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A Linguistic Odyssey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 89 of 265 19 November 2009 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday I did my French vocabulary. Only a day late. :) But it was computer and Internet terms, so it was a bit harder. There, I'm justified.
I did some Swedish vocabulary (just typing up and reading the introductory paragraph) too, but I've been pretty overwhelmed with schoolwork. I shall catch up over break (two days away, yay!!!). Oh, and yesterday I went to the library and stocked up on Pimsleur courses, to add to my iTunes library. I only got six more yesterday, but there are more on the way for me to pick up. I also have some from this summer. Among those that I got was the complete course for Italian. I hope I will have some time to complete it. I'm almost done with Michel Thomas Italian (foundation course), which I listen to when I'm forced to do silly activities like yard work or exercise. It makes them much more bearable. Well, that's about all for now... I'm at school right now, there's some sort of optional assembly that I had no desire to attend. Yay. -- Me 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 90 of 265 20 November 2009 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a couple more comments to make. I have been meaning for a while to mention some progress with my Spanish. I do believe that I have made some good progress in my Spanish this year, despite what I may have thought previously. At the beginning of the year, I rarely heard correct spoken Spanish outside of the teacher talking and classroom discussions (instead, I would hear lots of the grammatically incorrect "Spanglish", as spoken by many Latino kids here, which was utterly incomprehensible). This year, we have been doing a lot of listening and oral comprehension exercises in my class. We did this previously, but since I had been misplaced in lower levels, it was always much too easy. This year we are actually using authentic material. Each week we go to the language lab and listen to a couple articles of the Spanish audio magazine Puerta del Sol. In the beginning, I found it honestly quite challenging because of the Castilian accents (you know, the ones with the "th" for "z" and soft "c") which I was unaccustomed to and the rapidity of speech. I am now finding these exercises to be quite easy, despite often being boring. I am also really embracing the Castilian accent. I really like it, which is quite contrary to what I thought last year. I am attempting to switch my pronunciation to that. :)
The second thing that is making me enjoy my Spanish class more this year is that we are now watching a real TV show from Spain, called El Internado ("The Boarding School"). It's really good and I am finding myself watching it online of outside class just to see what happens. Of course, this is all in real, authentic Spanish. In class we have subtitles (in Spanish) so that we can read what is being said if it is hard to hear or something, but when I watch it outside of class, I don't have this luxury. Surprisingly, I'm finding it extremely easy to understand and great fun to watch. Today in class we continued watching the fifth episode of the first season, and upon coming home and finishing my homework, I finished watching that episode and episode six, finishing season one. It's so good! I really recommend it to anyone wanting to watch something exciting and authentic in Spanish. It has subtly augmented my vocabulary, both with useful words and a comprehension of the meaning and usage of many common swear words in Spanish (for example: joder, coño, mierda, etc; look them up yourself), not that I use them, though! However, it's been fun. I hope we can continue watching it. And since it is from Spain, I have been exposed to various accents from there, which is making me like that dialect more and more. And it has made me better understand the inner beauty of the Spanish language. I guess I just like the "Spanish Spanish" dialect better than the Latin American one, which is what I have been heretofore exposed to. Anyways, I should go now. Buenas noches. -- Felipe 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ncruz Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5540 days ago 31 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Dutch, Portuguese, Afrikaans Studies: French, German, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic | Message 91 of 265 20 November 2009 at 7:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Philip,
I am glad to hear that you are enjoying Spanish more, I know that for a while you were debating whether or not you wanted to continue with Spanish. Do you think you made the right choice, or would you have preferred to take another language instead? Are you planning on continuing with Spanish next year? I might have to start watching El Internado now and just pretend to be surprised by the plot developments when my class watches it later this year. I also thought about our conversation today in math class and I decided that you were right, and that after nearly 3 years of pretty intensive study (although in the beginning I was very disorganized and approached the language in an extremely ineffecient way) my level of Dutch is much closer to basic fluency than intermediate. To confirm this, before upgrading my status I read a random news story about how Lufthansa bought the national airline of Belgium and how they are focusing on marketing the flights they have to Africa because the demand for flights to Africa is growing and they decided that rather than build a new flight network it would be more effecient and cost effective to buy and expand upon the xtensive network the Belgians possess because of their presence in the Congo. I could give a direct translation of about 4/5ths of the words (much more if the specialized airplane terminology is excluded), while the rest I picked up through context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 92 of 265 21 November 2009 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
Hi Nick, Yes, I'm definitely enjoying Spanish more because of El Internado. I am actually going to go watch an episode or two right now, since it's the first evening of break now! Anyways, it's much more interesting than just doing grammar workbook all the time. Congratulations on your Dutch. Has is really been three years? Wow... That means it's been about three years (well almost) for my Portuguese. I should be quite near to advanced fluency by now, which I'm not at all. For a language arts final project, I have finally decided to read The Alchemist, which is by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian author. I have read the first bit and I think I could definitely read it in the original Portuguese. That would be great practice. :) I didn't get any actual language study done today...yet. I got up late this morning (alarm malfunction) so I had no time for that. I then stayed two hours after school in my pottery classroom finishing up a project, because today was the last day to finish. It's not very good, but I finished building it at least. So that ate away my time to do a Greek lesson with my grandmother. Better luck tomorrow. And the next ten days, since we have them off. Hooray! --Philip EDIT: Here is the link for viewing El Internado online, if you're interested. This is the link for the first episode of season one, and the other episodes are off to the right-hand side. You might have to download the Veoh player, but it's fairly quick and simple. And very worth it. Edited by ellasevia on 21 November 2009 at 4:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 93 of 265 28 November 2009 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, it's been a week. What can I say for what I have gotten done? Sadly, very little. In fact, it was for this reason that I have refrained from posting earlier; I was too ashamed to admit that I got next to nothing done despite that I had so much time. I did waste a lot of it, but it is true that whenever I try to do something, my meddling family interrupts me in some way, shape, or form.
