Modus.irrealis TAC 2013 - Team Yürükler (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Modus.irrealis TAC 2013 - Team Yürükler
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Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log

modus.irrealis Bilingual Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5877 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English, Greek, French Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Danish, Turkish	Message 1 of 3 05 January 2013 at 5:07pm \| IP Logged
	I decided to also do a TAC this year. The idea was sort of in the back of my head but then Chung told about the Yürükler Team for Turkish, so thanks to him I decided I should do this and see how it works for my language learning, since I've never tried anything like this before. My main language focus for this year will be German, Turkish, and Russian, but I still have minor interests which I'll probably turn to now and then, so for my own sake, I'll just go through all my languages and see where I am and what my goals are. =============================================== GERMAN My main focus right now is German, which I've learned off and on for a while now, but fairly intensely the past two years. I lived in Germany for a year and will almost certainly move back later this year (right now I'm in Denmark), so I really want to improve my German. My main weakness is my spoken German, and interacting with people in German. I have a tandem partner currently, but she will be leaving soon. I'll also try to speak more often with my German colleagues in German, but this is something I really need to work on, and I'm not entirely sure how. I'm really happy with how my reading ability has come along. I still depend on a dictionary quite a bit, but my vocabulary has grown a lot, and I'm comfortable with sentence structure and stuff like that. I've mostly been reading non-fiction books where the language is less florid (right now I'm reading "Die Schöpfungslüge", a translation of "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins), but I really would like to get comfortable with more literary works. A while back I had read through bilingual editions of some of Hermann Hesse's works and the German did not seem particularly difficult, so I think I'll make reading two of his novels as my main reading goal. TURKISH I've been working on Turkish for a long time, and I feel like I'm at that awkward stage where the material I can get is either too easy for me to progress or simply too hard. I'm currently doing a team-translation "game" on the unilang forum, where we work through Turkish texts, and this has been really good for me. And I'm hoping that being part of Team Yürükler will help. But honestly, I'm not completely sure how to proceed with this language. I also still have a latent interest in Ottoman Turkish (and it would be perfect as a gateway language to Arabic and/or Persian if I do that in the future), so maybe I will go back and try working through some Ottoman Turkish texts, which I had done a bit of before. There are some easier Nasreddin Hoca stories on google books that are interesting to read. RUSSIAN I basically abandoned learning Russian a while back after not getting that far and now that I got interested again, it's frustrating how much I've forgotten in terms of inflections and basic vocabulary. So my first goal is to get back to the level I was at, so right now I'm working through a lesson book and at the same time learning paradigms from a grammar. After that, I have some easy readers for beginners and adapted texts that I want to work through. But overall this year, I'd be really happy if I could read my way (with dictionary) through an unedited short story with full understanding. =============================================== DANISH I'm currently living in Denmark, but for some reason I don't have much motivation to really learn the language well. I will probably stick with the free lessons that are offered to residents, but I'm not sure how much more than that I will do. I had bought a copy of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the original plan was to work through them on a regular basis to work up my reading knowledge, so maybe I'll actually start on that. FRENCH/SPANISH/ITALIAN I've studied French for a long time, and did a lot in school as I was in a French immersion program. My French used to be pretty good, but now I feel like my French has deteriorated quite a bit lately as I don't use it all, not even passively like before when I watched hockey games in French. But I do have a lengthy multi-part trip to France lined up this year, which I'm really excited about, and it would be nice if my French were solid for that. But I'm not sure what I'll do about it. I'm really happy with how my Spanish has come along, since it feels like that because of my knowledge of other languages, the returns for the effort I put in are huge (plus I'm mostly aiming for reading knowledge). My goal here would be to work through some literary work, but I haven't chosen which one yet. As for Italian, my goals are similar to Spanish to get a good reading knowledge, but I'm at the very beginning of really looking into the language. The main thing now would be to learn the conjugations well and hopefully find some easy readers for beginners to get used the language and how it differs from French and Spanish. ANC. GREEK/LATIN/(SANSKRIT) Ancient Greek is my main focus for dead languages, but