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Dagbók Soffíu: að læra íslensku | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 9 of 22 12 June 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged |
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I'm not learning Icelandic now (I'm an upper-beginner in Norwegian), but I'll keep an eye on your log, Soffía. It's nice to see someone learn this beautiful language!
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| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 10 of 22 16 June 2012 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you, Expugnator! It's encouraging to know that other people are interested in the language. Although I
have an educated, cultured group of friends, I still get a surprising amount of disbelief and incomprehension when I tell them that I'm learning Icelandic. Not so much to report over the past few days. I've been keeping up with my Anki reviews and watching a bit of "Viltu laera islensku?" The show is an odd mix in terms of subject matter, as it's obviously partly intended for the practical concerns of immigrants to the country. I just watched an episode about seeking and finding employment in a fishmongers'. There was a lot of vocabulary in there that I doubt I will ever use! But I suppose it's all grist for the mill. One difficulty that I've been facing is the need to divide my time between English and Icelandic. I know, English is my native language and I'm not studying it in any sense. But I'm a keen writer and when I'm working on a short story, as I am now, I find that I immerse myself in the rhythms and patterns of the language as much as I do when I'm trying to study Icelandic. There is a tradeoff there. I feel that I go down to 98% of my usual English fluency when I'm fully involved in my efforts to gain (say) a 2% fluency in Icelandic. You might say that this isn't much of a sacrifice, and it's barely noticeable in my day-to-day life, but I can definitely notice it when I'm trying to function at the very top of my English proficiency. Maybe once I finish this story I'll set my writing aside for a while. Oh, to be fluent enough to be able to write fiction in Icelandic! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 11 of 22 22 June 2012 at 10:03am | IP Logged |
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Khazumoto at AJATT suggests putting sentences and phrases into your SRS as well as words, and this seems like a
great idea to me. Luckily my Icelandic dictionary offers all sorts of example phrases, many of which you would not be able to understand purely from the words in them, so this seems like a good place to start. I'm attacking key words like "setja" and "fara," the latter of which I got thirty phrases from! I tried having a separate deck of phrases but I found it too complicated, so I'm just mixing them in with my words. Hopefully this won't cause problems later on... I should probably be tagging them or something, so that I can continue to say "I know X words" rather than "I know X small chunks of language." Or maybe it doesn't matter? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 12 of 22 22 June 2012 at 12:03pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Soffia,
can you possibly share which dictionary you own? That sounds like a very interesting one! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 13 of 22 22 June 2012 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
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Soffia,
Did you catch "The Nightshift", an Icelandic TV comedy series set in a petrol filling station? (It's better than it sounds, honestly!). BBC showed it a while back in one of their graveyard slots (so it was easy to miss it). It looks like it might have been inspired by "The Office", but it's slightly more surreal and charming. I just looked on amazon UK to see if there was a DVD. There is, but it's not available at the moment :-( Interestingly, there are 2 sequels which I didn't know about. One is shown as available used, but it's quite expensive. You might have better luck at online Scandinavian DVD shops (or in Iceland, next time you go). I didn't see it, but apparently they also showed "Jar City", which was apparently a well-regarded Icelandic film. That and a few other Icelandic films are currently available at amazon UK, although again, you might be better off trying Icelandic/Scandinavian sources, especially for a better chance of getting it with Icelandic subtitles (not guaranteed though). Interesting what you say about getting "interference" from Icelandic when you are trying to write creatively in English. And language rhythms are really important, but hard to translate, hard to teach, hard to convey to anyone who hasn't grown up with them - no wonder learning a foreign language can be difficult. Enjoy your Icelandic journey. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 14 of 22 22 June 2012 at 1:02pm | IP Logged |
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vermillon, the Icelandic dictionary is happily available online as well as in print, so you can take a look for
yourself. For example, the entry for "fara" is here: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IcelOnline/IcelOnli ne.TEId-idx?type=entry&eid=FARA&q1=fara montmorency, I have watched and enjoyed Nightshift! The version that I have now is without subtitles but I might try buying "Dayshift" when I visit Iceland in August. "Jar City" I caught part of during that BBC Icelandic season; it too might be worth tracking down. There's quite a bit of Icelandic cinema given what a small country it is. I've also been eying up this website, where you can stream Icelandic films for extremely reasonable prices, though I suppose it might add up if you did a lot of rewatching: http://www.icelandiccinema.com/ Edited by Soffía on 22 June 2012 at 1:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 15 of 22 27 June 2012 at 8:22am | IP Logged |
