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Thaguel’s Log - Turkish, Armenian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Thaguel Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4178 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Russian Studies: Turkish, Armenian | Message 1 of 9 20 June 2013 at 1:50pm | IP Logged |
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After lurking a long time on this forum I finally decided to register here and start my
own log to help me keep motivated. My ultimate goal is to learn 15 (new) languages from different parts of the world. It’s my ultimate goal, however, and I’m currently not planning to actively learn 15 languages at the same time, or within the foreseeable future. My current focus lies with Turkish and Armenian. By the end of the year I hope to have reached a solid A2 level in both languages. My biggest challenge will undoubtedly be to focus on just those two languages and not to cave in to wanderlust. Another problem I’m likely to face is my lack of concentration, so I hope to work on that as well. Turkish: I’m not an absolute beginner in Turkish, but I’ll still have a lot of work to do to reach a solid A2 level in this language. I’ll be using Teach Yourself Turkish, Assimil ‘Turkish with Ease’ and Türkçe okuyorum (both volumes), with the aid of dictionaries and a grammar book. Armenian: Unlike Turkish, I am an absolute beginner in Armenian. I did practise some with the alphabet, so it doesn’t appear alien to me anymore, but I still have a long way to reach A2. I’ll be using a Russian self-study book for Armenian by Urutyan, Tioryan and Grigoryan (transliteration might be a bit off). For practising writing I’ll be using a book called “Learn to write in Armenian”. By the end of the year, I hope to write my first entries in both languages in this log. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 9 20 June 2013 at 2:03pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome fellow Dutchman! How did you learn Russian?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4641 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 3 of 9 20 June 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the forum. I will be following your progress in Armenian with interest. It is one of the languages that is on my wish list and it will be interesting to see what your experience will be. I made an attempt to learn the Armenian alphabet some years ago, but it never stuck. Maybe one day...
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| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4861 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 4 of 9 20 June 2013 at 7:51pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, Armenian. It's a very interesting choice - even for me :) Any hidden ideas behind it or just "for fun"? Edited by prz_ on 20 June 2013 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thaguel Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4178 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Russian Studies: Turkish, Armenian | Message 5 of 9 22 June 2013 at 11:43am | IP Logged |
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@Tarvos The beginning of my adventures in Russian are pretty much an advertisement on
how NOT to study a language. Once I advanced to a A2 level I went straight to native materials and immersion. It worked pretty well, only I'm still cleaning up the mess from my very very messy start. @Ogrim Getting the Armenian alphabet to stick is a challenge. It has no familiar letters and the ones that do look somewhat familiar represent a different sound. And quite a few letters look the same. @prz_ No hidden ideas here. Just "hey, Armenian looks cool, let's study it!" And so far I'm not having any regrets. I guess that the last couple of days I've spent most of my time focusing on Armenian, rather then Turkish.I would guess (I'm not really the type to keep track of time while I study) that I've spend around 6 hours on Armenian and just 2 hours on Turkish. Regardless of how much time I spend on either one of them, I feel as I've made great progress in both languages. Türkçe: Yesterday and today I spent most of my time refreshing my vocabulary and grammar. I think I now have a firmer grip on case system then I did before. Vowel harmony might remain a slight problem. Every time I’m doing some exercise I find myself looking up what vowel I should use in personal ending/verb conjugations. Հայերեն: I’ve completed the first two lessons of my самоучитель армянского языка.Learning the Armenian alphabet is quite a challenge, but nonetheless a fun challenge. For now I’ve decided to follow the structure of the book, which offers just a couple of letters each lesson, so by now I’ve studied 28 letters (out of 40). Because of the way the book is set up, the vocabulary isn’t always fitting for a beginner, what uses do words like wire, string and goatling have for a beginner? Nonetheless, I’ve a great time learning this exceptional alphabet. I've a slightly more difficult time learning vocabulary, though. Perhaps it’s due to the different alphabet. I’ll continue to use ANKI for reviewing the vocabulary from the first lessons and for the time being, redoing all the translation exercises. As for grammar, nothing exciting has happened... Some forms of the verb to be as well as the locative case. So I can now make small sentences like: պարկում կատու կար (a cat was in the bag). Goals for the weekend: For this weekend I'm hoping to complete lessons 3-4 of my Armenian textbook, and do a couple of Assimil units to get used to Armenian pronunciation. For Turkish, I'm going to finish my reviews and start on unit 4 of Teach Yourself Turkish 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 9 22 June 2013 at 6:50pm | IP Logged |
