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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6255 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes  Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 1 of 7 29 June 2007 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
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I'll be probably visiting Latvia later this year, so I've decided to take a stab at Latvian.
In order to justify learning yet another language I'll probably have little use for, I decided to try to learn it via Hungarian (I got a Latvian coursebook written in Hungarian). The point is, Hungarian is not exactly my forte. I took a 4-week course in it some 5 years ago but have not used it ever since. Only very recently I've decided to revive it (at least when it comes to reading skills). Learning Latvian is one of the ways of doing it I came up with. Now, I'm curious myself about how well (or how bad) this will go. I've tried to learn unknown languages via unknown languages before, but only for a very brief period, so the results were inconclusive (it was a TupiAntigo-Portuguese-German chain, by the way). Any thoughts/experiences/ideas to share? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6255 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 2 of 7 03 July 2007 at 3:17am | IP Logged |
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I went through lessons 1&2 of the Latvian course. My observations so far:
1. Learning via not-so-well-known language forces me to focus more and slows my pace considerably (which is a good thing - I usually breeze through a textbook, fast learning but then fast forgetting almost immediately). 2. I've found out that I remember Hungarian words better than Latvian ones. After reading Latvian text a couple of times without resorting to Hungarian this gets sorted out. I'll probably have to make my own Latvian-Polish vocabulary list or else vocab repetitions will serve my Hungarian better than my Latvian. 3. Reading grammar notes in Hungarian has turned out to be surprisingly easy. Practicaly everything is easily understood from context - I've already learnt a good deal of Hungarian grammar terms without resorting to dictionary. 4. Overall, it's been a rewarding exercise so far. Still a loooong way to go before I can start to try and actively use Latvian / read anything else but my textbook. Edited by peterlin on 03 July 2007 at 3:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6297 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 3 of 7 08 July 2007 at 10:39am | IP Logged |
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If you need any help in Your Latvian studies, just ask.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6255 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 4 of 7 09 July 2007 at 2:56pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks aru-aru! I will surely bomb you with questions about Latvian as soon as the hectic period in my life ends :)
For now I'd like to ask you for your recommendations on three things: -> Latvian literature (not the 'I recommend it for learners, because the language is simple, but would never read it myself' category but 'I think it's really great') -> Latvian music - both traditional (is there anything like "the great collection of dainas") and hip-hop (this is the genre I listen to in foreign languages the most). -> A 'serious' (ie. non-tabloid) daily / weekly newspaper dealing with cultural/political issues Once more, thank you for your offer to help. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6297 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 5 of 7 09 July 2007 at 5:40pm | IP Logged |
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1) Literature
From the more "classic" writers, the first one that came into my mind was Rūdolfs Blaumanis. The good news is, i found many of his novels online. Unfortunately, the site does not have "Nāves ēnā" (a good one), but you can find "Raudupiete", "Purva bridējs" (about a girl in love with an alcoholic, a true classics) and "Salna pavasarī". These can be found here: http://www.ailab.lv/TEKSTI/Senie/RBl/RBl01.htm From the same website, a historical novel by Augusts Deglavs, "Rīga" http://www.ailab.lv/TEKSTI/Senie/ADegl/ADsat.htm If youre into Soviet history OR parallel text method, the same site can offer you the adventures of Helēna Celmiņa both in english ("Women in Soviet Prisons") and latvian ("Sievietes PSRS cietumos", first three chapters only) http://www.ailab.lv/TEKSTI/Musdienas/Celmina/saturs.htm The full list of works available at http://www.ailab.lv/TEKSTI/saturs.htm About more contemporary latvian works. I have not read many, i somehow can not warm up to the stuff latvian people write lately. But you can check out this site here: http://eraksti.delfi.lv/ . They sell e-books in latvian (not a common thing yet). On the left, "Vairāk pirktās" are the most popular ones, and "Bezmaksas" are the ones you can get for free. The only author among the free ones that i know is Šilde, Ādolfs. "Valstvīri un Demokrāti" is a history book, not a novel though. From the other authors, I have read and rather liked a novel by Zelčs, Ainārs "1945 Riga". It seems that it is available bot in latvian AND english. This book is a bit similar to George Orwell's "1984" and tells about Latvia after a nazi victory. His book "Paralēlā vēsture. 