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Negatives:
The short phrases didn't work so well. There are so many different ways of using "fara" in a sentence. Who would guess that "fara með sig" means "do oneself in"? Perhaps it was an error adding all of those phrases to Anki at once, but I found them even harder to remember than individual words. It was just frustrating me so I ended up deleting most of them. Maybe I'll revisit this as a concept when I'm more advanced. Positives: I've been watching RÚV online! My mother pointed out that it's easier to follow television than radio and she was, of course, absolutely right. There aren't as many programmes available as I would like but there's certainly enough to get started with. My favorite so far is "Gulli builds." It's fun to see inside Icelandic homes and so much of it is visual that you can guess what they're discussing even if you can't follow the words. And it's helped me cement at least one word firmly in my memory. For some reason I'd had a mental block about "framkvæma" (to carry out) and had actually deleted it from Anki when suddenly there was a segment about Gulli having to get planning permission for a new project! The caption was "umsókn um framkvæmdaleyfi" ("application for feasibility"? "application for development"?) and the poor fellow had to go back about six times, so now whenever the word comes up in Anki I'll be able to visualise Gulli standing unhappily outside an office in central Reykjavik. I also watched a British documentary with Icelandic subtitles, which I found surprisingly helpful as a lesson in how to go from English to Icelandic. I didn't have to concentrate on the English audio, but read the subtitles carefully, pronouncing them in my head. I had lots of moments of "oh, that's how you phrase that in Icelandic!" Plus it had the additional benefit of my actually being able to understand what was being said. I can imagine that some people might just end up watching the show and not registering the subtitles much but I'm really a reader so they were squarely in the centre of my attention. My project right now is listening/watching for dative forms... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4551 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 16 of 22 31 May 2015 at 10:19pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I'm still here and still studying Icelandic. By the standards of HTLAL I'm neither particularly diligent nor
particularly talented when it comes to language learning, I think, but everyone has to be mediocre at something or other. I must be getting something out of it or I wouldn't be carrying on! Back in the summer of 2012 I went to the Westfjords for the one-week class in beginning Icelandic. Thanks to Alaric Hall's MP3 course, with a side of Icelandic Online, I was definitely not a true beginner. I found the content of the class a bit basic - there were other non-beginners on it, but sadly it wasn't quite big enough to make two groups. What really improved for me was my pronunciation. By the end of the week I could make myself intelligible to Icelanders, whereas at the beginning I really hadn't been able to. Last summer, 2014, I went back for the two-week intermediate course. At the beginning I was really afraid that it would be way beyond me. There were people on the course who lived in Iceland, or were studying Icelandic at university. My ability to *speak* Icelandic was near the bottom of the class, but my reading comprehension was right on par, I think. There wasn't as much opportunity for conversational practice as I'd hoped but the class was taught 80-90% in Icelandic, so what really improved for me this time was my comprehension. Since the beginning of this year I've been trying to do more reading. The first book I finished in Icelandic is "Indjáninn" by Jón Gnarr, which has fairly simple language and short sentences, but is nonetheless a good read. After that I read the translation of a Harlequin romance that I picked up on a whim. Also a good choice - the vocabulary is not that large and yet there's a fair amount of incident in the book. (It's also *awful* but that's by the by.) I intend to pick up some more romances when next in the country. At the moment I'm trying to read "The Little Prince" in Icelandic but it's actually *not* a particularly easy read, despite being short and illustrated! In August I'm going back to the Westfjords a third time to take a one-week course in Icelandic Reading and Vocabulary. Seemed to make sense to focus on what I spend most of my time doing! I'll be happy with my abilities in Icelandic if I can read proper novels, and it does seem as if this is an achievable goal. My very rough assessment of my own abilities is that my reading level is a solid B1. Comprehension somewhere between A2 and B1. My speaking ability is probably stuck at A1. Too much of a perfectionist; I just freeze up. Ah well. My most recent resource discovery is http://www.ordabok.is It does require a subscription to make proper use of it, but the prices are very reasonable and it seems extremely complete by Icelandic-English dictionary standards. I've found it really useful while reading. Anyway, that's by way of a very brief update but I'm hoping that blogging about what I'm reading might help to keep me honest. I was tempted to join the Super Challenge but I think I'm too late for that! I could probably manage a quarter challenge by the end of the year. Something to aim for... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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