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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6288 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 49 of 67 30 January 2009 at 10:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Since my last post, I've hit two milestones:
1) Real-time music comprehension - not all the time (sometimes songs simply use too many words I don't know, and I've been listening to some (Folk) Metal, a genre I can't always easily understand even in English), but often, even for songs I've never heard before. I hit this a few days ago. 2) I've read a children's book, "Die Kleine Hexe". It was 127 pages, including some illustrations, and took me about 2 hours to read, in one sitting (more or less - there were some very short interruptions). My comprehension was fairly high, though not perfect - I still lack intuition about how words like 'noch', used for emphasis of a sort, really change the meaning of a phrase, and my vocabulary was occasionally insufficient to catch some details, though the general arc of each chapter remained clear. In terms of studying, I did about 5 or 6 hours of L-R on the 28th. On the 29th, I needed a change of pace, so aside from about half an hour of L-R, I listened to about 8 hours of Folk Metal. Today, I reviewed a few Assimil lessons, had a couple of short L-R sessions (~45 minutes each), and then read the aforementioned book. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6285 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 50 of 67 30 January 2009 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Die Kleine Hexe von Preußler? Toll! Wie hast du die Geschichte gefunden? Ich habe selbst das noch nicht gelesen, aber als ich jünger war habe ich Hotzenplotz-Bücher von demselben Autor auf Koreanisch gelesen. Ich mochte sie sehr gern, und ich glaube, ich soll vielleicht die Bücher auf Deutsch lesen. Gab es viele schwierige Wörte? Wie war der Schreibstil? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6288 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 51 of 67 30 January 2009 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Genau, Die Kleine Hexe von Preußler. I came across it by pure luck: Sprachprofi gave it to me, when I gave her some Italian books. :-) There were some difficult words, but not that many. The writing style was extremely readable and straightforward, I found. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5934 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 52 of 67 30 January 2009 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Preußler is one of those authors that wrote several books, all of which are rather good. I like one in particular, Der Kleine Wasserman. I used to play it for my kids at bedtime. The flute music and the sound of underwater were enough to.....ZZZZZZ....:) I still like hearing it!
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6288 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 53 of 67 26 February 2009 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So, I've invested almost two months into German. On the whole, I'd say it went fairly badly; I can use it when I absolutely need to, but both my active and passive use remain at a level I'll bluntly call "lousy".
I was quite stunned at how little motivation I could bring to studying this language; I did less than 20 hours of L-R for it, for instance. I badly need a change of pace. As a result, I'm going to devote some time to the non-IE European language with the best resources I'm aware of: Hungarian. What can I say - Mek's collection of audiobooks is absolutely stunning. I'll dig up a grammar when I feel like it (aka, not yet). Suggestions are welcome, though - especially for online ones. Does anyone here know a decent pop-up dictionary for Hungarian (for any computer platform - Windows, OS X, Linux, web-based, whatever...what I care about is that it works), or good phonetics material for it (ie, with a lot of contrasting minimal pairs, etc)? Edited by Volte on 26 February 2009 at 11:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6000 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 54 of 67 27 February 2009 at 10:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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I just took a quick look at Mek's. That's an incredible resource. Thanks Volte. For minimal pairs I remembered you've already tried the FSI course, but didn't find them that minimal. If you find something better, let us know in your log.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6288 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 55 of 67 27 February 2009 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"The Phonology of Hungarian" by Peter Siptar and Miklos Torkencz, looks incredible at a glance - but it seems to have the crushing problem of not including audio. Still, you can take a look on google books.
In terms of actual recordings, there's a small resource which covers the consonants and vowels, plus a few small narratives - it's better than nothing, but it's quite limited. There also seems to be quite a bit in Hungarian on Hungarian phonology, judging by the reference section at the end of this page; I'd be happily surprised if anything was accompanied by recordings, though. Edited by Volte on 27 February 2009 at 1:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6288 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 56 of 67 27 February 2009 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm going to have to say the Hungarian phonology material situation looks bad. I've done fairly extensive searches in English, more-than-cursory ones in Russian, Polish, German, French, and Hungarian, and fairly cursory ones in Italian, Dutch, Finnish, and Esperanto, and haven't turned up significantly more than I mentioned above (though there were a few interesting results - Polish sites with materials in English/German about Hungarian poetry, literature, folk tales, etc, a book in German with the somewhat peculiar title "Das polnische und das ungarische phonologische System" - no sign of audio though, etc).
Probably the best result I've found is a German site on Hungarian Phonology - it has some minimal pair recordings. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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