Well, let's go through the list of what I've gotten done, language by language (in order of their days of the week). So, Portuguese is up first. The only thing I did was I did a lesson from Ultimate Portuguese. Oh, and I talked to a couple of random Brazilians online in Portuguese, and they said my Portuguese was excellent, better than that of any foreigner they knew of. That was a nice compliment, but I am sure they were exaggerating. French. Well, um... I typed up a vocabulary list about halfway...and then got bored. And I read through the lesson for Ultimate French, and learned a rule (it still really doesn't make sense) for something that I apparently already knew intuitively... I haven't "learned" the vocabulary yet (yay, dental vocabulary!), but I have scribbled it all down on a piece of paper. Swedish. Oh dear, this is embarrassing. I did finish that one lesson that I was on for weeks (it wasn't even a hard lesson!) and started a new one. I have yet to finish that one though. And to think that my goal was to do four Swedish lessons from my book and two additional ones from Livemocha! Laughable, it's simply pathetic. Here are my translations, if any Swedish speakers feel like correcting them: Swedish to English Djurgården är en stor ö och ett av grönområdena i Stockholm. Stockholmarna tycker om att vandra omkring där på lördagar och söndagar. Många går och tittar på bysten av Carl Mikael Bellman. Bellman var en stor skald, som levde för två hundra år sedan. Han växte upp på Södermalm, och ett av husen, där han diktade, står fortfarande kvar. Därifrån hade han utsikt över Stockholm, som han älskade. Han studerade folklivet i staden och skildrade det i sångerna om en urmakare, som hette Fredman. Bellman var en glad skald. Han åkte ofta båt över till Djurgården och hade roligt med flickorna där. Varje år i juli firar stockholmarna Bellmans dag på Djurgården. En sång av Bellman som barnen i Sverige tycker om att sjunga heter Gubben Noak. Gubben Noak, Gubben Noak, var en hedersman. När han gick ur arken, plantera han på marken mycket vin, ja, mycket vin, ja, detta gjorde han. Bellman är svenskarnas älsklingsskald. Djurgården is a big island and one of the green belts in Stockholm. The people of Stockholm like to walk around there on Saturdays and Sundays. Many go and look at the bust of Carl Mikael Bellman. Bellman was a great poet who lived two hundred years ago. He grew up in Södermalm, and one of the houses where he wrote poetry, is still left. From there he had a view of Stockholm, which he loved. He studied the life of the people in the city and described it in the songs about a clockmaker, who was called Fredman. Bellman was a happy poet. He often went by boat to Djurgården and had fun with the girls there. Every year in July, the people of Stockholm celebrate Bellman’s Day in Djurgården. A song of Bellman’s that the children in Sweden like to sing is called Old Man Noah. Old man Noah, Old man Noah, was a decent fellow. When he came out of the ark, he planted in the ground lots of vine, yes lots of vine, yes, he did that. Bellman is the Swedes’ favorite poet. English to Swedish The children went by boat to the island. The Swedes were looking at the bears and at the sheep. The poet described life in the country. The students bought the apples in Stockholm. He had fun with the children and the animals at Skansen. The boys were playing the gramophone records at home. The students were reading Bellman. In February the Swedes like to go skiing. The poet had a fine view of the palaces. Every year the people of Stockholm celebrate Bellman’s Day. On Fridays and Saturdays the neighbors always have guests. Who borrowed the cups and the chairs? Two years ago Eric bought a boat. The city has a green belt. The musicians went by train to Stockholm. She liked the wines. Did you see the parks? When did you hear the music? He was standing in the street. Where does he come from? He could see the man from above. Bellman lived in the eighteenth century. She is always at the theatre. I always make sandwiches in the morning. Barnen åkte båt till ön. Svenskarna tittade på björnar och får. Skalden skildrade livet på landet. Studenterna köpte äpplen i Stockholm. Han hade roligt med barnen och djuren på Skansen. Pojkarna spelade grammofonskivorna hemma. Studenterna läste Bellman. I februari tycker svenskarna om att åka skidor. Skalden had en fin utsikt över slotten. Varje år firar stockholmarna Bellmans dag. På fredagar och lördagar har grannarna alltid gäster. Vem lånade kopparna och stolarna? Erik köpte en båt för två år sedan. Staden har ett grönområde. Musikerna åkte tåg till Stockholm. Hon tyckte om vinerna. Såg du parkerna? När hörde du musiken? Han stod på gatan. Varifrån kommer han? Han kunde se mannen uppifrån. Bellman levde på sjuttonhundratalet. Hon är alltid på teatern. Jag gör alltid smörgåsar på morgon. German. Well, this is even worse. Nothing. Ich habe leider nichts gemacht. (Did