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TAC 2010 Sirkka’s 5-Languages-Challenge | ||
Tags: Hebrew (biblical) | Sign Language | Thai | Dutch | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5613 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 9 of 16 22 December 2009 at 12:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Ooh thanks for the detailed answer, it's very interesting :) Hehe and yes I'm very happy I get to speak Spanish every day! Sometimes I tease my husband that I married him just for his language XD
Yep well my vote goes to the Langenscheidt course, it's really perfect. And not only does it give you the MSA, but also the dialogues in Syrian and Egyptian, so at least for my uses it's perfect. I do want to learn MSA mostly first, but because I want to use my Arabic out in the real world, it is so incredibly useful to know at least some of the main words in the two most widely understood dialects! :) And I also plan on learning Levantine :) I couldn't decide for a long time, but I think it's the popular dialect I like the most. I shall be following your log too :) Also your daughter sounds adorable ^^ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sirkka Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5650 days ago 35 posts - 39 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Sign Language, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto, Thai, Modern Hebrew | Message 10 of 16 25 December 2009 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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trong>Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Thai: Reviewed Conversation Lesson Nr. 11 - Telling the Time. This is tricky in Thai. Time can either be told using 24 hour military time or using the traditional pattern of dividing the day into four 6 hour sections. Midnight and midday have their own words, the other times are referred to using classifying words - the Thai words for "morning" and "afternoon" and the words "dti" and "tum". "Dti" literally means "to hit". Way back in the olden days the watchmen used to beat out the times using sticks or drums. I'm unsure as to whether "tum" has any real meaning or is just an imitation of the sound the watchmen's drum makes (onomatopoeia - hah, Iove it!). trong>Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Russian: Dictation of Lesson 1 Text I need to teach myself Cyrillic again. Amazing how much you forget if you don't use it. trong>Friday, December 25, 2009 Dutch: Lesson 2 Copied the lesson text and did some exercises using words to describe family members and person's attributes (thin, short, fat, blonde etc.). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sirkka Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5650 days ago 35 posts - 39 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Sign Language, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto, Thai, Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 16 01 January 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm keeping my log short this week because I didn't get to do much.
Monday, December 28, 2009 I was on duty yesterday and had to catch up on some beauty sleep, so I didn't take the time to study Thai today. Tuesday, December 29, 2009 Got started on chapter 6 of Biblical Hebrew and entered some vocab into vokker.net. If only I could take the time to actually review the vocab. I need to schedule some time during the week to do that. Wednesday, December 30, 2009 Did some grammar exercises in Lesson 1 (which words are masculine, feminine, neuter, and what does the plural of these look like) Thursday, December 31, 2009 Passive listening to the main lesson text of Lesson 2. Friday, January 01, 2010 Reviewed sign language vocab on vokker.net 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sirkka Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5650 days ago 35 posts - 39 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Sign Language, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto, Thai, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 16 04 January 2010 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Monday, January 4, 2010
Sigh. I forgot about Monday being my Thai day again, so here goes Biblical Hebrew - again. Maybe I should just give in and declare Monday the Hebrew day. Finished lesson 6 (hollow verbs) and paged through lesson 7 (definite direct objects). The more I delve into the book again the more I realize the little Hebrew I know is coming back, and the early lessons are beginning to get a little boring. To keep it interesting I will up the level by jumping straight to Review Drill Number 2, review anything I can't remember, and take it from there. Edit: oops, got the date wrong Edited by Sirkka on 04 January 2010 at 10:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 13 of 16 12 February 2010 at 12:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sirkka, any news for us? You can do weekly or even monthly updates, I'd just love to hear
how your study of this eclectic choice of languages is going. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sirkka Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5650 days ago 35 posts - 39 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Sign Language, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto, Thai, Modern Hebrew | Message 14 of 16 21 February 2010 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
OMG, has it really been this long? I've been struggling to get things done these past weeks and I've come to realize it's not as easy as I thought to get into the habit of doing at least a half hour of language study when I get home from work in the afternoon. It's not that I don't technically have the time - a lack of energy to do anything but pass out in my favorite armchair immediately after coming home is more like it ;o) Anyone have any ideas? And this has happened to me even with only one language scheduled, so it's not the number of languages per se that's keeping me from studying. But, yay me! Now that I think about it I did manage to get some work done since my last post: Biblical Hebrew I did Review and Drill 2 Lots of verbs to chart and analyze (prefix or affix form, Qal or Piel stem). It wasn't at all as hard as I thought it would be and encouraged me to not review the lessons I had skipped again and instead go ahead with Lesson 8. Gosh, sometimes I watch myself and realize I'm taking this way too seriously! But this is me ;o) Russian I'm still trying to figure out a way to tackle the lessons that will keep me at it and not bore the *'$% out of me. Listening to the lesson