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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 |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 249 of 646 20 November 2012 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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TUESDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2012
Well, I've thought more about the issue how to improve my languages and how to get in contact with other language learners. First of all I've decided to cancel my study of the minor languages that I had begun recently (Scottish Gaelic and Old English). Perhaps, I'll do something in them just for fun, but my focus for the near future is to go on with Russian and Icelandic and improve the languages I already more or less know, i.e. Swedish, Italian, and French. Russian: I have begun with lesson 14 in Colloquial Russian. The main topic of the lesson is prefixed verbs of motion. They are not quite as confusing as the unprefixed verbs of motion, as there is no distinction between directed and undirected motions, but there are quite a lot of prefixes to learn -- with more or less obvious meanings. Furthermore, most prefixed verbs of motion take a preposition, so you have to learn that as well. Icelandic: I have been wondering for quite a time now how to deepen my knowledge of Modern Icelandic, as reading Old Norse sagas will neither equip me with modern vocabulary, nor will it enhance my active skills. Unfortunately, the weak spot of Colloquial Icelandic is the exercises, wich mainly consist of cloze tests and improvising Icelandic sentences, while I would like to do grammar exercises and translations. But once more my university library revealed itself as the most valuable resource of all: I discovered both Magnús Pétursson's Lehrbuch der isländischen Sprache and Langenscheidt's Praktisches Lehrbuch Isländisch in the catalogue and, of course, borrowed them both at once. I will now go through the books, revise the grammar, learn new vocabulary, and do the exercises, which mainly consist of -- you've already guessed it -- grammar exercises and translations. Swedish, Italian, French: My YouTube experiment has shown me that my Swedish has become quite rusty. My Italian could use some brush-up as well, and practising my French more might come in quite handy, too. I figured the best way to do that would be starting to write at Lang-8. Moreover, I might go through some Swedish and Italian courses to reinforce my grammar and my vocabulary. Unfortunately, the Skype list in this forum seems to be rather inactive, so speaking to other learners doesn't seem to be an option at the moment, but maybe I'll go on making a fool out of myself and post another video on YouTube. Edited by Josquin on 20 November 2012 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 250 of 646 23 November 2012 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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FRIDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 2012
Except for a tiny bit of Swedish and Icelandic, I only worked on my Russian during the last few days. I published my first Swedish text on Lang-8 (and immediately bumped into HTLAL member Mauritz) and watched Så som i himmelen for the first time without subtitles. Both were good experiences, because I made only a few mistakes in my text and I could understand a great deal of the dialogues only relying on my listening comprehension. But now for something completely different: Russian verbs of motion! I don't know if it's just because Colloquial Russian introduces so many verbs of motion at the same time, but I'm really confused. Maybe, there's also a bit of a problem, because I work on a really complicated grammar topic through an L2. It might be easier to understand all the nuances in meaning between the different prefixes, if I had German translations for them. Looking up the words in my dictionary helps, but it's a lot of work. Well, I did the exercises of lesson 14 today, and although not everything was wrong, I made quite a few mistakes using the prefixed verbs of motion. I hope I'll learn from the mistakes, but it's really hard to perceive all the differences in meaning. What especially trips me up is the compunds of носить/нести and возить/везти, which all more or less mean "to bring" or "to take" either by carrying or by driving. This is really quite a foreign concept, as the Germanic and the Romance languages don't make this distinction. And as if this weren't enough, some compounds of водить/вести may also be used to express "to bring" if this means leading someone somewhere. Well, I'm not quite sure if I have already understood all of it -- I'm pretty sure I haven't --, but there are even more verbs of motion, which have neither been introduced by the Langenscheidt course nor by Colloquial. So this is really a part of grammar which might take you forever to get it perfect, if it doesn't drive you crazy before. But I'm not going to complain. After having a look at Czech and Polish grammar on Wikipedia, I'm now convinced Russian is a sheer fountain of regularity -- at least compared to those languages. I didn't do a lot in Icelandic. I have worked through the first lessons in Praktisches Lehrbuch Isländisch, but it was all very easy and well-known to me. Unfortunately, neither the Langenscheidt nor the Buske book seem to be half as good as Colloquial Icelandic though. The Buske only has example sentences and no coherent texts or dialogues at all, while the texts and dialogues in the Langenscheidt are somewhat dry, old-fashioned, and boring. Moreover, the "text" in the Langenscheidt book is only a summary of the dialogue, so it's really uninteresting. But be that as it may, I chose those books for training my grammar, and I think they might be quite suitable for doing that. What's interesting about the Buske book: It offers some excerpts from Icelandic literature and newspapers, so it's not all bad. Edited by Josquin on 23 November 2012 at 9:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 251 of 646 25 November 2012 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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SUNNUDAGUR, 25 NÓVEMBER 2012
