napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5025 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 33 of 78 04 October 2011 at 1:49pm | IP Logged |
@emilianna:Thanks. I can distinguish between the sounds now, but I need to do more drills to 'overlearn' the stuff so that it becomes second nature to me. :D
When I do the FSI MWA course, I try not to translate, rather I try to feel the inherent meaning of the sentences. Its quite difficult for me to describe the process actually. When you read something in your native language, you comprehend the meaning instantly. I try to recreate this experience in my target language. I find that when I study in this manner, the material stays with me longer.
Napoleon
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4898 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 34 of 78 04 October 2011 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
The French u is hard for me, partly because there seem to be so many variations. u and ú
and eu ... in English the differences don't really matter, so it's hard for me to 'hear'
it. Any francophones out there who can help?
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6238 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 35 of 78 06 October 2011 at 9:58pm | IP Logged |
Bonjour les amis! J'ai terminé une semaine de ma classe en arabe. Je suis extatique que je comprends l'arabe mieux que je pensais que je pouvais!
أنا عائد إلى
DLI MSA Basic Course
لأن دروسي هي الفصحى. كذلك ، أدرس الدرس 20 و 21 هذا الاسبوع
It is funny... after studying the Saudi dialect for 2 or so months, my الفصحى got incredibly rusty so I'm reviewing DLI. I keep forgetting that the DLI MSA course really is a pretty good course!
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4898 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 36 of 78 06 October 2011 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
Salut!
One month into Arabic, and I just finished FSI Chapter 8 last night. My first stab at
a lesson is always hard. It's exhausting, and I rarely make it through ten minutes of
the recordings. By the time I make it to the supplemental sentences, and the pattern
drills, the lessons flow pretty easily.
This is going to be worthless for general conversation! But I'm just aiming to read,
and to completely internalize the script, so I'm ok with that for now.
For my French, I'm taking it easy. I read a chapter of Le ciel au-dessus du
Louvre each morning, "Assimil" style - I'll read the French copy, then the English
copy, then the French, and so on until it feels natural. It's a graphic novel set in
the Louvre during the Revolution. Robespierre and Danton are arguing in the assembly
about the nature of god, while the painter David is haunted by a Slavic immigrant who
is comme un ange. It's all so very French. I love it.
Edited by kanewai on 06 October 2011 at 11:40pm
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Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5123 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical)
| Message 37 of 78 07 October 2011 at 12:55pm | IP Logged |
My Update:
French
Assimil French: leçon 58, active wave still not so easy. My major problem are maybe not even those small particles but also words that only showed up once yet (like l'imprimé or dictons) and that I have forgotten already. How do you cope with that? If I review the lesson right afterwards I of course remember the words but only short-time. Maybe the best idea is to do a third review (a third wave) in the end again.
I also use lang-8 by the way and it's getting easier for me to build simple sentences (though I look up a lot of words, depending on the topic I'm writing about). But I noticed that compared to Germans who study French there are not so many French people around who study German. So it usually takes some time till I get my texts corrected :(. Nevertheless, lang-8 is really quite useful!
Arabic
Yesterday I started with "Arabic Simplified" and did the first 4 lessons (out of 200!!). Till now it was just a review of already known stuff but still quite helpful because it contains a lot of drills (contrary to the FSI course). Also its content is more orientated on active use, I belief. The funny thing is, that due to the fact the book is from 1921 some English expressions are.... well... oldfasioned ;). Or how would you describe a sentence like "thou didst strike"? ;-) The pace of the lessons seems to be quite slow yet but maybe that is only my impression because I already know the stuff that has been taught. When I scroll down I see loooong Arabic texts without vowels.
I'm also kind of working with FSI but veeeery slow, I am still at unit 2. I have the same problem like kanewai: this course is really exhausting and tireing. Also, I don't like the recording very much. Both the English and the Arabic voice sound very harsh.
I am also thinking about enrolling into a Arabic class at university again. It starts in about 2 weeks and I would need to review some of the old chapters of the book that they are using there. So I am not sure if it is better to concentrate on what I am doing right now (FSI and Arabic simplified) or add another source/course to it. I am a bit afraid that I will get lost when I am doing too many things at the same time.
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6238 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 38 of 78 13 October 2011 at 3:43pm | IP Logged |
!!مرحبه جاعميأ
كيف العربيةكم؟
Arabic: Week of 10/10/11
This week I switched my study materials to Teach yourself Arabic and Teach yourself Spoken Arabic of the Gulf;
mainly for the reasons that I should be able to complete both books in the time period of my course (9 weeks).
I have gotten through Unit 4 of each since it has been pretty much review for me. I think completing them will
give me a good solid base in both styles to work from.
My informal class is a lot of fun. It is a strange mix of MSA and colloquial. Our teacher is Omaniyya and a
student is Msriyya but she never learned written Arabic! So we will learn some MSA with Gulf and Egyptian
colloquialisms peppered in the mix. The 2 other students are Arabic newbies so we are taking a lot of class
time to learn the script. I'm beginning to agree with most folks that Egyptian is the most useful dialect to
learn. All the movie and music recommendations are Egyptian!!
I had a fun time searching you tube for Iftah ya Simsim clips ( the original Arabic Sesame Street in MSA) Grover
and Cookie Monster (Keki) in Arabic are hilarious!! I should have been getting my work done instead, however!
Edited by liddytime on 13 October 2011 at 3:45pm
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Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5123 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical)
| Message 39 of 78 17 October 2011 at 8:50pm | IP Logged |
Hey, what's going on? Nobody is writing anymore!? :(
What are you doing right now, how far are you in your studies?
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6238 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 40 of 78 18 October 2011 at 7:07am | IP Logged |
Emiliana wrote:
Hey, what's going on? Nobody is writing anymore!? :(
What are you doing right now, how far are you in your studies? |
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Yeah! Where you 'at people!?!? أينكم؟؟؟؟؟
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