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Dagbók Soffíu: að læra íslensku | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 1 of 22 11 June 2012 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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New to this forum but I thought that I might as well start documenting my progress right away!
The story so far... I'm a thirty-year-old monoglot, born and raised in the US but currently living and working in the UK. As a teenager I wasn't really interested in learning another language, and subsequently it's always been a "maybe someday" thing for me. Or it was until recently. I've visited Iceland three times in the past two years, and fell in love with the landscape and the culture and the sound of the language. I would love to be able to read the sagas and Halldór Laxness in the original, so... I decided to learn Icelandic. I've had my moments of thinking that this is over-ambitious and (perhaps) under- useful, but it seems to be the language that I'm excited about learning, so I've chosen to follow my passion. I started doing a bit of casual studying last December, but although I was in Reykjavik for a short visit in January, I didn't really have the courage to try out any words. (I was traveling with friends so I think this made a difference.) My committed studying started at the end of this April, if I recall correctly. I began with Alaric Hall's free mp3 course, which seems to me an extremely good introduction to the language. (It might be too basic for experienced language learners, but given that I started with no knowledge of grammatical terms, in English or otherwise, I needed a little handholding.) Since then I've been working on and off with Icelandic Online, and have gone through the first two courses, but I don't get on with their approach very well, so I've been doing more independent work. I have 900 words in my Anki deck so far. My current medium-term goal is to prepare for the summer course that I'll be taking this August: "Icelandic in One Week" with the University Centre of the Westfjords in Ísafjörður. It's a beginner's course but I'm sure that knowing more will help me to get more out of it. There's a lot to say, but I'll leave it here for now. Tomorrow I want to talk more about the texts/sources that I've used and how it's all been going... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 22 11 June 2012 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Icelandic! Wonderful! Will see if I am able to follow this with interest!
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| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 3 of 22 12 June 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks! I'll certainly hope to make it interesting.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 4 of 22 12 June 2012 at 1:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I wish you good luck with your studies!
Icelandic is a difficult, but rewarding language. I will follow this log with interest! Góða skemmtun og gangi þér vel! Edited by Josquin on 12 June 2012 at 1:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 5 of 22 12 June 2012 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Þakka þér!
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| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 6 of 22 12 June 2012 at 8:32am | IP Logged | ||
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12 June 2012
Difficulties: 1) It's starting to dawn on me that I've chosen a language where there really isn't much material available. Dictionaries are certainly a bit scarce and I look with envy at specialised texts like "501 French Verbs." I've been reading about the Listening-Reading technique but it's proving difficult for me to find suitable long texts. I have a copy of Laxness's "Independent People" which I optimistically bought in Reykjavik in January, and you would think that there would be audiobooks of Laxness available, but they're not so easy to track down. hlusta.is looks very interesting (audiobooks by subscription) but you have to have a kennitala (national ID number) to sign up. This seems to be the case for a lot of Icelandic websites and is deeply annoying. Right now I'm thinking of getting Njal's Saga from Eymundsson, since it's available as mp3 audio, and the text is easy to find. Modern spelling, modern pronunciation, no problem. But the language itself will be just a bit archaic!! 2) Right now I have to trade off between immersion and comprehension. I don't seem to be able to study for just ten minutes or half an hour: once I get started, I want to go on for hours. I want to stay in Icelandic; I want to do everything that I can in Icelandic. It feels actively weird to go back to English But I can't do very much in Icelandic! I can only write the simplest sentences and I can't read or listen to ordinary texts with anything in the way of comprehension. So it's all a bit... bare. I'm listening to Icelandic radio as I'm writing this, and I think I'm getting something from it, but at the same time I can't help but feel that I'm diluting the experience by functioning primarily in English. Obviously this difficulty will lessen as time goes on... but it might take a while... Joys: 1) Thanks to this forum I've discovered Viltu læra íslensku?. It's perfect! With the Icelandic subtitles it's just about at the right level for me. (Without subtitles I'm not sure that I would be able to follow it, but that's something I can try once I've been through the course once.) It amazes me how involved I can get in the little stories of visiting the bank or buying bus tickets, even though I would be instantly bored if I were watching it in English. Maybe this is part of what "learning like a child" is about? There's something very pure about the joy of simple comprehension and communication. 