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Hříbeček’s TAC 2012 - Team *jäŋe/*ledús | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5347 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 1 of 62 29 December 2011 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Welcome to my TAC 2012 log! This year I’m in the *jäŋe/*ledús (Finno-Ugric/Slavic) team, which is perfect for me because my two main focus languages are Hungarian and Czech and I also intend to dabble a bit in a few other languages from those language families.
Here are my logs from 2010 and 2011 – http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=22211 http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=24465 MY LANGUAGE STORY I grew up in a monolingual family in a monolingual town (I don’t remember ever hearing a foreign language spoken) in the South of England. My only experience with foreign languages came on holiday when we visited France every year and from the age of 11 I learned French at school. I learned French for 5 years and German for 2 years but due to the terrible teaching and my own complete lack of interest in those 2 languages at that time, I remember very little. The only conversation I had in French during the whole 5 years was in the speaking part (which we didn’t prepare for at all) of the final exam. Despite this negative experience at school, I remember that I must have had some inclination towards languages because I remember having short spells of wanderlust in the library with Italian and Swedish and me and my friends even developed our own kind of language which I can still speak to this day. In my early 20’s I started to get a strong desire to learn a foreign language; I was fascinated by the idea of being able to understand, think and communicate with foreigners in their language. I also have a passion for travel and so combined the two passions to go to Guatemala and Belize in order to learn Spanish in 2003. I had a 1 month intensive course in Guatemala and then spent 2 months living with a Spanish speaking family in a remote Belizean village. After this I lived for a couple of months or so in Seville and Barcelona and tried to develop my Spanish. In 2005 I got a job in the Czech Republic and started to study Czech intensively for 2 years. At the end of that period my Czech was quite advanced but my Spanish had slumped a bit to a weak Pre-Intermediate level. From late 2007 I refocused on Spanish and spent 1 month in South America and the in early 2009 I lived and worked in a remote Costa Rican village where my Spanish improved considerably. At this stage my Spanish was also quite advanced and my Czech had got a little bit worse but I had tried to maintain it as much as possible. In September 2009 I returned to the Czech Republic, because I wanted to get my Czech up to a native like level and I’ve been attempting to do that ever since! I still feel like I’m no closer in an active sense, my pronunciation is still very foreign (although maybe not English anymore) and my stuttering style of speaking in general really shows itself in Czech when I’m in a big group of Czechs. There are times when I do feel almost like a native, usually when I’m with another foreigner whose Czech is worse than mine but I still have a long way to go to get to that level. In 2010 I studied Mandarin Chinese for a year but that language never really got me, it was always a struggle to motivate myself to learn it. In 2011 I found a language which really did do it for me – Hungarian. I fell in love with the language and the country and always feel very motivated to learn it. I’ve realised that for whatever reason, Eastern European languages really appeal to me. I love grammar in general and I love the complexity of Czech grammar and the complex logic of Hungarian grammar. MY LANGUAGES THIS YEAR CZECH The most important, I hope I’ll never give up on my quest to speak like a native Czech. My listening and reading comprehension is very nearly at a native level, I feel almost as comfortable passively in Czech as in English. My problem is speaking, I can float between a B1 and C2 level depending on the people I’m with and situation I’m in. Even in English I’m a very bad public speaker because I was so painfully shy for so many years and still am to a certain extent. Current Level – C1 (C2 in listening and reading, C1 in writing and maybe B2 in speaking) Target – Improvement of any kind. HUNGARIAN My hobby language. The only reason for me to study it is love of the language. Current Level – High A2/Low B1 Target – B1 I aim to do a lot more listening this year, following Kisfroccs’s example, because I still suck at listening. SPANISH My social language. I only use it now in social settings and for writing emails and letters. Current Level – B2 Target – Maintain B2. OTHER Whereas 2010 was Mandarin year, 2011 was Hungarian year, I want this year to be the wanderlust and language expansion year. I want to broaden my knowledge of many languages. I might learn Northern Saami, Finnish, Croatian, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish to a basic level, plus improve my active Slovak. I also want to learn the Cyrillic alphabet and who knows what else. This part could change completely though, I’m open to whatever takes my fancy. It looks like Northern Saami will be the first of such challenges because my new teammate Chung is apparently preparing a course for me and others! I hope the team aspect will have a big motivating role in my studies this year as it did last year with my great teammate Kisfroccs who is again on my team. Hopefully Maxval will again prove to be invaluable with my Hungarian corrections. I’m also looking forward to being on the team with some new teammates – A3, Cathrynm, Volte, ChristianVlcek, Chung, Kafea and Mick33. Hopefully a couple more will also join. OUR MOTTO - Csak az csatlakozzon hozzánk, aki ilyet szeret Edited by hribecek on 29 December 2011 at 3:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5407 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 2 of 62 03 January 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hribecek, I have the honour to be the first one to post on your log :). As I was in holidays, I hadn't much opportunities to have the Internet, but that's fixed now. It's a very interesting choice to tell us about your language history. I might as well to it myself :).
