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Serpent’s log

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 81 of 119
03 May 2008 at 8:11pm | IP Logged 
Yesterday and today were exceptions for my daily immersion in Finnish. Yesterday I spent almost 6 hours learning Portuguese and translated half of this story (eo->pt :P) I meant to translate the other half today, but happened to have a LOTR-day instead. The second and third part of the movie were broadcast on TV, and during the several hours' break between them I, among other things, finally tried scriptorium in Finnish. It's pretty obvious what I was copying ;) Did 6 pages today, albeit each of the first two had only a poem - the ones about the rings and about Aragorn.
Reading aloud an entire page at a time rather than repeating every phrase after writing it somehow seems more natural to me. I'll probably force myself to use the original method and see what it feels like when I do scriptorium next time though.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 82 of 119
04 May 2008 at 3:40pm | IP Logged 
By the way, as for Tolkien. Almost 50 years have gone since he said that "Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c, &c, are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends". Has anything changed ever since? are there any Esperanto legends nowadays? :)
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Bill Chapman
Pentaglot
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 6059 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto, Welsh, French

 
 Message 83 of 119
04 May 2008 at 4:56pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
By the way, as for Tolkien. Almost 50 years have gone since he said that "Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c, &c, are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends". Has anything changed ever since? are there any Esperanto legends nowadays? :)


Esperanto has developed its own vocabulary over the decades. For example, krokodili means to speak a native language at a gathering of Esperanto speakers. Kabei means to abandon the language, based on the name Kabe, Kazimir Bein.

The Esperanto speaking world has its own heroes and villains. An arch villain, looked on more kindly as the years go by was de Beaufront, an enigmatic Frenchman who took responsible for a 'breakaway' language called Ido: another is a Danish opponent of the language in the 1950s called Blinkenberg. Dr Zamenhof continues to be held in high esteem for allowing the language to develop without him, and for overcoming obstacles, financial, political and linguistic Heroes include the Scottish poet William Auld, and a long-serving leader of the Esperanto movement, Ivo Lapenna, although the latter also had some fierce detractors at one time. I am convinced from experience that we now have a sort 'Esperanto people', a voluntary self-sustaining speech community. Perhaps one of the legends sustaining that speech community is the 'interna ideo', a non-p[recise commitment to the brotherhood and sisterhood of mankind.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 84 of 119
24 May 2008 at 7:31pm | IP Logged 
This is sure interesting, but I meant legends in the original sense of the word :) I find it really strange that no Esperantist so far has taken Tolkien's words as guide to action 0_0 I hope some did ponder this idea but found it too much of a responsibility, just like I do... I'm thinking of writing some fantasy story in Esperanto, with Finnish used the way Tolkien uses Elvish languages, but it will sure take place in Arda/Middle-Earth...
I've started reading Lundo ekas sabate btw, and find it really nice, although I'm still reading quite slowly in Esperanto :( Still I doubt I could read anything in a language not related closely to the ones I understand after less than a year of light-paced study :-) Esperanto rocks.

Last Sunday it was exactly 3 months since I started Portuguese, and I tried the Dialang tests in it. Got A2 in all skills, don't know whether it reflects my knowledge or not... I often understood too little, but with questions like "Choose the correct statement" I normally managed just by comparing sentences from the text to the statements... Of course there were also texts that I understood well:)
I've been putting off translating the text all the time, but I guess I'll now finally translate another part of it, probably not to the end but still.... Don´t feel like sleeping after this awful eurovision >:-(
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 85 of 119
13 June 2008 at 7:32pm | IP Logged 
Today is exactly a year since I started learning Esperanto. I took the second level exam at lernu for the third time and this time just one point kept me from passing %( Should have learned the igi/iĝi stuff better -_-

I've accidentally found a video of some old icehockey stuff commented in Finnish and suddenly realized that something challenging is just what I now need in order to improve my listening comprehension :) Luckily youtube gives almost 1000 results when searching for jääkiekko, I guess that will be enough for watching some every day for quite a while - and then I can just start over again :D

Edited by Serpent on 13 June 2008 at 8:49pm

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 86 of 119
20 June 2008 at 10:59am | IP Logged 
After passing yesterday's exam with a 5 (A) I've decided to raise my level in Latin to basic fluency :) I think I'm the only one from the group who is not going to stop learning it now that the classes have ended :D this will sure keep me busy for a while, but I don't know what I'm going to do next... perhaps reading some works on linguistics if I can find any.... or even L-R whatever I manage to find...
What I'm almost sure I'm not going to do is learning new vocabulary... I hope learning Portuguese and Esperanto vocabulary and reading Latin will suffice :-)
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 87 of 119
01 July 2008 at 7:42pm | IP Logged 
Copied from the goals thread:

Here are my original plans:
Serpent wrote:
Serpent wrote:
English
Start shadowing the exercises that we have at our phonetics classes and perhaps some podcast. I'd like to have a native-like accent, no clue what for if I'm not going to be a spy...

Finnish
Continue moving along to advanced fluency. I've asked a friend who's going to Finland for Christmas holidays to buy Lord Of The Rings in Finnish for me. It will be the first time I'll be reading such a huge book in a foreign language:))))
Also going to check some advanced-level textbooks at the library.

Latin
Try to reach basic fluency. Not sure what it means for dead languages...

Esperanto
Also striving for basic fluency. Learning more suffices and some more vocabulary should help. I also need to start using it more often.

German
Classses at university starting from September. Nothing special before that.

Belarusian
Reach at least the intermediate level, read and listen to genuine stuff as much as possible.

Portuguese
Start learning it as soon as I feel my knowledge of other languages is good enough to start a new one. Hopefully getting to intermediate by the end of the year.


