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TAC My poor overwhelmed brain | ||
Tags: Afrikaans | Wanderlust | Brain | Teach Yourself | Finnish | Swedish | Vocabulary learning | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Pronunciation | Grammar | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 49 of 223 20 February 2009 at 10:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wanderlust has struck again!! This week I took detours into Romanian and Danish. Wednesday, there was an international fair at school and I met a gorgeous Romanian girl, we talked for 5 minutes and that piqued my curiosity, so I did a brief web search when I got home, I found one Romanian lessons site, not a bad introduction, though I would prefer more sound files to go with the explanations of pronunciation. I'm taking a slight interest in Danish because I've been following Iversen's log; in the last week he has been typing some messages in his native language, Danish and then providing literal tranlsations into English.
I suppose I've described enough of my most recent bout of wanderlust, so now I'll get back to Afrikaans, Spanish and Finnish. I took third test in my Spanish class Wednesday afternoon, and I hope I did well, but I would've felt better if I had done a little more studying. Hopefully, I'm continuing to make progress in Afrikaans, whenever my mind wanders in my classes or during church I start mentally translating English words into Afrikaans, I've decided to think this is a very good thing. I stopped worrying about Finnish grammar; Wednesday evening I took a deep breath and learnt a few basic verb conjugations in the present and past tenses, when my head didn't explode, I followed that up by learning a little bit about 3 of the case endings for nouns. I still struggle with writing much more than "Hei, Minä olen Mick. Olen amerikkalainen. Puhun englantia." (Hi I am Mick. I'm American, I speak English.). That's not a bad start, I guess I just need to learn more vocabulary. Hyvää yöta Mick Edited by mick33 on 21 February 2009 at 10:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 50 of 223 20 February 2009 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Baie geluk met hierdie techniek, ik hoop dat 't ook werkt vir jou 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 51 of 223 21 February 2009 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Warning: The following post will be long NOTE: A summarized English
translation can be found by scrolling to the bottom of this message. Afrikaans: Eerste, ek moet sê dat hierdie week het baie lekker gewees. Ek is bly dat die weer is nou warm en ek dink ek sal met my tale studeer vordering maak. Ek het slegs een probleem, skool sal na hierdie naweek baie besig word. Ek het voor Maart 18 baie veel werk om te doen, ek moet twee toetse(?)vir my biologie en Spaans klase onderskeidelik skryf en ook een toets om in sosiologie te skryf, dat sal 'n totaal vyf toetse wees en ook twee essays(of moet ek "papiere" hier gebruik)om te skryf. Ek dink ek kan my klase en tale aanhou om te studeer, en ek hoop om goede merke te ontvang. Ek wou Fins hier skryf, maar ek het 'n baie klein woordeskat en verstaan nie hou om goed sinne te maak nie. Ek het in 'n vroeë pos geskrewe dat in die middel van Maart miskien ek kan 'n spaans boodskappie hier skryf, maar ek het my vordering geonderskat, dus kan ek nou 'n Spaans dialoog pos. Ek hoop ek kan ook 'n Afrikaans dialoog binnekort pos. As enigiemand kan vir hierdie boodskap sommige verbeterings maak ek sal dankbaar wees. Spanish: Conversación Consuela: ¡Hola, Juan! ¿Qué tal? Juan: Nada ¿Cómo estás? Consuela: Muy bien ¿Caminas a la casa? Juan: No, no camino a la casa. Caminar a la biblioteca ¿Adónde tú? Consuela: Mi amiga de cuarto y yo deseamos mirar la televisión en el apartamento. Nosotros gustamos mirar una fotonovela. ¿Trabaja viernes? Juan: No yo no trabajo viernes, porque necesito preparar la tarea de física. Consuela: Nos vemos mañana. Juan: Chau. I've also learned how to count to 30 in Finnish. I know it is not necessarily proof that I'm actually learning much, but I'll still list the numbers below just for fun. Numerot 0 - nolla 1 - yksi 2 - kaksi 3 - kolme 4- neljä 5 - viisi 6 - kuusi 7 - seitsemän 8 - kahdeksan 9 - yhdeksän 10 - kymennen 11 - yksitoista 12 - kaksitoista 13 - kolmetoista 14 - neljätoista 15 - viisitoista 16 - kuusitoista 17 - seitsemäntoista 18 - kahdeksantoista 19 - yhdeksäntoista 20 - kaksikymmentä 21 - kaksikymmentäyksi 22 - kaksikymmentäkaksi 23 - kaksikymmentäkolme 24 - kaksikymmentäneljä 25 - kaksikymmentäviisi 26 - kaksikymmentäkuusi 27 - kaksikymmentäseitsemän 28 - kaksikymmentäkahdeksan 29 - kaksikymmentäyhdeksän 30 - kolmekymmentä English: This week has been a good one for me. I'm happy that the weather is now warm and I'm making good progress with my studies. There is one little problem, after this weekend school will get very busy, I have 5 tests to take before March 18, 2 each in my anatomy & physiology and Spanish classes respectively, and also one in sociology as well. I also have two essays to write. I believe I can continue to study for my classes and learn languages, and hopefully get good grades. I'd write something in Finnish, but I still don't know enough words yet and can't work out how to write sentences. In an earlier post I wrote that I might be ready to post a Spanish message by the middle of March, but I understimated my progress, and would be posting a dialogue in Spanish. I also hope to post an Afrikaans dialogue soon. If anyone would like to make corrections to the Afrikaans and Spanish portions of my post, I would appreciate it. The Spanish dialogue was a conversation between two friends; Juan and Consuela who, after greeting each other, discuss where they are going at the moment. Juan is going to the library, and Consuela is going home to watch TV. Juan then says that he won't be working Friday because he has physics homwork to do. Wow! I've spent about two hours typing this, and didn't get confused. I know that my Spanish is very basic and I'm unsure about a few of the words I chose to use in the Afrikaans portion, but at least I have another way to measure what I've actually learned.
