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Solfrid Cristin’s way TAC 2011 Team Ohana | ||
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| 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 49 of 221 12 January 2011 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
You make me blush. On this forum there are a lot of people who speak a lot more languages than I do - I am practically a novice compared to some of the guys here who deal with heaps of languages. And I have been neglecting most of my languages for a long time. My life for the last 15 years has been so full of children and sick family members, that maintaining languages has not been a priority. Besides I am cheating a little bit, because like all Scandinavians of my generation I understand all three languages in Scandinavia, so there you have three languages right there. I do perhaps get more exposure than most Norwegians because I work in the international office of my company, and we have a lot of Nordic cooperation. I have considered removing Swedish and Danish from my list, but since I have a 90-something %reading and listening skills, it would feel odd not to list them. If I ever do a video, I'll have a go at spaking Swedish though. English I write and read every day, speak it regularly and usually watch a lot of TV in it (considerably less TV now that I am focusing on the TAC, but that is not a problem). My Spanish is - just there. With the exception of the 6 months when my newly learned Italian supressed my Spanish, I have been able to speak Spanish really well for the last 30 years, with very little effort. I guess that first learning it at 11, and then going back to it and learning it again at 18 and proceed to study it at the university for several years gives you a really good foundation. I spoke very little Spanish for 20 years, but it was still there. Not at the native level I was once at, but still good enough to impress any Spanish speaking person I met. A few years ago I got a friend from Peru, and after meeting her I get to practise it fairly often. French I also knew very well at one point, but unfortunately I was in too much haste to finish my studies quickly, so I never got the rock solid base I have in Spanish. Therefore it slips away much more easily, and I do not get enough exposure. I have tried to listen to the radio now and then, and I speak French when I am in France, but I definitely need to do more to maintain it. I am planning to watch some films that I bought the last time I was in France, and which have no subtitles or dubbing, so it should be quite good practise. My Russian studies are also proving very useful in my attempts to maintain my French, as I bought a lot of my Russian books in France. Italian is another neglected language. I guess it came a bit too easy, in the sense that I have not done any serious studies in it, and most of it just got absorbed while I was having fun. For many years I could just speak it, without effort, but there was perhaps one or two conversations a year - not enough to keep it up, and the last time I was going to speak Italian I suddenly realized that it was really hard. I saw also now that I have read through a book in Italian that I need a LOT more exposure, so I'll have to find some way of listening to more Italian. Unfortunately I do not think I have any films where I can put the settings in Italian, so I do not quite know what to do. German - ah - that is a tricky one, German is my weakest language, and the only one where I have always felt that it was a bit hard to speak. If I met anyone from France, Spain or Italy, I would always speak to them in their own language, but for many years I would only speak German if I had no other option. Then last year I decided to do something about that, and I took some German classes right before some German friends came to stay for a week. They came with two children, and they were quite relieved when I asked them to speak German to me, and so I got some practise. German is however in the category of languages where I am still learning, I have not arrived at maintenance-only-level. Together with Russian, German is therefore my focus-language this year. I do not feel that there are too many languages, I just wish I had not let them slip so much, but I am taking firm control now, so I should be ok. As for limits - I think I'll learn Russian first, and then I'll see. I would have loved to learn the languages I have dabbled in before (Polish, Dutch, Hebrew and Arabic) and I would also have loved to learn Ukrainian and Mongolian and possibly Mandarin. The fact that I have so little time to learn, at the same time as it now feels like it takes ten times longer to learn anything - makes learning new languages really, really hard. I could kick myself for not having been a bit "crazier" when I was young, and learned Russian and even Mandarin then. So I guess the answer to your question really is, no, I don't have too many languages, I have too few! 2 persons have 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 50 of 221 12 January 2011 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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RUSSIAN