Csak így tovább ! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5254 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 3 of 62 04 January 2012 at 9:29am | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5347 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 4 of 62 04 January 2012 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you both for your replies.
@A3, I was actually planning to start a thread on the general discussion forum about this. When we developed it, I believed that it was an original idea but then as an adult about 10 years later I met someone from a completely different part of England who also spoke this language, although a different form of it, and then I found out that it was a national idea with different forms according to the creators (I guess one of my friends pretended to come up with the idea but I don't remember). It's not actually a conlang, I don't know what you call it, it's an adaptation of every syllable in any language to make yourself unintelligible to everybody except those who speak both the real language plus the adapted form. I've heard that originally it was called 'bubble language' but our language was called 'huvagub'. Basically you have to add 'vag' or 'vug' to each syllable and it has some vowel harmony before and after it to adapt it to the specific syllable. For example in English - 'My name is Steve' would be 'muvagy navagame ivagis Stevageve'. (It's not a written language so the spelling is debatable). It's quite difficult to learn at first but once you learn it and practise it enough, you can adapt it to any language and pretty much never forget it! I used to speak it every day at school and still do occasionally when I'm with my other friend who speaks it. It's fun and great as a secret code! Whavagot avagabovagout yovagou? Divagid yovagou levagearn suvaguch avaga lavaganguvaguage avagat schovagool? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5407 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 5 of 62 04 January 2012 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Haha ! In French we have verlan, and sometimes I still use some words. I used to speak so much slang that my own mother didn't understood me.
We also have "javanais" and you add "ais" at each end of the word (or something like that). I was pretty young when I spoke that for fun with my friends. But I can't speak it now. Yesterday, I wrote that I had an encounter with an half cigány-serbian guy, and I said that they were some romani words in French slang. We tested this, and we found some, like "pourave / chouraver / gadji / gadjo..." haha it was fun :). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5347 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 6 of 62 10 January 2012 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Since the last 6 week challenge finished, I've been trying to relax my language studies a little bit so that I'll be raring to go for it big time again in February. So I've restricted myself to only doing things that I really feel like doing and not pushing myself. I always feel like working on languages though so the difference is mainly just in intensity, I've been doing something every day but probably half the amount that I did during the last 6 week challenge.
WANDERLUST! My first wanderlust project of the year is Northern Saami as Chung has put together a well-thought out basic course. I've completed the first couple of sections and recommend it to anybody interested in the Saami culture and language. As well as learning some words and phrases and features of the language, I've also learned about what they eat, what animals they encounter and the environment they live in. If you're reading this and even slightly interested, send Chung a PM and take the course. I've probably worked on Northern Saami for about 2 hours so far. CZECH Materials - TEXTBOOK - "Chcete ještě lépe mluvit česky", I finished this book about 2 years ago, but it's very thorough and I've been using it to review some difficult concepts. ANKI - I've added a couple of hundred more words to my stock and have been reviewing them. The words came from the recent novel I read. NATIVE MATERIALS - Watching TV, reading books and articles on seznam.cz, chatting to friends and family. VOICE RECORDER - I'm very technologically challenged but I recently realised that I have a voice recorder on my phone and have since been recording and listening to my Czech to try to work on it. It feels so weird to hear my accent for the first time, it seems like some kind of robot speaking Czech, I've got work to do! I think I'll post links to my recording on here and get them analysed by natives here. HUNGARIAN Materials - TEXTBOOK - "Teach Yourself Hungarian", I finished it a while ago, but I've been reviewing and listening to the dialogues again. FLASHCARDS - Instead of ANKI, I've made flashcards based on all the unknown or difficult vocabulary from my textbook and have been testing myself. KOSSUTH RADIO - I'm listening to it right now and is part of my drive to improve my listening. CHATTING and VOICE RECORDER - I've been chatting away to myself like a psycho and recording my voice on my phone. It's cringe making to hear how broken my speech is but at least I think I'm understandable most of the time. I'll post a link on the Hungarian thread when I work out how to transfer things from my mobile and then how to do a link! SPANISH Just chatting to people sometimes and writing the odd email. My computer and mobile phone settings are mainly in Spanish too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 62 10 January 2012 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm glad that you're enjoying what I've put together so far for Northern Saami. I'm also happy to "put in a good word" for an endangered language when the opportunity presents itself. Since you're not of Saamic ancestry (as far as I know), your enthusiasm would especially delight an acquaintance of mine in Finnish Sápmi who's involved with revitalization of the closely-related Inari Saami. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 62 10 January 2012 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
I tried to PM you, Chung, but your inbox is full. I'd love to see the course. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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