I say that right?) Anyways, my goal was to do two lessons out of Ultimate German by this Sunday. EDIT: I actually listened to a bit of the Michel Thomas German Foundation Course, now that I think about it. Greek. It's not as bad as German, but still, way too little. I did a short Greek lesson with my grandmother, in which I learned nothing. Hm... Oh, and I helped my brother learn the days of the week and months in Greek. I should get him to do that other vocabulary list that my grandmother gave him. Anyways, while on a walk, I decided to try to imitate the Michel Thomas method (which I really like--explained under Japanese) for him with Greek. It seemed to be working until he lost interest. He has a very short attention span and does not particularly care for languages (wait, then why does he like his Spanish class at school?) and I had to tailor the vocabulary specifically to things he could relate to: παγωτό (ice cream), ζάχαρη (sugar), σοκολάτα (chocolate), χιόνι (snow), etc. Japanese. Yay! I like Japanese this week because I actually did stuff for it. So, it started with me deciding to re-listen to the sample audio of the Michel Thomas Japanese Foundation Course that I downloaded off their website. I finally finished that (it was just the first hour) and really enjoyed it, so I um...acquired...the rest of the course, and the advanced course too. I have now listed to most of the foundation course and am not able to believe how much it has helped my Japanese flow. I have learned so much from it so painlessly! And it's pleasant to listen to; I like the people's voices. However, on the advanced course, the instructor changes and she has some sort of speech impediment. It's annoying, so I don't know how I will get through that once I get there. Oh, and I bought a new Japanese book, Japanese DeMystified, which looks helpful, unlike that no-good stupid Teach Yourself Japanese. Oh, and I learned a few new kanji (I'm nearing the 300 mark now) and review a couple. And I learned a bit of katakana, again. I swear, katakana is killing me. But today I FINALLY now know the difference between シ (shi), ツ (tsu), ソ (so), and ン (n), which has confused me for a long time. Italian. Sadly, I have gotten literally nothing done. I should try to do something, especially since I received an email reminder (thank you reminder service) today that notified me that I only have two weeks from today until I will have been studying Italian for exactly a year--in other words, I'm supposed to be at basic fluency very soon. Whether I will be or not, I will test myself then, but I need to do some serious studying! I shall post when and if I ever get anything done before school starts again on Monday. Oh right, and then there's that thing called "homework..." --Philip 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 94 of 265 28 November 2009 at 6:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, and I forgot to mention Spanish. I did have LOTS of practice for that language because I have now finished watching the second season of El Internado. It's so good!
Oh, and I did Spanish and French homework, but that wasn't really studying, more of just busywork. -- Me 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 95 of 265 28 November 2009 at 6:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Me again.
I'm just looking back at that text I translated into Swedish and I am observing that WOW there are a lot of the letter 'å.' I think they just stand out because I'm not quite used to them yet and they're bigger than normal 'a.' But it looks weird with them all over the place. But I still love Swedish. And Norwegian, which looks even cooler when written with its 'æ's and 'ø's. But Danish, bleh... I do NOT like Danish. It may look nice when written (basically looks like Norwegian to me), but it is probably (sorry any Danish peoples!) my least favorite language when spoken... But I chose Swedish, so it's all good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 96 of 265 28 November 2009 at 6:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm in the process of typing up a French vocabulary list and I think it's quite interesting how many idiomatic expressions there are relating to teeth in French. Just look at some of these colorful sayings:
-avoir une dent contre "to have a tooth against" = to have a grudge against -avoir les dents longues "to have long teeth" = to be ambitious -mentir comme un arracheur de dents "to lie like a 'tooth-puller-outer*'" = to lie through one's teeth -desserrer les dents "to loosen one's teeth" = to utter a word -Quand les poules auront des dents... "When chickens have teeth..." = When pigs fly... * You know, a person who pulls out your teeth, what do you call them? I found this one to be especially amusing. Edited by ellasevia on 28 November 2009 at 6:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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