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| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4986 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 33 of 37 02 June 2012 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Haven't updated here for a while...
I did my Catalan A2 exam and I'm eagerly awaiting the mark. I found the listening hard and yet the rest of the paper was very very easy. But I've made progress, which is more important than official recommendation. In other languages: Spanish - I continue to read academic and non-academic texts every week, but do not speak very often. German - Reading der Spiegel is about all I manage, I really need to start going back over grammatical aspects that I'm not ok with... And I'm beginning to think I should start doing either Welsh, Swedish or both. And for some reason Russian keeps coming back into my head. Decisions to be made I believe! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 34 of 37 03 June 2012 at 12:35am | IP Logged | ||
Hi Alexander. Hope you don't mind my butting in. Seems we have several linguistic interests in common (OK, not Russian or Basque... :) ). I noticed your reference to Welsh in your 1st post, and about never hearing it. I was just going to point out (although you probably know) that at least BBC Radio Cymru is on the internet these days, which wasn't the case when I was trying to study Welsh many years ago. (You just couldn't get R.Cymru where I lived, and could only get Radio Wales patchily, and this was mostly in English, although there was a long series of very good Welsh lessons on there which I listened to when I could). You are right though; for anyone living outside of Wales, the incentives are a bit limited. In its favour is that Wales is at least accessible to many of us in England, no currency problems, and you can always revert to English in emergencies! :-) We have a reason to visit Wales from time to time and it's even in a Welsh speaking area, but not often enough to make it really worth putting in the time that would be needed. I've just remembered that I suppose if you have the right kind of TV subscription, you can probably get S4C these days in England. (We don't). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4986 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 35 of 37 03 June 2012 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey, thanks for the comments.
Radio Cymru is a very good source, as is S4C, and I do listen to it from time to time. I actually understand quite a lot too, so I guess all that would be required is for me to make a commitment to the language and listen to the radio a few times a week while working through some kind of book. I really should find the time. Welsh is a beautiful language and I think that if I learned it fluently I would find the opportunities, rather than the situation now whereby I don't see the opportunities, which is probably due to the fact that I don't speak it! One example is that I could attend Welsh-language talks and seminars which are run at the University of Cardiff (where I am a student) But unfortunately the language courses they run here are expensive =( But that's ok, since I'm very happy to go through books. Have I just convinced myself to learn Welsh? I hope so! Hwyl! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 36 of 37 05 June 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
OK, I must have missed the fact that you were actually studying in Wales. In that case, then you probably really should try to learn Welsh then Boyo! A slightly off the wall suggestion, but even if you are not religious, you might do worse than find yourself a Welsh chapel to go along to. To listen to the singin' if nothing else. I assume there must be quite a few around there. And hopefully you'd meet people who wouldn't mind having a bit of a chat "i'r hen iaith" :-) EDIT: P.S. Changing languages, did you catch the "Sebastian Bergman" on the last 2 Saturdays? At least the last one should be iPlayerable still. I thought they were pretty good, but I tend to be biased. I've downloaded them in WMV form amd am going to see if I can find the Swedish subtitles on the web somewhere, and see if I can follow it that way. (The WMVs will expire after 30 days of course, so I need to get on with it). Edited by montmorency on 14 June 2012 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4986 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 37 of 37 05 June 2012 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes I've been watching the Bergman programs, as I'm a bit of a Scandinavian crime drama geek - you name it, I've
watched it! Given the frequency of Scandinavian TV drama here in Britain I should probably start going through my three months book, as the chance to see good quality Swedish TV is invaluable for language learning. I've been able to pick out a lot, with my crime and invective vocabularies increasingly rapidly! As to the Chapel idea, I think I'd rather watch S4C or listen to Radio Cymru. Indeed I've met two people over the last week who want to learn Welsh or are currently learning Welsh so I'm hoping to be able to practice with them. I think that once I start to speak it I will see more opportunities to use it, a virtuous circle that will help me to finally move the obstacles to my Welsh learning. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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