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Köln to Kiev TAC ’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 33 of 55 20 June 2014 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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A few things about language interference. This was a huge problem for me last summer because anytime I wanted to say something in Polish, German would come out. Everybody told me that it would get better once I went on to another language. For right now, that does seem to be mostly true. The interference isn't nearly as prominent as it was last year--mostly it will occur when I have to think automatically or more quickly than I would like. But for the most part, I haven't had the same problems I did last year.
I find it to be interesting that even though we are in a beginner class and none of us have really spent a lot of time studying the language, we're very clearly at different levels already. Those who have spent time studying Russian are much further ahead as far as vocabulary and pronunciation. It's the Russian students who are the first to be able to answer questions automatically. This is something that I've never been able to do in a language class, so it makes sense to me why I can't get an answer in quickly, but it feels a little discouraging to do so well on the homework and written assignments, but not be able to show how much I know in class. Maybe I just don't absorb information automatically! Well that's it for my quick update. Now I'm off to finish going over my Lviv presentation. 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 34 of 55 25 June 2014 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
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I think I'll refer to this week as the week of cases. We did locative and accusative over the last couple of days. Locative is actually a lot easier for me than Polish for some reason. Maybe just because there are fewer consonant shifts?
As far as accusative, we learned the difference between the inanimate and animate nouns, as well as the differences between hard and soft endings. For soft consonants I always think ю and я. Not too bad so far. This week's oral project is a dialogue between us and the instructor. We will need to pretend that we are just meeting somebody and asking about what they do and about the city. It feels nice to finally be able to speak full sentences! 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 35 of 55 27 June 2014 at 6:14pm | IP Logged |
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Test number three today about verb conjugation, accusative and locative cases, and asking questions. We also had an oral quiz where we took part in a dialogue with our professor. I talked about how I've lived in Pittsburgh for 10 years, work as an attorney, and sing at a Ukrainian church. Actually I was shocked at how well it went. I felt pretty confident and natural during this time, and wasn't constantly thinking about declensions or tenses.
Now that we're at the halfway point, here are my impressions of my summer so far: I am definitely putting in a lot more work this year than I did for my Polish class. I'm not sure if that's because it really is a more difficult language, or because I didn't study as much with Ukrainian beforehand, or because I just don't have as many distractions this year. But I definitely feel like I need a lot more time. I've really liked the way the class has been running; we are primarily expected to stay within our limited language and only use structures we know how to use correctly, instead of trying to make up our own version of Ykrainglish. I think this helps to reinforce what we already know, and definitely at this point last year I was much less comfortable having a five minute conversation. We do a lot of drills which are helpful, but the examples aren't always very clear. I do find it's more beneficial than not though. The one thing that I think doesn't help: watching movies. First of all, in the movies we've watched, a lot of the dialogue isn't really important to the plot. It has an importance, but the focus is more on the atmosphere than what the actors are saying. This is interesting because now that's three movies where I've found that to be the case. If this is typical of Ukrainian culture, I actually enjoy that from an atmosphere perspective. From a language learning perspective though, I don't know that it's particularly beneficial in helping to reinforce what I already know. And then there's the issue that I automatically go to the subtitles and have to work twice as hard to pay attention to the audio. The thing that is surprisingly helpful: singing Ukrainian songs. My teacher is really good about choosing songs with fairly simple lyrics, and this helps to remember phrases and use grammar. We've gone through in a fairly good amount of detail what all of the grammatical points are. So now I can write out examples of uses of the cases and tenses using the lyrics. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my progress in the class. I definitely wasn't expecting to be able to have a conversation, but I actually thought that I could have continued with it for longer. So I might be more willing to have conversations with other Ukrainian speakers in the near future. ***Oh yes, and this past week we watched a movie called Las Maninas in class. Yes it's Ukrainian. I'm not sure I can say I would recommend it...it's very strange but may be worth watching just once. Edited by Fuenf_Katzen on 27 June 2014 at 6:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6103 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 36 of 55 27 June 2014 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
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That's an encouraging progress report FK!
It's a great feeling when you're in converstaion flow, almost akin to sprouting wings and flying. Do you kmow any local Ukrainian speakers with whom you can continue your conversations? I suppose the church choir is helpful in this regard? Edited by Mooby on 27 June 2014 at 8:17pm 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 37 of 55 03 July 2014 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
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My poor brain: we crammed in genitive, dative, conditional mood, telling time, names of food and tomorrow we finally get our last case--instrumental. Of course, this is all for singular nouns, we haven't even touched plural yet except for nominative. Okay, so I peeked ahead and found that the plural endings are pretty similar to Polish.
