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TAC 2009 - DaraghM | ||
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5947 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 57 of 177 11 February 2009 at 4:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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10/02/09
I will be honest, and admit that my three language TAC is getting more than just a little challenging. I managed to blend all three languages in my study yesterday, but it feels like I climb a rung on two of the ladders, while I slip back on the third. The rung I slipped on was Spanish. Russian (Active ~15 minutes, Passive ~1 hour) My initial thoughts on the Living Language course was that it was great. I'm afraid I'll have to downgrade it to just good. While there is a lot more audio than comparable courses, some of the audio is missing from the dialogues. In урок 6 the written dialogue has "и холодильник" (and a fridge), but the audio says "и маленький холодильник" (and a small fridge). I hope this doesn't become a feature of the recorded material, as Russian has a lot of very short prepositions, which when they're devoiced can be very hard to hear. E.g. В (V) devoicing to sound like Ф (f). Spanish (Active ~50 minutes, Passive ~0) As my Spanish classes start in less than a week, I thought I'd be a good little student, and start into some new Spanish material. I unwisely chose the B2 Gramática. It seems there has been a bit of a leap between the end of the B1, and this new grammar book. I barely started into the first unit, before I found myself checking the dictionary a LOT. The first unit was on nouns, and a quick revision of the previous grammar books. It revised those nouns that change meaning between male and female. E.g. La cometa - the kite, el cometa - the comet The new material covers differences in meaning between single and plural usage. For example, the singular, "el seso" pertains to common sense, "sentido común", while in the plural, "los sesos" signifies the brain, "el cerebro". It also introduce some very idiomatic expressions. E.g. devanarse los sesos - to rack one's brain. There seems to a number of word like this discussed in the unit, but so far I only covered this. Hungarian (Active ~0 minutes, Passive ~1 hour) Is language learning turning me into a bit of an oddball, and do I care ? I spent the evening, walking, listening and staring at a very small printed version of the dialogue on unit 3. I should be more careful, as I was fixated on reading, and not really noticing the roads I was crossing. Edited by DaraghM on 11 February 2009 at 4:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5947 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 58 of 177 12 February 2009 at 5:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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11/02/09
Yesterday wasn't a good day for study, as I'd to spend five hours after work, preparing my books for my accountant. This is just the first, of a few life events in the next couple of weeks, that are going to hamper my free time, let alone my language learning. As I was working on the books late, it took me till 04:00 before I crashed, and I was in work today for 08:30. Therefore I'm just a wee bit tired, so please excuse any bizarre typo's in this post. Spanish (Active ~50 minutes, Passive ~0) For all the other stuff that was happening, I still snuck in some study. Finished reading Unit 1 of the Gramática, and did the first couple of exercises. The exercise to underline the feminine words was relatively easy, as they'd introduced some common and not so common words ending in -mbre. E.g. Costumbre - habit. Hambre - hunger Legumbre - vegetable. Incertidumbre - uncertainty. Pesadumbre - grief. Muchedumbre - crowd. Quejumbre - plaintiff. Vislumbre - sight. Russian (Active ~15 minutes, Passive ~50 minutes) Like most weekdays, I squeezed in some Russian study during my breakfast and lunch. I love learning Russian, and would like to spend more time with the language, as there's a lot of good Russian cinema. E.g. Солярис (Solaris), Русский ковчег (Russian Ark), and Иди и смотри (Come and See), which I haven't been brave enough to watch yet. However, I also love Spanish and Hungarian, and can't imagine dropping either of those languages, even temporarily. That said, since I've started TACing I've been a lot more disciplined, and not wandering between lots of different languages. My bookcase is like a graveyard to multiple language attempts. Edited by DaraghM on 12 February 2009 at 5:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5947 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 59 of 177 13 February 2009 at 5:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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12/02/09
While I managed some study, it was pretty tough considering my total lack of sleep, and the unfortunately long work day of 11 hours. Now I've finished complaining, here's what I did. Russian (Active ~1.5 hours, Passive ~40 minutes) I managed to complete урок 6, and the written exercises, but made some really bad mistakes I'd never make if I was more awake. There was an exercise on short adjective agreement, such as готов (ready) going to готова, and занят (busy) to занята. I never realised that short adjectives and long adjectives, are used very similarly to 'ser' and 'estar' in Spanish, to describe temporary or permanent conditions. It also involved a translation exercise, and this was my biggest mistake. Somehow, I mixed these two word up. This wouldn't be too bad, but the MT Russian course uses them repeatedly, and I'd never normally do that. My second mistake was thinking Петя (Petya) was a girl, and therefore радa (glad (f)), when it should've been рад. I also made a start into урок 7, which crams in too much grammar, in my opinion. It covers the possesives, E.g. мой дом (my house), моя машина (my car(f)), мое радио (my radio(n)), and мои кони (my horses) and also adjectives in the prepositional case, E.g. на Дальнем Востокe (in the Far East), в синей машинe (in the dark blue car) Hungarian (Active ~0 hours, Passive ~1 hour) Did my final session with the dialogue on Unit 3. I love the structure of the FSI dialogues. They introduce each word separately, then add it to the sentence. In subsequent iterations, they just play the dialogue, but at an increased speed. The vocabulary in unit 3 is very useful. E.g. kefe-brush, fogkefe-toothbrush, fogkrém-toothpaste, and borotvapenge-razor blade. When I was last in Budapest , I needed to pick up toothpaste and razorblades, and had to resort to pointing at the items. The dialogues also introduce the infinitive of the verb, before declining it. E.g. to believe - hinni I believe - hiszem lenni - to be lesz - (you, he she, it) will be Azt hiszem ez elég nagy lesz - I think this one will be big enough. [EDIT - For the record, this is day 47 of my TAC. Day 50 will fall this weekend on Sunday] [EDIT 17/02/09 - I managed to mix up ready and busy in the post, as well as the exercises. Thanks SII for pointing out the error] Edited by DaraghM on 17 February 2009 at 3:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5947 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 60 of 177 16 February 2009 at 6:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Weekend Summary 13/02/09 - 15/02/09