This morning I listened to lessons 26 and 27 from Assimil, and I wrote down the words from lesson 26-31 in Anki and a lot of items from my class notes – a total of 128 words and sentences. Then I repeated 120 Anki cards. Going through more of my class notes, I saw that sometimes it seems quite obvious to me, when I am in class, what something means, and then I forget to write the translation in Norwegian. Could someone tell me what these phrases mean? 1, В Норвегии более ( In Norway better?) 2. Она меня спрасила, нотим ли мы пойти в кино &nbs p; (She asked me........ we go to the movies?) Oh, and then I have to share a little gem with you. At least it is a gem for me.:) I love it when I find things that are similar in Norwegian and Russian. Obviously we share lots of words of Greek and Latin origin, as I mentioned the other day, but when I find words, or expressions or sayings or even cultural similarities, which I do not know from other languages/cultures, I am particularly pleased. One word I like for instance is the word for trousers ( брюки) which also existed in old Norwegian dialects (brok). My little gem of the day is: ”Делать хорошую мину при плохой игрь.” Which is exactly the same in Norwegian “Å gjøre gode miner til slett spill”.(In English it would be something along the line, of “Keep smiling even when you get a raw deal ” I am sure there is an English equivalent, but I cannot recall it just now. I said I would write some Russian, and I have, but this is a text I have had someone look over to correct the worst mistakes, so it is not really representative of my level of written Russian. However since my creativity when it comes to coming up with new spelling errors is boundless, I am sure there will be things to correct here too. Мояа семя У меня есть муж и две дочери, Kатрине и Сильие. Мужа зовут – Киартан, и ему сорок пять лет. Моим дочерям, четырнадцать и одинадцать лет. Они блондинки и очень красивые. Моему отцу девяносто лет. Его зовут Сигварт. Он был преподавателем. Моей маме восемьдесят один год. Ее зовут Кари. Она тоже была преподавателем и она живет в Осло. У меня есть сестра. Ее зовут Марит, и она тоже была преподавателем и живет в Осло. FRENCH J’ai decidé qu’après avoir travaillé tellement dûre avec le russe aujourd’hui, je meritais de m’amuser un peu, alors j’ai regardé les dessins animés “Les 12 traveaux d’Asterix “en francais. J’ai d’abord mis des sous-tîtres aussi en francais, parce que je pensais que j’en aurais besoin, mais après 5 minutes j’ai decidé de ne pas avoir des sous-tîtres, parce que c’était de trop. J’ai tout compris, et j’ai bien rigolé. J’adore Asterix, et j’ai apris beaucoup de francais lisant de l’ Asterix, mais c’est la premiere fois que je l’ai vu comme film en francais. Une fois à l’Italie je l’ai vu en italien, ce qui ètait très drôle. Ils jouaient sûr les dialectes italiens, alors quand ils y avait des roumains ils parlaient avec le dialecte de Rome, et les gaulois parlaient avec le dialecte de Florence. Et quand on entendait le “Ils sont fous ces Romains” – et les Roumains les répondaient en vrai “roumain” on ne pouvait que rire. En plus c’était un genre de cinéma que j'aime beaucoup mais qui n’existe pas en Norvège – du cinéma à l’air libre. J’ai vu cela en Espagne et en Italie, mais pour des raisons de clima et lumière cela n’est pas possible en Norvège. Pendant l’été il ne fait nuit qu’entre 00.30 y 2 heures du matin, et même pendant cette periode la, il y a assez de lumière pour pouvoir lire. Quand on sait que les nuits d’été norvègiennes – bien que incroyablement belles – peuvent aussi être assez frais, on comprend pourquoi le cinéma à l’air libre n’est pas une tradition norvègienne. So – tomorrow it is back to work again, so I won’t get much Russian done – but I’ll see what I can manage to sneak in here and there. Still following the “No-available-time-method”! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5727 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 51 of 221 14 January 2011 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Привет Solfrid Cristin!
