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TAC 2010: Arabic, Russian, Pashto | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6654 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 1 of 20 28 December 2009 at 4:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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First journal entry t-minus 3 days or so until 2010.
My most important consideration going into 2010 is keeping my Modern Standard Arabic at a high level. As Arabic is directly related to my job and livelihood, I'm going to be putting extra effort into learning more and more to keep it fresh and active. A part of this is enhancing my knowledge of certain dialects with Skype tutors. Doing this will be somewhat easier through the first third of this year, but less so starting in May, as I'm not going to be automatically exposed to the language quite as much. Don't ask! That being said, Russian will be my new focus for 2010. It's going to be the most linguistically stimulating part of my language study, whereas Arabic is going to be necessarily more about culture and usage. My area of interest with Russian is similar to Arabic (Newspapers and geopolitics from a reading and listening standpoint to start), but I'm adding more of a concurrent speaking strategy, whereas in Arabic, due to the MSA/dialect rift, it made less sense to do so. Specifically, with Russian, I'm starting out using the following materials: Jumpstart: "The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners" I've heard good things about this course. We'll see. Grammar: "Essential Russian Grammar" & "Oxford Russian Grammar And Verbs" I always like one simple and one more comprehensive grammar book, because some of my questions are simple, some are complex, and I can't guess when I'll need either. Besides, reading two explanations of the same rule is a great way to get it clarified. Speaking/Conversation: "Earworms Rapid Russian (Russian Edition)" Audio CD I've never tried this series, but it seems to be worth a look. I always try to start with as much authentic material as possible, so I'm going to use the tried and true euronews.net to get the newspaper Russian going. It also makes it easy to practice some of my other languages. As for Pashto, I just want to learn essential phrases and basic grammar, with a heavy emphasis on speaking. Not sure yet how I'll be able to practice, but this might be one of those times I rely heavily on shadowing and do without real conversational practice until a much more advanced stage. I'm looking forward to 2010. We'll see how it goes! Edited by apparition on 28 December 2009 at 4:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 2 of 20 28 December 2009 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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السلام عليكم!
Yay for the joy of Arabic ;) The dialects are both endlessly fascinating and (for me at least) a little frustrating. Oh and I tried the Mandarin Earworms at one point, and liked it! Definitely catchy and fun. You've got an interesting mix of languages there, good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 3 of 20 28 December 2009 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
Do you mind my asking what you do? We have similar linguistic interests, any any opportunity to use them to make money would be of interest to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6654 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 4 of 20 28 December 2009 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hmm... ever given any thought to joining the military? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6654 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 5 of 20 28 December 2009 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Since I have a good bit of time on my hands this week, I've decided to go ahead and start the log a bit early.
Today was a very productive day. I used this webpage Russian: An Interactive On-Line Reference Grammar to get better acquainted with the structure of the Russian language. Very useful resource and I hope to come back to it as I move along. Now that I'm a bit burnt out on grammar, I'm going to peruse some Arabic websites and maybe get my Pashto feet wet using the freely-available DLI Field Support Modules. These courses are not so much for civilians, but they are good for certain other populations. A lot of rarer languages show up here as they have security purposes, if not tourist/educational purposes. Edited by apparition on 29 December 2009 at 3:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6654 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 6 of 20 01 January 2010 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay, so it's January 1st now. What have I been up to these past few days?
I downloaded the Princton Russian course and I'm grabbing the dialogue sound files, splitting them, then attaching them to SRS cards in Mnemosyne. I've also done the Earworms CD a few times and it's already helping me get a better ear for the language. I've learned how to touch-type in Russian. Slowly, so far, but fast enough to be useful when making SRS cards. As for Pashto, I've gone through a bit of the Basic Field Support Module, but when I try to put the Pashto script, some of the letters don't transfer over. Maybe I'll just use the sound files for now. Arabic has been slacking. I guess my mind is to tuned to learn something new that Arabic doesn't seem as interesting. But I'll remedy that and spend a little while after this log reading and listening to the news. Maybe a podcast of one of the Al-Jazeera shows, or JCCTV.net. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6654 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 7 of 20 02 January 2010 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I decided to go to euronews.net, record the audio of the Karachi suicide bombings,
split it up into digestible chunks, then add it to Mnemosyne along with the script that was given in the article. After that, I went to Al-Jazeera.net and recorded about 5 minutes of the audio of Open Dialogue (one of their talk shows). The subject was human rights. Then I did the same thing I did with euronews.net (using Audacity), using the script that Al-Jazeera so thoughtfully provides. For Arabic, I don't need English translations, because I can pretty much learn new words by context now. However, for Pashto and Russian I'm still adding the English translations to my SRS as a check of understanding. Speaking of SRS, I have a new Mnemosyne file, exclusively for 2010, that has about 300 cards in it. I hope to grow that throughout the year to something close to 100 times that! (I might have to split it up at some point). Edited by apparition on 02 January 2010 at 4:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6654 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 8 of 20 06 January 2010 at 3:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've got about 150 cards memorized, mostly Pashto and Russian but I just added Iraqi dialect cards (lots of MSA overlap). The collection is at 1300 or so.
I'm going to be adding some Egyptian dialect tonight. I like that the SRS pulls the cards randomly. It keeps things fresh and I'm able to work in energetic spurts in between my MSA day-to-day. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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