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Started learning Kazakh | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7144 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes  7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 1 of 24 13 November 2006 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Finally, after three years of searching everywhere, I found a Kazakh learning method. And a good one, by the way. So a few weeks ago I began learning this Turkic language, not very seriously because I havent't got as much time for language learning as I used to have, but I do progress a little now and then.
At the moment, I only know about 20-30 words of vocabulary, so I obviously cannot express myself in that language, but on the other hand (as is usual in me when learning new languages, by the way), I have easily mastered every aspect of grammar that I have studied, and with the help of a dictionary, I can easily translate most texts I find - it is not just a word-for-word translation, guessing the general sense of the sentence by knowing the meaning of each word; I can actually say which part of each word means what, and why it does. I will post news about my progress in this thread. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OCCASVS Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6635 days ago 134 posts - 140 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, English, French, Polish | Message 2 of 24 13 November 2006 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello,
can you tell me its name, please? I'm interested in learning some uncommon languages, including Kazakh, but it's difficult to find learning materials :( 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Zorndyke Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6950 days ago 374 posts - 382 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Czech | Message 3 of 24 13 November 2006 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You found a good learning method for such a rare language as Kazakh and you do not mention which one that is? Shame on you! ;-)
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| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7144 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 4 of 24 14 November 2006 at 2:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Here it goes:
Manuel de Qazaq, Cholpan Khoussaïnova, Rémy Dor Collection Langues et Mondes / L'Asiathèque ISBN: 2 901053.12.5 It consists of a series of lessons of progressive difficulty, usually containing an introducing dialogue, a grammar part, a phonetic part, vocabulary and also some cultural and historical information. I find the grammar is very well explained, even though it does help to have studied grammar per se (that is, not a specific language's grammar, but general grammar itself). The distribution is also well done, as you never get too much of one thing before switching to another. The only problem I find with this method is that the French-Kazakh vocabulary is very limited (200-300 words), and the Kazakh-French one, although larger (800-900 words) is not too prolific either, so I guess that if you really want to speak with Qazaq people about a variety of subjects, you should get a dictionary as well. Finally, the book comes with two CDs which cover all of the dialogues in the book and most of the phonetical lessons. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7155 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 5 of 24 14 November 2006 at 5:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Kazakh seems to be pretty close to Turkish - it's also a turkic language, so it's agglutinative with SOV basic syntax. And it has front to back vowel harmony - some turkic languages have reverse vowel harmony.
My flirtation with Turkish, and some conversations with Uyghurs in China recently, suggest to me that the easiest way to learn a turkic language that's very similar to Turkish (Azeri, Uyghur and perhaps Kazakh spring to mind) would be to use the FSI Turkish course, then a shorter course in your ultimate target language to 'convert'. The reason i say this is that turkic grammar is very, very different to indo-european (and in my case sinitic) grammar. You can learn the rules, but without drills that force you to use them on the fly, it will still be a struggle to make and understand spoken sentences. (Well it was for me - more talented linguists might do better) None of the other Turkish courses i used or looked at (both edns of Teach Yourself, Colloquial) lacked approaches that solved this problem. I imagine this is equally true of materials for other turkic languages. After completing the first half of FSI Turkish - in a not terribly conscientious way - I did a placement test for the Taksim Dilmer turkish course in Istanbul. My level was equivalent to someone who'd studied in group classes for 20 hours for 2-3 months - of a course which lasted 6 months in total. I imagine assiduous study of the whole FSI course would get one to a level similar to people who'd spent 5+ months studying full time in Turkey. Additional advantages: - H1 of FSI Turkish is now available for free. H2 should be available before you finish H1 - unless you manage to rocket through H1... - If the Kazakh vocabulary presented in the material you have is too limited, after studying FSI Turkish vocabulary you'll have access to many more Turkish words. The lexical similarities between Turkic languages are quite large - if you throw in the Turkic word, a good percentage of the time the people you speak to will be able to guess your meaning. - In most places, it's easier to find Turks to practice with than Kazakhs... - The efforts of the Turkish government to promote pan-turkism , and the importance of Turkey in trade in central Asia, lead me to think that many native speakers of turkic languages also speak some Turkish. (Wikipedia's claim that there are 10m L2 speakers of Turkish - may support this, although kurd's and the turkish diaspora could account for much of this) Anyway, good luck with kazakh however you decide to learn it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6760 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 24 14 November 2006 at 5:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Those are good points about learning Turkish, Onebir. That pan-Turkism endeavour is very interesting, although it doesn't seem like the Turkish government has been entirely competent at it so far.
Looking up Turkish at Wikipedia, I see that Turkish and its very close relatives (Azeri, Turkmen, Kashkai, Tatar) have as many as 125 million speakers. Include the whole Turkic family (Kazakh, Uzbek, etc.) and that number goes up a whole lot more. I already know an agglutinative SOV language, and my wife's language school specializes in Turkish. Hmm... Edited by Captain Haddock on 14 November 2006 at 5:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7155 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 7 of 24 14 November 2006 at 6:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
True, but Turkey is still something of a regional power.
Yes - and there are communities of turkish speakers all over the world. Together with completely regular grammar, that makes it a neglected language in my eyes...
The japanese girl in my class said the grammar was quite similar to hers. But she had much more trouble with pronounciation than a native english speaker would, so in a way, you're in a better position to take advantage of the grammatical similarities... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OCCASVS Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6635 days ago 134 posts - 140 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, English, French, Polish | Message 8 of 24 14 November 2006 at 8:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thank you! I'm lucky because it's written in a language which I can understand :)
I've got basic notions of Esperanto. May it help, or should I be prepaired to struggle with a completely alien grammar to me? Edited by OCCASVS on 14 November 2006 at 8:55am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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