1, В Норвегии более ( In Norway better?) 2. Она меня спрасила, нотим ли мы пойти в кино &nbs p; (She asked me........ we go to the movies?) #1 is not a complete sentence, because the word более "more" needs to come before either an adjective (более красивый - more beautiful), or a number (более пяти миллионов человек - more than 500 people). If you have более by itself, it doesn't mean anything. For #2, I'm guessing that you meant: Она меня спросила, хотим ли мы пойти в кино. "She asked me if we wanted to go to the movies." ”Делать хорошую мину при плохой игрe.” Мина is a cool word, because it is equivalent to English "mien" (though in English it is not so common). As for the text, it looks good, and everything was 100% understandable to me. Just a few things stick out. The title should be Моя семья (сЕмя means seed, while семьЯ means family). Мужа зовут Киартан - you don't need to have the hyphen here. Also in the sentence "Она тоже была преподавателем и она живет в Осло"...if you are talking about the same "она", you don't need to repeat it in the sentence, because the verb will take care of it. You got this right in the very last sentence. Another thing that you may want to remember in conversation: a lot of times, the "my" or "your" adjective is left out when it is obvious that you are talking about your own mother/sister/brother etc. You'll hear things like "Дочь сейчас учится в университете", "Как мама?" in place of "Моя дочь сейчас учится в университете", "Как твоя мама?" Моя семья У меня есть муж и две дочери, Kатрине и Сильие. Мужа зовут Киартан, и ему сорок пять лет. Моим дочерям четырнадцать и одиннадцать лет. Они блондинки и очень красивые. Моему отцу девяносто лет. Его зовут Сигварт. Он был преподавателем. Моей маме восемьдесят один год. Ее зовут Кари. Она тоже была преподавателем и она живет в Осло. У меня есть сестра. Ее зовут Марит, и она тоже была преподавателем и живет в Осло. Anyway, best of luck in working the TAC challenge in with your work schedule! I'm going to try my best with this semester as well! Also, if there are any Russians who want to expand on or correct the stuff I've said, please do! Edited by snovymgodom on 14 January 2011 at 5:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5472 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 52 of 221 15 January 2011 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Solfrid Cristin!
You French is very good, there are just a few accent mistakes (which I thought might be because of a keyboard problem, but you do put them in some places so...). I admire you for writing in different languages though. I usually can't muster the courage. So here is you corrected post: J’ai décidé qu’après avoir travaillé tellement dur sur le russe (ou "en russe') aujourd’hui, je méritais de m’amuser un peu, alors j’ai regardé le dessin animé “Les 12 traveaux d’Astérix “en francais. J’ai d’abord mis des sous-titres aussi en français, parce que je pensais que j’en aurais besoin, mais après 5 minutes j’ai décidé de ne pas avoir (ou: garder) de sous-titres, parce que c’était de trop. J’ai tout compris, et j’ai bien rigolé. J’adore Astérix, et j’ai appris beaucoup de français en lisant (de l’) Astérix, mais c’est la première fois que je l’ai vu comme film en français. Une fois, en l’Italie, je l’ai vu en italien, ce qui était très drôle. Ils jouaient sur les dialectes italiens, alors quand ils y avait des Romains ils parlaient avec le dialecte de Rome, et les Gaulois parlaient avec le dialecte de Florence. Et quand on entendait le “Ils sont fous ces Romains” – et les Romains leur répondaient en vrai “romain” on ne pouvait que rire. Tu as tendance à mettre des accents circonflexes (^) un peut partout: il n'y en a pas sur "titre" par exemple. Quant à "sûr", ça veut dire "certain", alors que "sur", sans accent, veut dire "dessus". Voili voilou (c'est une façon humoristique de dire "voilà)... Sinon, oui, moi aussi j'adore Astérix, et j'imagine que c'est particulièrement bien pour apprendre le français, parce qu'on peut comprendre ce qui se passe avec un niveau intermédiaire, mais j'imagine que pour voir tous les jeux de mots il faut sans doute un excellent niveau, du coup, on peut le lire à tous les niveaux, et on en tire forcément quelque chose. Même en France, quand un adulte le lit il ne voit pas les mêmes blagues que les enfants. J'ai vus certains dessins animés mais ça fait très (très, très) longtemps. Les films sont drôles par contre, surtout les deux derniers, mais ils sont peut-être plus difficiles à comprendre... J'aimerais bien avoir une BD comme ça pour le Russe (en Espagnol il y a Mafalda, il doit bien y avoir des BD (bandes dessinées) marrantes en Russe...). Thank you very much for answering my question in such details, too. So you studied Smanish and French at University then? I'm sorry you're finding it harder than you used to to learn languages, but maybe it'll come back to you after a while. You did more or less stop for a while, didn't you? Then again age might have something to do with it -- I hope not, but they do say it's impossible to learn a language to native level beyond adolescence. I myself find learning even Spanish harder than I did English. Though that might only be because I've been trying to actually learn it, while with English I just read, played videogames and went to school, which made it feel like no effort at all. I keep telling myself I should use a more passive method, but every time I come across a new word, I can't help underlining it and looking it up as soon as I can. Have... to... resist... the urge! In any case it seems to me you're learning Russian pretty fast... You seem to be about my level already, and it took me six months to get there! I know there are a couple of hyperpolyglots on this forum, but I guess I feel more comfortable asking you, as we're doing TAC together (though in different teams, but with the same focus language). And still, eight languages is something to be really proud of. Edited by joanthemaid on 15 January 2011 at 5:35pm 2 persons have 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 53 of 221 17 January 2011 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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@ snovymgodom! Привет – and thank you so much for your corrections. I blush to the roots of my hair over the mistakes I made – but I am really grateful to you for pointing them out. I simply must start to write some more Russian, to move it from a passive to an active knowledge.
