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Small Expectations | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5334 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 177 of 431 11 October 2010 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Churchkhela, this sounds just like something I used to have in Turkey (I think they called it cevizli sucuk, i.e. walnut sausage). :)
Looking forward to hearing how the intermediate class works out, it will definitely be a change of gears...keeping my fingers crossed for you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5242 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 178 of 431 12 October 2010 at 6:28am | IP Logged | ||
That's interesting. It seems like a lot of Georgian cuisine has come from, or at least been influenced by, Turkish food. From my limited knowledge so far, the main ingredients that make Georgian food Georgian appear to be walnuts, pomegranates, fenugreek, yoghurt, and coriander. All good stuff, although I'm equally partial to the stodgy potatoes, cabbage, beetroot and dill you get in Russia (I even named my dog Dill in honour of the great herb). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5242 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 179 of 431 14 October 2010 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||
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So I went to my first intermediate class yesterday evening and, well, I'm not really
sure what I think about it. There were only four students besides me, which is obviously a good thing, but they were all pretty quiet and there was no banter and laughs like there always is in the Saturday beginners' class. The levels of the students seem to be wildly varying - some seem to be pretty good but others were still stumbling over the alphabet (this is after studying the language for 3 years!!! It makes me want to be very judgmental about the ability of Japanese people to learn foreign languages but I shall restrain myself). The actual content of the lesson was pretty tough. The grammar was manageable but there was a lot of vocabulary that I didn't know, and we did a listening exercise that I found very difficult indeed. Anyway, I've decided to take the plunge and switch to this class, with some reservations... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| E}{pugnator Newbie Brazil Joined 4944 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 180 of 431 24 October 2010 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not sure I can post it here, hope it doesn't sound as advertising (I don't mean it all), but my notes can be found at
http://www.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30643 I tried to open a log here but found the chriteria to be too confusing for classifying a simple language learning log. Edited by E}{pugnator on 24 October 2010 at 1:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5242 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 181 of 431 19 November 2010 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||
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It's been a long long time since my last update - over a month, in fact, and in the
meantime I notice that I've passed 20,000 views, so cheers for that, but more importantly apologies for being so lazy. My main excuse is that my life has been rather busy with both good things and bad. On the bad side, I got two terrible bouts of tonsillitis, one on each side of my throat, within a month, both of which required a course of steroids to cure. I was really quite perturbed at the apparent deterioration of my health, and so I made the momentous (for me) decision to give up smoking. Yes folks, I've been a dedicated smoker for the last 21 years. Incredibly stupid, I know, but it seemed so cool and grown-up when I was 16, and since Japan is a smoker's paradise in terms of both social acceptance and cost, I've never had to consider all the money I would save by quitting or face the social approbation smokers suffer elsewhere. So I smoked my last cigarette at 9:30pm local time, on Thursday November 11th, just over one week ago. For the first three days I did nothing but think about smoking, and the irritability ex-smokers are supposed to feel was closer to full-blown rage in my case (I took it out on the poor woman in the dry cleaner's, すみませんでした!), but now I feel much better, although I still haven't got used to the fact that I'm a non- smoker. Quitting is a bit like an out-of-body experience - like your brain is not your own anymore. Certainly one of weirder experiences I've ever been through. I'm so happy I've finally quit though. Disgusting habit... But I'm sure you didn't come here to read about my smoking woes, so on to Georgian. Georgian is going fine. Thursdays with Medea are really enjoyable, and although my spoken Georgian is still pretty horrible it's not quite as horrible as it was. The Wednesday classes at Asahi Culture Center are cool too - not quite as good a laugh as the Saturday class was, but more intense and more serious, which of course is to be welcomed. In my spare time I'm still reading Jeans Generation, but have only around 20 pages left, after which I will be able to say that I have read a novel in Georgian (and thereby hugely impress...er...no-one, probably), and I'm ploughing on with the Gold List method, which I enjoy a lot as it satisfies the list-maker in me. The problem with this method is that it is so inconsistent. On my 25-word head lists, I sometimes remember 20 of the words and sometimes only 1 or 2, and then I have great trouble making the first distilled list of 17 words. Still, I'm going to stick with it as it's such a good way to organize all the vocab I pick up from various sources, and it is quicker and more permanent than typing it all into Byki. Byki failed me when I moved computers. There may have been a way to transfer all my scores and learned items, but if there was I couldn't find it, so I was stuck right back at 0 learned words. The thought of going right through the days and numbers and months and so on all over again to get myself back where I was on my old computer is more than depressing, so I think my Byki days are probably over. If someone from Byki ever reads this, take note! So in summary, all's well in TixhiiDon's house, even more so now that my chances of lung cancer, stroke, heart disease, and assorted other hideous and fatal diseases are decreasing as I type. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 magister Pro Member United States Joined 6381 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 182 of 431 19 November 2010 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Congratulations. Keep it up! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5242 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 183 of 431 16 December 2010 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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So I guess it must be time to dust off the ol' language learning log for a Xmas update.
