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TL visits in 2011 and 2012 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5134 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 19 05 December 2011 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I am a firm beliver in immersion in your target language. Even if it is just for a day you will be surrounded by so much of your target language that it is worth many hours of study. Obviously the longer the better, but sometimes that is not possible, so you just take the little snippets you can get. I would also include visits from foreigners in your home or partners/good friends that you see a lot, so we can hear from those who did not actually have the opportunity to travel, but who have had occasion to practise their TL intensively even so, and meetings or guiding in one language which differs from the one which is spoken locally.
So which TL countries have you visited (or have been immersed in the language in other ways) in 2011, and which are you planning to/hoping to visit in 2012? Oh, and let us take the broad view on target language here. Let us define it as any language you learn a bit of, whether you had it as a TL before the trip was planned, or you made it a TL because you knew you were going there. In my case, even though this has possibly been one of the most painful years in my life, I have also had a vast amount of possibilities to practise my languages. I think the only one I have not been able to practise at all has been Italian. 2011 RUSSIAN One week in Ukraine - one day in St. Petersburg. GREEK I have always wanted to learn Greek, and had studied it a little bit before I went to Greece for one week. Loved it. Will go back as soon as I can, and learn more before I do. TURKISH I started to learn a bit of Turkish before going there for a week, but dropped it because I thought I would not be able to go after all. Still feel like hitting myself over the head with a blunt object because of the opportunity missed, but even the handful of words I knew actually came in handy. FRENCH Lots of French practise in Mauritius for two weeks, and also on my short visits to France and Belgium on business trips. SPANISH A few days in Barcelona, a 4 week visit from Spain and a Peruvian best friend makes for masses of Spanish immersion. GERMAN This comes in the snippet category. A few hours in Kiel on a Sunday when the shops were closed, so I just got to talk a little bit. I actually talked more German in Turkey. ENGLISH Loads. I have a two week vist from the US every year, all my international meetings are conducted in English and the guiding in both Turkey and Mauritius was in English. 2012 What is planned right now in the holiday department are either a few days in France or a week in Greece in May,a few days to Iceland in July (will have to pick up something on Icelandic before I go) and I may stopp by St. Petersburg, Riga and Helsinki in August but I doubt that I will do anything with Latvian and Finnish since we are just talking about a few hours. There is also the possibility of an oval week end in Prague in September, so I hope to hit my Slovak books, and go beyond the first three word, where I am currently stuck (I know Prague is not in Slovakia, but it is the closest I get). And I should go to the US for a week to see a relative in her 90ies before she passes away, but I have no idea how I am going to get that to fit in my holiday shedule. We only have 20 days a year! For business purposes it is foreseen that I will be going to France, Belgium and Poland - I may have a look at my old Polish books before I go there. So how about the rest of you? What international or national immersion have you had or will have? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 05 December 2011 at 11:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5951 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 2 of 19 05 December 2011 at 11:47am | IP Logged | ||
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My travels in 2011 were quiet compared to some other years. As my travel plans dictate my target languages, it came out as follows,
SPANISH (Spain - Malaga) I loved this Spanish town. The only English I ended up using was with hotel staff who weren't Spanish. RUSSIAN\ESTONIAN(Estonia - Tallinn) I decided to learn some Estonian and I increased my Russian study prior to the trip. As I'd never tackled Estonian before my conversation was quite limited. However, a lot of restaurant staff are Russian, and I got to really practice the language here. Singapore I couldn't find any decent Singlish resources so I used English mostly. INDONESIAN(Indonesia\Bali) As I was spending several weeks here I plunged into Indonesian before my holiday. Towards the end of the trip I was very comfortable in basic exchanges, and limited topical conversations. I think cultural sensitivity about certain topics held me back more than confidence. CANTONESE(Hong Kong) I just dabbled in a small bit of Cantonese to cover greetings, numbers and basic shop exchanges. PORTUGUESE(Portugal - Lisbon) I just spend a weekend here, but I ended up doing several months of Portuguese before my visit. I ended up talking to a few people about how Ireland and Portugal were in the same boat as regards the IMF. I also had other related talks about austerity, the unions and the euro. As I've decent Spanish, vocabulary wasn't an issue, but I tended to mispronounce some words. E.g. para. I haven't made any travel plans for 2012 yet. Edited by DaraghM on 05 December 2011 at 11:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6503 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 19 05 December 2011 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm immersing right now at Tenerife. But as all my other immersions this is just for a short time - I have never stayed permanently outside Denmark. When I read about language courses where you stay for weeks with a family AND have a course running in the daylifght hours, I'm sure you can clock up far more effective communication hours than I can here, but I try to keep thinking and speaking only in Spanish (in spite of all the other tourists here) so it is still a sensible boost to my active involvement with Spanish. And so far nobody has tried to force me to speak another other language (apart from two and only two conversations with German tourists) so I do consider it a 'monolingual' tour.
I have done similar monolingual trips to countries speaking the languages mentioned as "speaking" to the left of this message - with two reservations: In Sweden I'm sure I could have forced through a "100% Swedish" rule, but doing that to Swedes who actually understand Danish would amount to saying to them that they weren't good enough - so I have only made halfway immersive stays in Sweden. The same applies to Norwegian, except that my Norwegian is to much of a hodgepoge of different dialects + Danish, and the result would be miserable (so I have not marked it as "speaking"). Besides I have still not spent a full week in the Netherlands or Flandern since I restarted my language studies. but this should be easy to remedy in the upcoming year. For the languages marked as "studying" I hope to prove within a year or so that even the Greeks won't object to hearing me mistreating their language. I didn't speak Esperanto fluently at the congress in Copenhagen in July and time will tell whether I can find another immersive situation - the next universal congress is in Hanoi and I'm not quite sure whether that's within the limits of my travel budget. My complete travel list (outside Denmark) in 2011 runs as follows: January: England, Bourkina Faso and Mali: English, French and Danish (with nother members of my travel group) April: Poland and Germany - I have dabbled into Polish since then and can to some extent read ikt now, and German has never been a problem June: Madrid, Mallorca, Barcelona and Girona: pure castellano and Català (but less than one week) July: Rome, Sardinia, Berlin and the 96. International Esperanto congress in Copenhagen. Italian and German went smoothly, Esperanto was a valuable first encounter with the spoken language, and I did read a fair amount of texts about and/or in Sardic - but no immersion October: A short stay in Norfolk in England, and they do speak English there October: almost two weeks in Myanmar. I did buy some 'linguistic' souvenirs there, but survived on my English December: Tenerife, where I'm adamant to stick to Spanish if there is any chance the other person understands it Edited by Iversen on 05 December 2011 at 3:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5264 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 6 of 19 05 December 2011 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I went to Georgia for five days in May, and I'm going for another five days on Wednesday. On the first trip I
basically just wandered around the streets of Tbilisi, with a brief side trip to Gori, and soaked up the atmosphere, but there was plenty of opportunity to speak Georgian. This time I'll be taking a few lessons with a proper Georgian teacher, so I have high hopes. I don't really consider Japanese to be a language I am studying anymore, but since I am still far from perfect, I suppose the days, weeks, and months I spend completely immersed count as practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6503 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 19 05 December 2011 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm sure that many courses are spoiled by a constant use of English or other languages during the course itself, but if you wait to participate until you have a certain background you should at least be able to convince your host family to speak the local language. It may be harder to convince a teacher to change his/her methods. I have not participated in any such courses myself, but have received positive reports from at least some members of my travel club who have participated, so I'm ready to admit that they can be a useful investment for those you want to follow a course. And following any course in a country where the streets are full of the local language must be better than following an identical course at home. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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