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Confessions of a Teenage Poly-not | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Mysteryfaith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4858 days ago 14 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, French | Message 1 of 19 30 January 2011 at 3:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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Want a recipe for disaster? Okay, here's one:
Take one language-loving British teenager, still in school. Take two years in which to get her three languages to an advanced level. Finally, take three very different languaages to learn. So, what do you get? BOOM! That's called a teenage poly-not (opposite of a polyglot.) Now, my introduction post is in the introduction board (I would post a link, but alas the forum blocks it!), which should tell you a little bit more about me and the languages I'm learning - but, for those of you who didn't go check it out (lazy! ;D) I'm learning German, French and Russian. Seriously, though, go there. You know you want to. Over the next... however long, I'll be documenting my struggles with these three languages - the lessons, the learning, and the general fury that comes from being a poly-not. :) FREE WITH YOUR COPY OF 'CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE POLY-NOT'!: ~ My fury at being able to naturally pronounce the French R, but not being able to trill! ~ Everything I cover with my courses in those languages, including my German lessons in school! ~ Me trying to be funny and clever, and failing! ~ ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I experience that you, dear reader, might want to hear about! 'till next time, folks! :) Edited by Mysteryfaith on 30 January 2011 at 3:27am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Meelämmchen Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4894 days ago 214 posts - 249 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 19 30 January 2011 at 9:44am | IP Logged | |||||
You made my day! Welcome, and good luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5936 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 3 of 19 30 January 2011 at 11:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey, that's cool. I've had the same realization myself. Even though I've been studying language for several years now, I've come to realize that, well, "I'm monolingual." I'm not really fluent in either Japanese or Finnish. I'm working on it, but I'm still not there yet.
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| Whitefish Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5063 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 4 of 19 30 January 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
OMG IT'S SO ANNOYING! This video kind of helped me. I made the trilling noise once watching it, and I made it once by accident a few days ago, so I think I'm almost there. Mandarin doesn't have any trilling noises though, so it's not getting much practice. Anyways, enjoyed reading your log and hope you post more! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mysteryfaith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4858 days ago 14 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, French | Message 5 of 19 30 January 2011 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well thank you, both of you! :) And wow, the languages you two are studying are stunning. o-o Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Finnish... I never realised how diverse the world of languages is! :)
So, here goes with my first log entry - drumroll, please! GERMAN: German lessons are on Monday, and I don't tend to work on it except for when talking in German to my mother (fluent in German and French) or exploring the German forums for my favourite books. Now, I might just slip in a note about my new German teacher, O (I'll call her that for her own privacy.) Over this log I'll be telling you about why, if I have to sit through another lesson very similar to those I sat through in my first week of learning German - I've now gone through over three years of it - I may just find myself in a padded room with no shoelaces, having gone insane due to O's apparent denial of the fact that 'wo ist meine Katze?' is NOT a qustion hard enough to appease the appetite of an intermediate-level German speaker. FRENCH: Well, there's been one aspect of French that alludes me every time I prance among its fields of beautiful, poetic words: nouns. So my mission over the past few days has been flashcards of anything and everything - rooms, vehicles, animals, even numbers (yes, I'm that forgetful) have made their way into my collection of little papery nuggets of gold, which, when tugged out of my pocket in a public area, are often received with a familiar groan of, "Urgh, she's got those blimmin' cards again! Quick, someone get the baseball bat!" But until I've memorised those pesky words, they'll be sticking with me - whether my friends like it or not! RUSSIAN: I love the words, I love the pronunciation, I love the country and the fact that there is no 'the' or 'a'. BUT I HATE the fact that although I'm fine with German or French, since I can naturally do the French/German R, I am unable to do the trilled R, as required for Russian. Is anyone else with me when I say that it's one of the most enfuriating parts of learning a language - needing a certain something which will make you sound native and being unable to do it? It doesn't help that whenever I find something new on the internet that could help, my whole family (all of whom can trill their R's perfectly) laugh it off and say that it will never work, insisting that "all you have to do is this - rrrrrrrrrrr!" For now I'm just trying to find something, anything, ANYONE who can give me a sure-fire way of finding out what the heck I'm supposed to do (apart from "just doing this - rrrrrrrrrrr!") to get the FLIPPING TRILLED R. EDIT: I posted this before I realised that Whitefish had posted, so here's my quick response to that! :D (I voted for it, by the way, since the link was very helpful. ^^)