2) For a while now I've been listening to Rás 2 online, but I've just switched over to Útvarp Saga (motto: "Þú verður að hlusta"), which I'm finding much more suitable. It's almost all talk and they have lots of call-ins so that I get the chance to hear lots of different people's speech patterns. I catch words here and there, and that's about it, but the incomprehensible words are finally starting to separate themselves in my mind. 3) I do find nonsense-Icelandic running through my head when I go to sleep. I do find myself coming up with short, descriptive sentences when I'm doing things around the house. I even had a dream where I was looking at a list of Icelandic words, and I only realised when I woke up that they were in Icelandic. So I think something may be sinking in. We'll see. Edited by Soffía on 12 June 2012 at 8:35am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| csjc Tetraglot Newbie IcelandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5601 days ago 20 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Dutch Studies: Norwegian, French, Japanese | Message 7 of 22 12 June 2012 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Nice to see another Icelandic learner! I know the guy who teaches the course in the Westfjords, you'll definitely learn
a lot, especially if you put in the effort beforehand as I see you're doing. Background listening is one of the best things you can do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 8 of 22 12 June 2012 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
That's good to hear... all of it, really! I'm particularly happy to hear about the Westfjords course. I was nervous signing up for it because I've not done much learning of any kind in classroom situations, but I think it'll give me the push that I need to actually start speaking and using Icelandic. Particularly as it's so easy to just get by in English while in Iceland. As for the background listening, I'm starting to think that it's particularly necessary when learning a less common language. Even now I'm so much more accustomed to the sounds and speech patterns of languages like French, simply because I've heard them so much more often. I have plenty of Icelandic listening to do in order to catch up! On with my daily log... My work has been slow today (I'm a semi-freelancer) so I've had plenty of time to devote to my studies. I'm feeling a bit unfocused at the moment, possibly because this forum is giving me so many good ideas, but at this stage I don't think there's anything wrong with trying out various approaches and seeing what seems to stick. I felt like absorbing some actual content in Icelandic, so on the recommendation of the inestimable Alaric Hall, I decided to watch "Astropia": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j72vf3vK3Zc As he admits, it's not a great movie, but it's 1) in Icelandic, 2) has English subtitles, 3) is on YouTube, and 4) is entirely watchable and rather funny. That's all I ask! Having the English definitely helped me to listen better. I hope to watch it a couple more times and then perhaps try arranging the window so that I can't see the subtitles. (Interesting note: there are a *lot* of English phrases in the film. It's interesting to see just how easily the characters switch back and forth. Entirely typical of Reykjavik, in my limited experience.) Today's episode of "Viltu læra íslensku?" was about going ice skating. The last episode was (naturally!) about visiting the swimming pool. You can definitely learn something about the culture and favorite pursuits of a nation by how eager they are to teach immigrants the words for "sauna" and "jacuzzi." Not that I object to knowing them! Today I also tried recording myself reading a dialogue from "Colloquial Icelandic." Oh dear. Embarrassing. The voices in my head are clearly much more fluent than my tongue is, though there were a couple of moments where I think I managed that distinctively Icelandic lilt. There's definitely some shadowing in the future for me, as well as more recording and listening, but I think gaining more verbal agility is just a matter of practice. Finally, I've noticed that there's an Icelandic-and-Finnish Meetup group that has monthly events in London: "We meet on the third Tuesday of each month to chat in English, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic or whatever Scandinavian language we find easiest. We range in ability from complete beginner to native Scandinavian." If I get up the courage I may go along! Edited by Soffía on 12 June 2012 at 7:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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