text, then doing each exercise one by one leaves me feeling a) I haven't mastered the lesson and b) I often don't even get that far because it's going too slow, the exercises are oftentimes cumbersome, repetitive, whatever *whining mode off* I currently listen to the lesson text several times in a row, like when I iron my husband's Mount Washmore of shirts, and tailor my own exercises, do some of the ones given in the book and come back to the rest a couple of days later or even the following week. Will see if this works for me in the long run. I have the same problems with Dutch, and even worse because it seems so similar to German. German Sign Language Two weeks ago I took the first half of the weekend intensive course I had signed up for at the beginning of the year. Really great class! As far as the vocabulary that was taught is concerned I could have easily taken one of the intermediate classes, but the grammar part was virtually all new to me, and it made up at least half of what was taught. One of the most striking examples of how important good grammar is in Sign Language is the following: The sentence "The father gives the book to the mother." is signed in the following word order: Father - book - give - mother. Usually one-hand-signs are signed using your dominant hand, which for me would be my right hand. But in the case of handing the book over to the mother, the sign for "mother" is made using the left hand, because the right hand is busy signing "give". I can't "let go" of the book until I have signed "mother" because without a recipient, the book would "drop", so the only option is to sign "mother" with the left hand while "holding" the book with the right until the recipient has been specified. I was aware German Sign Language had its own grammar, but I didn't know it was that intricate! So I guess I did make some progress after all. Uh, hullo! *Knock on my own head* This is supposed to be fun, right? ;o) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sirkka Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5650 days ago 35 posts - 39 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Sign Language, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto, Thai, Modern Hebrew | Message 15 of 16 02 March 2010 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Biblical Hebrew Did a review of the grammar I've learned so far, which was good. I don't use Biblical Hebrew as much as the other languages. I sometimes like to try out web sites written in one of my target languages just to see how much I already understand. I can't do that with Biblical Hebrew, which means I miss out on a lot of active/passive usage. Thai Thursday afternoon I spent a lot of time in the car. In anticipation of the available time slot I had burned a CD with conversation lessons from my Thai podcasts. The conversation lessons are built around snippets from actual movies. The vocabulary is pretty advanced and they speak incredibly fast even to my ears (and I have heard everyday Thai day in and day out for several years, so I assumed I was used to the speed. Guess I was wrong ;o) ). Listening to the conversations over and over again does help, though, and that's what I did. I feel like I'm really getting somewhere right now. Russian I'm trying sort of a Birkenbihl approach with Russian and Dutch now. I've studied Modern Hebrew using mostly Birkenbihl, and I still remember a lot of what I learned this way even though I haven't used Hebrew in years. Doing it all the Birkenbihl way - no, I'm one of those who like to do some grammar every now and then. I feel like I need to know the principles around which a language is built. But what I really like to do is to take a dialogue and listen to it over and over again with the volume turned way down so I can barely hear it. Somehow the dialogue makes its way into my brain, and when I get back to it at a later point to do some active work on it I really feel like I have a much better grasp of what is being said and how it's being said. Dutch I did the same with Dutch. What I'll do with Dutch to keep it interesting is that I'll jump to different lessons and will not necessarily do them in the "proper order". This way I won't feel like I'm not making any progress. We'll see how it works. German Sign Language I reviewed vocabulary in vokker.net and watched some of the little films included in my German Sign Language grammar book. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sirkka Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5650 days ago 35 posts - 39 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Sign Language, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto, Thai, Modern Hebrew | Message 16 of 16 13 March 2010 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
Biblical Hebrew I skimmed through Lessons 9-12 and reviewed some things that looked important to know and remember. I was really happy to get to Lesson 13, because starting from that lesson, every lesson has a reading assignment with it, usually something like "Read and translate Genesis 22:1-2" . I feel like I can finally use the Hebrew I've learned. Thai Entered some vocabulary into vokker.net. I realized that I already know most of the basic grammar (as in "really basic") that is presented in the conversation podcasts, so I need to focus on vocabulary for a while now. I would love to learn how to type in Thai, because right now it takes like forever to type even simple words. This goes for Russian and Hebrew too. I downloaded a simple typing tutor, which does the job for all three languages, and I will try to dedicate some time each week to typing. Dutch I watched a couple of Sesame Street episodes (Ernie and Bert) in Dutch at "Learn Dutch at 2BDutch.nl". It's a really neat site with lots of Dutch TV programs to teach immigrants Dutch. German Sign Language I discovered some videos in sign language on You Tube put online by gebaerdenservice (roughly translates as "sign language service"). They're provided for native speakers of German Sign Language covering different subjects, asking for other people's opinions. I like how watching the videos and trying to understand what's being said makes it possible for me to judge how much I already know (or don't know ;o) ). But I found it quite comforting to see that I get the gist of what is being said in each of the videos. I'm making progress, yaay! Russian Quite frankly, I haven't been able to do any Russian - I was so hooked on finding sign language videos on the Internet I spent the entire Wednesday evening doing that instead of Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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