1940. gads" was, if i am not mistaken, made into a film recently. Cielēns Felikss and his three books are also nice, but it's not a novel. It's a story of his life and political career during 20s and 30s. Repše, Gundega is a rather popular author, even though i do not like her much. And now, about buying the books. There seem to be only one way - to pay through an SMS and get the code that allows you to download the book. Seems that it can be done from here only. The prices are, mostly, either 0.35 or 0.6 per book, that is, around 0.6 or 1 Euro. This is not much, so choose one or two, and you can get them as an early Christmas present from me. It's really no trouble. Just tell me which ones you picked, and i'll send you the code to get them. This site here: http://www.literatur.lv/basis/sitemap.htm can help you choose a book. it has translations of latvian authors into German, the "1945 Riga" that i mentioned is also there. And i think it would be correct to assume that the authors that people have bothered to translate are worth it. I did not take the "that's really great" approach, but more like - "it's good AND accessible" approach. Hope this is all right. Anyway, if there authors you have heard about and would like to know more of, or some particular genre or topic that you would like to read about, just tell me, i'll try to figure something out. 2) Music I am afraid i will not be of much help here. Don't know anything about hip-hop. I will tell you instead about some bands that are good and popular and easy to find and NOT hip-hop. The one band that people are a bit more likely to know outside latvia is Brainstorm or Prāta vētra. The "poliglot" thing about them is, that you can get their songs in Latvian, English and even Russian. You can find them easily at Youtube. Start with the song "Lonely Feeling to be Lonely" Latvian (original) - "Rudens", Russian - "Betep". I like the penguin video :) Lyrics are here: http://www.brainstorm.lv/main.php?llng=lv I guess that some clicking around Youtube.com might help you find related videos by other Latvian bands. An example - The hobos. The hobos even have a song with part of it sung in Chinese, "Pekina ir auksti". http://youtube.com/watch?v=7_ACXFXTRCA The same user has a few other latvian music videos. For other ideas - http://www.micrec.lv/hot/ 3) Newspapers www.diena.lv This is, i guess, the biggest newspaper. Lots of politics. If you do not like it, i'll try to remember what more do we have. not much of a newspaper reader, me. For articles, try http://www.rigaslaiks.lv/Default.aspx Some of the articles are available to read online. In "Arhīvs" there are previous issues, available full-text up to year 2004. The magazine is quite good, and more culture orientated. OTHER If you ever decide to abandon your hungarian book, a first free resource that came to my mind is "Latvian Language Competencies for Peace Corps Volunteers in the Republic of Latvia", available at www.eric.ed.gov , code ED402764 It's published in 1992 when we were still an unknown zone, so they have not consulted the locals much while making the book. Seems that they found some elderly latvian lady that had emmigrated decades ago to help them. It shows. But hey, it's free, so it's a good time to remember an old latvian (and i guess not only latvian) saying "Dāvinātam zirgam zobos neskatās" Another resource would be this here: http://courses.washington.edu/latvian/basic_latvian/ it's more recent, and has AUDIO. Even though people jump around claiming that latvian has the best ever writing system where the words are written exactly the way they sound, and that the stress always falls on the first syllable, it's not 100% true. So audio is a must. Good luck with you studies! Edited by aru-aru on 09 July 2007 at 5:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6255 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 6 of 7 10 July 2007 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
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1) Thanks for such an exhaustive suggestions list. It will take me a long time just to browse everything you provided. As for your "early Christmas" offer, that's really most kind of you, but I guess we should leave that for later, when/if I'll be able to actually make use of it. Thanks once more.
2) Brainstorm. Yeah, I should have mentioned that it's the only Latvian band that has ever made it to the Polish charts (some 3-4 years ago they were really popular here). Not my kind of music, though. 3) Foreign language hip-hop usually works for me quite well because: a) if it's well-done then I enjoy it as it is and if it's done badly, it's still fun to listen to, because of it being so ridiculous (surprisingly or not, bad Polish hip-hop sounds ridiculous, but it's not fun at all); b) I find it quite easy to understand what they're talking/singing about, compared to other genres; c) it's a good background music for running/other types of exercise; d) lastly, and on top of all the above - sometime ago I was thinking about doing some research on traditional improvised poetry styles worldwide, and I somehow treat freestyle rhyming as a modern day continuation of that tradition. Ok, sorry about this babbling :) 4) Textbooks. The Hungarian one rules :) Seriously though, the Peace Corps one was such a fun to read - all these passages on "the Latvians very rarely smile which is a reflection of the hard times they lived through" remind me of the American descriptions of early 90s in Poland :) 5) "Best ever writing system". What can I say? Native speakers very often are unaware of the features of their own language/orthography. I mean "you eat" vs. "he eats" "I eat" vs. "I ate". Audio is definitely a must. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6255 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 7 of 7 14 July 2007 at 6:17am | IP Logged |
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I was visiting my old folks yesterday and -to my surprise and delight- on one of my "language stuff" bookshelves I found a Latvian-Polish-Latvian dictionary.
I knew that most of my book collection is still over there esp. textbooks for languages outside of my main interests, and but didn't recall buying that dictionary (or anything else for Latvian for that matter - it turned out that I also have a phrasebook). About the dictionary - it's actually a re-edition of a dictionary written in Latvia and for Latvians and that shows (there's eg. a sketch of Polish grammar, but no corresponding info on Latvian grammar). It contains 12 000 headwords in the Latvian-Polish section and 9 000 in the Polish-Latvian one. It's Latvian editor was "Jumava". Bottomline - it's going to be of great help and I'm very happy about finding it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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