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Köln to Kiev TAC ’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 1 of 55 15 December 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to my new log for 2014. The year will be spent trying to manage four languages, two of which I have some independence and two which are completely new. Below are my goals for the year.
German: By far my strongest language. As of now, I have studied around 750 hours and would estimate that I'm at a definite B2 level. I can read novels and news articles on zeit.de and have now spent a couple of times where I've read and translated German language documents. I don't do as much listening as I should, but I'm at the point where if I stumble across something random without having any background context, I can identify at least the subject. My goal for this year is really to improve my active abilities, especially in active vocabulary, and generally be more accurate in my speech and writing. I would be really happy to hit the 1,000 hour mark this year and then finally be able to stop counting for German. Polish: Second strongest language; probably have a little over 300 hours now. I was being very conservative in counting them, so it's probably a little more. Around hour 290, the language started to "click" and become much more automatic. Not necessarily correct, but at least I had a pretty good response time. I'm not going to do as much new studying at the beginning of the year--I think I would be better improving what I already know and making sure I have a very solid foundation (something I never did with my German). I might adjust this as the year continues though. In 2014 I would like to read three book in Polish and watch up to episode 300 of Samo Zycie. Ukrainian: Beginner-I have a copy of "Beginner's Ukrainian" by Shevchuk and would be very happy if I could finish the book by the end of the year. What will be very difficult for me with Ukrainian is not letting Polish pronunciation and vocabulary influence it. This might be challenging considering several of the Ukrainians I know happen to be from the western part of the country, where those influences are much more present. I try now to make sure I don't study one right after the other, because I think that would be too confusing for me. Afrikaans: Beginner-I really enjoy this language a lot, and I can't really explain why! For right now, I'm going to keep it at a primarily passive level with reading and listening. That's mostly what I've been doing with it, and I would like to be able to read news articles by the end of the year. Like Ukrainian and Polish, it's tricky to keep the language separate from German. What makes it very challenging is that my German gives me such an advantage in understanding Afrikaans, but what it's really doing is reinforcing THAT language, instead of the one I'm trying to learn. So the way I'm trying to combat that tendency is to read material that's much closer to my real level, so that I can remember vocabulary. Here's to a Germanic/Slavic year of language learning! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 2 of 55 01 January 2014 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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After a week-long break from language learning because of Christmas parties/rehearsals for services/travelling, I'm finally ready to get back into the swing of things. I've been reading articles on Die Zeit a lot when I have short breaks at work, which is really helpful in maintaining my vocabulary. I need to get back into listening regularly as well in German.
Ukrainian is up on the list for the rest of the week. I would really like to get to verb conjugations. One thing that will probably be a task for the year is trying to get a handle on the rhythm of the language. The mobile stress makes it more difficult, because Polish is pretty predictable, and German was extremely intuitive. My default right now is to just use the Polish stress, which doesn't always line up. Something tells me this is going to require a lot of listening and just plain memorization. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 3 of 55 01 January 2014 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting set of languages! If we take Afrikaans and Dutch to be mutually comprehensible, then you can walk or bike from Amsterdam to Kiev and talk to the locals in every country on the way! Wouldn't that be a nice project for a sabbatical? :)
All the best for your studies this year. I'll be following your log, especially your progress in Polish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 4 of 55 02 January 2014 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Fuenf Katzen
Your log would be interesting for me even if you weren't my new teammate, especially obviously due to Polish and Ukrainian. I've flicked through your log from last year and see that you're a consistent poster and student, so I look forward to being on your team. Good luck for the year! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 5 of 55 13 January 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Funny things that happen when you sing at a Ukrainian church: for Christmas you will be expected to sing the Viruyu in Ukrainian. The result: crash course in sight-reading Cyrillic! Actually it's not that difficult typically, because the music tends to be a pretty steady pace. This one goes much faster, and the text is much longer than I'm used to reading.
First major Polish/Ukrainian interference moment: that pesky "y." So, in Polish, the letter "y" is pronounced as "ih" (for example Sokoły). In Ukrainian, the Cyrillic letter looks like "y" but is pronounced "oo." Sorry, writing out phonetics was never a strong point! Now all of my Polish words that have that letter in it are being pronounced as "oo." Okay, I can catch it most of the time, but sometimes it makes quite a difference--instead of saying "łyżki" I ended up pronouncing it "łóżki." Oops! I've found in the past that it's always individual letters that end up being the hardest ones to remember. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 6 of 55 21 January 2014 at 1:18am | IP Logged | ||
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This was the first time in awhile doing a lot of listening to German. I watched the movie "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo." Not exactly a feel good film, but it provided a challenge. Usually my German listening tends to be with documentaries, so I don't always get the full effect of accents. This movie has actors from Berlin, the actors are teenagers, and it was filmed in the early 80s, all of which provided some challenges. For some reason that Berlin accent has always been more complicated for me to understand. Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer is up next. We'll see if this one is any easier.
Ukrainian has moved on to learning the locative case. The same difficulties I've had with Polish--which preposition to use, remember consonant changes, etc. My real issue right now is present tense verb conjugations. This area is a little easier to "cheat" in Polish, because it's fairly predictable which verbs will take which forms just by knowing the stem. I'm not finding that to be true in Ukrainian. Speaking of Polish, I resumed Samo Życie. It's hard to believe that a few months ago this was completely incomprehensible to me, because I understand it much more now. One thing I haven't been able to figure out: those perfective prefixes (wy, na, roz, u, etc). I actually found a podcast on realpolish.pl discussing this. This is a tough area, and now I completely understand why people say phrasal verbs in English are so difficult to master, because this is completely unlike anything I'm used to seeing. So, I understand the concept of the prefixes; they tend to have similar meanings when attached to a verb. Understanding the concept and actually applying it though are very different, and I'm not sure I can properly distinguish between them. There is a somewhat similar mindset in English. Take for example, the phrase "I'm going to the bedroom" and "I'm going into the bedroom." They're both pretty clear, and if somebody were to say either one, I probably wouldn't read too far into it. It seems to me though, the second example is more specific (that you're physically entering a different room) but really either one is typically fine to say. These subtle differences seem to be pretty frequent in Polish. I think I'm going to have to wait awhile before I say I've figured out this concept. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6106 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 7 of 55 21 January 2014 at 10:05am | IP Logged | ||
You're not the only one! I've made no systematic study of the prefixes, but now you mention it, I think I'll have to add it to my ever-expanding "to do" list. I've ignored Samo Życie for nearly a month and have forgotten what episode I'm at (380 I think). I've been listening to podcasts from Radio Trójka, but it might be good to watch something for a change. Visual clues like body language help comprehension, although I can sometimes get distracted by what/who I'm looking at. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 8 of 55 22 January 2014 at 2:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Heute Abend habe ich Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer angeschaut--ein lustiger Film! Ich fand es interessant, dass ich dieser Film besser als Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo verstehen konnte. Ich bin nicht sicher warum, aber in Das Fliegende kamen die Schauspieler aus Süddeutschland, und in Wir Kinder kamen sie aus Berlin. Vielleicht ist die süddeutsche Aussprache mir leichter zu verstehen--ich höre diese häufiger als die Andere. Ich denke nicht oft an Aussprachen, aber ich glaube immer mehr, dass eine starke Aussprache, die man nicht häufig hört, kann das Verständnis verhindern. Jetzt denke ich, dass ich zu mehr mit norddeutschen Aussprachen zuhören soll. Edited by Fuenf_Katzen on 23 January 2014 at 4:52am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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