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TAC 2009 - DaraghM | ||
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| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6339 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes  1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 9 of 177 07 January 2009 at 7:10am | IP Logged |
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Hi Daragh,
"Manifestar" is a tough word - it also can be used for "to demonstrate" (i.e. a demonstration). The English, manifest isn't completely wrong - for example, 'symptoms manifest (make evident) of a disease' would correctly use manifestar in Spanish. zm Edited by zenmonkey on 07 January 2009 at 7:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 10 of 177 08 January 2009 at 4:49am | IP Logged |
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07/01/08
- Here's a quick summary of all of the study yesterday. I've promised myself I won't get into the relentless cut and paste that created TAC 2008. It's unlikely I'll get to do detailed daily reports, so I'll give the occasional snapshots of a day. Russian (Active ~15 minutes, Passive ~15 minutes) Russian is working out nicely at the breakfast sessions. The Living Language course is paced quite slowly, and introduces vocabulary and grammar in an easy going manner. I'm still trying to figure out how to use the course for maximum benefit. As the number of exercises is quite low at the end of each unit, it would be very easy to skip through the units quickly. However, there's a lot of material, especially vocabulary in each unit. At the moment, I'm reading the book at breakfast, and than listening to the audio on my way into work. As the audio is all in Russian, it provides a good check, as to how much I've learnt. At the end of each unit is an alphabetical vocabulary list of the words in the dialogue, and others throughout the unit, which also feature on the audio. I think this is a brilliant idea, as you're learning words in isolation and in context. I'm currently reviewing Unit 2, and listening to all of units 1 and 2, on the walk. Hungarian (Active ~80 minutes, Passive ~25 minutes) I spend my lunches listening to Assimil Hungarian, and reading the associated notes. Unfortunately, my lunchtime session was cut short yesterday, as it should be about forty minutes. I spent the evening using my usual method on Unit 37 of Assimil. Hungarian has a number of tricky features. In the negative imperative, and questions, the verb splits and reverses it's order. E.g. From Unit 36, Ne ülj le tornaóran - Don't sit down during exercise class. The positive imperative "sit down" is leülj. Which means the word has to be reconstructed, before you can check it's dictionary meaning. Spanish (Active ~2.5 hours, Passive 0) I skipped my usual walk because of the cold weather. It's not even that cold here (-5C), compared to the rest of Europe. I spent most of the evening working my way through a number of exercises in the Anaya Gramatica B1 on the 'estilo indirecto', the indirect style. Most of the transformations are similar or identical to English. John: I will do it. (Future) John said he would do it. (Conditional) Juan: Lo haré (Futuro) Juan ha dicho que lo haría (Condicional) However, John: Do it. (Imperative) John said that I should do it. (?) Juan: Hazlo (Imperativo) Juan me ha dicho que lo haga (Subjuntivo) I also spent a good bit of time reading about the uses of the gerund in my grammar book (A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish). Interestingly, it also compared the differences in the usage between Italian and French. Edited by DaraghM on 08 January 2009 at 5:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 11 of 177 09 January 2009 at 4:26am | IP Logged |
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08/01/09
Hungarian (Active ~15 minutes, Passive ~40 minutes) Listened to lesson 36 on loop over my lunch break, which means between the three lunch breaks, I must've heard it about 30 times. This made the exercises easy, but I still stumbled on one word I couldn't remember, állampolgár-citizen. It cropped up in an earlier lesson, and I could remember the állom part, but not the ending. Spanish (Active ~2 hours, Passive ~50 minutes) It's been a while, but I did a passive (unit 88) and active wave (unit 39) of Assimil Spanish. I used the same method for the passive lesson, looping the track, and looking at my notes, as I've employed for Hungarian. I finshed off the B1 Gramatica unit on 'Estilo indirecto', which was easier than the lessons on the subjunctive. I just started into a new unit, "Presenica y ausencia" (Presence and absence), which groups all the ways Spanish expesses the lack of a specific subject. E.g. Llaman a la puerta, Hay que comer mucho, etc. In Barrons vocabulary I