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BAnna’s TAC 2014 Spaß-Lobo-IndRussian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4620 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 105 of 236 02 December 2013 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Luso, Yes of course you are right...I was reading too many posts by super-polyglots. It's like the weekend tennis or soccer player looking at the pro athletes and thinking how lame he or she is, rather than thinking of all those who just sit on the couch...The routine isn't really so demanding, I only do it 1/2 hour per day (and only for the last 3 weeks). It's much more interesting than drilling Anki or writing out word lists, both of which I've tried and were like torture to me. I enjoy watching films, but find it rather passive. I don't know how effective this method is, but it is a bit more active than just watching. Time will tell.
I live in San Francisco. Somewhere I read there are at least 100 languages spoken in the metropolitan area (maybe because of Silicon valley?) Of course I left some important ones out: Vietnamese, Farsi, a slew of Indian languages, etc. A super-polyglot would have a field day here. @Sunja: I do find English subtitles pretty useless unless there is some incomprehensible dialog, since I end up tuning out the other language, but I have found Spanish and German subtitles to be good, even if they don't exactly match what's being said. There are the same "mumblers" you mentioned in your log in films as in real life. If only real people came with subtitles. LOL. Edited by BAnna on 02 December 2013 at 4:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6083 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 106 of 236 02 December 2013 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | ||
that makes me want to move back to California ^^ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4620 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 107 of 236 11 December 2013 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Summary of 2013:
Appx 750 hours studying German, I think I met my goal of being at the B2 level, haven't taken an exam, but I'm currently taking a C1 level class comfortably. Completed the SuperChallenge and exceeded the 100 books/100 films. That did a lot of push up my level, so I would recommend a similar effort to others. Highlight of the year was my trip to Switzerland/Germany, where I was not only able to take care of my needs without using English, but could also have interesting conversations with people. :) Another recommendation is to find a skype partner to do a tandem language exchange with, especially if you live in an area where there aren't a lot of native speakers. And last, do something, no matter how small, every single day. You will get better if you keep working at it. I've really enjoyed reading all the contributions from the Team Schnitzlers. And Josquin is the most amazing Godfather ever! Thank you to everyone and I wish you all the best in your future language learning endeavors. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4367 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 108 of 236 12 December 2013 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been following your log although I haven't commented, and I just wanted to say congratulations on all of you accomplishments! By the way, for whatever it's worth, my German study time is now at around 750 hours (probably a little over, but I was being very conservative in my estimates), and I would say I'm at around a B2 level. Again, congratulations on what you achieved, and I hope to continue reading your log in 2014!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4620 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 109 of 236 28 December 2013 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
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2014 TAC goals:
German: Continue to build on current B2 level via skype, reading, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, exchanging emails, attending meetups, watching films, etc. Will be trying out a "Literatur-Cafe" weekly reading group beginning in January (Elsa Ungeheuer is the book). Russian: Starting from zero here and wasn't able to join the team in time, but that's ok, will do this independently for now. Undoubtedly this will be a multi-year (decade?) project if I am able to stick with it. First goal is to learn the alphabet via Teach Yourself Read and Write Russian Script. Spanish: I have been using Spanish daily for over 40 years, but rarely do pleasure reading in the language, so my goal this year is to develop a more literary vocabulary by intensively reading novels. First book: Cuentos de Eva Luna por Isabel Allende. Edited by BAnna on 28 December 2013 at 7:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4620 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 110 of 236 01 January 2014 at 4:48am | IP Logged | ||
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First 2014 TAC Update: It's not yet 2014 here where I am, but it is certainly already next year many places on Earth already, so... here is an update on the end of 2013 and a look ahead toward the coming year.
