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PaulLambeth’s TAC 2012: Team ɬ | ||
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| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5376 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 9 of 16 17 November 2011 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've had a bit of a slacking couple of days and done nothing, after the completion of most of my work, so the last week hasn't looked so impressive. Now up to 45 hours in the 6WC, of which Hindi is still taking the biggest chunk.
--- Hindi I'm going through the new verbs and all the vocabulary to get myself up to scratch on the first 5 chapters. I've learnt the imperfect use of verbs and the imperative, as well as having gone a bit more through the audio. I feel I can rely entirely on Devanaagarii now, with a table of the rarer symbols alongside, so I'm looking forward to my new course - whose name I've forgotten - arriving. Irish I'm struggling slightly with the sudden introduction of all the forms of the verb "to be" (habitual, subjunctive, indicative, in past and present, alongside lenition and eclipsis rules) but the examples aren't too difficult. I've noticed that I've learnt a lot of helpful phrases that FluentCzech finds particularly useful, so I'm going to learn them additionally in Hindi and Icelandic to try and improve both. Icelandic I read the first 8 pages of On The Road (Jack Kerouac) translated into Icelandic and wrote down all the words I didn't know. I'm also up to about 400 example sentences, and will keep hunting for those when I get time. Tok Pisin I stumbled across a video of Genesis explained orally by a lady in Papua New Guinea, and learnt a couple of useful things about the pronunciation: the -pela suffix in adjectives (and a few other words) is said more like -pla, and the rhythm is very different to English. This is the first time I've tried to understand spoken Tok Pisin and I was pleased that I managed to get some of the more complex sentences mostly down. That's a hole, though, and a considerable one for a language which is mostly spoken. This video of Tok Pisin also opened me up to some academic discussions about whether English is a type of creole. From a bit of reading, it seems that if so it is not the same type as Tok Pisin, and relies on a different definition of a creole: a creole may be derived from a pidgin, which Tok Pisin is, or dramatically influenced even as far as grammar goes by another language, which English partially has been several times up to Middle English. I'm not sure how much I agree with it though. It depends very well what definition you use. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5559 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 10 of 16 27 December 2011 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Looking forward to following your progress in 2012, and am feeling quite tempted by your Icelandic studies already. There have even been whispers of giving it a go in Team Sputnik later on in the year, so who knows... ;)
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| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5376 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 11 of 16 30 December 2011 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Teango! Icelandic's great, and carries a few nice surprises for English learners. Here's to your taking it up.
The 6WC went well as a 3WC, but exams and essays meant I had to terminate my involvement at 50 hours. I was still rank 27th in target language hours, only 7 ranks behind what I stopped with. I'd like to combine the forthcoming TAC 2012 with 6 week challenges when they come up. --- TAC 2012 My languages for the TAC will be primarily Hindi and Irish, both from just above a beginner level. For the first half of the year I will continue using Icelandic while I'm here and will no doubt dabble in some more. I am in Team ɬ for the year. STUDY SUMMARY: Main languages HINDI January: TOTAL: 0 hours 55 minutes IRISH January: TOTAL: 11 hours 54 minutes Additional languages ICELANDIC January: TOTAL: 1 hours 0 minutes (additions will come when I dabble) All languages running total: 13 hours 49 minutes (last update: 01/02/2012) RESOURCES HINDI IRISH (will update when I am back in Iceland with my resources in front of me) Edited by PaulLambeth on 01 February 2012 at 4:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5376 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 12 of 16 26 January 2012 at 5:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Back from a far-too-long break from language posting, giving me time to settle back into the slow rhythm of Reykjavík and start enjoying my new classes. So here goes: For the past week I've been concentrating on Irish, going through all the lessons of Mícheál Ó Siadhail. I've just finished lesson 9, and it's going quickly but manageably.
New things I have learnt from these lessons: - The binding of this copy of the book is terrible. The first ten pages are almost all out so far. - The verb 'to be' has present, past, future, present habitual, past habitual, and conditional tenses, of which a few form combined forms. They are, in third person (to avoid combined forms): tá sé, bhí sé, beidh sé, bíonn sé, bhíodh sé, bheadh sé - Adjectives don't appear to decline for case, just number and with occasional modifications, e.g. lenition in the plural after a consonant-final plural noun - Irish has object forms of some of the pronouns, which can also be used in other combinations. These are thú, é, í, and iad, each with their own contrast forms. Example sentence I was able to complete today: Deir sí go mbeidh an dream uilig ag an bhfarraige amáireach, ach ní chreidim ar chor ar bith í. She says the whole crowd will be at the sea tomorrow, but I don't believe her at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5376 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 13 of 16 01 February 2012 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've done another almost 4 hours of Irish, again just going through the chapters.
New things learnt: - The rules for possessive pronouns are odd but keep me on my toes: mo/m' (my), do/t' (your), and a (his) all lenite the noun; ar (our), 'ur (your pl.), and a (their) all eclipse; and a (her) does nothing to the noun. This is probably necessary because every single one is pronounced as a schwa, with m and d before for my and your. - 'ar' has quite a lot of meanings and a couple of pronunciations depending where it's placed. I can't really remember all of them, but the main ones are as 'our' (pronounced as schwa) and as part of phrases (pronounced as 'er'), e.g. ar ndóigh (/er nu:/, roughly ... I need to get an IPA keyboard layout) - 'of course'. - I began learning the differences for 'go', 'an', etc., before verbs, when you use the copula 'Is' instead of 'tá'. I haven't gotten those down yet. - There are a couple of forms of the numbers in Cois Fharraige that are different to the standard. - The numbers (at least up to 10), like the possessive pronouns, like to mix up lenition and eclipsis of the noun. Jeez. I also attended an hour of Icelandic speaking class. I've not been speaking enough while I've been here, so I'm about as rusty as I was in August. The lady teaching us is Estonian and she's been living in Iceland for 18 years. Right now she's giving free lessons to 6 of us, every Monday and Wednesday. She seems to have studied linguistics - when she writes down the colloquial fast ways of saying set phrases, she uses the IPA. A useful hour, and many more to come :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5059 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 14 of 16 01 February 2012 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Adjectives don't appear to decline for case, just number and with occasional
modifications, e.g. lenition in the plural after a consonant-final plural noun Nom. an buachaill beag Gen. an bhuachalla bhig ár is pronounced like swa?! Not like [a:r]? ar is pronounced er', with slender r. short e never appears before a broad consonant Edited by Марк on 02 February 2012 at 10:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5376 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 15 of 16 01 February 2012 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Ahh ... I'm not up to genetive yet. Well, one instance of case modification's okay by me. These are just the comments I'm making so far; as always happens, every chapter something will rock my entire boat of cognition. The ar I mean is "our", which (at least in the dialect I'm learning) is written ar and pronounced as JUST schwa, no r included. It's different to the standard on a number of areas. Maybe this is one of them. I know ar (in the other sense - ar ndóigh) is with a slender r - I didn't bother to write that down because it's pronounced with an e. Thanks for your comments Mark. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4960 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 16 of 16 11 February 2012 at 6:08am | IP Logged | ||
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How is your Icelandic going? Is it true that after learning Icelandic you can read many
old Norse and English texts? I have to say I find the language very intriguing. What are your experiences with its difficulty? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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