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TAC 2012 Official Thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ampzor Newbie United States Joined 4955 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 217 of 361 25 December 2011 at 3:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I am also new here. But I have been wondering around reading this site for awhile now and I have decided that enough is enough. I am going to start taking my language learning seriously. Here is my info:
Language(s) you plan to study: German, and possibly Spanish Your current level(s): German A1 (been dabbling around since last spring), Spanish A1 (took two years on Spanish in high school but I don't remember much) Your goals for the challenge: German - Active B1 and Passive B2 (Active A2 and Passive B1 by Summer), Spanish - Active A2 and Passive B1 Whether you would like to be on a team or an individual participant: Being on a team would be ideal. I am most concerned about picking up German so if there is not an open team for both German and Spanish, I would like to find a German team. I want to mention that I am an engineering student and like many others on this forum I have a busy life. But I am confident that I can devote at least an hour or two a day towards my languages. Due to tests, projects, and homework I may have to move around my study hours to different parts of the day. This will be my last "real" semester of college until I hit my senior design classes which will open up more free-time next Fall. That being said, if there is anyone out there wanting to form/incorporate me into their team, please let me know! I know many of the users on this forum are not native speakers of English so I might be able to offer something there as well as a bit of homework help ;). Browsing through this thread I found that the following people would probably go great together (either looking at learning just German or German and another language): PacoBell Ligador AlephBey ummagumma Just a Dreamer Hidden Serpent ChristianVlcek kyknos If any of you guys are interested let me know! Edited by ampzor on 25 December 2011 at 5:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5879 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 218 of 361 25 December 2011 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I've already started my language log, Endlich Deutsch!, and would gladly join a German team.
Though I'm always learning other languages (even Portuguese, it must be said), my focus during the entire year of 2012 will be German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 219 of 361 25 December 2011 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5690 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 220 of 361 25 December 2011 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has anyone yet made a list of all the teams that have been created so far?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5045 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 221 of 361 26 December 2011 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Jinx, I think you should consult message 149 here. Edited by Takato on 26 December 2011 at 10:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5370 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 222 of 361 26 December 2011 at 2:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I would like to join the TAC 2012 studying Hindi and Irish. Both are at a beginner level. With Hindi I intend to spend a few months in India at the beginning of 2013, if the opportunity arises. If not, I'd like to have it anyway. Irish is much more of a hobby subject, and I'd like to dedicate most of my time to Hindi. I'd like to be in a team that studies both, if possible, or even just one of the languages. I'm aware they're both less common.
I will not be able to compete for the whole year, but for long spurts I can be motivated. Particularly at the beginning of the year I will have little other work, as the first few months of any university semester aren't too stressful. Thanks! --- Second edit: I would like to propose for, and with support make, the Rarely Studied Languages group. I don't think an Indic or Celtic group is likely to turn up, plus I will do some Icelandic in addition. On this thread, you guys all expressed some degree of interest in joining, and if you don't object to joining two teams, I would like to invite you in. Mani Serpent Chung (I know you're in the Finno-Ugric group as well) Pertklic Thanks again. Sending a message to you all. We would need a name ... perhaps "Team ?" would do, although in this forum I doubt many languages would even raise an eyebrow. Edited by PaulLambeth on 26 December 2011 at 5:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leisaowns Newbie United States Joined 4832 days ago 12 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese | Message 223 of 361 26 December 2011 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I decided I'd like to take part in this year's challenge! I got some new language learning books for Christmas that I'd really like to use to both their and my fullest potential.
