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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3417 of 3959 29 October 2013 at 11:17am | IP Logged | ||
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RU: Вчера я пошел пораньше домой с работы, потому что была предвещало урагана в Дании. Таким образом, было мне много времени, чтобы изучить, и я учился длинный текст из русской Википедии о городе Вавилоне. Это включено в число очень знакомый царя Хаммурапи, но и ряд царей, чьи имена звучали как что-то из Властелина колец.
PO: Również kopiowanę akapit z mojego starożytnego podręcznika w języku polskim, gdzie dama Ewa biegali zdezorientowana jak królik i szukał swojej torby, podczas gdy jej matka stawała się coraz bardziej nerwowa, ponieważ były w teatrze i nie zamówił taksówkę jeszcze. Z pewnością byłoby zabawne, ale nie sądzę, to jest zabawa, aby przeczytać o głupców. BA I: Dalam bahasa Indonesia, saya membaca terakhir dari Wikipedia artikel tentang bahasa Arab dan awal artikel tentang bahasa Afrikaans. GR: Τέλος αντιγραφεί και μετέφρασα ένα άρθρο σχετικά με τα λάμα (προβατοκάμηλους) στα ελληνικά. Αφού είχα διαβάσει αυτό, διάβασα επίσης ένα άρθρο σχετικά με τον Δαλάι Λάμα. Και τότε πήρα την ιδέα ότι είμαι εγώ θα μετρούσε ελληνικές λέξεις μου από ένα παλιό λεξικό Langenscheidt. Yesterday I left my job relatively early because of an impending storm (which caused a total stop for most traffic in Denmark, including the city busses in my town). This meant that I could spend a good long evening on language studies. I got through a long text about Babylon in Russian about Babylon, where most names apart from that of the wellknown king Hammurabi and the goddess Nanna sounded like something from the Lord of the Rings -- and I mean the ork names, not the fairies). After that one lesson from my antique textbook in Polish - something about a confused lady Ewa who ran around looking for her handbag and an umbrella and other things, while her poor old mother got more and more nervous because they had to go to the theater ASAP - and they hadn't even called for a taxi, but relied on finding one in street. Basically I don't like to read about blistering idiots, but I had run out of bilingual texts in Polish. Then the end of a Wikipedia article about the Arabic language in Indonesian, followed by the first paragraph of one about Afrikaans. And to add to the confusion I proceeded to study an article about the animal lama in Greek, followed by his holiness the Dalai Lama. And then I got the idea that I would recount my Greek vocabulary, using my trusty old Langenscheidt Greek-German dictionary, which has all the old accents and aspirations intact. OK, I have done this before, last time using my Pataki Greek-Danish dictionary, and the results were fairly close and also fairly low. I checked known, guessable and unknown words, and the dictionaries have according to my calculations roughly the same number of headwords (Pataki 32.000, Langenscheidt 38.000). I got estimates of 7400 known words for Pataki and 7100 for Langenscheidt, corresponding to 23% against 19%. For guessable words I reached 3600 words in Pataki (13%), but only 2000 with LAngenscheidt (5%), which was less than expected. But given the low number of test pages probably not something to take too seriously. I'm more occupied with the fact that I typically would know at least 2/3 of all words in a dictionary for any Romance or Germanic language of similar size, so my Greek is still not at nearly the same level. Edited by Iversen on 29 October 2013 at 11:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3418 of 3959 30 October 2013 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I spend time on Greek, Russian, Polish and Romanian yesterday evening, and besides I updated the travelogue/photo system on my PC with information about some of the zoos and aquaria I have visited lately. This included reading through a number of homepages including reviews of those pages, and for the places in South Africa I tried to find meaningful and comprehensive reviews in Afrikaans. But without much luck. The one thing that struck me most was how both the homepage of the uShaka thing in Durban and the reviews focused on the flashy surface activities (playgrounds, dolphin shows etc), where I primarily was awestruck by the excellent subterranian aquarium. In Afrikaans I hardly found anything worth quoting about uShaka, but while reading about other sights in South Africa I happened to read something about unrest in a township near Jo'burg during the apartheid period, caused by an attempt to dictate that the only permitted school language should be Afrikaans. Right now it is however Afrikaans speaking institutions which have come under attack for being racist.
