and you do have Swedish.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 294 of 646 13 January 2013 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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"A lot of the simple vocab" is a slight exaggeration as far as Icelandic is concerned. Yes, there are some similarities, but Icelandic can be surprisingly independent in its vocabulary. Swedish helps of course, but it's especially the "hard" and the "modern" vocab that causes me headaches. It was only through learning Icelandic that I discovered how much loanwords German really has.
Icelandic always coins new expressions that consist of other Icelanidc (or even Old Norse) words: telephone - sími, electricity - rafmagn, police - lögregla, restaurant - veitingastaður, computer - tölva, medicine - lyf, bus - strætó. And then there are all those compounds, which you can only understand if you know their components: hospital - sjúkrahús, nurse - hjúkrunarfræðingur, grammar - málfræði, fishery - sjávarútvegur, ... German and Swedish help more than French and Russian do, that's for sure, but you nevertheless get to a point where you simply have to cram the vocabulary without help from any other language. And Icelandic has a lot of vocab... But we can elaborate on this later on Skype, if you want to. Edited by Josquin on 13 January 2013 at 6:52pm 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 295 of 646 13 January 2013 at 7:38pm | IP Logged |
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Oh, you don't get everything for free, that is for sure. But you can get something
because a certain amount of roots are cognate with German, Swedish (or in my case Dutch). And sjukráhus isn't so strange - sjukhus in Swedish and ziekenhuis in Dutch. My point is there is something to go on if you're Germanic - more so than if you're coming from Italian or a Romance language which would normally get the loans. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 296 of 646 14 January 2013 at 7:23pm | IP Logged |
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MONDAY, 14 JANUARY 2012
This will just be a short reflection on yesterday's team chat via Skype. It was a really interesting and new experience to get into live contact with some other polyglots from this forum. Until now, I had only participated in the language learning community via this forum, a few posts on Lang-8, and my multilingual video on YouTube, so it was exciting and also a bit shocking to really be talking to some other polyglots. The first thing I noticed: I don't speak my languages often enough! The chat took place in English, French, German, Swedish, and Russian. Although I could follow most of it (I didn't get all of the Russian though), I couldn't speak fluently enough for my own taste. I didn't dare to join the Russian conversation, which is fine by me considering that I have only been studying Russian for eight months now, but I was especially unsatisfied with my French. I was stunned by the degree of fluency especially Cristina and tarvos showed whereas I had to think for words and also made some basic mistakes. This leads straight to my second observation. The other team mates talked about the way they used their languages and I suddenly realized that I don't really use my languages at all except for reading and listening. I am living in a monolingual environment and don't travel much, so my love for languages is more some sort of intellectual curiosity than the wish of being able to talk to people. This also became clear to me when Cristina asked me why I was studying Russian. I don't have Russian relatives or friends, I'm simply interested in Russian culture, music, and literature. I don't even know if fluency in Russian really is my goal, or if I would be satisfied with understanding it fairly well. I most certainly know I'm not striving for fluency in Icelandic or Gaelic, because I don't see any practical use in that. I just want to understand the language and (yes, this is nerdy) know how it works. Maybe, in another life, I wouldn't have become such a bad philologist after all... Well, so it was kind of a cultural clash to meet persons who really speak their languages on a regular basis (and do it well!), but it motivated me to do more with my dormant languages such as French, Italian, and Swedish. I know there is potential left, but on the other hand there is only so much time... I reread some of this thread and noticed that I had been chewing on lesson 15 in Colloquial Russian for two months now. My new job consumes a lot of time and there are so much other things I would like to do -- and sometimes I simply want to relax. Last but not least, I'm addicted to this forum, which is another time-consuming factor. So, what's the conclusion I draw from this? First of all, I'm gonna lower my expectations and restrain from striving for perfection. I normally want to do things 100 %, but as I am studying languages just for fun, I might take a step backwards and stop setting me under pressure. Learning languages isn't a race, it's my hobby. I often see the attitude that only 100 % error-free, accent-free, and idiomatic languages count, but I think I should make myself free from this thought. The languages are there for us, not we for the languages. I might not be on the level I'm secretely dreaming of, but who really is satisfied with him- or herself? So, this is my philosophy I will follow from now on in 2013. Maybe I will not study as much as I should and maybe I won't be talking perfectly fluently, but I want to enjoy the journey and that's what counts. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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