Í dag lærði ég svolítið íslensku. Það var mjög gaman og skemmtilegt. Ég hafði nokkrar beygingar yfur aftur og las nokkra texta í bókinni. Ég verð að viðurkenna að ég hef gleymt mörgum smáatriðum málfræðarinnar og mér finnst erfitt að skrifa á íslensku, en ég vil æfa mig til að batna. Erfiðasti hluti tungumálsins er að muna öll formin orðs. Ég hef aldrei notað íslensku mína, heldur alltaf bara lesið á íslensku, þess vegna kann ég málfræðina ekki svo vel og geri mjörg mistök. Íslenska er undurfagurt og mjög fallegt tungumál og ég elska hana mikið, þess vegna skal ég skrifa meira á íslensku í þessari dagbók. Ég vil batna málfræði mína og æfa virkar hæfnar mínar. Сегодня я ещё не занимался русским языком, но вечером я буду, наверно, заниматься. Мне надо повторить глаголы движения, потому что они очень сложные для немцев. Но я решил сначала написать несколько слов на русском, чтобы поупражнять мои активные способности. Мне легче писать на русском, чем на исландском языке, потому что я более занимался русским за последние месяцы, но я ещё делаю слишком много ошибок. Немцы говорят, что «навык мастера ставит», а я думаю что они правы. Поэтому я решил в будущее более писать на русском в этом дневнике. Я надеюсь, что вам понравится это изменение и что я не буду делать слишком много ошибок. Это на сегодня всё. As you can see, I want to practise my languages a little bit more in the future, so this log will become a bit more polyglot. I will choose any of my languages that comes to my mind, so I hope this will create a lot of diversion. But I won't stop writing in English altogether, so be surprised by the languages that I choose for my future entries. I spent the day mainly on studying Icelandic, but I want to do some Russian in the evening. The verbs of motion are calling! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 252 of 646 25 November 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 253 of 646 25 November 2012 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the corrections, Марк. I don't know why I always mix up более and больше. Damn!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 254 of 646 02 December 2012 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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SUNDAY, 02 DECEMBER 2012
No update for a week. Well, I have been busy, because I have finally been offered a job for which I had applied and there were a thousand things to do. Moreover, I visited my family during the weekend, so there was not much time for studying. I nevertheless managed to do some Russian on the train home. I started lesson 15 in Colloquial Russian, which consisted of a letter and a dialogue about Saint Petersburg. The grammar was only partially new to me, because I already knew how to express age, how to count years, and how to use который, the subjunctive, and чтобы. There were some new things though such as some ordinal numbers, that had not been introduced in my Langenscheidt course (двухсотый, трёхсотый, ...), and the declension of cardinal numbers, which can get complicated if a lot of numbers are combined. Having to decline all numbers is really inconvenient, but I think it's manageable with some practice. Last but not least, the lesson dealt with double negatives, which are not ungrammatical in Russian but completely normal. I haven't done the exercises yet, and I haven't studied any other languages either, so it was a rather unproductive week. I'll start working tomorrow, so I don't know how much time I'll have for studying languages in the future. We'll see. Доброй недели! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 255 of 646 06 December 2012 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Multiple negations are even obligatory. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 256 of 646 08 December 2012 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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СУББОТА, 08 ДЕКАБРЯ 2012 Г.
На этой неделе мне не было много времени для изучения иностранных языков. Я должен был много работать и у меня были несколько приватных проблем, которыми мне надо было заниматься. Поэтому я только занимался русским языком и не читал на исландском или шведском языке. Сегодня я повторил урок 15-ый в Colloquial Russian, потом начал урок 16-ый. Я снова прочитал письмо о Петербурге и повторил грамматику. Я не делал упражнения, потому что они были скучные. Мне больше нравится писать на русском языке. Это по-моему лучшее упражнение. Может быть, я буду делать переводы. Это всегда хорошие задания. Урок 16-ый рассматривает театр и обсуждает сравнительную степень имён прилагательных и также указание времени. Я надеюсь, что завтра у меня будет время, чтобы продолжить урок. Но может быть, я буду заниматься другим языком. Ещё не знаю. @Марк: Я знаю. Извините, что я не писал яснее. Edited by Josquin on 08 December 2012 at 7:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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