AF: In Afrikaans ek het skaars gevind enigiets die moeite werd vermeld oor die uShaka Aquariuim van Durban, maar terwyl ek lees oor ander toerisme-aantreklikhede in Suid-Afrika het ek toevallig iets oor onrus lees in 'n township naby Johannesburg gedurende die apartheidsera. Die rede in hierdie geval was 'n poging om die township sy bewoners te dwing sy kinders net Afrikaans te taal in hul skool. En sulke voorvalle het natuurlik 'n negatiewe invloed gehad op die beeld van Afrikaans vandag. Dit taal het na bewering sowat 7 miljoen sprekers, maar word halfpad bedryf as 'n geheime taal. En ek het ook wat lees in 'n plaaslike koerant over beskuldigings teen 'n paar suiwer Afrikaans-praat instellings vir rassisme - wat wys hoe die tafels het gedraai. Nou it kan dit wees Afrikaans mense wat gedwing word om te skakel na Engels. As dit is reeds in sommige dele van die Deense opvoedkundige stelsel. Edited by Iversen on 30 October 2013 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3419 of 3959 31 October 2013 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have read a thesis called "THE EFFECT OF THE INTEGRATED KEYWORD METHOD ON VOCABULARY RETENTION AND MOTIVATION" by Joern (Jörn?) Hauptmann from 2004. It mentions a number of competing methods for langage learning (p.12) and then goes on to claim that most of these have given vocabulary learning a minor role. It then goes on to undermine the idea that vocabulary learning in the class room primarily should take place as an incidental result of the activities there, for instance with the argument that "teachers regard the issue of intentional/incidental learning as mainly irrelevant and a matter that is only of passing interest outside the scientific domain.". Or in other words, even if some theoretical eggheads claim that guessing the words from context are the best way to learn new words, teachers will give word meanings in clear text when asked, mostly even with translations even though other current theories claim that you only should use the target languages. And why: of course because it is easier (and more efficient, as shown later in the thesis) to give the solutions instead of leaving the pupils raving around in conceptual darkness. On the other hand we know from another thread here that some teachers spend all their time speaking the base language, which is even more idiotic.
The author of the thesis subscribes to the keyword methods, and this seems mainly to be in the form where you formulate small histories based on the sound or spelling, though visual imagery also is OK where applicable. One quote (p.58): "Maintenance rehearsal, “the action of continuous vocal or sub-vocal repetition of the material” (Craik & Lockhart, 1972), is not sufficient to put information into longterm memory. Elaborative rehearsal is necessary (ibid.). Long and complicated sentences are better remembered than short and simple ones (Craik & Tulving, 1975), but it is the distinctiveness of the sentences and their elaboration that facilitates remembering. It is the nature of information processing which primarily determines retention. The more a learner pays attention to all the aspects of a word (elaboration), the more the likelihood is increased that this word will be better and longer remembered (Hulstijn, 2001). Imagery, i.e. mnemonic elaboration (Bower & Reitmann, 1972), is a powerful additional code to assist remembering." It is also suggested that teacher or textbook provided keywords are as good as those provided by the pupils, but my hunch is that this is due more to a lack of selfconfidence and training in the pupils than to anything else - the author mentions studies that show that few pupils continue using associants deliberately when the input from the teacher stops. Which of course is sad, if the methods actually works. One example (p. 85): "Example: Goten reiten auf Ziegen (Goths ride on goats)" The small Germanuli who try to learn the word "Goths" are apparently expcted already to know the word "goat" (German 'Ziege'), because otherwise the sentence wouldn't function. Or maybe it is meant for small Britons who have to learn the word "Ziege" based on the similarity between the English word 'goat' and 'Goth' - that's not quite clear. In any case I wouldn't entrust a teacher to come up with my associations. And I rarely make