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Ellasevia’s TAC 2011: Team Ohana | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 257 of 392 30 May 2011 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
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The wonders of Internet connections! I am having lunch in a lovely little restaurant by the sea in Crete and
have already received two compliments for my Greek pronunciation :-) I take it with buckets of salt, but it is still nice to receive a linguistic compliment. I have fallen in love with Greece, I do not know how a globetrotter like me can have lived a whole life without going to Greece. It must be lovely to come from such a warm culture Ellasevia! I have met nothing but kind and polite people since I got here. I will definiely learn more Greek and come back! 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 258 of 392 31 May 2011 at 8:22pm | IP Logged |
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Ugh, I just spent probably half an hour typing out a nice response here and then I accidentally deleted the
whole thing. Let's see if I can recreate some of it before I have to leave my aunt's hotel where we have Internet. Anyways, Solfrid Cristin, I'm so glad that you're liking Greece so much! You've been here since Friday, right? We arrived on Saturday morning and I'll admit that I was looking around at the airport in Athens for blond Norwegian families until I remembered that from Norway it's not an overnight flight and that you were going to Crete anyway. However, I still think it's awesome that we're in the same country. How is the weather in Crete? It has been surprisingly cool up here on Evia and it even rained yesterday but that could be because it's still May and I'm used to being here in June and July. Hm, Greek... It's good that you've been able to put your Greek to practice, even if it's just a little bit. People get so happy when you make even a small effort. By the way, are people using lots of /ch/ sounds (palatized from /k/) when they talk? If so, you've been hearing "Κρητικά", the dialect they speak (or maybe used to speak) in Crete. All of my mother's old relatives spoke that way and I could barely understand them because where I am they speak more or less standard Greek. In any case, you're making me feel guilty for not saying much more than a quick "γεια σου, καλά είμαι, ευχαριστώ" before going and hiding in here to write in my log. I haven't actually spoken much Greek while I've been here even though I've been hearing a lot of it. I'm painfully shy, though, so I'm using that as my excuse. Hm... What else? Oh, how long are you staying in Greece? I'll be here until the end of June almost. I'm currently here with only my grandparents but my parents and brother will be joining us here in about two weeks. As for my studies, they haven't exactly started yet even though I brought a huge load of books along with me. We've been extremely busy settling into our house (my grandparents are staying here until the end of October) and meeting people, so I haven't had much time just yet. Oh, and the jet lag is killing me. It's slowly getting better but the past two nights I've essentially sat awake in bed doing nothing all night and then it's only in the morning that I start to feel tired and subsequently sleep past noon. Terrible. What else was I wanting to say? I know I had written something else before my amazing post was erased. Maybe it was about the Internet. We still don't have a connection at our house but we should be getting connected within the week, with any luck. In the meantime, however, I'm having to use my iPod to prey on unsuspecting available Internet connections whenever possible. I guess that's all for now. See you later. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 259 of 392 31 May 2011 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, The wheather here is amazing, in fact so much so that I have a raging case of sun allergy. We had a
rain storm which was quite frightening the first night, and a cloudy morning the next day, but ever since the wheather has been fantastic. Our friends at home have sent pictures of a very rainy Oslo, so being here feels even better. I am unable to hear whether they speak a different dialect here, although one of the girls I spoke to here said the local dialect was ugly and difficult to understand. The few words I know are not pronounced differently from what it says in the book, but it is possible that they make an effort for me. I am sorry to say that I am already going home this Friday. I would have loved to stay longer, but I have to go to Warsaw for a railway meeting and to Barcelona for a Vampire Diaries convention next week, so I could not stay longer. I am going to start saving money the moment I come home in order to come back as quickly as possible though. Don' t forget to get enough rest and go out there and interact. As an American who can actually speak Greek the girls will eat out of your hand if you just give them a chance, and Greece has no shortage of incredibly beautiful girls. I swear I learned most of my Spanish just having fun - it is a lot more efficient than studying grammar rules. I am sorry your island is not close, it would have been lovely to meet you. If it gets too hot in Greece come and visit us in Norway. I hope you'll have the best of times though, and remember that sometimes you need to get out of your comfort zone. I almost did karaoke yesterday, and considering that I can't sing anymore, I am sure you can overcome some of your shyness if you just have the right motivation. :-) Did the sentence you wrote in Greek mean "Hi, I am fine, thanks", by the way? Oh, and please tell me, do they not use question marks in Greek? The book has not said anything about it, but they seem to just write a semi colon instead. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 01 June 2011 at 7:10am 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 260 of 392 02 June 2011 at 9:01pm | IP Logged |
