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Solfrid Cristin’s way TAC 2011 Team Ohana | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5266 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 185 of 221 02 October 2011 at 8:26am | IP Logged | ||
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possible ways of remembering :
kirmisi: carmin mavi : mauve (yeah, not very blue, but...). Ma vie?? Imagine you life painted blue? for some reason "beyaz" sound white to me anyways, but it starts like a "b" so... The Russian eq. might be the closest kara : if you know Japanese, black is "kuro" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5131 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 186 of 221 02 October 2011 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Gypsy blood, I like that. According to family legend, I have Romani ancestry so maybe that's the reason why my list of places I want to go just keeps getting longer and longer. I think I'll use that argument the next time I ask my parents to partly fund a trip abroad. "I can't help it. It's all that gypsy blood. I need to be on the move!" I also continue to not understand people who are willing to pay hundreds of Euros for a bag with some French or Italian name on it and I can't help but feel it's all about the shallow desire to impress others. I am forever asking my brother why it matters that the elastic band of his underwear has Calvin Klein on it but then he's always been baffled by my need to hoard films and books so I guess it's a matter of perspective (though I still think our perspective is the right one :P). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5130 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 187 of 221 02 October 2011 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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@ fasulye and joanthemaid - Thank you both for help in remembering the colors - I am getting there, slowly :-)
@ReneeMona - I would definitely use the family legend for all it was worth. I use my claustrophobia for all it is worth. "You see darling, I simply need to get out of Norway now, or I'll get claustrophobic", I say to my DH. Never mind that Norway is a country almost the size of France, it is still too small for me :-) I have copied all the Turkish words I have seen so far today, and that is about 140. That doesn't actually mean that I know them, but I am on my way. I am fascinated by the amount of languages I hear around me here. Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portguese, French, German, English, Swedish, Dutch, Creole and a couple I have not been able to identify. Strangely enough, no Eastern Europeans. In Greece all the most expensive rooms were filled by Russians and Poles, but here I have so far heard none. I feel bad about not having done any Russian while I have been here, but I have tried to focus on learning at least a few words in Turkish, since that is the next place I am going to. I have also read about 400 pages in English, but that is just for fun. Have any of you ever felt like you got 80 years younger in the space of 18 hours? I just did. Yesterday morning my back pains were so excruciating that I had to be helped out of bed - I could not get up on my own, and I felt like I was 98 years old. Then yesterday afternoon, a local doctor gave my one shot in the thigh, and own strait into the spine, and within minutes I was up and walking straight again. He then gave me some pills which he said were used for athletes when they were injured and had to perform anyway, and now I feel like I am 18. I have no idea what he has given me, and do not dear to ask, but it sure did the trick. Not looking particularly forward to a 12 hours plus 3 hours flight on economy class on Thursday though... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5130 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 188 of 221 07 October 2011 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm back home again, after a nightmare of a day. I love Mauritius, I really do, but a 16-18 hour trip is a long one. The good news is that I sat next to a gorgeous Frenchman on the plane who assured me that I had almost no accent when I spoke French. The bad news is that the combination of the compliment and his general hotness plus the flight attendant asking me a question at the same time, made me so flustered that the next few sentences I said probably would not qualify as French at all, and then I lost the book, the magazine and the menue that I was all keeping on my lap on the floor, so I looked like a complete clutz and idiot in one sweep. Oh well, I am a married woman, so hot Frenchmen are off limits anyway. I got a fresh "Canard enchainé" and concentrated on French politicians instead.
I changed flights in Paris, and had way too little time, and ended up running for 25 minutes, begging and fighting my way through passport control and security, only to be met by the message that the gate was closed when I finally arrived. I then sobbed so hysterically, that they decided to let me through anyway. And to finish the day - and the year - I got the message when I got to Oslo airport that my father's only remaining sister passed away this morning. She had been weak for some time, had been taken to hospital yesterday, and this morning at a quarter to 6 she entered into the big sleep. This has indeed been "the year of death" - as my daughter puts it. New funeral next Friday. Between that and all the work involved in emptying my mother's flat and my father's house, I fear that there will not be much time for language studies the next couple of weeks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5130 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 189 of 221 16 October 2011 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Another really weird week with very little formal study, but some interesting international encounters. In Russian I have listened to a bit of Michel Thomas while driving, and a bit of Pimsleur, but that is about it. I have also spoken some Spanish and English this week.
