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Македонски- a day at a time | ||
Tags: Macedonian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4309 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 11 06 February 2013 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Здраво!
I’m currently learning Macedonian right now. If you don’t know, Macedonian is a south slavic language spoken in a small country to the north of Greece. I’ll tell you a little how I became interested in Macedonian: a few weeks ago I found a book for it at a local book store (it’s called ‘Macedonian: a course for beginner and intermediate students’), I bought it; mildly interested as I coincidentally am friends with several people from Macedonia. After I looked through the pages I became intrigued and started looking up every thing I could on Macedonia. It has a very fascinating and unique history and culture that I advise all of you to look up, I apologize in advance for stealing several hours of your life because I guarantee you will continue reading up on it like I did. I hope to continue learning Macedonian for a few years until fluent, then maintain my level. I’m at something of a crossroad in my life and have the opportunity to live in Norway. If and when I move to Norway I want to have built up a decent level in Macedonian so that I can learn Norwegian and Macedonian at the same time, focusing more on Norwegian. Anyways, a Germanic language is (most likely) easier then a slavic one, so I don’t feel the need to learn Norwegian at the moment. I’ll probably make another log if/when the time comes. I learnt the cyrillic alphabet in a couple of days and am working on reading it with more ease. I will continually update this log weekly posting thoughts I have or my struggles with the language. I will also put up sentences and such and possibly a member fluent in Macedonian could could correct them? I’m only using the fore-mentioned book and youtube videos, so any other good courses or websites would also be appreciated. Also if anyone knows any cool Macedonian musicians or videos then I would be delighted if you posted them here :) First impressions I have so far are: 1) The Cyrillic alphabet is ridiculously simple 2) Macedonian sentence structure isn’t too far out for a layman like me to wrap my mind around + it doesn't have grammatical cases 3) Macedonian sounds really, really cool After a few days of study I can say: Јас сум Лерок, Јас сум Америкнец, Како се викаш? Is this correct? I would like to thank apple for including Macedonian as a keyboard input source on my mac. Edited by leroc on 06 February 2013 at 8:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4509 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 2 of 11 06 February 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Macedonian is far from being a popular language of study. Besides, it is spoken by few people and it's constrained to a very little nook of the world. This is very positive as long as your will power is strong enough to delve into Macedonian, because you will have access to, so to speak, a hidden world. Also, it could be that you're into the translation world or something similar. If it's so, people who master rare languages are always demanded. So go for it!
I am surprised to read that language hasn't got any cases, by the way. I thought any Slavic language lacked of them. Edited by Dagane on 06 February 2013 at 12:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 11 07 February 2013 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Macedonian is the most vowel-friendly Slavic language.
Most Croats think of it as the sweetest Slavic language. It's easier to understand for us than Slovenian. Unlike Croatian, there are no cases, and 99% verbs are regular. Macedonian pop music is superb, some songs I like: Lambe & Ljupka - Koga sonce gree placam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgfewnORHb8 ELENA RISTESKA - SAKAM PO DOBRO DA TE PAMTAM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdFkZ5m8w5g Karolina Goceva - Za godina dve http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IIvR7QaNsI Next Time-Lice od raj http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYsnU5yURyY Karolina Goceva & Tose Proeski - Nemir http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDpi0_YURsI Edited by Medulin on 07 February 2013 at 12:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4309 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 4 of 11 07 February 2013 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That about sums up why I'm learning Macedonian :). I honestly have no idea why more people aren't learning it on this forum, at first glance there isn't many resources but with a bit of digging you can find quite a few, plus it is arguably the easiest Slavic language. Do you think Macedonian would be a good jumping off point if I so chose to learn Croatian for instance? And thank you for the music, I'll definitely check it out! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 11 07 February 2013 at 1:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm curious about what substantial resources you know of outside Kramer's book and Friedman's reference book on grammar. A while ago I thought about starting to take up a bit of Macedonian but the scarcity of learning material was quite discouraging. Knowing Macedonian would provide a certain useful base to tackle BCMS/SC later on (most apparent in vocabulary), although it could simplify even more any effort to pick up Bulgarian because of its even greater similarity. P.S. I've argued before that Slovak is the "easiest" Slavonic language for an outsider with no background in Slavonic languages but indifferent to which one should be the first one to learn. Like Macedonian it has fixed stress (stress in Slovak as rule falls on the first syllable, Macedonian's is usually third-last syllable), but any trickiness inherent in handling Slovak's 6 cases is offset by its elatively sparse verb conjugation. Macedonian generally gets by on 1 case outside the pronouns, but its verb conjugations make distinctions that other Slavs other than Bulgarians find weird (if not complicated or even redundant). A Croatian friend who's fluent in Italian and English as well likened Bulgarian and Macedonian verb conjugation for me to that of Romance languages because of the high number of tenses, moods and compound forms that are marked in conjugation (as oppose to being restricted to certain registers or unknown in her native BCMS/SC verb conjugation). Slovak also has the advantage for now of being backed by more learning material for foreigners than Macedonian (although it still compares poorly on this score to Czech or Polish not to mention Russian). Edited by Chung on 07 February 2013 at 1:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4309 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 11 07 February 2013 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm using Kramer's book and audio and it is of a good quality. I'll check out that other grammar book you sent to me, it looks like it could be useful. I'm using http://mylanguages.org/macedonian_audio.php for listening practice. It's not very good, but it is kind of a relief to hear the language after looking at a text for hours; the course has over 200 minutes of free Macedonian. I've taken a look at http://macedonianlanguage.org/ and for being free, it's not half bad either. Anki has a few decent premade lists and I made my own alphabet list to become confident in Cyrillic. The amount of resources I have isn't so bad, I don't really need 50 books, a pimsleur and a MT. I am positive that after doing some of these I can speak with Macedonians through italki and IRL and advance to fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 11 07 February 2013 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Nor do I, however I didn't get far in lining up a decent English <> Macedonian dictionary (there is one published by Routledge but fetches an obscene price). I do know of a few Serbian <> Macedonian dictionaries which I could use in a pinch (especially when combined with my bigger English <> BCMS/SC dictionaries) if I were studying Macedonian, but I obviously prefer any kind of reference book that's in an intermediary language in which I'm fluent whenever possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4309 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 8 of 11 07 February 2013 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
According to this post I found on a different Macedonian thread there's a few good online dictionaries, I will keep my eyes out for physical copies of dictionaries and if I find any, I'll review them on this thread after purchase
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