mine into sentences - the intrusion of the notion of riding would in my mind cause more confusion than clarity. Maybe the image of a Goth riding on a goat would work, but not a sentence, only bas an image. And I have already to know what a Goth is from previous reading in my own language or some film (a sombre youth clad in black OR a member of a tribe that once roamed Europe). But with these reservations I do support the idea of using associations to help your memorization process. And I even noticed a reference to the use of word groups of 5-7 words, which I have been advocating for ages. One point where I find the theses defincient is in the pessimistic dictum that "The KWM is not suitable for the systematic teaching of grammar" (p. 107), followed by this observation: "As soon as grammar becomes more complex (e.g. the use of the perfect tenses), it breaks down for the simple reason that there is no meaning involved. Even if a learner could memorise a complex rule, such as that for the 3rd conditional passive: if had(n’t) or had(n’t) been + past participle in one clause and would(n’t) have or would(n’t) have been + past participle in the other (O'Connell, 1987: 169) ...the teacher who asked what this means would be met with a blank stare. No matter what the memorising method, the result would be the same. There is a vast gulf between memorising grammar rules and implementing them in fluent speech, i.e. committing them to procedural memory. However, especially learners in the adult classroom demand explicit grammar teaching since they are used to (and fond of) committing knowledge to declarative memory. It gives them more security. For me the central issue here is that the rule in question is formulated in a way that makes it totally incomprehensible. The first step must be to give a clearer formulation, combined with not one, but a whole string of examples (without too much irrelevant babble) ... and then it might be possible to cut it down to a number of cases, which can be learned individually using the same methods as with vocabulary learning. The author actually comes close to this by quoting a mnemonic rhyme: Never, ever, yet, so far, present perfect, ist doch klar. I learned the cases used with common prepositions in German using this method many years ago ("an auf hinter in neben über unter vor zwischen", "durch für gegen ohne um", "aus bei mit nach von zu"). But I learned these earhangers by pure rote memorizing, and I don't really like that - not even if it functioned quite well in this case (I still remember the three lists). As a first step I would learn the four words above IN the construction they are said to govern (never has been, ever has been, yet has been, so far has been), and then I would put them in a more euphonic sequence, like "never, ever, yet has been .. so far". Actually the linguistic reality never was that simple, but... The main problem is that few elements in syntax can be formulated as rhymes. But no need to despair: learning word orders as graphical shapes with empty slots or subordinate constructions as boxes within boxes are also examples of associative learning. The point is that I need explicit examples (without too much irrelevant stuff) in combination with such imagery rather than just obtuse formulations like the one quoted above in order to learn something. A rule that can't be formulated clearly must wait until I have learnt those that can. Edited by Iversen on 31 October 2013 at 2:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3420 of 3959 02 November 2013 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday I worked with a number of languages like Russian, Irish and... well, the main language somehow became German. I watched German TV, including a program from Stuttgart Wilhelma Zoo, and as I have mentioned before such programs are excellent sources of nonstandard German. Not only because soem of the employees speak to their animals as they would to a baby (yes, gorilla lady - it's you I'm thinking of!), but also because they speak their local dialect without any hesitation. And in the Stuttgart area this seems to imply that the ending -n has been eradicated centuries ago. But maybe under the inspiration from this program I decided to do something about my lingering problems with the gender of substantives, so ....