This upcoming year I plan to focus primarily and intensively on Japanese. I'll also be studying Mandarin, Modern Standard Arabic, French, and maybe some Portuguese if I can handle it. I'd say I'm at a lower intermediate level in Japanese, though I'm not entirely sure. I'm an advanced beginner in Mandarin, and beginner in MSA, French, and Portugese. Yeah, something like that... I just want to feel comfortable and confident in my Japanese abilities by the end of the year. I want to get rid of the anxiety I feel every time one of my Japanese friends instant messages me. I'd also like to be able to read through the Japanese readers I've acquired this Christmas without slaving over a dictionary. For Mandarin, I suppose I'd like to finish my online classes for it and work through the Living Language Mandarin book. For Arabic, I just want to be able to speak, read, write, and comprehend simple sentences (This language is going to be so tough - I'm already getting frusturated with the alphabet! haha). I'd also like to finish Assimil French With Ease, and maybe even my Everything Brazilian Portugese book. I'd like to join Team い since my main focus will be on Japanese. This is probably a lot of work I'm setting up for myself, but I have so much downtime in school. I'm up for the challenge! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7153 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 224 of 361 26 December 2011 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
The first matter would be to define "rarely studied language". Rarely studied by whom? I'm not sure if I'd call Hindustani a rarely studied language no matter what outsiders may think as having nearly 500 million speakers (L1 & L2) must count for something. I suggest three ways to get around this problem although all of these will leave Hindustani out, and even Icelandic would be squeezed out in my third suggestion. The first idea is to do a reverse "Top 40" list. In other words the first 40 languages ranked in descending order by number of native speakers cannot be studied but what's left is open. The 40 languages on the "anti-playlist" are: Arabic Awadhi Bengali Bhojpuri Burmese Cantonese English Farsi (includes Dari, Tajik and Hazara) French German Gujarati Hakka Hindi-Urdu Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Korean Maithili Malay/Indonesian Malayalam Mandarin Marathi Marwari Oriya Pashto Polish Portuguese Punjabi Russian Shanghainese Spanish Sundanese Taiwanese Tamil Telugu Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Xiang (Hunanese) The second idea is to take the hackneyed cry of "We are the 99%" and apply it to grouping languages to study. Basically 60 languages or the nefarious "1%" of the 6000 odd languages as ranked by number of native speakers are excluded. The remaining 99% (~ 5940 languages) forms the only "worthy" choices. The "1%" that's to be excluded is: Amharic Arabic Assamese Awadhi Azeri BCMS / Serbo-Croatian Bengali Bhojpuri Burmese Cantonese Chhattisgarhi Dutch English Farsi (includes Dari, Tajik and Hazara) French Gan German Gujarati Hakka Hausa Hindi-Urdu Igbo Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Korean Kurdish Lao-Isan Maithili Malay/Indonesian Malayalam Mandarin Marathi Marwari Northern Berber Oriya Oromo Pashto Polish Portuguese Punjabi Rajasthani Romanian Russian Shanghainese Sindhi Spanish Sundanese Tagalog Taiwanese Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Uzbek Vietnamese Xiang (Hunanese) Yoruba Yes, I note the irony of this suggestion because this 1% of the world's languages counts over 4 billion native speakers or about 60% of the world's population (4 billion out of 7 billion). In other words the top 60 languages by number of native speakers are spoken natively by about 60% of the Earth's population. The third way takes the related suggestion of a team for endangered (plus vulnerable?) languages. UNESCO has an interactive map and list showing the vitality of languages and divides endangerment further into three grades (incidentally, UNESCO classifies Northern Saami as "definitely endangered" which is worse than "vulnerable" but better than "severely endangered" to say nothing of "critically endangered" and "extinct"). Moreover "vulnerable" and "definitely endangered languages" would be rarely studied (e.g. Faroese, Maori, Rapa Nui). Anyway, I don't have anything against being part of a third team. As I had mentioned earlier, my study of Northern Saami would neatly qualify my learning a rarely studied language although it seems a bit incidental. My focus remains on Finnish and Northern Saami for now. Yet after I finish Davvin 2, the latter may be replaced by another language which might not be endangered, vulnerable or on a "black list". On one hand, Belorussian, Livonian and Mari would be "safe" choices under any of the criteria that I've mentioned but Latvian and Ukrainian don't fit in at least one of these criteria. If I were to be a member of this team, I probably wouldn't be as active as on Team *jäŋe / *ledús since I feel that I should show some loyalty to my study group. My posts here would be limited to linking to my log whenever I put down an entry about a rarely studied language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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