Spanish (Active ~1 hours, Passive ~3 hours) As my partner will also be doing Spanish classes, I picked up a copy of Aula 2 over the weekend for her. Now this book is meant to be the level below me, but it contains some structures and a lot of vocabulary I don't know. Now I'm worried that I've been incorrectly assessed, and will be lost in the Cervante's course. I also started using Platiquemos, for the first time, over the weekend. I decided to start with unit 14, as I'd completed up to unit 15 on the original FSI course, but wanted to revisit some old ground. However, I'd never used any audio with the original FSI course, and just completed the exercises in my head. The Platiquemos course is good, and it's a real shame that Dan Casteel passed away, as it needs just a few more tweaks to make it a great course. [EDIT - I added Platiquemos to my studies after reading ymapazagain's log. Thank you:-)] Hungarian (Active ~0 hour, Passive ~1 hours) On Friday, I started the second tape of unit 3. This tape contains both a short variation drill, a short translation drill, as well as some pronunciation guidelines. I'm drifting slightly away from Assimil in my language studies, and developing a preference for FSI style learning. The pendulum will probably swing back to Assimil, but I really need this change in format. Edited by DaraghM on 16 February 2009 at 6:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5947 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 61 of 177 16 February 2009 at 8:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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-I much happier this year with my time tracking, as I know the figures are very accurate.
Day 50 Language Totals Start Date: 01/01/09 Current Date: 16/02/09 French Active Study - 0 minutes = 0 hours. Passive Study - 0 minutes = 0 hours Total: 0 hours Spanish Active Study - 2140 minutes = 35.66 hours Passive Study - 1290 minutes = 21.5 hours Total: 57.16 hours Russian Active Study - 999 minutes = 16.65 hours Passive Study - 947 minutes = 15.78 hours Total: 32.43 hours Hungarian Active Study - 733 minutes = 12.21 hours Passive Study - 1417 minutes = 23.61 hours Total: 35.83 hours Overall Pure Study = 64.53 hours Passive Study = 60.9 hours Total = 125.44 hours Language Percentages Spanish : 45.57% Russian : 25.85% Hungarian : 28.56% French : 0.00% Edited by DaraghM on 16 February 2009 at 8:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SII Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5588 days ago 184 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English | Message 62 of 177 16 February 2009 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is mistake: busy = занят, ready = готов.
In Russian most of the names have 2-3 forms: one form is full name (Пётр, Александр, Иван, Юрий, Степан, Дмитрий etc) and another is short/pet name (Петя, Саша/Саня/Шура/Санёк, Ваня, Юра, Стёпа, Дима/Митя etc). Usually pet name's ending is 'а' or 'я' regardless of the sex (or gender? I don't know how say this right...) Edited by SII on 16 February 2009 at 1:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5947 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 63 of 177 17 February 2009 at 3:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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16/02/09
Russian (Active ~15 minutes, Passive ~15 minutes) Thanks SII for the corrections. I think the term your looking for is nickname, and thanks for that extra piece of information. Oddly, the book doesn't mention that Петя is the nickname for Пётр (Peter) . I just read in урок 7, this morning, that names like Петя (Petya), though they refer to masculine objects, behave like feminine nouns in the accusative. This means "She loves Petya" is "Она любит Петю", and it doesn't imply she has any sapphic desires. Spanish (Active ~2.5 hours, Passive ~40 minutes) Yesterday was the first day of my Spanish classes, and I have mixed reactions to the experience. As I marched up the stairs, I had no idea what to expect. I even felt awkward asking the secretary, in Spanish, which class room as I was in. Outside the room, a mixed bag of strangers awaited, covering all age groups. There was a father and daughter, a number of secondary school teachers, and a couple of other young professionals. The daughter was studying Spanish in school, and sitting her end of school exams next year. The teachers were all language teachers, and most had a couple of languages under their belt. All the other professionals, including myself, worked in I.T. I'm not sure whether this was due to Irish employment patterns, or something about I.T that encourages language learning. We all agreed that several hours of Spanish, after work, was not the easiest thing to do, and it takes a bit of motivation. After the class started, we had to do some introductions, and find out a couple of facts about each person. This was relatively easy, and enjoyable. I found out that I was the only self assessed person in the room, and all the others had done the courses from the very start. Some of them have been doing Spanish for four years. The class then progressed to discussions about television, and our viewing preferences, and this also felt basic and manageable. We wrote out a couple of sentences, and nothing seemed particularly intimidating. At the very end, he gave us some homework, which I expected to be relatively easy. It wasn't. We have to write a 500 word essay contrasting Irish television with television in other countries. Did I miss something? Weren't we just saying simple phrases like, "Me gustaría ver los documentales", and suddenly we're expected to write an essay. This will take a huge chunk out of all my language study, as the essays go towards your final mark. Edited by DaraghM on 17 February 2009 at 4:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SII Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5588 days ago 184 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English | Message 64 of 177 17 February 2009 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Some nicknames is used for both masculine and feminine objects. For example, "Саша" is nickname from (or to? or anything else?.. I don't know :( ) "Александр" (masculine) and "Александра" (feminine), "Валя" -- "Валентин" and "Валентина". Such nicknames is fully identical in declension, and its gender may be identified only by context. Edited by SII on 17 February 2009 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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