GER: Ich habe ganz einfach mein altes deutsch-dänisches Wörterbuch genommen und die "einfachen" Sachwörter auf Maskulinum, Femininum und Neutrum verteilt. Es ist im Allgemeinen nicht notwendig, zusammengesetzte Wörter aufzuzeichnen, da sie in der Regel das Geschlecht des Hauptwortes folgen. Und dann habe ich ein paar Seiten mit Wörtern auf a und b gefüllt, bis ich davon satt war. Danach habe ich beschlossen meine deutsche Wörter zu zählen, und ich teilte sie wie gewohnt in bekannte, 'rat-bare' und unbekannte ein. Das Ergebnis war etwas überraschend. Zugegeben, ich habe nur 4 Seiten gezählt, aber es gab immerhin etwa 500 Wörter darauf, so das Ergebnis ist nicht ganz ohne Grundlage. Aber ich habe niemals so viele Wörter gekannt, außer auf Dänisch oder English. Gyldendal hat laut meiner Schätzung rund 60.000 Wörter, und davon sollte ich etwa 36.700 (61%) kennen, 6700 (12%) erraten können und nur 29% nicht kennen (aber jetzt habe ich einige davon gelernt!). Aber Deutsch ist ja von zusammengetzten Wörter geprägt, und damit kann mann die absoluten Angaben nicht ganz anvertrauen oder mit deren anderer Sprachen vergleichen - die prozentuelle Angaben sollten aber vergleichbaar sein. Die Größe des Wörterbuches sollte natürlich berücksichtet werden, aber ich weiß von früheren Untersuchungen, daß es nicht einfach ist, daß das Gebrauch vön große Bücher zu niedrichen Prozentsatzen führt. So anscheinend habe ich tatsächlich ein Paar deutsche Wörter gelernt, seitdem ich meine Sprachstudien Anno domini 2006 wiederheraufgenommen habe - und dies, obwohl ich Deutsch nicht direkt als Zielsprache studiert habe, aber eher als Hilfssprache benutzt. Ich stufe aber immer noch nur mein Deutsch als etwa C1 ein, bis ich das lästige Geschlecht-Problem beseitigt habe. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2013 at 9:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3421 of 3959 02 November 2013 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Inspired by Solveig Cristin's thread about honest assessment of your skills I went into statistical mode and compiled the following summary of all the wordcounts I have been able to locate on HTLAL or my computer. The order of the languages is based on a simple criterion: the average percentage of known words - and in the case of Catalan this reflects the small size of the dictionary used rather than my skills.
If there only is one value and a percentage it is 'known words' - but until I began to distinguish known and guessable words som unknown percentage of the 'guessable' words definitely have been coded as 'known' - but presumably not all the guessable words. It should also be taken into account that the absolute numbers depend strongly on things like dictionary size and language structure. But by and large the values correlate fairly well with my own assessment of my passive skills. One small remark about dictionary sizes: the indications that sometimes appear in or on a dictionary sometimes include idioms, sometimes not, more often that not they only totals for two-way dictionaries and sometimes I simply don't believe the figures. My own assesments when using the same dictionary reflect the pages I have counted and only them, so there may be slight variations. Like the difference of some 500 items for my Catalan Larousse dictionary. 