A guy who works for me sent me an SMS saying: “Hurrah! I have gotten a new car”, and I wrote back “And I have been hugged by two virtual strangers from two different continents within the space of five minutes”. The explanation for the latter was that I had arranged to meet a friend of my mother who is from Sri Lanka (the friend, not my mother) at her apartment. I had just met him once before. We both hugged, and cried together as we both miss my mother. Saying good bye in the parking lot, we hugged and cried again, when one of my mother’s neighbors came by and immediately also gave me a hug, asking what was wrong. I told her, and before I knew it she was sobbing in my arms about how alone she felt, because all her family was in Morocco, and I was sobbing about how much I missed my mother. Given the fact that we had only spoken twice before, that was a somewhat unexpected turn of events. I also had two taxi trips with an Iranian guy and a Pakistani guy, and I of course pumped them both for information about their language story. The Iranian guy became very interested when he heard about HTLAL, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned up here on the forum. He was very impressed when I told him that I had no less than two people on my team who were learning Persian (go team Ohana!) As to the Pakistani, I have already written about him in another post, but the short version was that even though he has lived here since age two, his accent was still not native, which I find sad. At the end of the week I went to the Western Norway for my aunt’s funeral, where I met up with cousins I had not seen for 20 years. Thankfully we had an extremely civilized split of her belongings, which is nice as I have seen people becoming virtual animals as soon as the word “inheritance” enters. I guess the fact that there was nothing of real worth, and most of her belongings were religious books and bric-a-brac helped. And then of course stories of family skeletons came on the table, which is always fun. I managed to listen to a little Russian on my iPod in my room while nobody listened, but otherwise I did not get to do any language studying. Most of my family thinks people who study more than one foreign language are freaks, so you can just imagine what they think of me... Then yesterday evening I came back from the West to a party, where I was the only Norwegian. There were two Brazilians, two Peruvians, one Cuban and one South-African. The communication was a bit difficult, since the South-African didn’t speak Spanish, the Cuban and one of the Brazilians spoke very little Norwegian and the Cuban and one of the Peruvians spoke very little English. Since there were just the 7 of us, we all talked together, and did not break up into little groups, so for a while we spoke Norwegian, but then the conversation started passing into Spanish and English, which meant that I had to start translating. Normally not a problem, but the day before, Friday, I had been at the funeral which was hard in itself, then we had had a gathering with all my cousins who are so noisy that even I do not get to say anything, and then I had ended the evening with my head down the toilet after a bad case of food poisoning by crab. So after then having spent 9 hours travelling by car, bus, train, bus, train and car on the Saturday I had actually called off going to the party, because I did SO not feel like partying, but one of my friends practically frog-marched me there. And now, on the Sunday morning, my daughter is sitting next to me trying to learn the American sign language – I am really proud of her, she learned the whole alphabet in just half an hour. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5130 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 190 of 221 26 October 2011 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||
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This week I have seen several hours' worth of Spanish videos. I would have loved to tell you that I was watching the Spanish classics, but I am afraid that I got hooked on Gossip Girl, and watched a lot of episodes with my daughter. She watched it in Spanish only, with no subtitles, so I let her watch as much as she wanted to, for Spanish practise, and I am a weak soul and got caught up in it. I also got to speak quite a lot of Spanish with a friend, so that is taken well care of.
I have also continued to listen to Michel Thomas, so I get a little Russian almost every day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5266 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 191 of 221 26 October 2011 at 8:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking of silly shows, have you ever tried Aguila Roja ? (I only watch and read in original language, so my choices are a bit more limited...). Then again you're already fluent in Spanish so you might not need the practice.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5130 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 192 of 221 01 November 2011 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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This post is actually a milestone, because it is my post nr 1000. WOW. I have now moved into the less than 1% of the members who have written more than 1000 posts. I love this forum, the only problem is that I am actually getting addicted. That is, I have been addicted since I found it, and the effect is not wearing off. I am not quite sure whether I study less, because I spend too much time here, or I study more because I am inspired, but unfortunately I suspect it is the former. On the other hand I have had so much good fun here, that it is worth it.
LANGUAGE TRAINING THIS WEEK FRENCH I have listened to a lot of French on the radio in my car lately. The button that governs the channels and sound has somehow disappeared, so we cannot change channels – or so my husband thinks. I am shamelessly exploiting the fact that he is even less technical than I am, and that he does not realize that you can change channels and volume also from the steering wheel, so I have put it on the French radio channel. The marvel of this, is that when I am in the car , I get to listen to it, and when we are both in the car he turns it off, which suits me fine, because I hate having the radio on when there are more people in the car. They have for obvious reasons spoken a lot about Libya, and the financial crisis, and it is nice to get a different view of things. We tend to underestimate that when we listen to the news in a different language, we get not only the other language, but also a completely different angle. SPANISH I talked lots of Spanish yesterday, and got to see an example of the Norwegian saying “The biggest joy you can experience, is to make other people happy”. For the first time in my life I actually got to see someone jumping for joy. My Peruvian friend has not been able to use her car for 3 months, because the estate after her late husband has not been settled. Since she needs to take her children to the emergency room often, that is a real predicament. I have called just about every entity I could, to try to solve it, but had so far failed. Yesterday she called me and begged me to make another attempt, and after having recalled everyone, and begged and pushed and bullied my way through kilometres of red tape, I suddenly had a break through, and actually managed to get physically hold of the authorization. ( Something which theoretically is impossible to do on someone else’s behalf, particularly when that someone is dead, but I can be incredibly persuasive when I want to :-)). I went to her house, and she was tired and worried, and then I said: I have something here which will put a smile on your face”, and showed her the authorization. She started to jump around, and scream, and laugh and cry, all in one, and then her 9 year old son came by and literally threw himself at me, and hugged me again and again, and then the daughter. I wish I had more days like that. RUSSIAN I continue to listen to Michel Thomas and Pimsleur, and am considering to join the 6 week challenge again, to get more motivation. Oh and a big hug to you all, I feel particularly good today :-) @joanthemaid No, I have never heard of Aguila Roja. What is that? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 01 November 2011 at 10:02am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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