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Kuunhalme’s Multilingual Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kuunhalme Pentaglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6174 days ago 25 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Hungarian, Latvian Studies: Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Georgian, Lithuanian | Message 1 of 8 09 January 2010 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why start a language log, when I could use the same time for learning? This a thought that shortly crossed my mind when I started creating this new topic. But very soon I ignored it. My self-examination has revealed two things: I have to be more organised and I have to write more. I think and sincerely hope this log will serve both goals.
I will be discussing several languages I actively learn: currently those are Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Dutch, Spanish and Georgian, which I started studying actively just a few weeks ago. Sometimes I might also write something in other languages than English. Feel free to correct anything I write. I also aim to improve my English writing skills and strive for a higher level of idiomacy, so advice and feedback on that is welcome. While I acknowledge the advantages of a "total immersion" learning method, concentrating on one language, it is something that I cannot afford anymore, having so many languages to maintain and a family to look after. Thus, I'm making slow progress in several languages and hope that it bears its fruits in years to come. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5679 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 2 of 8 09 January 2010 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Miksi juuri latviaa, liettuaa ja georgiaa? :D Tuntuisi jotenkin suomalaisen näkökulmasta "järkevämmältä" opiskella vaikka viroa ja venäjää, mutta oletan että noiden valitsemiesi kielien taustalla on sitten jotain henkilökohtaisia syitä tai puhdasta kiinnostusta vähän harvinaisempia kieliä kohtaan? Puolakin on vähän outo lintu saksan ja espanjan rinnalla, mutta eipä kai siinä mitään ;)
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| Kuunhalme Pentaglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6174 days ago 25 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Hungarian, Latvian Studies: Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Georgian, Lithuanian | Message 3 of 8 09 January 2010 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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My experiences with Georgian so far
I have been strangely fascinated by Georgia and the Georgian languages for many years already. It is hard to say where the fascination stems from. Possible reasons are its exoticness, an exotic language group, an own alphabet, the interesting geography of the country and the apparent determination of its people. When I flirted with the language a few years ago, I grabbed a few books from the library: Georgian: A Reading Grammar by Howard I. Aronson and Einführung in die georgische Sprache by Kita Tschenkéli. I learned the alphabet and then read the two first lessons of Aronson's book. But now as I am delving more seriously into the language, I have taken a preference to the more comprehensive Tschenkeli, which consists of two large volumes, a "theoretical" and a "practical" part (Theoretische & Praktische Teil). While separating the two volumes like this theoretically sounds like a good idea, it is not very practical (pardon the pun). I first need to learn lesson 1 from one book and after that from the other, so I need to keep both largish books around. But other than that, the book seems to be very solid choice for learning Georgian, as it explains everything in a very comprehensive way and in a logical order. Let's take one example: In the first two lessons of Aronson I learned verbs like დაიწყებს [daits'q'ebs, "begin"], გააკეთებს [gaak'etebs, "do"], გადათარგმნის [gadatargmnis, "translate"] and even ხედავს [khedavs] and ნახავს [nakhavs] (different forms of "see"). I learned that და, გა, გადა and others are segments that you put in front of the verb when you need the future tense. Tschenkéli explained this very clearly: those are actually verb prefixes, comparable to the prefixes used in Eastern European languages, such as Russian, Polish and Hungarian. You can put them in front of the verb "to go" in the present tense to express the direction. In combination with other verbs, their existence or non-existence expresses the verb aspect (future/present). Just as in Polish, the root verb "to go" is completely different in the present and in the future. Tschenkéli also explained that -ებ, -ი and others are actually different kind of verb endings, which will play a role at least when an infinitive has to be built. I think it is important that these kinds of details be explained in the beginning: it makes it easier see the inner structure of the verbs that I try to learn, thus helping me to learn them faster. Now, when I see a verb like ააშენებს [aashenebs, "build"], I already know that ა- means "up" and that the root is აშენ-ებ, which is so much easier to learn and visualise than the whole word as one weird-looking segment. I was relieved to learn that having two completely different verbs in present and future (like the verb "to see") is rather uncommon. Too many language courses take shortcuts in explaining these kinds of things and the result is that learning vocabulary becomes substantially more difficult. (In my opinion, the same applies to trying to learn lots of expressions in a phrasebook style before getting sense of the basic grammar.) Edited by Kuunhalme on 09 January 2010 at 11:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kuunhalme Pentaglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6174 days ago 25 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Hungarian, Latvian Studies: Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Georgian, Lithuanian | Message 4 of 8 09 January 2010 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Näiden kielten kohdalla taustalla on ihan puhdas kiinnostus juuri näitä kieliä kohtaan. Muutenkaan en harrastuksissani ja kiinnostuksissani kulje suuren joukon mukana, niin miksipä kielissäkään... Kyllä harvinaisempien kielten osaajillekin on tarvetta, pitää vain olla vähän luovempi, että löytää niissä piilevät mahdollisuudet. Puolan taustalla oli myös ajatus, että aloitan jonkin suuren mutta vähän osatun EU-alueen kielen opiskelun. Latviassa kävi niin, että kun annoin pikkusormen, se vei koko käden... --- Thatzright pointed out that Estonian and Russian would make more "sense" for us Finns than learning Latvian, Lithuanian and Georgian. This is partly true, but if everyone learned languages where there is more demand, there would be nobody speaking the others. The disadvantage is that many people think that indeed nobody speaks them, so if you want to take advantage of your language skills in a lesser-known language, you have to discover the possibilities yourself, because nobody will come looking for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5854 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 8 09 January 2010 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hoi Kuunhalme,