2013: 2700 - 22 % - 500 - 3 % - - Indonesian - Tuttle (total 12000) 2015: 4500 - 44 % - 1500 - 12 % - - Indonesian - Tuttle (total 11000) 2009: 7900 - 29 % - - Greek - Pataki (total 27100) 2009: 10600 - 32 % - - Greek - Langenscheidt (total 33000) 2013: 7000 - 18 % - 2000 - 5 % - - Greek - Gl.Langenscheidt (total 39000) 2013: 9500 - 35 % - 3500 - 13 % - - Greek - Pataki (total 27000 (not 35000 as previously indicated)) 2015: 9000 - 37 % - 4500 - 20 % - - Greek - Pataki (total 23500) 2013: 3000 - 24 % - 1000 - 8 % - - Polish - Oxford (total 14000) 2013: 9000 - 27 % - 4000 - 11 % - - Polish - Pons (total 35000) 2007: 8000 - 16 % - - Romanian - Academiei? (total 50.000 off.) 2009: 13300 - 33 % - - Romanian - Teora (total 40.000 off.) 2009: 21400 - 43 % - - Romanian - Academiei (total 50.000 off.) 2013: 9000 - 15 % - 1000 - 2 % - - Romanian - Academiei (total 60000) 2013: 13000 - 31 % - 2000 - 5 % - - Romanian - Teora (total 42000) 2013: 7000 - 45 % - 1000 - 4 % - - Romanian - Edit.Scîintifica (total 15000) 2009: 16300 - 36 % - - Afrikaans - Pharos school (total 45600) 2009: 10700 - 37 % - - Russian - Gyldendal (total 29000 (not 39000 as previously indicated)) 2009: 10800 - 40 % - - Russian - Langenscheidt (total 27000) 2013: 9000 - 31 % - 2000 - 7 % - - Russian - Gyldendal (total 29000) 2014: 9400 - 34 % - 4400 - 16 % - - Russian - Gyldendal (total 29000) 2009: 8900 - 43 % - - Latin - New College (total 20700) 2009: 10800 - 50 % - - Latin - Langenscheidt (total 21500) 2013: 8000 - 30 % - 1000 - 4 % - - Latin - New College (total 27000) 2013: 7000 - 34 % - 2000 - 9 % - - Latin - Langenscheidt (total 21000) 2013: 6000 - 46 % - 500 - 5 % - - Latin - Gl.Gyldendal (total 13000) 2009: 34400 - 17 % - - Spanish - Bratli (total 200.000 off.) 2009: 19900 - 41 % - - Spanish - Gyldendal (total 48000) 2009: 17600 - 44 % - - Spanish - Langenscheidt (total ca 40000) 2013: 19000 - 42 % - 4000 - 8 % - - Spanish - Gyldendal (total 46000) 2013: 17000 - 60 % - 2000 - 6 % - - Spanish - Berlingske (total 28000) 2013: 21000 - 64 % - 2000 - 7 % - - Spanish - Langenscheidt (total 33000) 2009: 10800 - 48 % - - Icelandic - Idunn (total 22400) 2009: 10500 - 53 % - - Icelandic - Sigurdsson (total 19800) 2013: 8000 - 42 % - 2000 - 12 % - - Icelandic - Idunn (total 18000) 2013: 9000 - 43 % - 3000 - 13 % - - Icelandic - Sigurdsson (total 20000) 2009: 22600 - 50 % - - Dutch - Gyldendal (total 45000) 2013: 20000 - 50 % - 3000 - 8 % - - Dutch - Gyldendal (total 40000) 2013: 15000 - 52 % - 2000 - 5 % - - Dutch - Prisma (total 29000) 2014: - 67 % - - 11 % - - Serbian - Сазвежћа (+wordlist) (total 12000) 2014: - 33 % - - 16 % - - Serbian - Сазвежћа (-wordlist) (total 12000) 2009: 30800 - 36 % - - Swedish - Gyldendal (total 85900) 2009: 19400 - 67 % - - Swedish - Langenscheidt (total 29000) 2009: 12100 - 70 % - - Swedish - Gyldendal stribet (total 17400) 2013: 35000 - 48 % - 7000 - 9 % - - Swedish - Gyldendal (total 72000) 2013: 11000 - 67 % - 1000 - 5 % - - Swedish - Gyldendal stribet (total 16000) 2013: 25000 - 72 % - 1000 - 4 % - - Swedish - Langenscheidt (total 34000) 2009: 23100 - 51 % - - French - Gyldendal (total 45000) 2009: 19100 - 73 % - - French - Micro Robert (total 26300) 2010: 28200 - 63 % - - French - Gyldendal (total 45000) 2013: 21000 - 60 % - 4000 - 11 % - - French - Gyldendal (total 35000) 2013: 15000 - 62 % - 2000 - 9 % - - French - Micro Robert (total 24000) 2009: 21900 - 44 % - - Portuguese - Porto Editora (total 50000) 2009: 12500 - 63 % - - Portuguese - Oxford Univ.Press (total 20000 off.) 2009: 19800 - 71 % - - Portuguese - Langenscheidt (total 27800) 2012: 10000 - 67 % - 2000 - 11 % - - Portuguese - Oxford (total 15000) 2012: 20000 - 67 % - 5000 - 15 % - - Portuguese - Langenscheidt (total 30000) 2009: 4900 - 66 % - - Low German - SASS (total 7400) 2013: 5500 - 60 % - 2000 - 9 % - - Low German - SASS (total 9000) 2009: 29000 - 67 % - - Italian - Gyldendal (total 43000) 2012: 26000 - 63 % - 6000 - 14 % - - Italian - Gyldendal (total 41000) 2012: 8000 - 72 % - 1000 - 12 % - - Italian - D'Agostini (total 12000) 2013: 23000 - 60 % - 3000 - 9 % - - Italian - Gyldendal (total 39000) 2013: 20000 - 63 % - 2000 - 6 % - - Italian - Garzanti (total 32000) 2013: 10000 - 69 % - 2000 - 11 % - - Italian - D'Agostini (total 14000) 2009: 13600 - 78 % - - Catalan - Larousse (total 17500) 2013: 22000 - 55 % - 3000 - 8 % - - Catalan - enciclopèdia (dE) (total 39000) 2013: 13000 - 70 % - 2000 - 9 % - - Catalan - Larousse (total 18000) 2009: 41400 - 51 % - - German - Gyldendal (ny) (total 80400) 2009: 29500 - 78 % - - German - Pons (total 38000) 2012: 46000 - 74 % - 8000 - 13 % - - German - Gyldendal (total 62000) 2012: 27000 - 85 % - 4000 - 11 % - - German - Gyldendal (total 32000) 2013: 37000 - 61 % - 7000 - 12 % - - German - old Gyldendal (total 61000) 2006: 35000 - 78 % - - English - Gyldendal (gl.?) (total 45000) 2009: 51600 - 31 % - - English - Webster unabridged (total 165900) 2009: 43500 - 91 % - - English - Gyldendal (total 48000) 2009: 27600 - 92 % - - English - Oxford Advanced (total 30000) 2012: 39000 - 66 % - 6000 - 10 % - - English - Oxford (total 59000) 2012: 29000 - 78 % - 3000 - 8 % - - English - Gyldendal (total 37000) 2013: 49000 - 64 % - 10000 - 13 % - - English - Oxford concise -all (total 74000) 2013: 36000 - 68 % - 3000 - 6 % - - English - Gyldendal (total 53000) 2013: 23000 - 70 % - 2000 - 5 % - - English - Oxford concise -headwords (total 33000) 2013: 7000 - 73 % - 1000 - 10 % - - Esperanto - Teach yourself (total 10000) 2009: 58800 - 98 % - - Danish - Retskrivningsordbog (total 60000) PS: I'm just listening to an interview (in English) on Swedish TV with a female Vietnamese author Kim Thuý, who now lives in Canada. She said a very interesting thing, namely that her family in Vietnam was so poor that when they got hold of a book they literally learned it by heart from A to Z. And when she arrived in Canada she did exactly the same thing with a novel by Marguerite Duras (in French), and her uncle went through the meaning of each sentence in the book with her until she understood the whole thing. OK, that's also a way to learn a language! Edited by Iversen on 02 October 2015 at 6:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4648 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 3422 of 3959 02 November 2013 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
"Skopiowałem też akapit z mojego starego podręcznika polskiego, gdzie panna Ewa biegała zdezorientowana jak królik i szukała swojej torby, podczas gdy jej matka stawała się coraz bardziej nerwowa, ponieważ były w teatrze i jeszcze nie zamówiły taksówki. Z pewnością byłoby to zabawne, ale nie sądzę by było zabawą czytać o głupcach. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3423 of 3959 02 November 2013 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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OK, my Polish text wasn't very polished.... But I'm still a beginner and have to try writing something.