covered material relating to music and literature. Some words were similar to English, trombón-trombone, víolin, and guitara, while were others slightly related, tambor-drum, think tamborine and corneta-trumpet. The two that stood out were gaita for bagpipes, and contrabajo for the double bass. I've a vague memory about an Irish documentary that discussed the history of bagpipes, and this word was featured. The documentary also mentioned the Irish word, úrlar-floor, as the bass line in bagpipe music, which leads me to contrabajo, as a word, nicely captures the use of a double bass in a quartet. I read a lot about auxilary verbs in the grammar book, and some archaic uses such as haber de. It said the use of "haber de" is very common in Catalunya, as "haver de" is a Catalan borrowing into their Castilian. The grammar book refers to itself as B&B (Benjamin and Butt) throughout, and I might adopt this in my log. Russian (Active ~15 minutes, Passive ~15 minutes) I've decided to spend at least a week, if not more on each unit. As I'm listening at a different time to reading, I really notice any vocabulary in the lesson I'm not familiar with. A number of word are used to explain pronunciation, but not explained such as юг-south and следить-to follow(?). I've know the spelling rules regarding Г, К, Х, Ж, Ч, Ш, and Щ using "И" insead of Ы, but I've still to tune my ear, so it's natural. Edited by DaraghM on 09 January 2009 at 5:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 12 of 177 09 January 2009 at 6:52am | IP Logged |
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EP:
He decidido escribir algunas palabras sobre mi español, y espero que no os moleste, pero no voy a traducir esto. Me encanta leer los varios hilos españoles, y llevo pensando que debería contribuir, pero tengo miedo de hacer las faltas de gramática o faltas de ortagrafía. ¿Cuál es el mejor? Escribir con errores o no escribir nada pero español perfecto. Ahorita, estoy escribiendo en el acto, por eso, es muy posible que hay muchas equivocaciónes en ese texto. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 13 of 177 12 January 2009 at 3:58am | IP Logged |
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Weekend Summary 09/01/09 - 11/01/09
Spanish (Active ~2 hours, Passive ~3 hours) EP: Como la mayoría de los fines de semana, no hice mucho. Terminé unos ejercicios de Gramática, y otros de "Teach Yourself Spanish", y tambien di unos paseos escuchando al Assimil. Sin embargo, vi muchas peliculas de Español. El primero, "El flor de mi secreto" se trata un escritor con un marido ausente, y era un película típica de Aldomovar. El otra, fue "I am Cuba:The Siberian Mammoth" un documental sobre la película cubana "Soy Cuba". Me interesaba porque usó dos lenguas, Español y Ruso. (Por favor, corregid mis faltas) EN: Like most weekends, I didn't do a lot. I completed some exercises from the Gramática, and others from "Teach Yourself Spanish", and I also went on some walks while listening to Assimil. However, I did watch a lot of Spanish films. The first, "The flower of my secret" is about a writer with an absent husband, and it was a typical Almodovar film. The other was "I am Cuba:The Siberian Mammoth" a documentary about the Cuban film "Soy Cuba". It was interesting for me because it used two languages, Spanish and Russian. Edited by DaraghM on 12 January 2009 at 4:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 14 of 177 13 January 2009 at 5:29am | IP Logged |
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12/01/09
I'm still trying to find the right balance between my various languages. I can't decide whether I should do one language per week, or blend them within day as I'm doing. Hungarian (Active ~1 hours, Passive ~80 minutes) Listened to unit 37 on repeat over lunch. It's an easy lesson with few cases, and a lot of useful vocabulary for colours. E.g. sárga - yellow, kék - blue, szürke - grey. In the evening, I listened to the first part of FSI Hungarian Basic Unit 2. I might add this course to my TAC, but I'm not sure. It provides more functional Hungarian than Assimil, but it's not as interesting. Finally, I scripted Unit 38 of Assimil, but varied the layout by adding more footnotes. Russian (Active ~75 minutes, Passive ~15 minutes) It's pretty obvious that fifteen minutes of active Russian study per day is nowhere near enough, though you can cover quite a lot. Apart from the breakfast session, I spent the evening completing the exercises on Unit 2. I also wrote out, on an A4 sheet, the entire vocabulary list for Units 2 and 3. This was a slow process, as I'm writing Russian as it's printed, and not using the cursive script. I'll hopefully learn the cursive script later. My plan, mind numbing as it sounds, is to listen to the all Russian audio on repeat while