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TAC 2009 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5738 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes  Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 25 of 67 13 December 2008 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Volte
I hope that you are ok. I miss you and your interesting posts. Best wishes, Pauline 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6437 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 26 of 67 14 December 2008 at 1:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Who doesn't? :)
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6310 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 27 of 67 14 December 2008 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Volte is doing fine, she's just taking a break from the forum in order to focus on intensive study. She will be back in the new year.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6437 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 28 of 67 14 December 2008 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Nice to know, but it doesn't make me miss her and her posts less :)
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6279 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 29 of 67 03 January 2009 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the kind words, everyone!
Short version: most of my 'intensive study' during my absence hasn't been linguistic. That said, I am now fluent in Esperanto*; I'd be hesitant saying I can pass the airplane test (I still read more haltingly and with more unknown words than I'd really like). Longer version: By 'fluent', I mean I can discuss, fairly flowingly, pretty much anything I want to; I've held multi-hour conversations, containing everything from mundane social pleasantries to highly technical conversations, religion, politics, finance, etc. My vocabulary is definitely not as large as I'd like; I don't think I could name even half a dozen trees or flowers, and I have gaps with a number of mundane items, though I can generally use circumlocutions when absolutely necessary. My grammar is not perfect; principally, I misuse the accusative endings far more often than I'd like in speech (in writing, I often have to go back and correct myself), and secondarily, I make a number of other mistakes, and don't actively use some forms yet. As for passive understanding of Esperanto: I understand almost everything I hear spoken (I miss an occasional word); depending on the singer, I can catch about 50-99% in live concerts. Reading is definitely my weak point, simply because the vocabulary used is so much larger, and some authors feel quite free to spawn neologisms from tongues I don't have a base in; aside from that, some of the more intricate grammar occasionally throws me a little. Given that I've largely been slacking off (by my definition), I'm relatively pleased with the results. My next plans revolve around doing a fairly massive amount of reading in Esperanto; I'm still deciding how much I'll use a dictionary. ------- Notes on other languages: a) My Polish has rusted extremely badly; I understand far less than I used to, and I have essentially no active use. I intend to remedy this.... via L-R... but not right away. b) My German is somewhat stronger than I thought. I am certainly NOT conversational by my standards (I'm missing far too many basic words), but I'm also well past basic survival. I used my German to its limits over the last week, culminating in an hour-long discussion/set of discussions(?) with an old lady on a train on January 3rd, where she told me her views on various things and I told her (in very broken German) about Esperanto, its history, etc. Less precariously, I rarely ran into problems using my German even for the odder parts of conversations about food or directions. I was also occasionally exposed to German TV; I found it pretty straightforward, though I occasionally missed words. Somewhat annoyingly, I found myself in German mode repeatedly over the last week, to the point I'd find myself speaking German instead of Esperanto to German Esperanto speakers. More sadly, my German accent needs deep work; my 'ch' has gone from perfect to horrible, and my vowels are sometimes far enough off to render me near-incomprehensible even when I'm making no content errors. I'm leaving it as 'beginner' in my profile. Edit: one interesting thing which happened last week, from a language learner's point of view, was having a perfectly fluent speaker of Esperanto ask me if I were a 'denaskulo' (native Esperanto speaker; there were several at our gathering) - given that I basically restarted a bit over a month ago, that amused me highly. That said, it's not as high of a compliment as it might sound: being a native Esperanto speaker doesn't guarantee that one has a good command of the language, apparently (I think some mainly used Esperanto with their parents, and if their parents aren't good speakers...). Edited by Volte on 03 January 2009 at 7:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5834 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 30 of 67 04 January 2009 at 11:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Admirable work Volte,
What's the break down of Esperanto speakers native/fluent world wide? Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6279 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 31 of 67 04 January 2009 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I like to throw out numbers like "1000-2000"/"1 million - 2 million", but estimates vary significantly; it's not like you can really do a reliable international census of Esperanto speakers. I've heard estimates of the number of fluent speakers ranging from the hundreds of thousands to 10 million, though there seems to be a consensus that you need a rather low definition of fluency for the latter. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Maestro Groupie Chile Joined 5711 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes | Message 32 of 67 04 January 2009 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder how's a "denaskulo" accent? Is there such a thing as "native Esperanto accent" or "denaskulos" speak with the accent of their "other language" (I suppose there aren't any monolingual desnakulos )?
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