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TAC 2013 Team Żubr German and Polish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4375 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 57 of 74 12 August 2013 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
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I finally broke down and made my first video of me speaking in Polish.
This was actually enjoyable, despite it being a minute and a half, and I think I might post more in the future. Enjoy! Edited by Fuenf_Katzen on 12 August 2013 at 1:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6111 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 58 of 74 12 August 2013 at 9:50am | IP Logged |
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Gratulacje FK.
Very well done. And very brave! I have tried to sustain speech, but it's hard work and my brain gets overloaded with trying to find the right words, be grammatically correct, pronounce everything clearly and trying not to worry about mistakes. Constantly thinking,"Did I day that right?" can really get in the way of speech production. I look forward to "Polish - The Movie" one day :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4375 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 59 of 74 25 August 2013 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
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After a quick vacation, I'm back to studying. I've been doing a pretty good job at maintaining 2+ hours a day (and I finally moved back up to #12 in the 6 week challenge--it's amazing how much competition can actually motivate you to study more). Grammar-wise, I hit the dreaded verbal aspect. Well, I shouldn't say "dreaded" yet, because right now it's at that point where it looks easy because I have clear, obvious examples. For right now, the difficulty isn't so much knowing when to use it, it's remembering the vocabulary. I'm not quite as terrified of it as I was previously.
I've really made a lot of progress in listening comprehension. About a month ago, I found a video on YouTube and the only reason I "understood" any part of it was because I had seen it before in English and knew the story. This time, I watched it and could actually follow the dialogue and plot. So progress is definitely coming! I finally studied German again for the first time in awhile. I had mostly been just maintaining it. What I finally did was study relative pronouns. That's something that really isn't hard to master, but I never bothered to learn it properly and always just played a guessing game (which of course usually ended up being incorrect). It's interesting that this was a problem, because I actually thought my reading had helped me to learn grammar passively. I essentially learned passive voice just through reading. But counting back on how many times I must have seen a relative clause, I really never learned how to do it myself. With all of the discussions taking place on HTLAL recently about studying grammar, I think I've just had a reminder that everybody learns differently, and maybe for me, just reading and hoping the knowledge will turn "active" is probably not going to be enough. I think I'll keep this in mind from now on as I continue to study my languages. I didn't realize before how necessary it was to actually practice! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5177 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 60 of 74 25 August 2013 at 8:36pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Fuenf_Katzen, I just watched your video, and I second what Mooby posted a few weeks ago - very well
done and very brave! Your accent is very good, and although you made some grammatical errors, I still understood exactly what you meant. Great job! From what I have been able to figure out about verbal aspect, the basic rules are pretty straightforward, but the more you delve into the topic the more complicated it gets. I feel like it is very easy to acquire a general understanding of aspect - but very hard to master it. Aspect still gives me a headache after seven years. Of course, I've never exactly sat down and read all the rules, so perhaps this is partly my fault. Anyway, good luck with it and the rest of Polish! If you are studying 2+ hours a day, I think you'll be amazed at your progress. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4375 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 61 of 74 08 October 2013 at 7:34pm | IP Logged |
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Oops, looks like real life caught up with me again!
I've still been doing Polish--watching a lot of movies and trying to do a lot of reading. One thing I've noticed about my listening: I don't know how this happened, but a lot of listening I do in Polish tends to be predominantly with men speaking. What ultimately ends up happening is that I have a more difficult time understanding females because I just don't hear them speaking as much. Obviously this is something I need to adjust! I've also tried to expand my reading to things beyond my comfort level. I just read an article with commentary about US health insurance, a topic with which I'm extremely familiar, and I learned a lot of really useful vocabulary from it. Reading is not always an easy thing for me to do. All those years of mandatory reading plus law school and reading cases has conditioned reading as something to do for work, instead of something to do for pleasure. About vocabulary: writing down and memorizing lists is something that has gone from difficult to next to impossible. So I've stopped doing it, and started hoping that the vocabulary would just stick. So far it's working okay, but I wonder if I can motivate myself to actively learn vocabulary again. I'm very sure this is why my vocabulary is much lower than it probably should be. And now I officially do have language wanderlust too...with Ukrainian. I started going to a Ukrainian Orthodox church--the Ukrainians really do have some of the most beautiful choral music--and about half of the people there are actually from Ukraine, and love speaking the language. This past weekend, somebody actually approached me in Ukrainian (I'm not really sure why, because I doubt I look it--I have absolutely no Ukrainian in me whatsoever!). Without even thinking, I responded in Polish to him. Would you believe the conversation was actually able to continue that way?! It was pretty basic, and I'm sure there were a lot of adjustments on his part, but we were still able to communicate. This of course, also made me feel a lot better about my Polish comprehension, as I would not have been able to do that had my Polish not been at a certain level. Of course, not I actually do hear Ukrainian spoken quite a bit, so that makes me want to learn it! Maybe that will wait until 2014 though...only one Slavic language at a time! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6111 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 62 of 74 08 October 2013 at 9:01pm | IP Logged |
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Cześć.
I'm sure there are lots of effective vocabulary building methods to suit all tastes. I've just stuck with Anki, but the never-ending reviews (about 300 a day at the moment) are grindingly tortous. I've drastically reduced the number of words I add to Anki (just one or two a day now) in a bid to catch up and bring the daily total down to a more mangeable number (100-150 would be ok). It doesn't help that I tend to mark myself down for minor mistakes, resulting in cards being reviewed earlier than they need be. That's changing now, and Anki mountain is slowly shrinking. Without reading, Anki would cram me so full of words with with no outlet that I'd mentally implode. Reading is my safety valve. It reinforces, clarifies through contect, creates word associations and is, most importantly, enjoyable. I love the thrill of seeing a word or phrase that I've recently committed to Anki, actually appear in text I'm reading. Listening is another matter. I simply don't listen enough, although I've improved on last year. I find female voices a lot clearer. If I'm watching a TV serial, I'll sometimes skip listening to a dialogue that's too dense, fast, slurred etc. Interesting to hear about the mutual intelligibility of Polish-Ukrainian. I've detected plenty of similarities with Russian when I hear it, maybe Ukrainian is closer? My fear of learning another Slavic language too soon, would be interference with my fragile and semi-formed Polish. But the temptation to wander is constantly near. I blame HTLAL ! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4709 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 63 of 74 08 October 2013 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Fuenf_Katzen, I just found your blog via your post in another thread! I loved reading it, even though we don't
have any languages in common. Good luck with your Polish and German. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4375 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 64 of 74 23 October 2013 at 4:27am | IP Logged |
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I blame Mooby for getting me hooked on Samo Życie! Although considering how many episodes there are, I could turn that into a project for 2014--note to self: I was very proud of myself for figuring out that one of the characters tested HIV positive (which I later confirmed in a later episode and saw posters in the background about AIDS). Interesting fact--in English it's pronounced "H-I-V" with each letter individually, whereas in Polish it's pronounced as one word.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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