walking, until I've learnt the 40 or 50 words in each list. Spanish (Active ~45 minutes, Passive ~0 minutes) I just managed a few more exercises from the Gramática. It's an interesting unit that contrasts, and tests, the difference between the gerund (gerundio), the infinitive (infinitivo) and the past particple (participio). The unit brings together a lot of information from previous units, but includes such advice as, Verbo + gerudio in the negative is, No verbo + sin + infinitivo Question: I was about to translate this into Spanish, but stumbled on, "I just managed" ? Can you use "Acabar de" to also convey the idea of "I just about managed" ? Edited by DaraghM on 13 January 2009 at 5:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 15 of 177 14 January 2009 at 3:41am | IP Logged |
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13/01/09
Russian (Active ~40 minutes, Passive ~80 minutes) My Russian vocabulary experiment worked well. The vocabulary track lasts about three minutes, and there's a very useful pause after each word, so you can repeat it during the gap. I thought looping the track would be very repetitive, but it wasn't. As I was walking, different words stood out at various times. I couldn't imagine doing this sitting down though. As I became familiar with a word, I would repeat it while imagining a picture of it. As there's no English on the audio, I could link the words with pictures, or emotions, without English as a bridge. Happy with the results, I wrote out the vocabulary for lesson 4 when I got back. During the morning session, I came across the Russian word for oranges Апельсины (apelseeni ), while apples is яблоки (yablaki). This is probably the first of many false friends. Hungarian (Active ~0 minutes, Passive ~40 minutes) Hungarian Assimil Unit 38 is a series of bad jokes, such as the following, Egy kisfiú as egy kislany talélkozik. A little boy and little girl meet up. Ha én nagy leszek, olyan sok pénzt fogok keresni, mint a papám. When I grow up, I will earn a lot of money, like my dad. Ha én nagy leszek, olyan sok pénzt fogok költeni, mint a mamám. When I grow up, I will spend a lot of money, like my mum. The repetition does make the lesson easier though. Spanish (Active ~60 minutes, Passive ~0 minutes) EP: Anoche la pasé completando unos ejercicios de la B1 Gramática. Algunos eran muy difíciles, sobre todo, esos se trataba perífrasis. EN: I spent the night completing a few exercises from the B1 Gramática. Some of them were very difficult, especially those about periphrases. Edited by DaraghM on 14 January 2009 at 4:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5938 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 16 of 177 15 January 2009 at 5:11am | IP Logged |
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14/01/09
- A couple of target language posts, so please correct my mistakes, or suggest a better way of expressing it. Russian (Active ~45 minutes, Passive ~75 minutes) RU: Я сделал ещё один словарный список для урока пять. Я также слушал к урокам три и четыре. EN: I made another vocabulary list for lesson five. I also listened to the vocabulary on lessons three and four. My Russian has a long way to go, and there's very little I can express at the moment. I have to give it to the MT Russian course for really teaching the verb ending for most tenses. I'm still unsure abut Russian word order, proper use of the cases, and those dreaded participles. Hungarian (Active ~60 minutes, Passive ~0 minutes) HU: Módommal, írtam leckét 39. EN: With my method, I wrote (out) lesson 39. My Hungarian is even worse than my Russian. I googled the word mód for method, and tried applying the personal and intrumental case endings, Mód+om+val. I'm not sure whether lesson (lécke) should be in the accusative or another case to express the idea of "to write out". Spanish (Active ~45 minutes, Passive ~0 minutes) EP: Escribir, y teclear, en español es mucho más facíl para mí. Espero que mis otros idiomas sean a los mismos nível algun día, sin embargo hago demasiado errores en esta lengua todavía. EN: To write, and type, in Spanish is a lot easier for me. I hope my other languages will be at the same level some day, however I'm still making too many mistakes in this language. General I've been thinking about setting myself weekly challenges, and seeing how far I get. The challenges could be based on course material I possess, learning a number of words, or something similar. With a lot of the Spanish material I own, I can see the final lap approaching, and I'm very tempted to break into a sprint and complete some of them. Any thoughts ? [EDIT - Corrected some Russian mistakes.] Edited by DaraghM on 16 January 2009 at 5:51am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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