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Haha, awesome. Always happy to see Dutch people study Russian! Turkish is a language I
hope to get round to eventually but it won't be for a while. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thaguel Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4178 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Russian Studies: Turkish, Armenian | Message 7 of 9 03 July 2013 at 4:23pm | IP Logged |
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The last week didn’t go as I had originally planned, but nonetheless, I did get quite
some studying done. I’m not the kind of person who keeps extensive time logs of everything what I do, especially since I recently started using ankidroid and now regularly use it to study during my commute. Studying a language using resources in Russian is challenge on its own, but a nice one. It has given me the confidence that I know Russian well enough to use it in learning a new language. The drawback is that I’m spending a good portion of my time looking up words from Russian, rather than Armenian. Հայերեն: Although my progress in Armenian is slower than I had expected, I’m quite pleased to see that I’m progressing nicely. The biggest problem I’m facing with Armenian is vocabulary. As I mentioned in my previous update the vocabulary isn’t always that good for a beginner. After reviewing the vocabulary lists, entering them into Anki, I’m lucky if I know/recognise more than 20% of the words, while with Turkish I’m easily reaching 60-75% for new vocabulary. This frustration is part of the reason why I decided to change study materials, so now I’m using «Самоучитель Армянского языка» in exchange for another one, this time by Markosyan. This book has the similar layout, but it’s more thorough in what it teaches with far more exercises. Currently I’m still working on the first unit of this series. Türkçe: I’ve completed Teach Yourself Turkish unit 4! All that remains is just drilling/reviewing the vocabulary. The only problem I’m seeing myself having here is that there could be some problems with the genitive case (or possessives as it’s called in the book), where not only the possessor is being put in the genitive case but also the possession. I recently bought a Turkish grammar book with corresponding exercise book, so I’ll use those to practise the case so I’ll use that to get a good grip on the cases, but I don’t expect much trouble there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thaguel Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 4178 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Russian Studies: Turkish, Armenian | Message 8 of 9 08 July 2013 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
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This week was a mixed one, study-wise. I found out that I still had several college
assignments lying around, which had to be handed in this week. As a result, I couldn’t spend as much time on language learning as I had imagined. Nonetheless, I did reach a milestone this week. I’ve learned 500 Turkish words and although it might not seem much, it feels like I’m on the right track to reach my goal for that language. Another thing I should probably mention is that I’ve started using a countdown stopwatch to make sure I don’t get lost in vocabulary drilling, or procrastinate too much. And so far it’s paying off. I’ve also started using Teach 2000, which allows you to drill your vocabulary. The only drawback I’ve with it thus far is that it can be a bit tedious at times, but so far I’ve achieved great results with it. Türkçe: As I’ve mentioned in the beginning of my post, I’ve reached the 500 mark. I did continue to practise with the cases and as I expected, there weren’t that many problems, perhaps at most a slight overlook in which case to use. I’ve started on unit 5 of Teach Yourself, and so far I’m not expecting much difficulties, although de word order with de and mi (both meaning too) can be a concern. I’m also planning to start using Assimil ‘Turkish with Ease’ this week. I’m expecting to complete 2-3 lessons a day, until I feel that it becomes a burden to do that many lessons a day. Հայերեն: It turns out that switching study materials was an excellent choice. I’m now getting more confident in reading and writing in Armenian. Although getting the vocabulary to stick is still a bit tricky, but with the help of Teach I’m progressing at a nice pace. Chapter 1 of my самоучитель covered the conjugation of the verb ‘to be’, the genitive case, word formation and a little bit about punctuation. It appears that the Armenian question mark (՞) is placed above the word it refers too, but the sentence still ends with a full stop (:). I’ve also started doing Assimil ‘L’armenien sans Peine’, so far I’ve covered the first 3 lessons and pronunciation wise I’ve not encountered any real problems. On a side-note, I recently organised my ‘library’ of language related materials. As it turns out I’ve got reasonable collection of materials lying around, ranging from the big languages as Spanish, Mandarin to small languages like Chukchi and Koryak (native languages of Siberia), for a total of 30 languages. I’ve a feeling that organising my language materials was not the best thing to do at this time. I’ve a feeling of wanderlust coming over me… 1 person has voted this message useful |
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