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Spanish and beginning Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6207 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 25 of 32 19 July 2009 at 7:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I've been pretty sick for a while, and then I went to the hospital and they gave me medicine that made me
feel way better but also made me sleep all day so...excuses excuses! But I'll put a quick update: Turkish I've tried to keep up listening to about an hour per day. I've started my "stage 2", which is like 45 days or so, and I want to listen to about 50 hours more duing that time. Now that I'm learning words, it's alot of fun listening for them. One of the podcasts I listen to is a morning radio show, and they say "günaydIn" (sorry I can't find the Turkish dotless i) all the time, and it was one of the first words I learned, so I was very excited! I've done the first conversation of TY conversation and the first two sections or lessons or whatever they're calledof the Livemocha Turkish 101 course, and my rough goal is to spend about 30-60 min a day on these, alternating between Teach Yourself and Livemocha. I'm still in that honeymoon stage, and I'm really enjoying myself. Spanish I did almost nothing. I listen to some news podcasts, and today I watched "A mi madre le gustan las mujeres"-- I really enjoyed this movie, and I don't normally really like movies. But anyways, I really recommend it. I also went to the library and picked up a bunch of books on intonation, and they look good. Only one problem: like two or three of them are comparitive studies of Spanish and (American) English, and I don't know why, but just about every book I've read like this has made the same mistake! They always say that in English, an /o/ at the end of a word can turn into a schwa, so that an English speaker would be likely to naturally pronounce "niño" and "niña" the same way if they're not careful. I don't agree with this at all. We have words like "bingo", which would never be confused with "binga", and like there's a town in the north called "Chico", which nobody pronounces like "chica" at all (even chica with an English accent). I mean, like ALL the comparative English- Spanish phonology books I've read say this! I understand that they're mostly not written by English speakers, but come on! Do they think we all speak like bros, or is there another dialect I'm missing here? Anyways, there's my rant. Hopefully now that I'm feeling a bit better I'll be able to dedicate like 30 minutes to listening and 30 minutes to studying for Spanish per day starting next week. As far as my other two goals for Spanish, well I've been trying to think more in Spanish, and to read news and stuff in Spanish. And I showed my mom some podcasts in Spanish and how to change some movies she's familiar with into Spanish, and she seemed pretty excited about that, so that's good. Other languages Once I've been good/better about keeping up with Turkish and Spanish on a daily basis, I want to add in a tiny bit of time (like 30 minutes-1 hour per week) for studying/maintaining/listening to my other languages (MSA, Syrian Arabic and Catalan). I'll probably try to do that little by little starting in a few weeks. Edited by anamsc on 19 July 2009 at 7:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6207 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 26 of 32 19 July 2009 at 8:02am | IP Logged | ||
Hey Dizzy, Muchas gracias por escribirme! As far as the Costa Rican source, I found a radio station that streams and has alot of archives (called Monumental I think, if you're interested), so I think that'll be helpful for getting alot of audio material. Unfortunately I've been lazy and I've not listened to much at all! For TY Turkish, I have the Conversational and the Beginner's without the tape. I'm starting with the conversational for now, and I really like it. It centers on dialogues and (very briefly) explains grammar points as they come up in the dialogues. I think it's pretty similar to regular TY, but a bit less in-depth and more concentrated on listening. But there is alot of English on the tapes, which I know turns people off. I've only looked through the beginners, and it looks pretty good too, I just don't want to depend too much on reading without the audio, since I've heard that leads to a bad accent, especially in a language with hard (for me) vowels like Turkish. Y gracias por el enlace, nunca lo había visto antes. Las dos series que mencioné, las veía cuando estaba en España, pero me parece que las puedes ver en youtube, si buscas "Que vida más triste" o "La tira de la sexta" por lo menos salen algunos episodios. Anyways, thanks for your input and support! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dizzycloud Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6602 days ago 88 posts - 109 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Turkish | Message 27 of 32 22 July 2009 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
How strange, I've not heard of that before and I'm racking my brains to think of any English dialect/accent that would support that but I can't think of any..! Thanks for the reply on your other message, you're certainly devoted with languages considering you're going to do Arabic/Catalan on top of Spanish and Turkish! Suerte! Thanks also for the advice about the series, and hope you feel better soon! Dizzy 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6207 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 28 of 32 30 July 2009 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Dizzy,
Thakns for replying to me, and for the well-wishes :). Believe me though, I'm not that devoted--I was going to do like 1 hour of Arabic/Catalan a week, so not that bad! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6207 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 29 of 32 30 July 2009 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Some random observations:
1. I learned in my Bilingualism class today that it's much harder for second language learners to switch from their L2 into their L1 than vice versa, and that with increased proficiency they get better at it. So there goes all my bragging of the form "I'm so good at Spanish because I can switch from English right into Spanish whenever I wanted, but when I'm speaking Spanish it's so natural that I have a hard time speaking in English again!" Turns out the opposite is true--if you can switch easier, it means you're more bilingual. 2. Livemocha is sexist! Seriously, in the professions section, all of the "I am a ___" are said by a man except for nurse, secretary, and teacher. I mean, it would be way better if they were either all said by a man or all by a woman, or randomly 50-50, because having the woman say nurse, secretary and teacher is just patronizing. And, I'll never find out how to tell people I'm a scientist! (Because I'm not really sure a woman scientist would be "bilim adam".) ETA: Also, since my computer's set to Spanish, I use the website in Spanish, and there's some pretty conspicuous errors in their Spanish! There's grammatical stuff that I can't remember right now, and to save flashcards the button says "salvar tarjetas", which I don't know if that's used in some places, but it seemed wrong to me. So I'm not sure how much I can trust their language lessons! Also, I wrote this whole post in English, and then remembered that I wanted to write everything in Spanish first and then summarize in English! From now on I will, fo sho. Edited by anamsc on 30 July 2009 at 3:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 30 of 32 30 July 2009 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, your #1 (on bilingualism) is really interesting. I had no idea! I wonder why that
is. I think it's really cool that you're doing Turkish, by the way. I tried starting Turkish a couple years ago but just didn't keep up with it, which I sort of regret. Maybe in the future. Good luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6207 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 31 of 32 20 November 2009 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I think I just might start this log up again. I haven't really been studying steadily, more just dabbling. I dropped Turkish a while ago, but I've been looking into French a bit (mostly just listening to Amel Bent and gathering resources). Also I'm going to Thailand for Christmas (not Turkey anymore, which made Turkish seem less pressing), and while I don't have much interest in Thai, I did order the first 30 lessons of Pimsleur and a phrasebook from the library, so I think I may start with that over Thanksgiving break. Also, I may go to Malta in the spring, so I think I'll do some Maltese over winter break. This is of course all never going to happen, as I'm a proud wanderluster!
As far as Spanish, I actually feel like I've been doing hella good with it. I'm not doing any studying, just trying to get some exposure. I've been watching a few series as well as a podcast called Lo que no sabías, and I've been listening to BBC news. Anyways, that's just a quick update, but I do hope to keep this log up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6207 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 32 of 32 22 November 2009 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I just found full episodes of Mexico's Next Top Model on Youtube. Great for my Spanish, but awful for my
schoolwork! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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