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Eww. My spoken Greek is terrible. I have definitely neglected speaking it for too long, but there are really no
opportunities for me to practice back in the US other than with my grandparents, and there's only so much that I want to talk to them. Of course, I knew that my spoken Greek was probably terrible simply by virtue of the fact that my speaking is awful in any language, even ones like English and Spanish which I know very well. But particularly so with the languages which I don't speak as frequently, like Swedish, Italian, and Greek. How have I discovered this? Well some of my relatives finally lured me out of my silence this evening and made me talk to them and I was just... It was painful how many mistakes I could hear myself making in every sentence. The words just weren't flowing the way they should. I knew how the things should sound and how they should be said but my stupid mouth just wasn't obeying. I wanted to go hide in a hole. What is particularly discouraging about this is that all of my other skills are just fine in Greek. My reading is very strong, like in most languages; it's not difficult at all for me to compose written Greek; and the listening comprehension which I struggle with in some other languages is one of my strongest abilities in Greek from having heard it spoken around me so much. I can understand almost everything that people are saying around me (assuming I'm listening) but as soon as I go to open my mouth, disappointment is all that can possibly follow. I would say that I want to make it my goal to become more fluent in speaking by the time I leave Greece, but then I realize that the only way to do that is to speak A LOT. That frightens me because it implies that I'll have to interact with people significantly and being extremely shy and something of a sociophobe, I can't really see that happening without a lot of discomfort on my part. I suppose I can try to talk more than I normally would, but it might result in something unpleasant. Θα δούμε. In the meantime, everyone is telling me how wonderfully I speak and when I try to explain that I'm really not speaking nearly as well as I should, they insist that I'm doing extremely well. I know they're just being nice, though, so even though I want to believe them I know it's not true. Such frustration. Oh, and happy June by the way. It's just past midnight local time on June 1st as I'm writing this. It will probably a while before I get the chance to post it though. [Later addition: I mentioned earlier in this log that the Greek passive voice, and especially its aorist/subjunctive/past participle forms, was one of the very few parts of the grammar which still escaped me and which I could never form on my own. Since then I've basically decided to stop trying to understand it the way you might expect, and instead hoped that with enough exposure it would eventually penetrate through my thick skull. Yesterday, however, I noticed that simply by having paid some attention to it when people were talking and not purposefully trying to deduce specific rules, I subconsciously noticed several patterns in the formation which turns out are mostly correct. I keep giving my grandmother pairs of passive/reflexive verbs in the present and past tenses and asking if they're right and strangely almost all of them are (except for some pesky irregulars)! It just suddenly makes sense to me. It's not much when you think about it, but I feel like I've just killed a giant by throwing pebbles at him, or at least weakened some of his remaining defenses. I think this little victory is a nice note to conclude this otherwise negative post with.] 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 261 of 392 03 June 2011 at 1:58pm | IP Logged |
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When I first moved to Germany and started speaking German, it was also painful. So much so that the local Berlitz centre rated me as level 3 (mid A2) during the first few days I arrived, leaving me feeling as miserable as hell. After a week of chatting away to strangers (e.g. neighbours, cafe customers, shop assistants, local baker and hairdresser...anyone really) and trying my best to stick with it each time (rather than fall back on English), speaking German became a LOT easier, and all that passive knowledge I learnt in school that I thought was long-lost came bubbling to the surface. When I returned to the language centre, the teachers were shocked and amazed - my level had apparently risen to 6/7 (B1/B2) in just a handful of days! Of course, there was no real magic involved here - just the power of activation. So don't be so hard on yourself - your foreign language skills are awesome, in which I'm sure Greek is no exception. Even the best of students who pass C2 level on paper with flying colours make stacks of errors when they move to the new country. Dealing with colloquial dialogue and integration alone is worth a separate thread. Just remember, you've got lots of great knowledge passively locked away inside you just waiting to get out, and it's only early days. And the next time you feel down or inadequate about all this, just remind yourself it's nonsense really, stand proud, and say to yourself "THIS IS SPARTA!" (please don't kick anyone down a well though).