@joanthemaid Lots of thanks to you too! I am happy that my French mistakes were not too bad (I did once upon the time know how to write it quite well) but as you have seen I am really bad when it comes to accents, and no I can’t blame my keyboard for anything, apart from not having a “cedille”. I do struggle to learn Russian, and it is probably at least partly age related, but then I do not expect to reach native level either. If I can manage to get to basic fluency, I will be very pleased indeed. Oh, and I do consider everyone in the TAC challenge to be my adopted teammates as long as they do Russian. :) The last days' work: Not a very efficient weekend, but then I did have the odds against me. On Friday the hospital called and said they thought my mother was going to die that day, so obviously studying was not on the agenda. She got better ,so Saturday I managed to do a bit of Russian related stuff before and after my visit to her, but today was busy first with the kids and then with another visit to the hospital, after which my motivation for anything except crying over the unfairness of life evaporated. When you see someone you love is so weak that they can just barely manage to open their mouth in order for you to feed them, and is in so much pain that there is not enough morphine to deal with it, it gets immensely difficult to focus on any serious studying, or indeed any studying at all. RUSSIAN Anyway, on Saturday I went to an exhibition in the National Gallery about sacred object from Russia, as this week end was the last two days the exhibition was on. They had lots of icons and objects and fabrics from Orthodox churches, two thirds of which had never been outside of Russia before, so it was an occasion not to be missed. They also told us that they have quite a collection of Russian icons which belongs to the museum, and in 2004, when we celebrated the 1000 years anniversary of Norway and Russia as neighbors, they had put them all on display. One day all the alarms went off, and they were afraid that someone were trying to steal them, but it turned out to be a group of Russian Orthodox Christians who were visiting, who did what they were supposed to do when they saw icons – kiss them! There was also a mini concert by members of the Orthodox congregation in Oslo, and man could they sing! One song was in Norwegian, and one in Greek, but the rest was in Russian, and the whole thing was so beautiful that it was soul shattering. In the evening I watched the film Evgenij Onegin which I had borrowed at the library. It was in Russian, but since it is always difficult to hear what is said in an opera, and the sound was really bad, I only caught random words. As I like to learn something about the culture of the languages I study, I wanted to know this particular work anyway, as it is a very important part of Russian culture. I went through a few of my Anki words, but was unable to go through them all – again – lack of focus. FRENCH/RUSSIAN I also read through a few chapters of Assimil. Not study them mind you, just read through them. When I listen to the Assimil lessons on my iPod, I cannot put any lesson on repeat, which means that I sometimes hear through a lot of lessons, of which I do not understand much. I then figured that if I read through a number of lessons, I might remember the story, and it would then be easier to understand the text. When I did Latin, about a hundred years ago, I had a panel of four who overheard my oral exam. One of them, a woman from Latin America accused me of not actually knowing any Latin, but of just having memorized the text. She was furious, because they were limited to hearing me translate the texts in the book, they were not allowed to ask me to actually speak any Latin, as that was not part of the test, and even though she demanded (against regulations) that I be asked to translate more text than I was supposed to, she couldn’t catch me in not being able to translate anything, so they had to let me pass the exam. She was of course partly right, I had read through the stories so many times that I knew them by heart, and I am counting on still having the ability to remember the stories, and thereby understand the words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5472 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 54 of 221 18 January 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for adopting me! You really shouldn't blush about your Russian, becaus ethen how should I feel about mine, which at this point is probably worse than yours even though from what I understand you're only a "beginner". It seems to me like you're making tremendous progress, and mistakes are a normal part of learning.
