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Four Little Birds, TAC 2015

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 1 of 54
17 December 2014 at 1:18am | IP Logged 
Introducing my language learning goals and resources for the 2015 TAC



No initial lengthy monologues to cajole myself into action this year; just one ball of hopeful intentions, and a little early gentle push to get it rolling into action here with a new blog for the 2015 TAC. So let's get down to business...

I've chosen to focus on Hawaiian as my major language in the forthcoming TAC. I've already completed a semester of elementary Hawaiian at university, and have now eagerly signed up for Hawaiian 102 next term. There's mountains of homework involved of course, and it's tough to fit it in around teaching my own classes, but the courses are fun and offer plenty of opportunities to join in local Hawaiian community activities and speak with fluent Hawaiian speakers. Hereʻs my little cache of resources for Hawaiian language spanning beginner to intermediate levels (plenty to keep me going for now):

Study Materials
- Ka Lei Haʻaheo (main university course book used at UH Mānoa)
- Nā Kai ʻEwalu (main university course book used at UH Hilo)
- Instant Immersion Hawaiian (a great little supplementary audio course)
- Spoken Hawaiian (parallel text and dialogues)
- Hawaiian at Home (a basic introductory course book)
- Pukui and Elbertʻs Revised Hawaiian Dictionary

Stories (text + several audio)
- Ke Keiki Aliʻi Liʻiliʻi (The Little Prince)
- Ka Moʻolelo O Eddie ʻAikau (The Story of Eddie Aikau)
- Puke Palapala ʻĀina O Hawaiʻi (Land of Hawaiʻi Book)
- Mohala Mai ʻO Hau (How Hau Became Hauʻula)
- Kohala Kuamoʻo (Naeʻole's Race to Save a King)
- ʻO Laukaʻieʻie (A Hawaiian Legend Retold)
- No Ka ʻĪlio Moʻo (The Brindled Dog)
- No Ke Kumu Ulu (The ʻUlu Tree)
- No ka Elepaio Kolohe (The Naughty Elepaio)

I'll also continue with Irish as a minor language to support my Celtic language teammates in the TAC and attempt to rise to new dizzy heights beyond my ol' trustworthy cúpla focal (few phrases). Inspired by my teammates' progress with Irish in 2014, I've ordered beginner and intermediate versions of "Gaeilge gan Stró!" to complement my other resources. Tormented akin to Tantalus, I have an immense treasure horde of Irish resources locked away in an attic back in England, but sadly beyond my reach for now. So in the meantime, this is what I've scraped together or have destined for my bookshelf in the middle of the Pacific:

Study Materials
- Buntús Cainte 1-3
- Gaeilge gan Stró! 1-2 (on order)
- Turas Teanga
- Collins Irish Dictionary

Stories (text + audio)
- Daideo by Áine Ní Ghlinn
- Úlla by Seán Mac Mathúna (audio by Niall Tóibín - what an amazing voice!)
- Peig Sayers: Labharfad le Cach

As to my current levels of proficiency, I'm a clear beginner (around A1 on the CEFR scale) in both Hawaiian and Irish at the moment, but I'm keen to take these languages all the way to a solid mid-high intermediate level by the end of 2015 if my health and crazy work/PhD schedule in "that other world" allows me. My goals in this respect are to reach a level of both conversational proficiency and fluency where I feel comfortable changing my HTLAL profile status to "speaks" for each language by the end of the year.

And with regards to other languages, I hope to dabble in or maintain some favorites throughout the course of 2015, and I'll add any progress or reflections to my log from time to time, although they won't necessarily form the central focus of what I hope to achieve in the TAC. One very big change however, and probably worth mentioning here from the outset, is that Russian will be the main language I speak at home with my wife from the New Year on, and I hope to keep moving forwards in this language with increasing commitment and shuffle well down that path to fixing up my abominable grammar by the end of 2015 - всё будет хорошо!

I'm very much looking forward to sharing the journey ahead with new members on the Rare Languages Team, as well as weathering the ups and downs together with fellow travelers and brave new souls in the Celtic Languages Team again. I know I've probably said this before at the start of other TACs (after all, this is my sixth in a row already, which in terms of the history of our TAC, no doubt makes me one of those tattered chintzy cosy armchairs with side head rests by the fireplace), but I have a very strong positive feeling about 2015, and I wish my teammates, visitors, and everyone sharing their experiences on HTLAL, maikaʻi pōmaikaʻi (the best of luck) in realizing their goals and bringing their language(s) to a whole new level.

Have a great Christmas, everyone, and see you up in the air in the New Year!! :)


Edited (25th February): I changed the title of my blog from "Three Little Birds" to "Five Little Birds" to reflect a change in my study schedule (i.e., 5 languages every fortnight with the addition of French and German).

Edited (11th March): I amended my blog title once again to add a low-intensity side project in Ancient Egyptian. Being a little superstitious about the number 6, especially in relation to little birds, I decided to keep the number 5 in the title and just add 1. ;)

Edited (28th June): Assessing my progress halfway through 2015, I've decided to slim down my schedule to a more realistic 4 languages, i.e., Hawaiian as my major language, and French, German, and Russian as my minor languages.


Edited by Teango on 29 June 2015 at 2:58am

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 2 of 54
25 December 2014 at 1:11am | IP Logged 
Peig Sayers is finally in the house! I can now add "Labharfad Le Cách" to my Irish collection, which comes with just over two hours of original audio recordings on CD to accompany the transcriptions and translations. :)

Edited by Teango on 25 December 2014 at 1:14am

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Anya
Pentaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5792 days ago

636 posts - 708 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish
Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin
Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi

 
 Message 3 of 54
25 December 2014 at 12:22pm | IP Logged 
Good luck with your studies!
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4706 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 4 of 54
25 December 2014 at 1:15pm | IP Logged 
Don't worry, 'cause every little thing is gonna be all right!


1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 5 of 54
27 December 2014 at 1:22am | IP Logged 
Mahalo guys, I'm already feeling Jah love... :)
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Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5333 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 6 of 54
27 December 2014 at 7:29am | IP Logged 
I'll love following your log as always :-)
1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 7 of 54
27 December 2014 at 7:55am | IP Logged 
@Cristina
I'm sad we won't be on the same TAC team next year, but you just try and keep me from visiting your blog and that of other comrades; I'll be rooting for you from the sidelines with rattlers, vuvuzela, and my Zenit scarf! ;)
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ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6141 days ago

2150 posts - 3229 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian

 
 Message 8 of 54
01 January 2015 at 9:25pm | IP Logged 
I'm looking forward to reading about your adventures in Hawaiian and Irish this year! I had a Hawaiian problem set assigned in one of my linguistics courses this past semester, and remember it being quite the fun language. Pomaikaʻi!


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