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Small Expectations | ||
Tags: Georgian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5562 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 161 of 431 10 September 2010 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry to hear about the tonsillitis. I hope it clears up over the next few days, and that you're blessed with a spot of cooler weather soon.
I used to chill out in a top-floor internet/manga cafe next to the infamous Shibuya crossing when things got really hot and humid (I forget the name of the high-rise now)...cosy private compartments with comfy lazy chairs, food and drink ordered right to your desk, and most importantly, mountain cool aircon served with a bow. Ahh... Excellent summary, by the way! I'm sure it can't be too easy finding Georgian resources in Japan, which makes your progress all the more impressive. You should reward yourself with a little gift from Tokyu Hands or perhaps even some gadget hunting in Akihabara, once you feel better. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5470 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 162 of 431 10 September 2010 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Teango, the tonsils are back to their normal size and, miracle of miracles, the
air temperature has fallen below 35 degrees to around 30 or 31, which feels positively Baltic by comparison. My treats tend to come in packages from Amazon rather than Tokyu Hands, and since I usually find it difficult to go more than a week without ordering something I should probably give my credit card a rest for a while! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5470 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 163 of 431 17 September 2010 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been terribly lazy recently in updating my log, but all is going well with my
Georgian. My Thursday language exchange with Medea is paying off slowly but surely in terms of my speaking ability. Last night we started with English and for some unknown reason I became nervous as we approached Georgian time and for the first ten minutes or so I found it utterly impossible to produce anything but garbled nonsense. I soon warmed up, though, and although I am far far away from anything approaching fluency I can just about navigate my way through a sentence or two. I'm also starting to understand a lot more of what Medea says to me, which is always helpful when learning a foreign language, I find... There are three Georgian sumo wrestlers in Japan, namely Kokkai, who has been here longest and is quite famous, having climbed quite high up the rankings, and two up-and- coming youngsters Tochinoshin and Gagamaru. Medea is friends with all of them and said she would introduce me, so that's kind of exciting. I went to my first Saturday class last week after the long summer break and it was slooooooooow. I'm all signed up now until December, and I should probably continue going to keep a handle on my grammar, which we are not covering at all on Thursdays, but damn, the pace is just glacial. Still, it's all input of sorts. At home I'm continuing with ჯინსების თეობა, which is an excellent, relatively easy read and continues to provide me with plenty of vocabulary. Other than that I'm not doing an awful lot, but at least I have a guaranteed two and a half or three hours of Georgian a week with my two classes. For anyone who is interested, the reprint of "Georgian Language and Culture: A Continuing Course" is out. As soon as I've written this post I'm off to order myself a copy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5562 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 164 of 431 17 September 2010 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, you're going to get to meet Kokkai! I had the privilege of watching him fight in Tokyo in 2005, as well as seeing Asashōryū Akinori, and my own personal favourite, Kotoōshū Katsunori! It was really fun (especially as everyone brought Japanese-style picnics and plenty of booze), and I even got to sit in a family box with a great view, all paid by my ex's awesome uncle. At the end of the evening, after all the matches, everyone threw their pillows into the ring for some odd reason. My first ever sumo experience! :)
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| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5470 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 165 of 431 17 September 2010 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sounds good Teango! I've never been to see sumo live but if I ever happen to switch the
telly on during a tournament I get well into it. I like Kotooshu too, and I liked Asashoryu a lot before he broke a nightclub bouncer's nose and was forced to retire (!) but at the moment everyone is going crazy over the yokozuna Hakuho, who is Mongolian, and his record winning streak. I think they only throw the zabuton pillows into the ring when the yokozuna loses to a lower-ranked wrestler. Cool when it happens. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5470 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 166 of 431 27 September 2010 at 1:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Having read about the Goldlist method I was quite intrigued, so I went out and bought
myself a big posh exercise book and so far I have done 4 lists. 100 words. Not much, I know, but even if I can learn half of them I'll be quite happy. I need to focus on verbs, so a lot of the content of my lists was irregular verb endings and so on. Once again the Saturday class was just painful. At the risk of sounding terribly condescending, I really sympathize with my classmates - Japanese is so far removed from practically any other language that it makes a lot of grammatical concepts and vocabulary confusing, and sometimes totally alien to them. For example, a while back we learned the word for "never" in Georgian, which is არასოდეს. All very straightforward, you might think, until you realize that Japanese does not have a single word that corresponds to "never". As another example, this week one guy was trying to say "My apartment is on the fourth floor of the building", but since アパート (apa-to) actually means "apartment building" in Japanese, and the word for "house" (სახლი) in Georgian is also used to mean "apartment building", while ბინა means "apartment", he got completely confused. Anyway, I've decided to quit when my currently paid-for lessons end in December. I'm still learning things from the class but not enough to justify the expense and boredom. What else? I made a Georgian beef stew yesterday which was delicious but so full of garlic that I was up half the night with indigestion. Bet you're all glad you know that eh? The Biliki book is really good and quite tough so I'm working with that now. "Flight from USSR" is still great. Thursdays with Medea are still going strong. And most importantly I'm still motivated to continue. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6148 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 167 of 431 27 September 2010 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
How are your classmates faring with Georgian pronunciation? I can imagine that the frightening clusters of seemingly unpronounceable consonants (along with just about everything in the language) would be near impossible for them, given that Japanese is their first language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6709 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 168 of 431 27 September 2010 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I have very little knowledge about the language, but I visited Georgia briefly in 1988 and travelled around the new independent country for more than a week in 2000 with a privat (German-speaking) driver, and I found much pleasure in learning to pronounce all those names with their consonant clusters. Such as when we drove from Tbilisi to Mtskheta at the Mtkvari river to visit (among other things) the Sveti Tskhoveli church...
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