it's been a while since I've really worked on it. In any case, my goal for this year is essentially the same goal I've had the last two years, which is to read through the major works of tragedy, or at least Sophocles. For Latin, I just want to maintain my current level, so I will try to semi-regularly read some Latin as I've been doing the past few years. And there's Sanskrit which I've wanted to learn for a long time, but I don't know if this will be the year. I actually had once made a start with the Teach Yourself book and it was pretty nice, but I've forgotten everything since. In any case, I would like to finally master the devanagari script. ENGLISH/GREEK These are the two languages I've spoken since birth. My English is stronger so there's nothing to work on there in terms of the language, but I wouldn't mind finding time to read more novels. As for Greek, my main thing is that Greek was my home language so there are gaps in my vocabulary concerning technical subjects, but it's hard to get access, even with the internet, to interesting Greek books on scientific subjects. Maybe next time I visit Greece, I'll have to spend some money on books. 1 person has voted this message useful
Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish	Message 2 of 3 05 January 2013 at 6:20pm \| IP Logged
	Hoş geldin ve iyi şanslar! 1 person has voted this message useful
modus.irrealis Bilingual Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5877 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English, Greek, French Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Danish, Turkish	Message 3 of 3 05 February 2013 at 2:02pm \| IP Logged
	I clearly need to get it into my head that this a journal, and I need to post regularly about what I've been doing language-wise. I wıll try to do that, but lately I've mostly been doing basic stuff, either reading a bit, or writing short sentences here and there. The most dissapointing thing so far is with my Russian, where I've basically done nothing. I'm surprised by how quickly my initial enthusiasm vanished, but hopefully it comes back. Anyway, to try to write a bit in (some of) my languages: GERMAN: Ich habe einige Leute gefunden, mit denen ich auf Deutsch reden kann. Bisher geht es gut, und es wird immer bequemer, Deutsch zu sprechen, aber ich habe noch viel zu verbessern. Davon abgesehen lese ich weiter, aber ich hätte mein aktuelles Buch zu Ende lesen sollen. TURKISH: Orhan Pamuk'un Kar adlı romanını okumaya birlikte başladık. Kolay değil, fakat çok daha zor olacağını düşündüm. DANISH: Jeg har bestået min første test. Testen var meget kort og relativt nem, men jeg er stadig glad for det. Det bliver nemmere at forstå hvad danskere siger (selvfølgelig når de noget simpelt siger). Jeg har imidlertid ikke læst noget eventyr. 1 person has voted this message useful

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modus.irrealis Bilingual Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5877 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English, Greek, French Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Danish, Turkish	Message 1 of 3 05 January 2013 at 5:07pm \| IP Logged
	I decided to also do a TAC this year. The idea was sort of in the back of my head but then Chung told about the Yürükler Team for Turkish, so thanks to him I decided I should do this and see how it works for my language learning, since I've never tried anything like this before. My main language focus for this year will be German, Turkish, and Russian, but I still have minor interests which I'll probably turn to now and then, so for my own sake, I'll just go through all my languages and see where I am and what my goals are. =============================================== GERMAN My main focus right now is German, which I've learned off and on for a while now, but fairly intensely the past two years. I lived in Germany for a year and will almost certainly move back later this year (right now I'm in Denmark), so I really want to improve my German. My main weakness is my spoken German, and interacting with people in German. I have a tandem partner currently, but she will be leaving soon. I'll also try to speak more often with my German colleagues in German, but this is something I really need to work on, and I'm not entirely sure how. I'm really happy with how my reading ability has come along. I still depend on a dictionary quite a bit, but my vocabulary has grown a lot, and I'm comfortable with sentence structure and stuff like that. I've mostly been reading non-fiction books where the language is less florid (right now I'm reading "Die Schöpfungslüge", a translation of "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins), but I really would like to get comfortable with more literary works. A while back I had read through bilingual editions of some of Hermann Hesse's works and the German did not seem particularly difficult, so I think I'll make reading two of his novels as my main reading goal. TURKISH I've been working on Turkish for a long time, and I feel like I'm at that awkward stage where the material I can get is either too easy for me to progress or simply too hard. I'm currently doing a team-translation "game" on the unilang forum, where we work through Turkish texts, and this has been really good for me. And I'm hoping that being part of Team Yürükler will help. But honestly, I'm not completely sure how to proceed with this language. I also still have a latent interest in