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TAC 2013 Tandem Winnipeg-Berlin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 113 of 137 01 August 2013 at 11:38am | IP Logged |
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Time for the 6-week challenge! Not sure how much time I'll have to devote to this, but I choose Estonian.
I'm using a German language course by Cornelsen which is just challenging enough for a seasoned learner. Of course, my previous foray into Finnish is proving quite helpful with grammar/case concepts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 114 of 137 01 August 2013 at 1:18pm | IP Logged |
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I chose Indonesian, because I get the feeling that it's eminently possible to reach
somewhere maintainable in another 6 weeks; otherwise I'm still at an early enough stage that I could lose all I studied before. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 115 of 137 12 August 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
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Is Estonian harder than Finnish?
Although I’ve only had a beginner’s encounter with both of these languages and there is little I can say about advanced grammar in either language, I would venture at this point that Estonian presents a slightly higher level of difficulty for the following reasons: -When the Finnish and Estonian words are related, Estonian tends to have lost the final vowel, which implies that it’s more difficult to guess what vowel is going to pop up when the word appears in a different case (or in a compound word) -- a bit like how French final-vowel dropping makes gender hard to learn. -Although Finnish vowel harmony initially presents an interesting challenge, it quickly becomes obvious that it limits the number of possible sounds in a word; the lack of vowel harmony in Estonian means that vocabulary is harder to remember as any vowel is possible (eg. both täda and tädä are technically possible). -Further phonological complications: there are more vowels in Estonian, less of a correspondence between the orthography and the pronunciation (particularly in terms of voicing and gemination) and a mysterious 3-way consonant length system that isn’t expressed in the orthography. Moreover, stress is sometimes not on the first syllable (I can't confirm that this isn't the case in Finnish, though.) Edited by Arekkusu on 12 August 2013 at 8:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4428 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin | Message 116 of 137 15 August 2013 at 3:42am | IP Logged |
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This tandem log is such a good idea. It seems like you guys are really keeping each other motivated and on the ball!
I wonder if i'll be able to find someone to be my TAC partner next year. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 117 of 137 17 August 2013 at 12:30pm | IP Logged |
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I finished another book:
Book 1: "B.A.f.H. - Das Neueste vom Bastard Assistant" by Florian Schiel Book 2: "Το ταξίδι στη χώρα που δε βλέπουν τα μάτια..." by Αντώνης Καλογήρου Book 3: "Io Alessandro" by Steven Pressfield Book 4: "L'Irak du silence" by Marie de Varney Book 5: "Ramsès - le temple des millions d'années" by Christian Jacq Book 6: "Oni ne pafas en Jamburg" by Mikaelo Bronŝtejn Book 7: "搭车去柏林" by 刘畅 Book 8: "Babel-17" by Samuel R. Delaney Book 9: "Without Reserve" by Abigail Reynolds Book 10: "Eine Billion Dollar" by Andreas Eschbach Book 11: "La ABC de tempoplanado" by Lothar J. Seiwert. Book 12: "Spanisch für Büffelmuffel" Book 13: "Le porte di fuoco" by Steven Pressfield Book 14: La Cultura Aymara Book 15: La oralidad fingida: descripción y traducción Book 16: "How to Improve Your Foreign Language IMMEDIATELY" by Boris Shekhtman Book 17: "Overhearing Film Dialogue" by Sarah Kozloff Book 18: "Aventuroj de pioniro" by Edmond Privat Book 19: "Vieni via con me" by Roberto Saviano Book 20: "Io sono nessuno" by Wainer Molteni Book 21: "Notti africane" by Kuki Gallmann That's 15 foreign-language books so far, half of what I wanted to achieve this year, so I will try to up the pace. I still have several books that I started on or that I'm reading occasionally; my problem is with finishing them. Especially books in Chinese. I'm also hoping to re-activate my spoken Greek now, because I'll be going to Rhodes at the end of September for a short conference. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 118 of 137 24 August 2013 at 10:21am | IP Logged |
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Hey Sprachprofi,
glad to see you booked a Dutch lesson with me! (Quite honoured to do it!) Let me know if you have any particular requests because I will be quite busy the coming month - I would love to spend hours tutoring people but I have some annoying things to get out of the way first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 119 of 137 24 August 2013 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
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Looking forward to it!
These days I've tried to have a lot of speaking sessions, because it's an area I tend to neglect. I signed up for the italki Fall Challenge in order to force myself to stop procrastinating on that and it is working: I just had an hour-long Spanish conversation, I also had a Chinese conversation, an Indonesian lesson and a Japanese lesson this week already and I have more scheduled. Also, I did a Greek-German language exchange with Alex Rawlings, which was fun, though it did show me how much I still need to review before Rhodes... After signing up for the italki challenge, I realized that there's a mini-Tadoku challenge going on right now as well, until the end of the month, so I've also been making headway in reading Greek and Chinese before sleeping. I finished another book: Book 22: "Κανάλι 35" by Λίλυ Εξαρχοπούλου And in other good news, I've caught up to where I'm supposed to be in terms of language hours and I have new freelance work that pays well and takes up just the right amount of time in order not to interfere with my studies or personal projects. Life is good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 120 of 137 25 August 2013 at 12:59am | IP Logged |
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Wow! You've been busy, partner!
I spent a lot of time preparing and interpreting for a conference, which left me almost no time for anything else. Now that it's finally over, more translation contracts have come my way, leaving me no time again. l've nevertheless been squeezing in some documentary watching in German and some Estonian for the 6- week challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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