Thanks for the link! :D Yeah, it's awful to think that your language-learning might be prohibited just because of a little muscle that won't do what you want it to do! However, I was thinking that I might possibly be tongue-tied - not seriously, but just a little - as my tongue is more of a wide-and-floppy thing, and doesn't really have a point... I can do the French R though, so it think it does have the capability to vibrate... but I don't know. I guess I'll find out what's going on once I get more practice with this whole trilling thing! :) Edited by Mysteryfaith on 30 January 2011 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mysteryfaith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4858 days ago 14 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, French | Message 6 of 19 31 January 2011 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So, another day, another log! :) I'm writing this before I generally study, so this is what I plan to do today. (I know I'm such a noob with these languages, I'm not writing stuff like "Reading the Holy Bible in Russian!" because I'm only just beginning. Be patient with me! D:)
GERMAN Of course, a German lesson today! I begrudgingly admit that my knowledge of future tense wasn't as good as I'd thought (although stubbornly muttering all the way through that my brain "just wasn't awake yet, that's all") but now I thiiiink I've got it covered. Apart from the fact that the person sat next to me (after asking them if they could trill) trilled in a Russian accent for the whole lesson just to mock my inability to do it, it was pretty good - and O (my German teacher, remember?) was actually being... well... cool. :o Not planning on doing anything to do with German today, although I might look up a couple of German horoscopes just to review my knowledge of those. :) FRENCH Today, it's allll about the weather. It's SNOW joke, when it comes to weather I hold the RAINs (sorry xDD) but as I've said before, I've got a memory like a... thing with no memory, so I'll just have to grapple with it and try to get my head down for long enough to take a yonder at 'em. And whilst I'm at it, I might just run through the numbers... ...Okay, back from running through the numbers in my head. We seem to have a new French number called 'catsanc', as according to my jumbled-up brain. Polyglots, take note! :) RUSSIAN It'll have to be another numbers day for me. All I can remember from them last time was three was pronounced 'tree', or something like that - and that's probably wrong. xPP Oh, and writing - I haven't been practicing writing much, since I'm mainly a read-pronunciation-ignore-actual-word person, which is terrible, I know, but I want to be able to say to my friends, "Ah, blahblahblahblah!" in Russian and finally convince them that it's not 'just a phase', as everyone seems to believe. (On the note of trilling, I think my family are getting worried. The amount of times I've walked round the house saying, "Prrrt! Prrrt!" like a telephone ringing is driving them mental - more than once someone's ran to the phone, picked it up, said "Hello?" and then put it down with a furious look on their face when they see me peering round a corner, chirping like some demented budgie.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mysteryfaith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4858 days ago 14 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, French | Message 7 of 19 01 February 2011 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Now looking back over yesterday's targets, let's see what I did...
I did make flashcards for the months in French. Although this means I can spell them better than I can pronounce them now, which kind of sucks. And as for Russian, I copied down the sounds of the Russian alphabet, but not in order - FLASHCARD TIME! TRILLING: Yes, it's got its own subsuction now, alright? :D This is just a slight update to say that I cannot trill, BUT - and this is a big BUT for me - (I LIKE BIG BUTS AND I CANNOT LIE... etc. etc.) - I can roll my r's at the back (French R, uvular R) and sort of roll it forward a little, shape my mouth and use my voice chords to make it SOUND like a pretty convincing R. Of course, if I did it on its own for long enough it wouldn't sound anything like what I'm going for, but when used in conversation it kind of works. :) Stupidly Inadequate Mouth, 0 - Strangled French R, 1. FRENCH: As I said, I made the weather flashcards, but I can't exactly take them with me everywhere. I'll review my book, and see if I can memorise the phrases needed for the weather. Oh, and I need to make some kind of revision technique (err... flashcards?) for remembering terms like 'over', 'under', 'behind' etc. I can only remember 'behind' for obvious reasons. xDD RUSSIAN: I saw J - a teacher who I was told did a Russian A-Level - and I must admit, Russian's the LAST language I would expect him to learn! Of course, I didn't approach him - I can't imagine what he would think of me if I walked straight up to him and spouted random knowledge about his A-Levels... Anyway, today I'm going to create some alphabet flashcards (copy the letters out in order, staple them together, write on the back how you pronounce them) and keep trying to memorise them. It doesn't help that I'll be going out to eat tonight, so all I'll be thinking is, "FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!" (Or, as I found out whilst in fits of laughter whilst flicking through my Russian vocabulary book, the way pudding is pronounced in Russian: poooo-deeeeeng!) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| gizmo2012 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4905 days ago 49 posts - 49 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French | Message 8 of 19 01 February 2011 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't rely too much on flashcards. Try reading to gain vocabulary. For French, you can read Lemonde.fr or Russian, Vesti.ru. Then, words are just going to keep on appearing naturally, so you won't have to try to remember with flashcards. Russificate is also a good site for learning Russian.
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