Ottoman Turkish (and it would be perfect as a gateway language to Arabic and/or Persian if I do that in the future), so maybe I will go back and try working through some Ottoman Turkish texts, which I had done a bit of before. There are some easier Nasreddin Hoca stories on google books that are interesting to read. RUSSIAN I basically abandoned learning Russian a while back after not getting that far and now that I got interested again, it's frustrating how much I've forgotten in terms of inflections and basic vocabulary. So my first goal is to get back to the level I was at, so right now I'm working through a lesson book and at the same time learning paradigms from a grammar. After that, I have some easy readers for beginners and adapted texts that I want to work through. But overall this year, I'd be really happy if I could read my way (with dictionary) through an unedited short story with full understanding. =============================================== DANISH I'm currently living in Denmark, but for some reason I don't have much motivation to really learn the language well. I will probably stick with the free lessons that are offered to residents, but I'm not sure how much more than that I will do. I had bought a copy of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the original plan was to work through them on a regular basis to work up my reading knowledge, so maybe I'll actually start on that. FRENCH/SPANISH/ITALIAN I've studied French for a long time, and did a lot in school as I was in a French immersion program. My French used to be pretty good, but now I feel like my French has deteriorated quite a bit lately as I don't use it all, not even passively like before when I watched hockey games in French. But I do have a lengthy multi-part trip to France lined up this year, which I'm really excited about, and it would be nice if my French were solid for that. But I'm not sure what I'll do about it. I'm really happy with how my Spanish has come along, since it feels like that because of my knowledge of other languages, the returns for the effort I put in are huge (plus I'm mostly aiming for reading knowledge). My goal here would be to work through some literary work, but I haven't chosen which one yet. As for Italian, my goals are similar to Spanish to get a good reading knowledge, but I'm at the very beginning of really looking into the language. The main thing now would be to learn the conjugations well and hopefully find some easy readers for beginners to get used the language and how it differs from French and Spanish. ANC. GREEK/LATIN/(SANSKRIT) Ancient Greek is my main focus for dead languages, but it's been a while since I've really worked on it. In any case, my goal for this year is essentially the same goal I've had the last two years, which is to read through the major works of tragedy, or at least Sophocles. For Latin, I just want to maintain my current level, so I will try to semi-regularly read some Latin as I've been doing the past few years. And there's Sanskrit which I've wanted to learn for a long time, but I don't know if this will be the year. I actually had once made a start with the Teach Yourself book and it was pretty nice, but I've forgotten everything since. In any case, I would like to finally master the devanagari script. ENGLISH/GREEK These are the two languages I've spoken since birth. My English is stronger so there's nothing to work on there in terms of the language, but I wouldn't mind finding time to read more novels. As for Greek, my main thing is that Greek was my home language so there are gaps in my vocabulary concerning technical subjects, but it's hard to get access, even with the internet, to interesting Greek books on scientific subjects. Maybe next time I visit Greece, I'll have to spend some money on books. 1 person has voted this message useful
Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish	Message 2 of 3 05 January 2013 at 6:20pm \| IP Logged
	Hoş geldin ve iyi şanslar! 1 person has voted this message useful
modus.irrealis Bilingual Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5877 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English, Greek, French Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Danish, Turkish	Message 3 of 3 05 February 2013 at 2:02pm \| IP Logged
	I clearly need to get it into my head that this a journal, and I need to post regularly about what I've been doing language-wise. I wıll try to do that, but lately I've mostly been doing basic stuff, either reading a bit, or writing short sentences here and there. The most dissapointing thing so far is with my Russian, where I've basically done nothing. I'm surprised by how quickly my initial enthusiasm vanished, but hopefully it comes back. Anyway, to try to write a bit in (some of) my languages: GERMAN: Ich habe einige Leute gefunden, mit denen ich auf Deutsch reden kann. Bisher geht es gut, und es wird immer bequemer, Deutsch zu sprechen, aber ich habe noch viel zu verbessern. Davon abgesehen lese ich weiter, aber ich hätte mein aktuelles Buch zu Ende lesen sollen. TURKISH: Orhan Pamuk'un Kar adlı romanını okumaya birlikte başladık. Kolay değil, fakat çok daha zor olacağını düşündüm. DANISH: Jeg har bestået min første test. Testen var meget kort og relativt nem, men jeg er stadig glad for det. Det bliver nemmere at forstå hvad danskere siger (selvfølgelig når de noget simpelt siger). Jeg har imidlertid ikke læst noget eventyr. 1 person has voted this message useful