|
 |
Serpent’s log | ||
Tags: Comprehensive input | Yiddish | Ukrainian | Wanderlust | 10000 sentences | Croatian | Romanian | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Bilingual texts | Finnish | Esperanto | Latin | Swedish | Dutch | Portuguese | Polyglot | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | German | Spanish | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Denis_BD Diglot Newbie Brazil Joined 6489 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English, Portuguese* Studies: French | Message 9 of 119 19 February 2007 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
|
Oh! I've tried this in the beginning, when reading the french newspaper Le Monde online. I printed some articles, and jotted down every word that I didn't know and put it on a list, then looked up in a dictionary. It was a very time consuming process. But I will give it a try again, but this time I will write the words in flashcards. It will be more useful, I think!
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 10 of 119 07 March 2007 at 4:23pm | IP Logged |
|
Back on topic: now I'm through with the first book, finished it yesterday and going to start the second one soon. This is gonna be harder, because in jokes it's easier to guess unknown words from the context and because I knew some of them.
I should mention that by the end of the book I was able to understand non-adapted versions of the jokes, sometimes checking the adapted ones. Not sure that I'll be able to read the second book this way from the very beginning though. 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 11 of 119 09 March 2007 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
|
Started the second book yesterday. It's really harder, but it's also more enjoyable, when reading it I realized I was starting to love the Ukrainian language instead of simply being interested in it. I found it extremely pleasant to just read the book aloud. I was able to read the non-adapted versions first, but had to check the entire adapted versions usually, not just some occasional points.
I thought I couldn't love any language almost as much as I love Finnish, but it seems I can. edit: forgot to mention that we had a lesson at a Ukrainian classroom today and I *stole* a textbook. Going to give it back tomorrow, hopefully no one notices its absence o:) Edited by Serpent on 05 April 2007 at 6:22am 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 12 of 119 05 April 2007 at 7:05am | IP Logged |
|
I finally dared to post an audiofile of myself reading a passage from the book aloud. My friend said I wouldn't be able to pass for a native, but would pass for a Ukrainian girl whose mother tongue is Russian but who learns Ukrainian at school :) She even said most of her classmates (non-natives of course) couldn't read that quickly.
The same friend also gave me some articles in Ukrainian and I had few problems understanding them. I'm still reading the adapted version of the book though, but only because the stress is not marked in the non-adapted version:( I've also tried reading a passage in Ukrainian a few times and then retelling it in Finnish, but it seems too hard, so yesterday I decided to simply translate instead, that seems a bit easier.. 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 13 of 119 15 April 2007 at 10:03am | IP Logged |
|
So first of all a short update for Ukrainian - I finished reading ôiÎi ÚÁÂÕÔÉÈ ÐÒÅÄËi× some days ago, going to read something else now as my friend did not recommend Fata morgana.
Yesterday, I started Yiddish as part of the 6 weeks challenge. I'm currently learning the alphabet, it's somewhat easier than I expected it to be. It took me just a couple of minutes to get used to reading from right to left. Of course I can't read quickly yet and writing is even tougher - it took me 5 minutes to write the Finnish word "koiruoho" with the Hebrew alphabet (yeah the first word I wrote with it myself was not a Yiddish one, but all my Yiddish materials have both Yiddish and transliterated variants of all words, so I had to pick a non-Yiddish word to write something really on my own). Just as with Ukrainian, I first started learning the language and only after starting got fascinated with it :) As for other languages, I've only recently started dreaming in English. It feels really weird that it took me two weeks to start dreaming in Finnish and thirteen years to start dreaming in English... 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 14 of 119 16 May 2007 at 4:02pm | IP Logged |
|
First about my Yiddish: I'm not satisfied with it. Not sure, but I don't think the time I've spent learning it so far is equivalent to 30 minutes a day :/ Well, at least I have the alphabet down, although sometimes it's tough to recognize letters in differents fonts... I also know some grammar, but much less than I could've learnt during these almost 5 weeks.
Now about my journey to France, Germany and Belgium, from the linguistic point of view. I now really love the way Dutch sounds. Too bad it's not a very useful language for me, since afaik nearly everyone in the Netherlands speaks perfect English. Still I might learn some of it, especially before travelling there - hopefully that happens someday. It also seems promising that when the announcements were in Dutch before German and English, I could understand quite a lot thanks to the similarities among the languages. The stereotypes about the French turned out completely true. The level of English was mostly awful, and my father's attempts to use his French didn't meet much encouragement. Well, at least people didn't laugh at his accent... Some of the guides in France were non-native speakers of Russian. One of them especially impressed me, her grammar was just perfect! She made only 3 or 4 mistakes concerning verbs' aspects during a 3-hour excursion, and even those were of the kind that would not give her away as a non-native if she had no accent - they didn't sound too wrong (occasionally I make such mistakes myself, ie when I choose another way to say the same thing when I've already used the verb of the aspect that doesn't sound exactly right in the given context...wish I could understand this sentence myself XD). Another guide had a better pronunciation, but her grammar was less brilliant. There was one more guide, and she impressed me a lot as well. She made some mistakes, but I really liked her intonation. Occasionally it didn't sound native, but it was so lively that I didn't really care, I just enjoyed it:) In Germany, I used some German, and it felt great. It felt even greater to watch a TV-show in the hotel room and understand it fairly well. And at a German lesson a few days ago I noticed my German had stopped sounding like stuttering! Surprisingly enough, I also had an opportunity to practise my Finnish passively: in Brussels I overheard a conversation among a few Finns and could understand everything I caught :) Soon I'll also post the photos of a hilarious Russian menu at a restaurant in Paris :D edit: typo Edited by Serpent on 17 May 2007 at 7:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6502 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 15 of 119 17 May 2007 at 12:33am | IP Logged |
|
Those darn Russian verbs are hard. :( I am glad natives make mistakes too. How is the Ukrainian going? Did you notice 60% of the vocab is the same and the grammar is close as well, right?
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 16 of 119 17 May 2007 at 8:01am | IP Logged |
|
Sure, I guess I knew that long before I started :) That's the reason why I've chosen such method for Ukrainian, it wouldn't probably be of any use if I got a book in eg Basque with parallel translations and some grammar comments and tried to learn Basque only by reading it:)
Ukrainian is going ok, I've sorta taken a break recently, but luckily that Ukrainian friend gives me some interesting links in Ukrainian from time to time. After all, my current goal is reading proficiency, so it shouldn't be hard to go back to Ukrainian once I have a bit more free time, it's mostly the active skills that get rusty rather quickly. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my Ukrainian though, since in August I'll be able to start Belarusian and this is one of the languages I'm aiming also to speak fluently, not just read. I think a history-based approach to learn both would be great, but I have no clue how to do that :/ 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