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| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3424 of 3959 04 November 2013 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Yesterday I decided to update my Romanian wordcounts and grabbed my trusty Teora, which only has one defect: it doesn't tell me which verbs have infixes (-ez etc.) and which haven't. And lo and behold, with 5 pages I got pretty much the same result as four years ago - 13.000 words and 31% known words plus 5% guessable words. And I estimated the total number of headwords 42.000 which is close to the claimed 40.000 headwords). But that's where the trouble started... RO: Am decis să estimez pe al meu vocabulariu românesc cu marul dicționar vechi al Academiei din anii Ceaușescului, deci am avut un rezultat oarecum diferită decât cea pe care am primit în 2013: numai 9000 (15%) cuvinte cunoscute și 1000 (4%) 'ghicitabile' de un total de 60000 de cuvinte. "Av min arm!" (idiom Danez). Am însă și un dicționar microscopic de Langenscheidt și un alt dicționar vechiu de Editora științifică de 1970. Cu acest din urmă am primit 7000 de cuvinte cunoscute (45%!) și aprox. 500 transparente (4%) de un total de 15000 de cuvinte. De ce aceste fluctuații? Motivul pentru numărul foarte mic cu dicționarului Academiei este că am întâmplat un cuplu de pagini cu cuvinte care încep cu gh- și j(n), și în afară de "ghirland" nu există aproape nici un cuvânt de împrumut în aceste pagini - așa am făcut aceste pagini cu doar 3 cuvinte. Fără aceste două pagini estimarea mea ar fi fost de aproape 11.000 de cuvinte cunoscute. Pe de altă parte, am avut 21.000 cuvinte cunoscute/transparente în anul 2009 cu același dicționar - cu siguranță un fapt cauzat de pagini dominate de cuvinte de împrumut. Deci cred că rezultatele mele cu Teora este cel mai credibil. Summary: I also checked my vocabulary with my old fat Academy dictionary from the 70s and... 'av min arm', I only got 9000 known words plus maybe 1000 guessable out of 60.0000! What went wrong: at closer inspection it turned out that I accidentally hit upon two pages with about 130 words whereof I knew 3 - because precisely these pages were almost devoid of loanwords and words clearly derived from Latin. I did learn that my old school bag is called "ghiozdan" in Romanian, but where does that word come from? Turkish maybe? Without these two pages my result would have been 11.000 - still low, but more credible. On the other hand I must have hit mostly pages dominated by loanwords in 2009, where I reached 21.000 words with exactly the same dictionary. Which goes to show that dictionaries with too many pages (here 961) may give less eliable results than dicionaries with fewer pages and a better mix of headwords on each page. However the old Academy Leviathan had one thing which redeems it: it clearly indicated which verbs had infixes like -esc or -ez, and which didn't. I once started a project which consisted in transferring this information to my newer and more handy Teory, but somehow I got stuck midway through the alphabet. I still don't understand why the dictionary authors don't take this problem as seriously as the gender of nouns. Yesterday I ran in a similar problem in Polish. Inspired by the somber fate of my last attempt to write in Polish I decide to take a look at the Polish verbs. I found my thin Pons under a pile of rubbish and read the section on the verbal morphology. And then it struck me that it didn't even give rule for guessing whether a verb on -ać has -em or -ą in the first person singular of the present tense. And then I finally opened my concise grammar of Polish, which has been standing untouched on my shelf since the Slavic bookstore in my town shut down (I bought a selection of dictionaries and books for later use before it close - they might come in handy some day, I thought). And it was as going from a Danish sausage wagon ("pølsevogn") to the breakfast extravaganza on a five-star Asian hotel. I read the section on the present tense through and reached the conclusion that you simply can't learn the forms of Polish verbs in the present unless you know at least the first two forms (1. and 2. person singular indicative). But not even my heavy Pons Polish <--> German dictionary gives that information, and certainly not my Larousse Polish <--> French dictionary, which clearly is aimed at a Polish audience. So where do I then get it? Maybe from Verbix, but only one verb at a time. Or maybe there is a gargantuan book with all the forms of just about any verb in the language, like the one I have for Russian (where I rather ironically rarely use it because it is too cumbersome). I found a Verbix-like thing on the internet just for Polish here, but I really would like to find is a one-page list just with the infinitives, the two first forms of the present, one form in the past tense and plus a free-text comment about possible unguessable irregularities. Edited by Iversen on 04 November 2013 at 2:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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