Iversen, Dankie vir jou aangemoedigend antwoord, die woordelys metode is uitstekend! Ek sal môre woordeskat bespreek. Lekker dag Mick EDIT: I corrected some mistakes in my list of Finnish numbers Edited by mick33 on 30 October 2017 at 8:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 52 of 223 24 February 2009 at 10:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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I see that in my last post I wrote in Afrikaans that I would type something more on vocabulary Saturday, but it's Tuesday and I didn't do that. Over the weekend, I did pretty well and studied all 3 of my target languages, and I've discovered a few issues I need to work on. My understanding of Spanish verb conjugation seems to be good overall, but I sometimes forget the correct conjugation of "ser", and on my last test, I wrote está" in two places where I should have used "es" and "son" instead. I don't think this is a major issue, but I will need to review the present tense conjugations, since "ser" is very commonly used and is, unfortunately, one of the few (so far)irregular verbs I've learned. Finnish spelling is very easy, but I'm still unclear about word order, the only thing I can state with any certainty is that Finnish word order appears to allow far more freedom than English or Afrikaans. I still need to listen more to spoken Finnish, I still can't quite get the right sounds for k, p or t; I continue to use English pronunciation, which is far too harsh. From what I've already heard and read about Finnish, Finnish speakers do not release puffs of air from their mouths when making the sounds for k, p or t; some examples would be "kaupunki" (I think it corresponds to "city) or "postikortti" (postcard). I know I wrote that I would report on the wordlists(Iversen's method) some time last week, but I won't do so until I can say something more substantial than "they work well"; I need to be able to explain why they work well for me. Well, I'll listen to a little more Finnish and then go to bed.
Mick Edited by mick33 on 24 February 2009 at 10:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 53 of 223 25 February 2009 at 10:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I almost had another occurence of wanderlust Tuesday night; I was very tempted to read an article about Scottish Gaelic, until I remembered I hadn't yet figured out Finnish word order. Serpent and a few others on this forum claim that Finnish is not difficult, it's just different, and I'm beginning to understand what they mean. One of the differences I've run into is: The fascinating, and daunting, 14 or 15 case endings, though I must add that many, perhaps half, of the cases do indeed correspond to prepositions such as "into", or "on" creating compound words like "talossa" (in the house) or "pöydalla" (on the table). While the cases are not really anything one should fear; it is still weird when attempting literal translation of even basic sentences into English because there are no definite or indefinite articles (such as "the", "a", "an") which at first seems easy, thus I get a simple sentence like "Poika on talossa." which I think literally translates to "Boy is house-in." Since that does not really make sense I should make it "The boy is in the house." Then it gets a little weirder, no definite or indefinite articles means that I might be allowed to render the previous sentence as "Talossa on poika."; if I wanted to place more emphasis on the house rather the boy. If my assumptions are correct, the sentence would now translate as "House-in is boy" or for clarity "There is a boy in the house". I'm not complaining, just explaining one of the reasons why I'm not progressing as quickly as I'd like to in Finnish. I've haven't neglected Afrikaans or Spanish, but I am trying to acquire a little more basic knowledge of Finnish.
Mick Edited by mick33 on 28 February 2009 at 11:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 54 of 223 25 February 2009 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
You write: Since that does not really make sense I should make it "The boy is in the house." But why? You aren't learning English, but Finnish. In my opinion it is much better to think about Finnish as a language where they run around saying "House-in is boy" - just in Finnish instead of English. The hyperliteral translation is the one that reminds you of how Finnish is constructed, the 'pretty' translation is just something you do as a service to others. Edited by Iversen on 25 February 2009 at 3:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 55 of 223 25 February 2009 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 56 of 223 28 February 2009 at 11:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thursday, I found something I've been searching for; a concise explanation of Finnish sentence structure. I had looked at Venla.org before but hadn't realized until Thursday that it actually explained how Finnish word order works. Nearly everything else I had read simply stated that Finnish word order, when compared to languages like English or German, was very free but did not elaborate on what that means. After I've gotten some sleep I will also write a little more about Finnish case endings. Afrikaans and Spanish have not fallen by the wayside, in fact I finally stopped procrastinating and am completing the Afrikaans dialogs I started in December. I am also learning about stem-changing verbs in Spanish; that is verbs like "volver" which when conjugated can become "vuelvo", it also has other conjugated forms but I'm too tired to look those up right now.
Nos vemos mañana Mick 1 person has voted this message useful |
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