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One Week Challenge | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Beginner | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4930 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes  Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 49 of 70 21 December 2011 at 7:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Random observations:
Just started Pimsleur I for Russian. The Russian accent is not as difficult as I thought it would be. My schedule this week won't let me complete as many lessons as I'd like, but since all of the Pimsleur lessons are similar, I can listen to the ones I think would be most useful for a coffee-table conversation. The Russian alphabet, while different, makes learning new words much easier than learning Chinese, where you have to learn a new character(s) for each word. At this point, I can sound out most Russian words, even if I don't know what they mean. The IPA is also useful in this regard. Discovered a reference to the most common words in the Russian language. The first 2000 are considered to be mandatory for an A level, but it's not clear whether this is just A1 or both A1 and A2. One interesting thing about this project, the more you study, the less you really know. Russian has a rolling-r sound familiar to me from Spanish. The alphabet has many symbols that are similar to or identical to the Latin alphabet. Russian is a nice vacation from my Chinese language studies. 俄文 is simple to write in Chinese. Edited by zhanglong on 21 December 2011 at 7:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 50 of 70 21 December 2011 at 9:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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the CEFR levels are not usually referred to as A, B or C (in Europe). besides, 2000 is way too much for A2. it all depends on the language and on how well you "juggle" them, but in general i think you need some 500 words for A2.
was the list for A-levels? that appears to be B2 :) Edited by Serpent on 21 December 2011 at 9:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4930 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 51 of 70 21 December 2011 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, great to know! As an American, I've only heard about A, B, C on this forum. Yes, the quotation on the book was for "A-levels". In Europe what are the CEFR levels referred to? 500 words is a lot more manageable in seven days. The more I do this, the more I think A1 is more "realistic", but I'm shooting for the moon and hope to be among the stars. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 52 of 70 21 December 2011 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Number of words is only part of the equation. What will you be able to do with those 500 words? And are those 500 words applicable to what's expected in A1/A2 levels? I don't know the contents of the Pimsleur Russian course, but I suspect they probably teach basic present, past and future tenses in the 30 lesson course, and you probably won't get to simple past and future until the last third of the course. My experience with Pimsleur Turkish shows that yes, you might reach an A2 level in the strictest of definitions by lesson 30, but it's in a VERY limited way. Sure, you can talk about your mother or father. You wouldn't be able to talk about your brother/sister/cousin/etc. You won't be able to talk about any day of the week, other than today, yesterday or tomorrow (although I think there's mention of "week", there's certainly no mention of "month" or "year"). EDIT: Thinking back though, they did give me a way to fudge that knowledge at least to a small extent, by way of using "x number of days ago" and "until/for x number of days". R. == Edited by hrhenry on 21 December 2011 at 4:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 53 of 70 21 December 2011 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
the A-levels reference is limited to the UK, for those who are familiar with the system it's obviously easier to just say they've learned language X enough to pass their A-levels. i suppose in many countries it would be possible to use the specific reference to the national high school examinations that roughly correspond to the A-levels, such as the Russian ЕГЭ (единый государственный экзамен), where however the skills required depend on the activity - don't remember for sure but something like B2 for oral interaction, B1 for monologue and writing. and true, it's not all about words. Gunnemark described in his book how he once went to Hungary and Romania. Romanian is related to French, Spanish, Italian, so he knew several thousand words in Romanian by then; in Hungarian just 150-200. However, speaking Hungarian somehow turned out easier. Though he also insists on learning lots of expressions. anyway, in russian you'll need basic grammar to be able to say anything at all, so why not learn it well enough to be able to "juggle" with a limited vocabulary at first? :) try out the BBC free course, btw. the ones i tried from them were all awesome. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4930 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 54 of 70 22 December 2011 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This project gets more and more interesting by the day!
I spoke to my Russian friend for half an hour. This was the pre-test. She said my accent was good, but of course, I have too little vocabulary at this point. I am just repeating phrases from daily conversation, but have little understanding of the grammar. Today, I went to the bookstore and found a Russian-Chinese and Russian-English dictionary. Rather than making my life more difficult, I chose the Russian-English dictionary because it included a brief description of the grammar. Ah. I had forgotten the loveliness of Indo-European languages. For Russian, not only are the verbs conjugated, but the nouns are declined. The BBC website is quite good! When this experiment is over, I will visit it on a regular basis. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4930 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 55 of 70 22 December 2011 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Все строят планы, и никто не знает, проживёт ли он до вечера.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 56 of 70 22 December 2011 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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да ладно, до конца света еще год=)
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