I realised I didn't correct all of your text. Here goes: En plus c’était un genre de cinéma que j'aime beaucoup mais qui n’existe pas en Norvège – du cinéma à l’air libre. J’ai vu cela en Espagne et en Italie, mais pour des raisons de climat etde lumière cela n’est pas possible en Norvège. Pendant l’été il ne fait nuit qu’entre 00.30 y 2 heures du matin, et même pendant cette période- là, il y a assez de lumière pour pouvoir lire. Quand on sait que les nuits d’été norvégiennes – bien qu'incroyablement belles – peuvent aussi être assez fraîches, on comprend pourquoi le cinéma à l’air libre n’est pas une tradition norvégienne. Details, I know... It doesn't make sense, but although "Norvège" takes an "accent grave", it' "aigu" on "Norvégien, norvégienne". That actually happens a lot: collège -- collégien, collégial. And uh... Can't think of any other examples, but it feels like there's a lot of word families where the base word takes a grave or other accent which turns into an "accent aigu" in the derived words. You can probably make it a rule without problems, even for invented words: Comète -- cométoïde, Sudètes (Sudetenland) -- Sidétique, ou même Claudel (poète français) -- Claudélien, etc... OK, that's the linguistic geek in me taking over, so I'll stop (those words I gave you are invented, but not by me, I re-invented them and actually found them on the Internet, which goes to say how interested I am in such useless considerations... Edit: OK, I re-read you first post and saw that you're actually not such a beginner at Russian. Still, you know more than I do (ok, that's maybe not saying much). Being dyslexic makes it all the more impressive that you learned so many languages, and it certainly can't be easy with the cyrillic alphabet, which is different but easily mixed with the Latin words (how often do I want to read Russian "r"s like "p"s? Actually going back and reviewing things I'd already learned, I realised I had learned a few words as if Rs were Ps, which means I have to forget them and re-learn them OX.) Anyhow, maybe you should just learn to speak for the moment, and worry later about writing? Edited by joanthemaid on 18 January 2011 at 3:51pm 2 persons have 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 55 of 221 25 January 2011 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
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@joantemaid Thanks for your corretions - I am a walking disaster when it comes to accents. I really need to do something about it. Oh. And I wouldn't count on me knowing more Russian than you do. But I keep trying!
I have not posted for a few days. It has been a very difficult week, even by my standards. On Friday I got another call from the hospital who said my mother was getting worse. I spent the evening with her, but she was unconscious. On Saturday my sister was with her, and on Sunday morning we got a call telling us that she had passed away. Hence no real studies this week end. However, I did experience that like so many other times during these last very difficult months, my Russian studies had therapeutic effects. I woke up at 3 a.m. and could not sleep last night, and started studying Russian adjective endings in the accusative. After half an hour I was sleeping like a baby again, and I also listened to Russian tapes in the car back and forth to the hospital. I doubt that I remember much of what I studied, but it got me through the worst. RUSSIAN Films Earlier in the week I watched ”Ivan’s childhood” , by Andrej Tarkovskij. Again a Russian classic. It was tough. Seeing a child in the middle of a war makes a big impression. Nevertheless I could not help that think that I am so trained in the American way of being emotionally engaged, that in an American film, a well groomed, well loved and well fed dog, whose paw gets hurt, will make me cry profusely. And here, because of a different film tradition, I watched a small orphan child experiencing the horrors of war, while my eyes remained dry. Whether it is just a different tradition, or because the director was simply not interested in making anyone cry, I do not. I still understand a word here and there, and the occasional sentence, so I just keep on watching films in the hope that they will make my ear get accustomed to the language, and that I will in the end understand most of the dialogue. I also saw “The Irony of Fate – the next generation”. I have not seen the original, and there was only Russian texts, so I am not quite sure how much I actually understood, but I look forward to borrowing it again in 6 months, and see how much I have learned. Vocabulary/Grammar I revised more than 300 Anki words and sentences during the week.I have also done a couple of chapters of grammar. Other Russian related activities – I have contacted the Russian embassy to find out about the possibility of multiple entry visas, I have found out where the Russian orthodox church in Oslo is, and plan to go to a mass whenever they have one in Russian. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 25 January 2011 at 9:59am 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 56 of 221 25 January 2011 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm so sorry to hear about your mother, Cristina. That is obviously a major loss, so it's perfectly
understandable that you haven't managed to get as much done this week. I'm sure no one in your team would blame you for lack of study under these circumstances. I hope things can start to resolve themselves a bit more for you, and that you have a much better time this week. I hope you feel better. A big bouquet of Internet roses for you, Ellasevia 1 person has voted this message useful |
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