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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 41 of 270 30 January 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cristina, this log is awesome. I was about to tell you for a few weeks already.
Your list of studied languages seems to be quite growing. Where do you take time for all of it? I must admit this is a huge trouble of mine that I let my languages rot when things pile up... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4713 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 42 of 270 30 January 2012 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | ||
The example my wife gave me was "Я не люблю новые книги." (accusative case, the same as the affirmative) instead of "Я не люблю новых книг." (genitive case). My wife is from Moscow, so I don't think it's a dialect at all. You can see on my log that other Russians (Марк, Serpent and s0fist) confirmed that they don't use the genitive for negations with "не". I assumed it's mandatory only with "нет" like in the sentences "Его нет дома." or "У меня нет машины.". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 43 of 270 31 January 2012 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||
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@tarvos: Yes, I imagine they would :-)
@jellyfish: Thank you, that is really a big help! @Ruskivyetr: I am happy I am not alone. @Kerrie: Yes, just as they say that the shopping centres are the new cathedrals, my log is the new confessional :-) @Cavesa: Thank you, what a lovely comment:-). Yes, I have also noticed with concern that my language list seems to be growing, but if you add up the 4-5 languages I have spent the least time on, you see that it does not really take up that much time. I am trying to spend as much time as possible on my focus languages, in particular Russian, and I am just giving myself free reign when it comes to dabbling, to keep enjoying myself. @fabriziocarrarao:Thanks, I'll bring that example to my teacher. It is 30 year since she left Russia, so it is possile that she is simply out of touch. GERMAN Today I had 2 . 5 hours of German class. And I doubt there is another German class in the whole wide world just like it. We have a very nice, unorthodox teacher, who is half Italian and half German, but who grew up in Germany, and in between the pure torture of having to do grammar exercises, I do my best to derail him and speak as much as possible instead. Both my colleague and I are flexible people, and I think we shatter most of his preconceptions about Norwegians, just as he shatters any preconceptions we might have had about Germans. The poor guy does his best to keep to some sort of theme, but usually the conversation ends up in all possible directions. One of the first texts we had today was about Religion, so he says to me: “I suppose you are a normal Norwegian woman when it comes to religion”. So I go: “Norwegian, yes, woman, yes, normal, hardly”. So he says: “Ok., but I mean when it comes to religion?” So I gave him the highlights of my religious life, which include being the religion teacher’s favorite pupil, because I knew all the stories of the bible, yet not being allowed to stand for confirmation because of a bigoted minister who did not like that my parents were divorced, leaving the church for 17 years, yet at some point becoming president of the local church council. Absolutely not your standard Norwegian. I then proceeded to ask him if it was normal for young girls to courtesy in Germany. I asked because when I was a girl, we all did that, but now it is uncommon, yet yesterday a friend of my daughter, who is 15 years old, actually did that when we were introduced. I then proceeded to tell him how as an 11 year old in Spain, I had been introduced to a famous author, and like the well brought up little thing I was at the time, I did of course courtesy, and he just laughed at me, because that was not common in Spain. I still remember how much I blushed. An English teacher walked in at that point, so I asked him what the situation was like in England, and after having been told that you only did that to the Royals now, I then proceeded to tell our teacher about my wedding. The reason why that came up, was because our minister forced me to courtesy to my husband at the altar, and when doing so I lost my balance, and came very close to falling flat on my face on top of my wedding bouquet. While telling this I did a full reenactment of the whole incident, including describing my veil. I must have been the last woman in the Western Hemisphere wearing a veil at her wedding. And I do not mean one like everyone wears, which is on the top of your head and back. This one covered my face, and went all the way down to my waist, and it was not drawn back until after the wedding ceremony. I have no idea why that seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but