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Embici’s slow road to Greek | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes  Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 81 of 108 15 July 2013 at 10:54am | IP Logged |
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Good work! Εύγε!
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| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 82 of 108 03 August 2013 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks renaissancemedi!
I don't have much of an update. My Greek tutor is on holiday so I've put away the book he uses and have gone back to some of the other Greek-learning materials I have. "Greek: An Essential Grammar of the Modern Language" has been particularly helpful in clarifying some things that weren't very clear to me or that I thought I understood, but didn't really. I've also been using HAU's podcasts. They're very good for Listening-Reading as well as shadowing. I've also been using Living Language's Spoken World Greek. I find it quite vocabulary heavy which has been my weak area. I've also registered for the August 6 week challenge for Greek. I was reading the instructions and saw that we shouldn't be above A2 to participate. I've been studying Greek on my own for over a year and I'm probably not above A2 yet. That's pathetic! I really should be putting more time into my studies otherwise it's not really a challenge, is it? Well, there are only so many hours in the day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 83 of 108 16 August 2013 at 8:30pm | IP Logged |
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I am enjoying being off work for the last week and have taken advantage to do lots of
studying. I have been going through the first six lessons of Spoken World Greek. I really like this course. It has six CDs. Three are meant to be used with the book and the other three are for use without the book. The audio in both sets corresponds to the same lessons but the first is for listening and reading and the second group of CDs, for using without the book, has pauses for repeating as well as exercises that aren't in the book. I've also taken a few Skype lessons this week. When I first started the Skype Greek lessons back in January, I wondered if it was too early in my studies to start speaking. I just couldn't say very much then. Now, after about 6 months of almost weekly online lessons I can chat for an hour in Greek only resorting to English for a few words here and there. What a great feeling! So, I've tried some Catalan, French and Italian lessons lately and really enjoyed them as well. I recently had an Italian lesson on Verbling. I think I've mentioned before that I really like the idea of Verbling: just log on and start talking to someone, or take a group class (without planning 24 hours in advance like with iTalki); but, I found that there wasn't much for me as a Greek learner. I still haven't found anyone to speak Greek with there. However, I did like the Italian lesson and I may take more. It was only $3 for an hour and there were just four or five other students. I took one semester of Italian in high school, decades ago, but it was still there buried in my brain. I managed to say a few sentences and conjugate a few verbs. I'll be away from home next week, at a quiet resort by a lake so I look forwarding to the peace and quiet with my Greek books. Edited by embici on 17 August 2013 at 1:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 84 of 108 21 September 2013 at 1:56pm | IP Logged |
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My long overdue update...
I managed to do some studying during my vacation in August. I mostly used Spoken World Greek. I also took an Italian class on Verbling just to see if the Italian I studied in high school in the 80s was still kicking around in my head. It was a fun challenge. Verbling classes are inexpensive, handy (you don't have to book days in advance) but there isn't a lot of opportunity to speak during that hour as there can be up to 8 or 9 in the class. I also took a few French conversation classes via Skype. Now that my daughter is going to a French-language school I'm motivated to work on my rusty French. All communications from the school are in French and so far I haven't had any difficulty understanding (I do have to look up a word or two per page) but as she gets older and I have to help with homework it might get a bit more challenging. There has been a lot of turmoil at my workplace over the last five months or so. My department was closed and I've had to find work in another department, and now I find myself on strike. It's been very stressful and time consuming so studying Greek has taken a back seat. Maybe I'll write "on strike" in Greek on my picket sign. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 85 of 108 23 September 2013 at 9:51am | IP Logged |
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You should also learn how to swear in Greek. It's very enjoyable, and noone will get it. :)
Anyway, good work. Even a little is better than nothing! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 86 of 108 21 October 2013 at 9:59pm | IP Logged |
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The strike is finally over. Because of a very demanding picket duty schedule I got no
studying in whatsoever for over a month. I'm trying to get back into my routine of Greek study but I feel a bit aimless with that right now. I should probably decide soon if I'm going to write-off this whole TAC thing for this year or if I'll cram in a lot of study till the end of he year. We might be taking a trip to Cuba this winter so I have sought out some conversation exchange partners and have begun working on polishing off my rusty Spanish. I'm still quite nervous chatting with complete strangers via Skype. I thought it would get easier by now, but it hasn't. It's strange, I'm not terribly shy in real life. Edit: typo Edited by embici on 25 October 2013 at 2:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 87 of 108 08 November 2013 at 1:45am | IP Logged |
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I often read, enviously, about our forum colleagues in Europe who can just pop over for
a mini break to this or that country. In North America, we don't have a lot of countries nearby to travel to. However, I did recently travel abroad so to speak. I was in Chicago during our Thanksgiving weekend in October and I had lots of opportunities to speak Spanish. I met up with some Spanish-speaking friends who had travelled to Chicago and everywhere we went, Spanish-speaking service workers switched to Spanish when they heard us. It was great practice for me, and flattering that they would switch to Spanish with me when I don't look stereotypically Latina at all. But I did notice I'm a bit rusty. I have started practising Spanish a lot more lately. I've also gotten back on track with Greek. I am taking lessons again. I find I really need that to keep me on track. Having to prepare for a weekly lesson is the motivation that I need, particularly now, when I no longer have any definite plans to travel to Greece. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 88 of 108 09 November 2013 at 2:44am | IP Logged |
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About 20 years ago I enrolled in a Mandarin Chinese class. After just a few months, the
organizers decided that there weren't enough people in the Mandarin for English speakers class and the Mandarin for Cantonese speakers class to warrant continuing both separately so they decided to merge them. That's when I decided to call it quits. Even though I hadn't studied Mandarin for very long, I felt I would never get the tones right. I knew I would be completely lost in a class with Cantonese speakers who already had familiarity with tones. Other than the tones, I progressed quickly. It wasn't hard to read pinyin and to understand the way that words were constructed (my knowledge of Spanish helped with the former and Quichua helped with the latter). Oh, but the tones! I still fear them and have never attempted to study Chinese again. This reminds me of something a friend of mine told me once. She had spent time in Thailand and Colombia and she told me that she found she learned Thai faster than Spanish. She said that as an opera singer, tonal languages are much easier to learn. It seemed rather far fetched to me, but who was I to argue with her experience? That got me thinking about musical ears and language learning. I often hear that people who are good at music tend to be good at languages. I have a very bad ear for music, however, in my second and third languages (French and Spanish) I have been mistaken for a native speaker. My limited vocabulary and grammatical mistakes eventually give me away, nevertheless, my accent, I've been told, is pretty good. Should I give Mandarin another try? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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