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Geoffw in TAC2015: RU, HE and Friends

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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 241 of 251
11 January 2015 at 3:01pm | IP Logged 
Russian progress continues apace, but I think my estimate for finishing Assimil was slightly optimistic. It's just
taking too much time to finish each lesson now, so I'm no longer finishing one active and one passive wave lesson
per day. No big deal, though. I'm still moving forward and learning every day. February seems more likely now.

I'd be curious if anyone else has experience with learning both Russian and Hebrew. I generally have not worried
much about the notorious "interference" bogeyman, but it does seem to pop up a bit if I try to switch back and
forth between these two languages. It seems that there are a number of ways in which phonetically similar words
cover similar concepts, despite the great differences in linguistic structure. For example (I'm so frustrated trying to
reconcile left- and right- facing inputs that I'm just going to use roman letters for Hebrew here):

Personal pronouns они (3rd. pl.) and "ani" (1st sing.),
Emphatic particle ж and preposition "-sheh"
How: как and preposition "ka-"
Russian в and Hebrew "ve-" and "be-"
and even Russian на and Hebrew "ha-" (not phonetically similar, but orthographically similar in an English-
speaker's mind)

and so on. I have no trouble keeping these straight, but when I immerse myself in Hebrew and then switch to
Russian, I keep wanting to use Hebrew definite articles and prepositions at first.
2 persons have voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 242 of 251
11 January 2015 at 3:13pm | IP Logged 
I've also found that I tend to have greater motivation for Russian in the winter, and a greater motivation for Hebrew
in the summer. I suppose that's due to my cultural conceptions of Russia as a wintry place and Israel as a hot place.
I know it just snowed in Israel recently, and it certainly gets hot in Russia, which is a huge and diverse country.
Russian also is one of the major languages of Israel nowadays (along with Hebrew, Arabic, and English). But when's
the last time anyone saw a good Israeli game of ice hockey? I'll stick to Russian TV for that, thanks.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5164 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 243 of 251
12 January 2015 at 10:50pm | IP Logged 
@geoff, it happens all the time with Russian and Georgian. Although unrelated, the languages have common loanwords from western languages (e.g. a language enters Russian via French then proceeds to Georgian) and have plenty of words of the CVCV type which could be either one language or another and neither similar to a Romance or Germanic language, to the extent that if I see a Georgian-Russian wordlist I often have a hard time remembering which one is Georgian and which one is Russian, especially when there's no palatalized consonant involved.
1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 244 of 251
01 February 2015 at 11:44pm | IP Logged 
Pretty good sign of how far I've come with my German comprehension: yesterday I read about 220 pages of Äon
(quasi Sci-Fi novel, which was written originally in German). It's simply not possible for me to read that fast in
languages I don't understand as "fluently."
1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 245 of 251
12 February 2015 at 3:46am | IP Logged 
Just saw
this video in
French discussing scientific studies of language acquisition in babies in bilingual situations, and discussing the
hypothesis (which has been discussed in this forum at length elsewhere) that raising a bilingual child could pose, in
some ways, a possible handicap to the child's development. Interesting ideas.
1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 246 of 251
16 February 2015 at 4:51pm | IP Logged 
I still think about the Super Challenge framework, but I think I've mostly abandoned it. Not the reading and
listening, just the documentation. I have no idea what some of my totals are, though I'm pretty sure I've read 500-
600 pages of various TLs over the last 8-9 days, minimum. Unsurprisingly, my most advanced languages are the
fastest reads, so that doesn't mean I'm making significant Russian progress, e.g.

I've done 50 or more (sometimes much more) pages over the last week in: German, Dutch, and French. I only made
nominal progress in Russian and Hebrew (and Italian, which I'm still officially neglecting).
1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 247 of 251
22 February 2015 at 4:01pm | IP Logged 
J'écris toujours des SMS en français à ma femme, ce qui est presque le seul moyen avec lequel je pratiques produire
la langue activement. C'est un peu difficile, parce que ma femme, comme j'ai déjà écrit ici, ne parle pas que un très
petit peu français. Différent maintenant est, que j'utilise le fonction de reconnaissance vocale sur mon téléphone
cellulaire. Écrire un message ainsi est, à mon avis, à la fois intéressant et bizarre. En anglais (ou en allemand), je
peux dicter chaque mot individuellement, si je veux. Mais en français, c'est impossible pour le téléphone (ou pour
un homme) distinguer comment on doit écrire un mot qu'on écoute sans contexte. Par exemple, dois-je dire, c'est
un nom singulier, ou c'est le nom pluriel avec un 's' muet? Alors, on doit prononcer toujours un complet phrase, si
on ne veut pas faire des corrections.

Edited by geoffw on 22 February 2015 at 4:20pm

1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4686 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 248 of 251
04 March 2015 at 7:06pm | IP Logged 
Je suis bel et bien confus. J'ai entendu dire que tous les posts que les gens avaient écrit pendant la dernière
semaine ont été effacés. Et maintenant que je vois que mon dernier post dates à 22 février, je n'ai pas aucune idée
si j'avais écrit quelque chose d'autre, ou non.


1 person has voted this message useful



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