Something is wrong with my settings (encoding or something) although I do think I have things set to Unicode UTF-8. My email notifications are coming in as from the German Team as from Team Spay...hmm. And when I previewed my post in German and Spanish, all the umlauts and accents were garbled, so after messing about for too long trying to fix it, I'll just stay in English. German: doing my usual thing (a lot of input) and am currently reading Die Vermessung der Welt. Pretty good so far. Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr! Spanish: read about 50 pages of Los Cuentos de Eva Luna, but have decided to stop. It's not difficult to read, but it just didn't hold my interest. I've also been doing some online exercises on the Bowdoin College website, since I have not really ever studied Spanish grammar. Have also watched a couple of films from Spain and Argentina, just to be exposed to some different accents and vocabulary than what I usually hear, which tends to be Mexican- and Central American-accented Spanish. The Spaniards say "vale" a lot for ok, which my Nicaraguan husband finds hilarious. Russian I am making progress in learning the Cyrillic alphabet. I did not know before that one writes the letters differently than the printed form. For example a printed Cyrillic letter T looks very much like a Latin T when printed, but like a Latin m when written by hand. I am also using a couple of websites: Russian for Everyone and Russisches Alphabet (a German site). I was able to get Pimsleur Russian 1A from the library, but the first CD is damaged. I will try to make some progress with the cds that do work, although I think Pimsleur may be cumulative (not sure since I have not used it before). Undoubtedly Russian will be a huge challenge, but it is very interesting and of course Russian culture is really fascinating. I need to really think over what my goals are and how much time I am willing to invest. In my first TAC signup post I think I said my 2014 goal was A2, which seems now to be completely absurd. Solid A1 will be a stretch: It seems I need a 5 year plan ... ;) Something very cool did happen as I was reading in a cafe. The man at the next table picked up his cell phone and I clearly heard him say in Russian Hi and Bye (something like privyet and baka). This was a thrill for me, although of course in between those two words was to my ears a completely incomprehensible 10-minute conversation. My goal is definitely NOT to be an eavesdropper, but it was satisfying to understand even those two words. Happy New Year to all! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4620 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 111 of 236 03 January 2014 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Deutsch
Ich habe gerade „Die Vermessung der Welt” von Daniel Kehlmann gelesen. Ich habe viele Wörter getroffen, die ich vielleicht nie im Leben benutze wird, z.B. mathematische Begriffe und einige altmodischen Wörter. Es war ziemlich witzig und leicht zu lesen, obwohl die Dialoge in der indirekter Rede erzählt wurden. Die zwei Helden waren gleichzeitig superklug und ahnungslos. Das Buch ist eine eingebildete Biographie von Alexander von Humboldt und Carl Gauß, der letzten heute berühmt wegen der Glockenkurve der Wahrscheinlichkeit. Ich habe sogar laut gelacht als Humboldt Goethes Gedicht Wandrers Nachtlied ins Spanisch übersetzte und sein Publikum völlig unbeeindruckt war...aber es war auch ziemlich seriös und es gab am Ende Gedanken über Leben und Sterben. Meine Freundin hat mir ein deutsches Hörbuch geschenkt, aber ich weiß nicht ob ich Lust habe, es zu hören. Hat jemand „Der Geschmack von Apfelkerne” schon gelesen? Wenn ja, würdest du es empfehlen? Ich bin normalerweise kein Fan von Liebesgeschichten, aber es war ein Geschenk...Ich soll dankbar sein. Vielleicht ist es doch keine Liebesgeschichte? Español Vi una película española que se llamaba Un franco, 14 pesetas. Se trataba de españoles que fueron a Suiza a trabajar en los sesentas. Había subtítulos en español cuando la gente hablaba alemán. No era tan fácil comprender el alemán porque hablaban con acento suizo y los españoles a veces hablaron alemán con acento español. Había una parte que al principio no pude comprender bien, pero pronto me di cuenta de que estaban hablando Italiano. Acabo de comenzar a leer La breve y maravillosa vida de Óscar Wao por Junot Díaz. ¡Ojalá que me sale mejor que el último libro! Tiene muchas expresiones regionales de la Republica Dominicana y también argot urbano de los EE. UU. Русский I found Pimsleur lesson 1 on youtube and went through it a couple of times. I feel quite insecure at this point with Russian. It is quite different from other languages I am familiar with, so I am trying to just enjoy the incertitude. I think for now 20-30 minutes a day is about all I can handle. Starting with a brand new language is a much different experience than expanding on a known one. The learning curve is steep, but progress is very tangible. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| milesaway Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4329 days ago 134 posts - 181 votes Speaks: French, English*, Russian Studies: Finnish, Sign Language | Message 112 of 236 03 January 2014 at 8:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Привет is hi, used informally (with friends and such)
Пока is bye, also used in more informal situations. Cursive Cyrillic is a bit of a challenge at first, It took me a while to get it right, and almost a year before I could comfortably write in cursive with the letters attached. I would write them cursive, but slightly detached, otherwise I couldn't read it after! Once you get past the alphabet, it's just like learning any other language. Good luck! Удачи! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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