I still remember the gasp of shock of all my friends as I entered the church looking like something out of 1001 nights. And of course, like Scheherazade, who told stories to avoid beheading, I tell stories to avoid having to do the German grammar exercises. Practically the same thing, if you ask me :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 31 January 2012 at 12:18am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 44 of 270 31 January 2012 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Your analogy of German grammar exercises with beheading and the description of your wedding sent me into a fit of chuckles this evening, leaving me with a rather vivid afterimage of you on your wedding day as a grand vizier's veiled daughter, with curved scimitar-wielding grammar assassins looming ominously in the aisles, and all manner of Persian diversion and eastern promise drifting into your classroom! I often find my head rolling in frustration to the end of German sentences myself in search of that elusive key verb, but thankfully so far it's remained reassuringly attached. Now if I can only find a magic Musovite lamp or Cossack genie to grant me my wish of fluency in Russian by the end of the year, I'd be a happy man. :)
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 45 of 270 02 February 2012 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||
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@teango: And I thought I was the one with the vivid imagination :-)
RUSSIAN A fairly good day. I listened to Pimsleur in the shower, to Michel Thomas over breakfast, and revised my writing exercises in the train. Then I had planned to spend my lunch break on some Russian grammar, but of course today it was chaos, and I did not get to do anything at work. I was so late I had to take a taxi home, and I spent the time making the taxi driver teach me a couple of words in Punjabi - the Indian version according to the driver. He gave me the following words: changa din - good morning tuohada ki hal he - how are you thik he - I am fine chalie - let's go. Can anyone confirm that this is actually somewhat correct, and not Punjabi profanities? Then in the afternoon I snook down to the basement where I was stretched out on the floor in the bathroom for an hour, studying a Norwegian Russian book called Sosiedi (Named so because Norway and Russia are sosiedi - neighbours). Actually I was there for an hour and ten minutes, but since my little kitten kept interrupting me, I had to count out the ten minutes. He is so cute I could eat him, he is all white, with dark blue eyes, and we forgive him everything. He is called Angel, and Angel, like the rest of the household, does not like me studying Russian. He got into a fight with my pen (it moved first!), he started gnawing on the corner of my book, and when I ignored that too, he finaly just sat on my book. A bit hard to ignore a cat sitting right in the middle of your book, So I took some time off just cuddling him. Last week he managed to jump into the toilet, He was playing in the bathroom, and he often uses the toilet lid as a stepping stone to get on top of the bench. Since he is so small, he did not see that the lid was up, so he took a jump and landed right in the water, I did not see it myself, he was in the bathroom with my husband, but I heard his yelp. You may wonder why I was on the bathroom floor while studying. Simple. The bathroom doubles as a utility room, so when I am there the rest of the family think I am folding clothes and leave me alone. And I am on the floor because I do not fancy sitting on a toilet lid for an hour doing my Russian exercises. I was of course discovered in the end by a very accusatory daughter: "You mean you would rather be down here with your Russian books, than upstairs with me?" So I had to go up and watch the episode of Bones I watched yesterday, again today with her. Don't ask... I have the day off tomorrow, so although I have lots to do, I am counting on also doing lots of Russian. Insha Allah... Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 02 February 2012 at 12:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mani Diglot Senior Member Germany imsprachendickicht.b Joined 4903 days ago 258 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, Welsh, Luxembourgish | Message 46 of 270 02 February 2012 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I don't know any Punjabi, but as the Indo-Aryan languages are a bit like the Romance languages among one another and knowing some Hindi and Bengali I'd say he didn't give you profanities.
I googled a little and found a nice page from Punjabi University, Patiala you might like. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 47 of 270 06 February 2012 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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@Mani: Thanks, That was very useful!
