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TAC 2009 - DaraghM | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| SII Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5789 days ago 184 posts - 194 votes  Speaks: Russian* Studies: English | Message 161 of 177 07 October 2009 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||
The preposition "на" has meaning "to stay on something"; for example, "Я стою на полу" - "I stand on the floor". Then preposition "в" has meaning "to be inside of something"; for example, "Я сижу в комнате" - "I'm sitting in the room". Probably, use "на" for "почта" and "в" for "клуб" can be explained by historical reasons. "Клуб" in Russian has the main sense "a building or a room, inside of which has a club. "Почта" had the sense "the post service", not "the post office". In this case "идти на почту" has meaning "to go to the post station, where post carriages change horses and where men can send their letters". In this case men go to a certain place, but they don't go into any building, and it is impossible to use the preposition "в". In modern Russian the word "почта" means in first "a building with the post office", but as before we use the preposition "на". 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6148 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 162 of 177 09 October 2009 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish
While reading El País, I came across an interesting story regarding a find in Buenos Aires, El tesoro que velaron las ratas. It's seems that buried in a basement they've just discovered a cache of documents including unpublished works by Alfonsina Storni, Ruben Dario and Valle-Inclan. It's probably because I'm heading there in a week that led me to this story. I was actually looking to read an article in Spanish about the probe that'll smash into the lunar pole, and hopefully produce more details on lunar water. Unfortunately, these stories are been blocked by the proxy server in work. Odd. Edited by DaraghM on 09 October 2009 at 10:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6148 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 163 of 177 16 October 2009 at 10:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish
Before I head to Argentina, I thought I should give another quick update on my Spanish. As before, I'm still slowly ploughing through Platiquemos. At the moment I'm studying Unit 44. While the audio quality has dropped, I really like the fact that the readings are now on the recordings. I think they started this with Unit 43. I was tempted to skip ahead to one of the units that cover the Argentinian Vos, but thought it best to pick it up there. As a slight aside, while reading through a Spanish webpage, I discovered that residents of Buenos Aires are called porteños. I've also started L-Ring the first Harry Potter book. As Spanish is by far my strongest foreign language, I felt I gained a lot by using this method. I decided to avoid anything literary, as I want to concentrate on the language and not get too distracted by the plot. During my French study, I found myself pondering L'étranger, its influence on French literature and cinema, and came to realise I wasn't focused enough on the language. Edited by DaraghM on 16 October 2009 at 10:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5862 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 164 of 177 16 October 2009 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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The voseo isn't too difficult, though it makes a lot more sense if you are already familiar with the vosotros forms. At least in Argentina, I think it's generally the vosotros form without the 'i' (or the 'd' in the imperative).
vosotros tenéis vos tenés tened! tené! vosotros lleváis vos llevás llevad! llevá! vosotros dijisteis vos dijistes si dijerais si dijeras (same as tú form) Also note: vos sos instead of eres. Check out the vosotros form: sois instead of ve as the imperative of ir, I believe people generally use andá. In the present tense it may sound a bit wierd at first because the stress is moved to the last syllable, but you get used to it pretty quickly. You may find RAE page on the voseo interesting :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6148 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 166 of 177 04 November 2009 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is my first visit to the forum since my return. It looks like there are a lot of new features, which I'll read up later. I'm not sure if I still need to highlight the language if there's a microtagging feature ?
Thanks Crush for that succinct description of voseo. The trip to Argentina was incredible, and also very challenging, from a language perspective. Apart from the pronounciation differences, they also stress words slightly different to both Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. When I first arrived in Buenos Aires, I found it slightly challenging to understand some of the porteño taxi drivers. However, most of the hotel and restaurant staff spoke very clear Spanish. The other big challenge was vocabulary. I was familiar with some of the more common differences, as I've used American based Barron's courses for vocabulary. E.g. melocotón - peach is durazno in Argentina. Some that did catch me out were avocado, which I knew as aguacate, but it's palta there, and peppers which I knew as pimientos, while they used morrones. After the first week though, I'd adjusted, and managed to engage various Argentinians on a number of topics. They seem surprisingly willing to talk about the dictatorships, the various governments, and the banking crisis as well as royalty (Hot gossip topic). A number of people I talked to had very personal experiences to relate regarding the disappeared (los desaparecidos), and had friends who were raised by these famililes. Regarding resources, I brought over a Spanish copy of Harry Potter and a small dictionary. It turned out the dictionary was useless. Every word I didn't know in Harry Potter wasn't in the dictionary either. Edited by DaraghM on 04 November 2009 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6148 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 167 of 177 13 November 2009 at 11:53am | IP Logged | ||
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It's been a while since I've studied Hungarian, but I returned to it over the past couple of weeks. My primary resource has been the FSI course, but I also dipped into Teach Yourself Hungarian. Teach Yourself Hungarian was the first language course I bought many moons ago. I think I studied it for about six weeks before heading to Hungary. As soon as I got back, wanderlust kicked in, and I started into another language. I think that was the start of my language learning journey.
At the moment, I'm over learning the contents of FSI Unit 7. To make things more interesting, I've decided to study the unit in a different order. After the dialogue, I started with the variation drills, and only then the replacement and transformation drills. The variation drills are probably the most challenging and most enjoyable part of the FSI courses. If you're not familiar with the format it's normally an English prompt, and then you provide the Hungarian translation. Unit 7 concentrates on the Hungarian possessives in the singular. Some of the possessive suffixes seem to be very irregular, and a bit of a nightmare. I would compare them in complexity to the irregularity of English plurals. The first and second person possessives aren't too bad, and almost always use -m or -d, allowing for vowel harmony. The problem is the third person singular, and if it includes a j or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6148 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 168 of 177 24 November 2009 at 10:55am | IP Logged | ||
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In the middle of my Hungarian study, I decided to take a short break, and returned to Russian for a week. My primary resource was the Modern Russian course, but I also did a bit of L-R with Маленький принц (The Little Prince). I find Russian a difficult language to L-R, as I'm not sure what the base words are before undergoing a case transformation, and also the effect of particles on the meaning of expressions.
Aside from L-R, I managed to complete Unit 5 of the Modern Russian course. This unit has a good text explanation of the perfective and imperfective aspect of verbs, but these aren't drilled in the audio. The audio concentrates on the past tense of a number of verbs and is a little too easy. Some of it really does feel like drilling, with little thought concerning the actual transformations. My other quip is the audio quality has really dropped in this unit, and there is background chatter on some of the exercises. This is really odd, and I wonder how it got there. Edited by DaraghM on 24 November 2009 at 10:55am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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