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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 129 of 407 22 May 2011 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I had my first Norwegian lesson with a really generous Norwegian teacher who agreed to help me for free
over Skype. We took two texts, I read them, he corrected my pronunciation, then he asked oral questions about the text. I love this type of exercice; it forces you to reuse any new vocab, in context to boot. It's great for fluency AND vocab acquisition. Surprisingly, he said I was already at an advanced level, and that I could move to Norway and work there already. Pretty flattering, but I think intermediate is probably closer to reality. I understand written material pretty well, but I still completely fail to understand TV shows, for instance. I can build complex sentences with several subordinate clauses but I fail to know the most simple day to day language. Still got lots of work ahead of myself. In Japanese, I haven't met with my language partner in almost 2 weeks, but I watched a movie and a TV show this week, and I've been reading an interesting article about a Japanese guy who went to the US, only to realize no one understood him, katakana English being to blame. www.gaya.jp/english/katakana.htm Because there's lot of unknown kanji, I put the text through JDIC. One sentence at a time, it gives the reading and definition of every word. That's a pretty efficient way to read; I shall do that more often. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 130 of 407 22 May 2011 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Should I start organizing the welcome party? :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 131 of 407 23 May 2011 at 7:43am | IP Logged | |||||
If you find me a job, sure! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 132 of 407 23 May 2011 at 9:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, we have next to no unemployment, so if Canadians do not need particular work permits or visas, that should be no problem. What is your profession? (And is your family interested in coming?)
Your Norwegian will get you a long way, and Norway is routinely voted the best country in the world to live in, but they may still not be just as interrested :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 23 May 2011 at 9:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 133 of 407 24 May 2011 at 6:40am | IP Logged | |||||
linguistic market all of a sudden. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 134 of 407 26 May 2011 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's probably impossible to pronounce other languages correctly until you'd done a fair amount of introspection to understand what you do in your own language. Indeed, if you don't know how you pronounce s, how can you perceive that Spanish or Greek s, for instance, are slightly different?
No matter how hard people try to repeat or mimick what they hear in other languages, until you've done such introspection, the results are bound to be disappointing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 135 of 407 30 May 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Japanese
Met with my Japanese language partner Thursday, then our Japanese tutor Friday. I had been slightly apprehensive of those meetings because I hadn't met either in over 2 weeks, and I'd spent a fair amount of time concentrating on Norwegian and Spanish. I thought I'd be going through one of those bottom-of-the-roller-coaster-ride moments, but to my surprise, that wasn't the case at all. In fact, I quickly got right back in, feeling very comfortable. On a tougher note, a friend sent me an article that was supposed to be "easy", but I'm having a hard time deciphering the darn thing. There is so much technical vocabulary... Norwegian I'm in the middle of lesson 14 from Teach Yourself, which contains 16 lessons. I'll be speaking with a volunteer-tutor next weekend, so I need to prepare an article to discuss with him and, if possible, an oral presentation. When I mentioned the presentation to him, I think he assumed I meant a full-fledged presentation as if I were in front of an audience; I simply meant that I would present a story orally to him, without written notes. I think this is a great way to improve fluency while forcing you to look up all the words you'll need ahead of time. **** On a different note, a Japanese friend of mine has been mentioning lately how people have a difficult time understanding her. She called someone on the phone and they apparently couldn't understand her at all. Later, she was speaking to a friend of mine and he completely misunderstood many of the words she used. She says she doesn't know why, and I think she was very discouraged. I don't want to work with her specifically on her pronunciation because I want to avoid putting that stress between us (I tend to be a little intense when it comes to pronunciation;), but I do wish I knew exactly what to tell her so she would improve on her own. The main problem is probably that several years of reinforcing the wrong pronunciation back in Japan is hard to undo, and that pronunciation is burdened by heavy interference from Japanese. I think I will encourage her to first try to understand how Japanese sounds work, then to try and familiarize herself with English phonology. Probably not very interesting, but can you really improve your pronunciation without having some idea of what you are pronouncing and why? I suppose I could also encourage her to experiment while she's on her own, pronouncing words or sounds in as many variations as possible, hoping to get her to reach sounds outside of those locked-in areas. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| librarian Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5072 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 136 of 407 31 May 2011 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would accept the praise from the Norwegian teacher. Reading through your posts you are obviously a very talented learner.
As for the Japanese article I am sure you will understand it perfectly sooner than you think. Could you send it to me so I can know what your level is please? I have enjoyed reading your log so far so keep up the good work :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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