General: start practising "immersion days" for languages other than Finnish.


If I achieve these goals I'll have basic fluency in three languages and intermediate level in two more (+ German) by the end of the year. Nice :)


Updated:
Since I was praised by our very strict Latin professor at the credit, I now think it's not too ambitious a goal to try to get an excellent mark for the Latin exam in June. They say this prof almost always gives satisfactory or bad marks at exams, but occasionally also good ones and rarely excellent marks.

Another new goal is start going through the tips at http://www.getitwriteonline.com, a site for those who want to improve their writing style in English. I've just found this site and I think it's fantastic. I'll try to go through one article each week during the semesters at uni and two-three articles during the weeks when I'm free from studies and have internet access. I'll also do some revision, perhaps once a month. So if everything goes as planned I'll have gone through 48-50 articles by the end of the year, but since things never work the way you expect them to, my plan is to go through 45 articles.


I'd have had a good laugh if I had been told when posting this^^, that the language I would be most satisfied with my progress in would be German. It's taken such a long break to start loving it as much as I used to again and maybe even more...

Without taking into account that I planned to work a lot on my listening comprehension in Finnish - don't know why I didn't even mention this - I can say I'm satisfied with my Finnish as well. I read LOTR and enjoyed it thoroughly, I've learned about 1000 words by Iversen's method - I know it isn't supposed to be much, but for me it is (I revise them systematically assigning them to regular Mnemosyne flash cards). I've also done some scriptorium and I love this technique. And.. I don't even know why, but I've stopped shadowing, even though I enjoy it a lot :/

I'm quite satisfied with my Latin - after passing the exam with an excellent mark I decided to move it to basic fluency.

I'm also relatively satisfied with my Esperanto. I'm close to basic fluency now :)

As for Portuguese, I'm not exactly dissatisfied, but I could've done a lot more. It's so much easier to make progress when you're a beginner! Same for Belarusian...

...And it's time to say the language I'm least satisfied with my progress in is English. I haven't done ANY SHADOWING although I was going to... and I've gone through only 5-7 of those "get it write" articles :/ Oh, and I got 3 (satisfactory) for my English exam last week. Well, the teacher didn't deny I speak good English, I just should've worked more (no matter how much the classes sucked...)

To sum it up, I can´t say I'm 100% or even 80% satisfied with my language studies, but I'm forgiving myself for it, because the university studies were really tough -_-

Here are my plans for the rest of the year:

Finnish
Start shadowing again. Do more scriptorium. WORK ON MY LISTENING COMPREHENSION. Start going through the business Finnish textbook that I've recently bought. Keep on learning the vocabulary, polishing the grammar and reading.

English
Start shadowing. Try to study better at university and use what I have to do to improve what I need to improve anyway, instead of dismissing it as useless and doing it badly or not doing at all. For example, I hate our home-reading classes but since listening comprehension is my weakest skill in all languages except German, I'll listen to audiobooks of the stuff that we read and discuss. I'm not setting any specific goals as far as the articles at get-it-write-online.com are concerned, but I'll try to read more of them, at least a bit more.

Russian
Yeah, Russian. A couple of weeks ago I decided I should make effort to stop using English words in Russian when I'm too lazy to try to find an equivalent. Hopefully saying about this in public ;) will help me keep on doing it.

German
Finish the Warum nicht course by DW and then probably some L-R or whatever I feel like doing. And of course do my best at university. My worst enemy in high school German were noun genders - so I'm going to put every single noun that we'll learn into a special notebook, writing the feminine ones on pink sheets of paper, the masculine nouns on blue ones and the neutral ones on violet ones. In order not to feel bored when things are still easy and miss some points I don't know I'll try to get some help from...
...Portuguese. My German notebook will be in German and Portuguese only :-) I'll try to reach the intermediate level solely by L-R, translating texts from Esperanto into Portuguese and having them corrected, drilling verb conjugation, shadowing and learning the vocabulary via Mnemosyne. If I'm still not intermediate by November I'll add other methods in order to fulfill this goal by the end of the year. Hopefully the same things, along with using Esperanto more (e.g. discussing the corrections to my translations at lernu forum) will bring me to basic fluency in Esperanto by the end of the year.

Latin
No clear plans yet. First of all I'll read some parts of LOTR translated into Latin that I've found online... Then I might read some works on linguistics in it or L-R whatever I can find...

Belarusian
Learn more vocabulary. Start using genuine materials.

Edited by Serpent on 01 July 2008 at 7:45pm

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 88 of 119
20 September 2008 at 2:55pm | IP Logged 
Haven't posted for quite a while... Now I finally have a very good reason to: I sorta got a job offer, and if everything goes well I'll work at a book exhibition in November. I won't have to do much, but I might have to interpret interviews to/from Finnish. Hopefully I'll cope with it... Obviously I'm going to concentrate on vocabulary and shadowing now :)
Things haven't changed much with English classes at university yet, but I'll try to get better results this term... Luckily English classes are pretty much the only ones I dislike at university now - I'm really enjoying German. My plan of using only German and Portuguese in my notebook for German has failed because I don't know any linguistic terms... In the end I decided it's enough for me to make sure I can translate all our dialogues and texts in Portuguese, unless they use words like Betriebswirtschaft, of which I know the Russian translation but not the meaning, or understand it very vaguely :)
I've also started using Iversen's wordlist method for Belarusian and I do plan to go on with my Esperanto-Portuguese translations >_<
Oh, and I'm currently reading the 3rd volume of The History of Middle-Earth (in English).

Edited by Serpent on 20 September 2008 at 5:59pm



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