FIRST WEEK OF FEBRUARY, AND FIRST WEEK OF THE 6 WEEKS CHALLENGE Wow! Is this 6 week challenge giving me a study boost or what? I studied more Russian this week, than I did for the two last weeks put together! I have not been able to focus so well on my Russian for ages, so I really needed to do that. RUSSIAN When I dropped my Russian Berlitz classes 18 months ago, I did not really feel I was going anywhere, and I hated the three books we were using. I hated the Berlitz book most of all, as it was totally useless for self study. I hated the other one the teacher got me too, as it was confusing, and also only in Russian. Then I got the book which is used at Norwegian high schools, called Sosiedi, and it is actually quite a good book in terms of what you can learn. The sad thing is that it has a weird vocabulary, and the texts are really boring, but it has good explanations and exercises. I have no doubt that words like government, and art and puppet theater and fortress and brick buildings are all good to learn, but do they have to come already in lesson 7? One of the reasons I have been doing different courses at the same time, is that I thought that then the most important vocabulary would be clear to me, since the words that appeared in all the courses would logically be the most used ones. This book has a vocabulary which seems to be specifically designed for pupils living in the North of Norway, and who might make frequent trips to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Some of those words will not enter my head. I spent almost half an hour yesterday and half an hour today doing just 5 words which I found difficult. 3 of them I was eventually able to do, but the last two, I am just about to give up. I have tried everything: I have written them down by hand several times, and tried to then write it in Norwegian and translate it. Blank. I have tried writing it down in context – which make me understand it and remember it passively, but it does not enter my active vocabulary. Since one of the words means beach promenade, I tried picturing myself walking down it while singing the word for it. Singing a difficult word to some Disney tune usually does the trick. Blank. I even tried sleeping on it, hoping that my brain would magically absorb it during the night. Blank. Do any of you have better ideas for how to learn vocabulary that just won’t penetrate your skull? When I tried to teach my kids French 10 years ago, I would take sentences and sing them to the songs from the film Aladdin, and dance around the house while doing it, and they learned it fast enough, Of course, they were 2 and 5. I am – not. Also my teacher was pleasantly surprised at how much vocabulary I remembered from lesson 6 of that book which was the last lesson we had done, and I had to confess that I had been reviewing the vocabulary a bit. I thought she would be dismissive, and think that I was just as big a fool as she has always seen me as, but she was actually quite appreciative. I guess a pupil who is in her late 40ies, who comes in once in a blue moon to actually take a class, who refuses to do any homework and who is incapable of retaining neither grammar nor vocabulary could bring anyone to the brink of tears. I can’t wait to see her face now that I have actually done all the exercises, learned the vocabulary and even written up extra sentences. I suspect she is going to ask me: “Who are you, and what have you done to Cristina”? I have also done quite a lot of Michel Thomas and Pimsleur. With Michel Thomas I did a weird thing, which was to start with part three, the vocabulary course, and now I am doing the foundation course, and will then move on to the advanced course. The reason is that when I became aware of the MT course, I figured I would be too advanced for the two first courses, but might like the vocabulary course. And I did like the vocabulary course, it was just right for me. In fact I liked it so much that I went back to buy the foundation course and the advanced course. Since I know a lot of the vocabulary, I can concentrate more on listening to the grammar, which suits me fine. On Pimsleur I am around lesson 25 on the second course, and wondering how everyone else uses Pimsleur. Do you just listen right through the whole course without stopping, do you repeat the lessons until you know everything or do you do something in between? ENGLISH I tend not to count English, but since we are in a competition, and I actually do watch masses of English, with English subtitles only, I am including it in my count. I only count 50% of the time for the bot, since it is a TV-series, but since we are addicted to this series “Bones” right now we are watching it quite intensively. I use it as a treat for the girls, and have got quite hooked too. I must admit that there is so much medical lingo, that I struggle to keep up, but since I see that the non scientists among them struggle too, I figure that I am in good company. I have listed the time in full here, though. Studies this week: Russian: 14 hours 5 minutes German: 2 hours 30 minutes Spanish: 2 0 minutes Punjaabi 10 minutes English 8 hours 40 minutes Total this year: Russian: 45 h 45 min German: 10 h 30 minutes Greek: 2h 10 min Spanish: 8 h 55 English: 13 h 40 minutes French: 40 minutes Italian: 3h 30 minutes Icelandic:20 minutes Mandarin: 45 minutes Ukrainian: 30 minutes Arabic: 1 hour and 5 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5333 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 48 of 270 06 February 2012 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
Hi Cristina, congratulations on your excellent 6WC score as well as your good taste in TV shows. I love Bones and I kind of love the medical lingo as well but then I have about six years of watching Grey's Anatomy and House under my belt so I'm used to it by now. When my aunt was in the hospital last year, I actually had to ask the doctors to explain things to me in English instead of Dutch because I got so confused hearing words like MRI pronounced in Dutch. Oh, and I agree that agent Booth is excellent company to be in. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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