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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 81 of 160 12 August 2009 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||
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After a long saga in which I broke my internet and had to call in reinforcements to
help me fix it (not that you can tell or anything, considering that I am posting mere hours after my last update - you know, someone recommended Twitter to me once, because I am such a post-happy person, but I didn't like it because nobody was following me whereas in this thread I can pretend that legions of unknowns are reading my every glorious word) Long paranthetical statement. Let me start again. After losing and finding my internet, I am finally ready to post another whine. Namely: man, do I wish I could speedread in Arabic! I don't mean speedread and understand - I just mean read the individual letters at a faster speed. With a language utilizing the Roman alphabet, I can take in whole chunks (unfortunately, not in an useful way unless I'm really pressed for time) with a glance. In Chinese, I go slower, sentence by sentence rather than section by section, but I still go at a decent clip. And now there's Arabic. I know that I can't hope to read quickly at this stage in my studies; I've barely begun! But I can't help wishing. Maybe I'll borrow one of those books about speedreading from the library and apply their techniques to Arabic. I now have 500 words/sentences entered in Anki. 6 more vocab lists to go (13 more with sentences), then I can get started on my various notebooks. I did not read today, although I did listen to the news for a while - perhaps I'll read now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 82 of 160 12 August 2009 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
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So I did not read because I decided to, um, illegally procure Michel Thomas, just for
testing purposes, really, I swear. Anyway, it looks like I won't be breaking any laws after all, because my mate MT really doesn't want to download. So there goes that. I did, however, find myself some manga translated into Arabic. I actually do not like manga. I prefer reading novels. But perhaps the addition of pictures and simple storylines will help me out here. So I investigated this Naruto. The young male protagonist's hair looks like it could seriously injure someone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 83 of 160 12 August 2009 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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So I thought I'd make a list of all the reading resources I have available to me but am
inconsistently using, in order to inspire me to read more. Right now I read while mining words for about 45 m to an hour a day, but I never get very far because I translate every sentence to keep a record and translation takes longer than comprehension (also because I'm just slow). Mahfouz - two books Season of Migration to the North - Salih The Holy Quran 100 pages of 1001 Nights (the free site I got it from did not tell me if it was simplified so I'll have to double check that later - it has large print so may be intended for chilluns) A few children's books, printed out A Reader in Modern Literary Arabic + 2 x textbooks of Georgetown al-Kitaab parts one and two Sundry dictionaries al-Kitab al-Asasi in pdf One more textbook in pdf that someone gave me and that I can't recall + Recordings for Ahlan wa Sahlan Recordings for some but not all Pimsleur 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 84 of 160 13 August 2009 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Reading was a bit rockier today. I came across several nouns that I could not find in
the dictionary. I'm about 90% sure they're in my Hans Wehr (I've come across in the past a few words that definitely weren't in my Hans Wehr but that I could find in my friend's more updated Hans), but I just don't know what root to look under. For example, one seems to be a plural - full disclosure, I google-translated it - but I can't find it under the most logical root. I even tried several other less logical root combinations and still couldn't find it. Very frustrating indeed. I have 600 words/sentences in my Anki now and am about 3, 4 chapters from finishing just the word lists from my textbook. I still have sentences and supplemental vocab to go. I'm surprised at how few words there are in my textbook - I guess that's where all my supplemental vocabulary notebooks come in handy! Edited by bouda on 13 August 2009 at 12:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5729 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 85 of 160 13 August 2009 at 2:34am | IP Logged | ||
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So what was the elusive plural word? :)
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| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 86 of 160 13 August 2009 at 4:41am | IP Logged | ||
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My notes say مندثر. Google translate gives it as "relics," so it can't be TOO hard to
find, but for some reason I just can't find it in my dictionary! I have a reprinting of the first edition of Hans Wehr, so as mentioned, I've been in situations where words I am looking for are DEFINITELY not in my copy before... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 87 of 160 13 August 2009 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, completely unrelated (I swear!), but lately I've had this conversation a lot:
Me: Oh, I'm reading Oedipus Rex (or whatever). Other person (a polyglot): No, you're not. Your Ancient Greek sucks. You can't read that. Me: I meant in translation... I use Oedipus Rex as an example only because for some reason these exchanges have revolved only around my grasp of Ancient Greek thus far. (For the record, I have read Oedipus in the original.) Anyway, it's mildly infuriating. I know that I don't need to prove anything to anyone and it theoretically should be perfectly fine if I just read what I want to read and enjoy myself doing so, but gosh, can we lay off on the jealousy/snobbiness factor a little here?! I know that my Ancient Greek is hardly perfect. In the months since I last touched anything in that language, my skills have deteriorated, it's true. I'm even forgetting my conjugations. But that's almost irrelevant. It's not about what skills I have or don't have. It's the bad attitude of those who try to demean me or what I have done through telling me that I "suck" and that I "can't" do something. Rant over. Seriously though... now that I'm thinking harder about this chain of incidents, I'm noticing that most of the pretentious dismissals of me and my language studies have come from the mouths of polyglots or people who think of themselves as very advanced in one foreign language. Perhaps there are several insecure polyglots out there and I've just happened to meet all of them. Or perhaps it's not insecurity and these people I've met just really can't stand anyone who isn't as advanced as them. Who knows? I don't think I've come across anyone truly nasty on this forum yet, so that shows there's hope still. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5729 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 88 of 160 13 August 2009 at 6:05am | IP Logged | ||
That word itself is not in my copy of Hans Wehr either as an entry, but it does appear to come from daal-thaa'-raa'. The form VII (infa3ala) is "to be or become wiped out, blotted out, effaced, obliterated; to be old; to be forgotten, have fallen into oblivion, be obsolete". That makes sense for relics, since they are old things and can be forgotten by many. So from the verb indathara you get mandathar or mandathir. It doesn't look like an actual Arabic plural form, but if it makes sense as relics given what you were reading about, then that's good enough. Were there any adjectives or verbs associated with the word? I'm interested because this is the first time I've seen this word as well. Arabic is such a rich language, isn't it? --- As for the Oedipus thing, I don't like those kinds of people either. It's probably much easier said than done, but it would be best to ignore those people and just enjoy what you are reading. And kudos to you for studying Ancient Greek! I studied it with a tutor when I was in high school for some time, but as far as classic texts I didn't progress much - I read the beginning of Homer's Odyssey but I didn't get that far - I was taking Latin in school and was starting to study Russian and Arabic, things were starting to overload. But eventually I will return to it! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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