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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 145 of 195 12 October 2010 at 12:33pm | IP Logged |
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630 (+2)
совершенно - perfectly данный - this I really should have learned these words a long time ago. They kept popping up in everything but I assumed I would learn them from context. Well, yeah. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 146 of 195 15 October 2010 at 12:30pm | IP Logged |
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Hello, everybody - it's a Friday! I'm quite happy about that.
Also, I'm happy that I've gotten into the habit of looking at Pravda everyday in the morning. They've recently had a lot short articles that I have no problem understanding, which has done wonders for my ego. And of course, the actual news is sometimes interesting though although I can't help but think that these past few weeks might have been slow news weeks. 638 (+8) очередной - last оценка - value, appraisal, estimation действие - action обсуждаемый - debated (being debated?) распоряжение - an order внесение - introduction ??? изменение - change межправительственный - between governments поставка - supply, reserves 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 147 of 195 19 October 2010 at 2:55am | IP Logged |
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8 h 20 min (+30)
I managed to get 30 minutes while washing the dishes. I got a few of the topics: there was this one guy complaining about the government and how he's not the president or prime minister, then something about Muslims in Europe and the white race and whether or not the Russian people need to be protected, and then some stuff I couldn't understand. I read a Russian article recently where I was proud to report that I could understand 80% of it. :) It's nice to be encouraged like that now and then. It gives me the feeling that this isn't all in vain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 148 of 195 23 October 2010 at 11:49pm | IP Logged |
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8 h 41 min (+21)
I've been reading more articles and I've finally finished the Count of Monte Cristo (in English). I have to get back to reading Harry Potter. I have been trying to think in Russian recently. I lack a lot of vocabulary, but hopefully using some words over and over again should help me. I can think in French pretty reliably and I hope to get that same experience with Russian at some point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 149 of 195 02 November 2010 at 4:51pm | IP Logged |
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9 h 51 m (+1 hour 10 min)
I'm actually starting to understand the radio a little more, but unfortunately not enough to be able to say "I can understand Russian radio." Slowly, bit by bit, I'll get there. If I listen to around five more hours of Russian radio, I'll have reached my goal of listening to fifteen hours of Russian radio by the end of the year. Not a big goal, but it's something! I'm going to do NaNoWriMo this November, but rather than write my poorly planned novel, I'll simply write a diary. In Russian. I'm a little behind since I didn't write yesterday but I can definitely make up for it today. The idea is to make myself start using all those nice Russian words I keep picking up as opposed to storing them somewhere and forgetting them because I only see it every three months. 50,000 words of written Russian - can I do it? Yes, I can! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 150 of 195 06 February 2011 at 7:18pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, it has been so very long since I last posted! Unfortunately, I did not end up
doing my NaNo in Russian. I did write several entries in Russian, but definitely not enough. :/ The truth is that I have not been paying much attention to Russian; I have been very busy and Russian sort of fell by the wayside. However, this year I have pledged to finish "Harry Potter" in Russian, and this time it's for real. I'm on a reading streak and I'm going to read much more (in many languages) this year - it's time that I tend to my literary field as opposed to letting it rot. What have I done for my languages? Absolutely nothing. Well, my father brought me back a book on Toledo in Russian. That's more reading material there! I think it's better if I list my languages and what I'm going to do for them: French: Read French news. Read at least one French book. I never finished "Kiffe Kiffe Demain" or "Candide", though I read the latter in English. I have more than enough French books, so this year I will see to it that French does not decay. Russian: Finish reading freaking Harry Potter. That thing has been here a year already. Oh, and listen to Russian radio every day, at least one hour. I was doing so well before! Swedish: Listen through all of "Kristina Från Duvemala." When I finish reading it, I will go through the lyrics. Remember that Swedish is my "fun" language, and I'm going to mess around this time. I'm going to see how much of a language you can learn with just one grammar book and with some music to analyze. Other languages: all on hold until I can get back on track with Russian. This is probably not Hindi's year, though I finally found someone who I can speak Hindi with. I've already learned a new Hindi phrase: "Mai khel hargayi", which is "I lost the game" for a feminine speaker. Add it to "Mai daktar nahi huun" and you can see I clearly have a formidable command of Hindi. I've started reading "the Loom of Language" on the recommendation of one of the users here. I'll see if any of its tips help me with language, and if not it'll at least be entertaining. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 151 of 195 05 March 2011 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
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Almost a month since my last post - I am horrifically inconsistent.
