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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 241 of 646 10 November 2012 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can see this word for the first time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 242 of 646 13 November 2012 at 1:28am | IP Logged | |||||
MONDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2012
I was able to shed some light on this issue. It seems the West Slavic languages have a system that's a little bit different from Russian. While they use the nominative singular after 1 and the genitive plural for numbers bigger than 4, Czech and Polish have the nominative plural after 2, 3, and 4. That means adjectives will be in the nominative plural as well and there's no fun with weird case agreements. Well, other than playing language sleuth, I only began lesson 13 in Colloquial Russian. It's about going to the market and doing groceries. The vocabulary is quite interesting and useful, while the grammar is on the easy side again. The lesson introduces the dative, instrumental, and prepositional plural, which are already known to me. An interesting detail is the partitive genitive, which I already know from Latin. Well, in Russian, some masculine nouns have a special ending for the partitive, which is -у for hard stems and -ю for soft stems, so "I drank some tea" could be translated by «Я выпил чаю». I didn't work on my other languages today, because I was busy playing chess with some good friends. It's late now, so I'll go to bed. Спокойной ночи! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 243 of 646 13 November 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for the information.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 244 of 646 13 November 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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TUESDAY, 13 NOVEMBER 2012
Today, I was able to study all my languages, although with different intensity. I finished lesson 13 in Colloquial Russian. I reread the text and did all the exercises. They dealt with the dative, instrumental, and prepostional plural as well as with the partitive genitive. There also was an exercise concerning the use of ставить/поставить and класть/положить. The most challenging exercise was - as usual - the translation. This time, it didn't consist out of single sentences but a coherent text, so I'd like to show it to you: Перевод Обычно я делаю покупки на нашем рынке. У нас очень хороший рынок на главной площади города. Овощи и фрукты обычно не очень дорогие, но качество отличное и всё свежее. Цена мяса на рынке довольно высокая, поэтому я предпочитаю покупать мясо в большом гастрономе недалеко от нашего дома. Всегда можно найти хорошее и недорогое мясо там. Сегодня я готовлю большой обед. У моей дочери день рождения. Она устраивает вечеринку и пригласила много друзей. Поэтому я должна много купить. Я решила приготовить её любимое блюдо: мясо с овощами. Я уже купила все овощи, но сегодня я должна купить торт. Я пойду в кондитерский магазин, где всегда большой выбор свежих тортов. Besides Russian, I worked through lesson 3 in First Steps in Old English. It dealt with the personal pronouns and the present tense of weak verbs and was rather easy. I then reread the text of lesson 5 in Lehrbuch der schottisch-gälischen Sprache. It was a letter from Loch Ness. The text was quite good (better than most of the beginning dialogues), but now Gaelic grammar has got complicated. As I already told you, lesson 5 deals with the definite article, which depends on the gender and the first letter of the noun that it accompanies. Well, I think I have memorized the pattern, but I don't know when I'll be able to use it comfortably. Last but not least, I had a look at Hrafnkels Saga. I read through the next page and made up a rough translation in my head. I wasn't in the mood for translating every word and writing it down, but at least I've read a bit. I have also been watching a bit of RÚV online lately, but my listening comprehension is still kind of crappy. Unfortunately, there's no other way to enhance it than listening more, so I'll keep going when I have the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AndrewS Diglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4427 days ago 27 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Spanish | Message 245 of 646 14 November 2012 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Josquin, that is all right! Only "там" would be more natural to place in the beginning of the sentence: Там всегда можно найти хорошее и недорогое мясо.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 246 of 646 14 November 2012 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Большое спасибо, AndrewS!
@Марк: Не за что! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 247 of 646 14 November 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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WEDNESDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2012
I haven't studied any languages today, but I have given in to the common trend of public exhibitionism and made a video (or rather an audio with a still picture) of me speaking in the languages that I know. I haven't included any dead languages, because I don't really have any active skills in them, and I haven't included Dutch either for the same reason. Please feel free to comment on them -- and please don't laugh about my Icelandic! I know it's hideous, but that's just the way it is. I also know that I butchered Swedish intonation and Russian soft consonants, but maybe you can help me to improve them. Enjoy! Polyglot video of Josquin Edited by Josquin on 15 November 2012 at 10:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 248 of 646 17 November 2012 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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SATURDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2012
Instead of my usual reports of what I did and what I didn't, I'm going to muse a bit about my philosophy of language learning tonight. As you know, I put a video of myself speaking a bit in my foreign languages on YouTube. I was really moved by the positive responses and encouragement I already received, although the video has only been online for a few days. For me, learning languages was up to now a rather solitary occupation: sitting at home, reading books, listening to CDs, watching movies or the like. As I'm a bit short on money at the moment, I don't often get the opportunity to go abroad and visit the countries where my languages are spoken, although I don't live too far away from the French border. Be that as it may. Although I have been a member of this forum for over a year now, I only realized by making this video that there are real people out there who simply love foreign languages just as much as I do - some of them even more. So what the heck am I doing? Why am I sitting alone in my study when I could be talking to these people using my languages instead? I've never been a very extrovert person, I am really more of a loner, to be honest. But I think that results from the fact that very few people I know really share my interests. When my colleagues at work chat about their weekend, I don't say: "Well, I studied Russian on Saturday. You know, those aspects can be tricky - and don't get me started on the pronunciation. But I really like the case system..." If I did so, they'd probably simply stare at me - not knowing whether I was strange, odd, or just crazy. The only accepted reason for knowing a language seems to be having lived abroad. Even people who know that I like languages, simply don't share that passion, so I used to sit at home alone, reading my grammars and my textbooks. Even writing this log in this great forum is mainly a monologue. So, I was really a bit insecure to go out there and just speak foreign languages, no matter how silly I may sound in them. As a matter of fact, I caught myself saying "I didn't want to make too much mistakes" in my second video. I learned in fifth grade that I had to use "many" in this situation, but here I am, talking bullshit. So, what's the lesson I draw from this? I really want to go out there and speak my foreign languages. Learning languages can make lonely, but language is mainly a tool for communication - communication with people who have the same interests as I do. I don't know what's the use in learning all that vocabulary and grammar, if it doesn't enable me to talk to other human beings from other countries and other cultures. Yes, I've always been intellectually curious. I simply wanted to know a language, because it was strange and beautiful and interesting. But I don't think that's enough any more. So, I thought about changing my focus of study. Instead of always learning new languages, gaining mostly passive knowledge of Icelandic, Gaelic, and Old English, I might go back to the languages that I know and improve my active skills. I'm not quite sure how to do that yet, but I guess YouTube and Skype are great means of communication with other language lovers. And I'll definitely take part in the next TAC in order to get more involved with other language learners. So, this Russian and Icelandic log might soon become a Russian and French or Italian log. I'm not quite sure yet, but I have great plans. Well that's my sermon for today. Thank you if you've made it to the end and let me know what you think! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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