One thing about Ukrainian and really Slavic languages in general. It's not so much that individual issues such as cases and endings are that complicated. They're really not. Now, aspect is a little weird and I'm not sure I really understand why perfective is used at certain times and imperfective is used at others, but most of the issues students will bring up are not that bad on their own. It's when you have to make full, complete, correct sentences with everything that it becomes complicated. Suddenly you have to have immediate recall of which nouns are a particular gender and which case you're in. Much easier to read and underline different cases than it is to come up with it quickly! Yet another reason why I'm glad we're mostly using our limited vocabulary. I've also noticed that I go in waves of motivation: Mondays and Tuesdays are my best days, Wednesday and Thursday start to get a little rough, and Friday is just a bad idea! I've still been managing about 30 hours a week, so by the end I should have a pretty good "core." Can't believe the course is almost over already. 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 38 of 55 05 July 2014 at 7:46pm | IP Logged |
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And we have officially learned all 7 cases! On Thursday, our professor gave us a lecture in Ukrainian on Shevchenko. 20 minutes of listening to Ukrainian--surprisingly I understood a good amount (though the 7 minute attention span is very true, especially in a foreign language!)
One thing I'm looking for is good audio books for when the course ends. Starting in August, I'm going to have about 20 minutes of commuting to and from work one way. It would be really nice to spend that time with some Ukrainian audio. If there are any suggestions, please let me know! 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 39 of 55 09 July 2014 at 2:41pm | IP Logged |
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My attempt at writing down what my oral project was on this past week (describing a typical day). I hope everyone can forgive the lack of commas and punctuation. The keyboard I was using didn't have it clearly marked, and anyway, it was taking me awhile to type it--I would type and there would be a 2 second delay between that and it showing up. I think there was more that I said during my test, but I can't remember it right now.
Типовий Понелілок Кожного Понеділка я прокидаю о сьомій а потім я снідаю о сьомій п'яатнадцять. Часто я їм яйця і п'ю каву. О восмій тридцяать я їзду до універсітету автом. Там я вчюся українскої мови. Наша лекція починае о дев'яатій рівно. Я на лекції до дванадцяти а потім я обідаю на кав'яарні. О тринадцятій рівно я знову на лекції до п'ятнадцяати. Потім я їзду додому. Вдому я роблю домашне завдання сиджу в мережі і дивлюся телевізор. О двадцят другі я іду спати. 2 persons have 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 40 of 55 10 July 2014 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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We had the dreaded verbs of motion day, or, as I like to put it: "how many different ways can you say you're going somewhere?"
Truthfully, after 20 years of school, a language class last summer, and 2 1/2 months of studying for the Bar Exam, I can say that this is the only time where I've needed some horilka after class. I've taken a few examples from the exercises we did in class today and tried to translate them as well as put them into context. I think that because there is no true English equivalent to these motion verbs, the best way to handle it is to examine the context and focus of the sentence. So I've gone a little overboard in trying to explain the situation as well as the focus. And as always, if anyone has any tips for these verbs, please share! Куди ти вчора шов коли я тебе бачив? "Where were you going when I saw you yesterday?" Possible context: I saw a friend/co-worker shopping, then see them the next day. Focus: Where were you in the process of going when I saw you? Він чув як ви шли і говорили про нього. "He heard that you all were walking and talking about him." Possible context: GOSSIP! Person x finds out that y and z were talking about him on their lunch break as they were walking through the park. Focus: X hears that you're talking about him as you are in the process of walking somewhere. Він посидів трохи і рішов додому. "He sat for a little and then went home." Possible context: "Hey Joe, where's Bob?" "He was hanging out with some friends at their place for a bit, then decided he was bored and went home to study Ukrainian." Focus: He was someplace and then got up to leave. The focus is on the fact that he was here and then left to go home; we aren't interrupting him on his way home. Він шов і ввесь час думав про неї. "He was walking and thought about her the whole time." Possible context: Bob is on his lunch break and is walking around to clear his mind. However, his thoughts are completely on his love interest. Focus: The whole time he is in the process of walking, he is thinking about this person (thinking and walking at the same time). Я бачив як вона вчора їхала з ним до міста "I saw that she was riding with him into town yesterday." Possible context: Ooo, look, my co-worker likes this guy. I was in my car driving home and I saw that she was going into town with him. Interesting! Focus: I saw her as she was in the process of riding with him. DIALOGUE: Я вже іду. До побачення. Чекай. Куди ти ідеш Я думала піти до Люби. А що Ми якраз хотіли дивитися на телебачення. Буде цікава програма. Краще піди до нас. Добре. Піду до вас. I'm ready to go. Goodbye. Wait, where are you going? I was planning to go to Luba's. Why? We just wanted to watch television. There's going to be an interesting program. You better come watch with us. Okay. I'll go with you. Edited by Fuenf_Katzen on 10 July 2014 at 2:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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