I'm starting to get back into the language learning groove. I've been spending a lot of time on personal development and I have a lot of work, so I don't have the time (or motivation) to crack open a grammar book. For Russian, I don't need a grammar book - I need to attack vocabulary head on. I have two conflicting stories: today I read an article in Pravda and understood almost everything. Yesterday I read an article and almost didn't understand anything. My success rate varies wildly - sometimes I will get everything and other times I'll only be able to pick out a few words. I need to improve my vocabulary, but I don't know how to do so quickly. This is the plateau, I suppose, and it's hard. I never did get to 1000 words, did I? Well, clearly I need to do a *lot* better if I want to get my Russian to a decent level. Russian is the language that is dearest to me - I want to be really fluent in Russian. All my other languages are sort of... for fun. If I sound silly in Swedish or I can't understand everything in Hindi, well, that's okay. Getting to an advanced intermediate in those languages is more than I could ever ask for. Becoming fluent in Russian, however, would really mean a lot to me. I just want to state with confidence that yes, I do speak Russian. I just have to put the work in to read every day and look up words I don't know. I've also been writing in my journal in more languages. Sometimes I write three paragraphs in Russian, and then I feel like have to do Swedish, then French. It's a good way to keep my languages active and allow me to practice expressing myself in them. I still do English, of course, as that's the language I best express myself in, but I'm trying to diversify. I brought a small Swedish dictionary to school and when we're not doing anything, I pull out my dictionary and journal and start writing, looking up words I don't know. The result is painful to a native speaker but helpful to my ego. I'll also write down Swedish lyrics I've memorized and then look up words I don't know. I have a surprisingly good understanding of Swedish. Not near my Russian level, but using the few words I know and my knowledge of Germanic cognates, I can get by rather well. Swedish is my fun language, so I'm trying to avoid the whole "hitting the books" thing until I can get into the groove. I'm also listening to a lot of Swedish music. My pitch accent might not be good, but I'm getting a hang of pronunciation and listening. I'm really glad to have "officially" started Swedish. It feels like so long since I said I'd do it, and now I'm really doing it. I don't feel guilty about studying it anymore - Russian will get its time, but I can't be with it all the time. Russian is like... my husband? It knows I'll always be there. Swedish is a long term fling or something. Whatever - languages aren't picky. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 152 of 195 12 October 2011 at 11:20pm | IP Logged |
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I hate the summer. I felt so... unproductive. On the bright side, I got some Pimsleur
CDs for Irish Gaelic from the local library. Hurrah! Don't think I'm abandoning my darling Russian, however. I never shall. I wrote this yesterday: Спрашиваю себя - почему я не с тобой? Мне кажется, что нет хорошой причины. Ну, прошлое прошло и делать нечего. Надо забыть старые вещи, чтобы новые пришлил. Будущее будет лучше! А если читаешь это с помощью Гугл Транслейт... не буду счастливой. :| (I ask myself - why am I not with you? It seems to me there is no good reason for it. Oh well, the past has passed and there's nothing to do about it. One needs to forget old things so that new things cam come. The future will be better! And if you read this with the help of Google Translate... I'm not going to be happy.) This is actually an updated version; the original one was criticized by one of my Russian acquaintances and after I picked my sagging ego off the floor, I made some changes. It's a very simple paragraph, but hey, you gotta start somewhere. Also... WORDS: 669 (+31) Whoa! Where did all these words come from? I got a new cell phone because my old one was finally becoming... obsolete. Were it up to me, I would never change one phone for the other because phones are like life partners to me - till death do us part. However, my new phone had the advantage of actually having a usable Applications Market and so I got AnkiDroid! And it had a bunch of Russian news apps, making me a very happy camper. I went through a bunch of the news articles, picked out words I didn't know, and put them in. I learned a ridiculous amount of synonyms for "depression," my favorite being "хандра" which apparently means "the blues." I will reach 1000 words... and then 2000, and then 5000... and by then I should be able to read most things in Russian. If I cannot do that by then, clearly I am learning the wrong words. But wait! you ask, what about Swedish? Jag lära svenska! Jag är so lycklig för att jack can studera svenska. Det är an vacker tång. Jag vet into värfor jag stodde studera. Plötslit idag jag hade en vill att lära mig svenska igen, så ta jag min bok till skolen och jag läsade där. Man kan se att jag svriver inte härlig. Förlåt mig, Sverige! Väl, värför vill jag studera svenska? Jag kan säga att jag älska svenska musik. Jag vill förstå musikalen "Kristina från Duvemåla." Jag vill också läsa boken "Utvandrarna." As for my scholarly pursuits, I took the French subject test. I learned a lot of things about French while reviewing for that test that I had never learned the first time. I am not sure how well I did... it's funny how French just keeps popping back into my life. I tried learning Hindi seriously over the summer, but the deal with Hindi is that it is hard to find actual things in Hindi to read. I think I'm more in love with the idea of learning Hindi than the language itself. It's very interesting, but it would take a great deal of dedication to learn. I can't display Devanagari on my phone, so reading Hindi news is out of the question. Most Hindi songs on Youtube are not written in Devanagari either but in an idiosyncratic transliteration. I do have a few friends that speak Hindi, but I realized that I should put languages I really want to learn now (Swedish!) over languages I only kind of want to learn. I also tried learning Icelandic, and although my venture was brief it brought me great joy. I mostly stopped because I ran out of motivation, but it was very interesting to compare Icelandic to Swedish and I could recognize a lot of cognates. I have a feeling that once I get a good grasp of Swedish, I will be able to tackle Icelandic with ease. I looked at my Yoruba book. The grammar is frightening. Whoever says that African languages are simple need only take a glance at the pages of "Teach Yourself Yoruba" to realize that they could not be more wrong. Yikes. Zulu and Swahili are also on my "To Learn" list... the languages of Africa seem very varied and interesting. Unfortunately it is so hard to find materials for them, and the languages are no piece of cake either for this Indo-European girl. They will have to wait til later... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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