Edited by Teango on 03 June 2011 at 2:02pm 6 persons have 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 262 of 392 03 June 2011 at 6:34pm | IP Logged |
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Well miracle of miracles we suddenly have a permanent Internet connection here in our house, and this just a few hours after my grandfather and I had resigned ourselves to the fact (or so we thought) that we wouldn't be getting connected for at least another week. What a pleasant surprise. :) In any case, this now means that I'll have to copy out everything that I had written for my next post on my iPod, which I intended to post if I came across a free Wi-Fi connection somewhere. At least I can type quickly when I have an actual keyboard. Anyways, here's what I had written:
Solfrid Cristin, thank you for your response. I wrote that most recent post in advance so that I wouldn't have to waste time writing for a long time for the short period that I actually have an Internet connection, so I apologize if my responses sound a bit delayed. We inquired about the Internet again today and it seems that the Internet people have gone on strike so it might be a while before anything works out in that respect. [all of that is now outdated] Haha, you have to go to Warsaw and Barcelona? I'm envious. I'm sorry to hear that you have to leave so soon but I'm glad that you enjoyed your stay and that you intend to come back. Plus, you do have those other trips (Poland, Spain, Turkey) coming up soon so you have something to look forward to. I wish we could have met, but maybe it will work out in the future. My grandmother still seems to think that the weather here in Greece is freezing (she keeps telling me to close my window because she thinks that I'll die of the cold in the middle of the night), so I don't think she would be particularly open to the idea of Norway... Yes, that's exactly what my sentence in Greek meant. Extremely advanced stuff, right there. :) As for the question marks, Greek likes to be as difficult and different as possible so it uses that semicolon for a question mark, which is still very confusing for me when reading. I think all of the other punctuation marks are the same, but the function of the semicolon seems to be filled by a certain raised dot, if I'm not mistaken. Κατάλαβες; Regarding what you said about being more interactive, I guess I sort of already addressed that without knowing in the previous post. However, I will try... I think part of it is that I have so far mostly been in largish groups of older relatives or friends of my grandparents, so speaking in front of so many people, no matter the language, is difficult for me. I noticed that it was a bit easier today when I was speaking with people individually and when I was talking to my younger cousin who is closer to my own age (well, he's six years younger but that's still closer than sixty years older). I'm getting there... As for the rest, I'm getting almost too much of that. I feel like I've been asleep for more of the past week than I have been awake. Hm... Studying? Nope, not yet. Maybe tomorrow. However, I've just totaled up the time I spent being immersed in Greek since being here and it's about 10.5 hours. Not a lot considering I'm living in the country, but I'm not being overly generous with myself either and am not counting any of the time I spend with just my grandparents because their half-and-half mix of Greek and English is just too complicated to even begin to calculate. [written on June 2nd] 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 263 of 392 03 June 2011 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
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I'll come back to the factor of motivation, and I would agree that people your own age would be more of a motivation to speak Greek, than old relatives.
I do however again find it interesting that I can go to Greece knowing 40 words, and feeling great for understanding and being able to use 20 of them, You understand almost everything, and can say anything you want with just a few mistakes, and you feel frustrated. You must start focusing on your acheivements, which are major, and stop focusing on your few mistakes, which are more a matter of details. I am sure your relatives are most sincere when they say you do great, after all, why would they lie to you? Most Americans do not bother to learn foreign languages, not even their heritage language, and you make a real effort. Otherwise I am - as so often before - all with Teango on this. In a couple of weeks all your passive vocabulary will be activated, and you won't even understand what you were fretting about. Otherwise, I must again say what a lovely people the Greeks are. I have never been anywhere where absolutely 100 percent of the people were friendly and polite, and with a great sense of humour. I have totally fallen in love with Greece and with the Greek language. I am definitely going to continue with it even if it just on the side. I feel a bit weird though, since this morning I was swimming at a Greek beach, and now I am sitting in my living room at home in Oslo(where we have 25 degrees right now, by the way, so that should not even worry your grandmother :-) Anyway, you have an open invitation to come and visit us in Oslo and practise your Swedish, your Spanish and to teach all of us Greek. I have promised my two daughters that once they know 100 words in Greek I will take them to Greece, so they should certainly be motivated enough. Enjoy your stay,and don't worry about a thing, just go with the flow, enjoy the heat, the warm people, the clear water, the wonderful food and everything else which is Greece. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 264 of 392 06 June 2011 at 3:47am | IP Logged |
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Just dropping by to say have a great time in Greece! I just returned from Bali and I'm anxious to get back to my studies. My in-laws are coming from Iran soon and I am responsible for them during the day until 8PM when their son gets off from work. Instead of being nervous, I am trying to think of how great an opportunity it is to practice Persian! But meeting your in-laws for the first time is still extremely nerve wracking.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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