I'm still studying Georgian diligently so I'm not sure why that hasn't translated into more updates, but anyway, for those who are interested, here is a summary of my Georgian endeavours of the last month. I'm back with Aronson's Reading Grammar. As much as I complain about it I just can't seem to stop going back to it every few months. The thing is is that it works, folks! After 3 months of using any other sources, I find myself completely confused about which verb does what, means what, takes which cases, and is conjugated how, and then I open up Aronson, and there it all is, laid out for me in clear black and white, with tables and examples and cross-references to other languages. So hats off to Mr. Aronson. Anyway, specifically, I started back at Chapter 7 and am now right up to Chapter 14, which means I've finally got the perfect series more or less organized in my head, and have also covered the participles, which are hilariously random. There are about 7,635 ways of forming participles, depending on the conjugation type, whether or not the verb root includes a vowel, what day of the week it is, whether or not the speaker has a cousin called Mary, and whether or not the listener likes cabbage. Perceptive readers will notice a hint of exaggeration there, but safe to say I will be happy to recognize the participles for now and use just a few more or less as set phrases (for example იმ წიგნში დაწერილია რომ...). My two classes are going well, although I'm feeling a lot of frustration over the disaster that is my spoken Georgian. My listening and reading have come on leaps and bounds recently, and my writing is not bad either, but I just cannot produce anything but the simplest sentences from my mouth. Of course I know that the passive skills advance more quickly than the active, but the disconnect in this case is too large. Just yesterday I was listening to Medea tell a long convoluted story about the dormitory she used to live in in Moscow, and I could understand everything she was saying. Not just the gist, but all the individual words and their meanings. When my turn to speak came, though, I sounded like a gibbering wreck who'd never spoken a word of Georgian in his life! So annoying. I'm still reading ჯინსების თაობა - I have about 15 pages to go but can't seem to get myself over that final hump. So hold off on the congratulatory cards and flowers for a while longer. I've also been reading a short story by აკა მორჩილაძე, who is a very popular and prolific contemporary Georgian writer, about the time between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Rose Revolution, when Georgia was, to put it rather crudely, in all sorts of shit. So now I know what a კაი ბიჭი is (I guess it kind of corresponds to チンピラ in Japanese). Sad news here in Tokyo. Gaumarjos, the Georgian restaurant in Gotanda, is closing down at the end of this month. I have been twice since I heard the bad news, once with my classmates and once with other friends, to pay my respects and fill up on ხაჭაპური and ხინკალი. I also attempted to make ხაჭაპური at home, and it wasn't bad at all - not great either, mind you, but not bad. I am still a non-smoker after 1 month, 5 days, and 10 hours. Giving up smoking is not really all that difficult at all. Don't know why it took me so long. Unfortunately I seem to have replaced my nicotine addiction with one for chocolate so I am piling on the pounds. Might have to renew the gym subscription at some point. The Gold LIst thingamajig is still going well, and I have decided for definite that I am going to visit Georgia in July next year, and possibly again in September. Have a smashing Christmas everyone. Hmm, I don't even know how to say Merry Xmas in Georgian. გილოცავთ შობას? Edited by TixhiiDon on 17 December 2010 at 3:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5242 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 184 of 431 23 December 2010 at 2:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I can confirm after a quick glance at Dodona Kiziria's masterpiece in the not exactly
crowded field of Georgian language teach-yourself books that "Merry Christmas" in Georgian is indeed გილოცავთ შობას, so გილოცავთ შობას. Also, as if the season is not filled with enough miracles, I finished ჯინსების თაობა last night. I have now read a novel in Georgian. I think I shall have it engraved on my gravestone: "He was average in most respects but he did read a novel in Georgian". Very good novel it was too, although the English translation was laughably bad (and laughably badly manufactured - it fell apart bit by bit as I was using it whereas the Georgian version stayed perfectly intact) so if anyone fancies reading it they'll have to learn some Georgian to actually enjoy the experience. Last Wednesday class of the year last night. I was utterly knackered so it wasn't much fun. I'll be glad of the break. Tonight will be my last language exchange with Medea for 2010. I've bought her Alan Bennett's "Talking Heads" as a Christmas present, but I had a glance through it and it is much more difficult than I remember, what with all those Northern-isms and brand names, so I don't think it's going to do much for her confidence in English. Sorry Medea! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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