Het idee van jouw nieuwe log klingt interessant. Ik ben ook van mening dat men inderdaad zijn vreemde talen actief moet gebruiken. Ik wens je veel succes voor jouw log! Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kuunhalme Pentaglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6174 days ago 25 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Hungarian, Latvian Studies: Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Georgian, Lithuanian | Message 6 of 8 09 January 2010 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Writing Georgian letters in Windows
Most of you probably know how new input languages can be added in the Regional Language Settings of the Control Panel and how you can switch between the activated input languages. But what you might not know is that you don't have to rely solely on the pre-configured keyboard layouts. Microsoft has released a free tool called Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, which you can use to create own layouts. The problem with the standard Georgian keyboard layout is that most letters are not set to the same keys as their phonetic equivalents in Western languages on Western keyboard layouts. That would result in a steep learning curve in the beginning. Fortunately, the Keyboard Layout Creator solved this problem elegantly. In my own Georgian layout, the keys are mostly found on the places belonging to the letters of their standard Latin transliterations. As there are no capital letters in the Georgian alphabet, I can differentiate with aspirated vs. ejective stops (e.g. ქ/კ [k/k']) by using Shift. The remaining letters were placed on keys whose letters have no direct equivalent in Georgian. And if I want to write Latin alphabet, I just keep Alt Gr pressed down and type characters normally. You could actually do this with any language, provided that you have installed a font with the right alphabet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kuunhalme Pentaglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6174 days ago 25 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Hungarian, Latvian Studies: Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Georgian, Lithuanian | Message 7 of 8 09 January 2010 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | ||
Hoi Fasulye, Dank je wel! Actief gebruik van de taal is erg belangrijk en ik denk dat het gebrek eraan is tot nu toe een van mijn hoofdproblemen gewezen, bijzonder met het Nederlands. Bijvoorbeeld Duits en Hongaars zou ik veel slechter kunnen spreken, als ik ze niet veel actief had gebruikt tijdens de laatste zes-zeven jaren. --- Words can be learned by seeing them often enough in a text, but they will become part of your active vocabulary much faster, if you use them yourself. This is clearly a fact which I haven't until now kept in mind often enough. More language exchange via e-mail and Skype should help. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kuunhalme Pentaglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6174 days ago 25 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Hungarian, Latvian Studies: Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Georgian, Lithuanian | Message 8 of 8 09 January 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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On learning Georgian vocabulary
Georgian has no gender and no articles, so learning new vocabulary is quite straightforward. As with my earlier languages, the main hurdle is mostly exotic combinations of letters. In Georgian words, the most exotic feature are the consonant clusters, for example in words მგზავრი [mgzavri, "traveller"] and მღვდელი [mghvdeli, "priest"]. Fortunately, though, there are much more words without any significant clusters. Another potential difficulty is differentiating between aspirated and ejective stops and not mixing them up when recalling a word. But so far it hasn't been as difficult as I thought it might be. If I am able to create a simple memorisation trick for a word, I often learn the word right away or on the first repetition. For example, when I first time saw the word ფინჯანი [pinjani, "cup"], I visualised a small ninja who has a stone pine (Finn. pinja) growing on his head and another person presenting him as his own ninja. Both of them were standing inside a gigantic cup. Here is how I came up with that visualisation: pinja is pronounced like 'pinya' in Finnish, so when I combined that with "ninja", I was sure I'd get the pronounciation correctly. The possessive suffix of first person singular in Finnish is -ni, which is why I wanted another person to possess the ninja. It's an extremely crazy image to think about, but probably that is actually one of the reasons that it works so well. I was also able to make working memorisations for some numbers: 1. ერთი / erti: Hung. Érti? ("Do you understand?") 2. ორი / ori: Finn. ori ("stallion") 3. სამი / sami: Finn. Sami (a male name) 4. ოთხი / otkhi: Finn ota kii! ("Catch this!") 5. ხუთი / khuti: Finn. huti (a missed shot) 8. რვა / rva: Finn. rva (abbreviation for rouva, Mrs.) 9. ცხრა / tskhra: Finn hra (abbreviation for herra, Mr.) But for some words it's harder to think up a good memorisation. For example, სიკვდილი [sik'vdili, "death"] and სიცოცხლე (sitsotskhle, "life") are tough ones. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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