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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 33 of 270 29 January 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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@numerodix: Yes, those of the war generation were something special.
WEEKS 3 AND 4 Team Sputnik had our bi weekly Sunday Skype conference last Sunday, and we actually spoke a little Russian! The good news is that this time I did not feel like fainting, when someone said a Russian word. :-) I think we were all nervous, so the conversation was not terribly impressive at this point, but at least we managed to present ourselves. We also spoke some German, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish and English, so all in all it was quite a good session. It takes a little time to figure out all the technical stuff, but once we have done that, and gotten to know each other, I think these sessions have tremendous potential. RUSSIAN It has been a couple of fairly good weeks. I have had my 2 ½ hours of Russian class, and I have done copious amounts of Pimsleur and Michel Thomas plus a little Assimil. My main problem with Pimsleur seems to be that I understand and can answer practically the whole half hour lesson, but for some reason I struggle to hear and adequately repeat one or two key words, verbs mostly. Do any of you know if I can find the texts to Pimsleur somewhere? I asked my teacher about genitive not always being used for negations, like Fabrizio and Mark discussed in Fabrizio’s log, but she said she had never heard of that. She suggested it might be some kind of dialect, and asked if I could give any examples, which I obviously could not. Could any of you come up with any? GERMAN Finally! I have finished my German book, all 540 pages of it. There is something wrong about reading a mediocre novel that you do not even enjoy. It is about as smart as having an affair with a lover who is really bad. The thing is that the book looked really great from the cover, and once I have started a book I hate to drop it, and let’s face it, I do not have that many German books to choose from. Can any of you recommend any good crime writers in German? I usually go for Agatha Christie in every language, but if any of you know any good German writers that would be nice. I have also gone back to German class. My colleague and I signed up for German classes at Berlitz 3-4 years ago, but since this is something we are supposed to do during working hours, and we always have too much to do, we haven’t gotten around to it for a long time. Since we are now so overdue with our German classes that we are about to lose them (you are supposed to finish them within a year) we decided to just start again. January is usually a fairly calm month. I was keen on remembering my German book for class, because 18 months ago when I had my last class, I had forgotten my book and the teacher scolded me. So I turn up with all my books, and what does my German teacher say? “Oh, you remembered your book this time, I brought an extra book, since you forgot it last time you were here”. He remembers that after 18 months and a gazillion pupils in between. How does he even do that? I felt really rusty in German after all this time. He had us read a couple of texts about German dialects, asked questions about the content, and then we generally just rambled after that. The good news was that he was satisfied with my pronunciation, and I understood all the content. I noticed that my prosody was off, but at least the pronunciation of the individual words was o.k., and although there was the occasional word that I had not seen before, it did not hinder the understanding. The bad news was that I had forgotten a lot of words, and my grammar was – as always – eh - creative. Therefore: Did I speak German yesterday? Yes I did. Was I eloquent? Not even close. The colleague I do this with has a slightly smaller vocabulary than I, and is a bit more timid when it comes to speaking, but he is king of the class as far as grammar goes. He is literally passionate about grammar, and has taught English grammar at the University of Oslo. I, on the other hand, rank grammar along with math and medieval torture. We therefore practice a division of labour. I do most of the talking, and he does most of the grammatically correct talking. Still, it is good to be back in the game. ARABIC I am afraid I have been a naughty girl. I have started on an Arabic course: “Teach Yourself Complete Arabic”. It is supposed to take you up to B2, which I think is a big fat lie, but at least it will give me the basics. We are going to Tunis for our Easter vacation, and since I insist that the girls learn 100 words of the language of every country we go to (unless we are there just for a day, of for changing flights) I did not really have any choice. I can’t ask them to do anything I won’t do myself. Besides, Arabic is an old love of mine. When I was 18 I met some Arabic students in France, and decided to learn a little Arabic. Given that it is a couple of winters since I was 18, I have forgotten practically all of it, but the occasional word rang a bell. Greetings felt familiar, but an article I read said that the most common greeting – as salam alekum, is not used in Tunis. Just my luck… I have gotten through the introductory chapter, and have listened to the first lesson. I slowly start remembering a few of the letters, but it will take time to get back into that alphabet again. SPANISH I am still helping my Peruvian friend in legal matters, so I get a lot of Spanish practice. A little over 2 hours this week. Studies these two weeks: Russian: 10 hours 10 minutes German: 6 h 10 minutes Arabic: 1 hour and 5 minutes Spanish: 2 h 10 minute Total this year: Russian: 31 h 40 min German: 8 hours Greek: 2h 10 min Spanish: 8 h 35 English: 5 h French: 40 minutes Italian: 3h 30 minutes Icelandic:20 minutes Mandarin: 45 minutes Ukrainian: 30 minutes Arabic: 1 hour and 5 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5954 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 34 of 270 29 January 2012 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Though I can't say that I agree, this part made me laugh a lot. I love grammar in its own right, but I can't stand the way it's usually taught in classes. I do wholeheartedly agree that math and medieval torture should be placed in the same category together, however. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6052 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 35 of 270 29 January 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged | |||||
You've read Dürrenmatt, I suppose. Otherwise I recommend Der Richter und sein Henker and Der Verdacht. A contemporary popular readable writer is Martin Suter. He's quite productive and there's a lot of books to choose from.
I'm fascinated by maths and I like grammar, at least some of the time, but I'm not into medieval torture. And Arabic, yes that's a real challenge but an exciting one. //aloysius Edited by aloysius on 29 January 2012 at 12:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 36 of 270 29 January 2012 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well the thing is, that in Norway grammar, and in particular German grammar, is taught in a way specially designed to make you hate both grammar and German. They make you repeat the prepositions that govern the different cases until you are unable to forget them, even if you want to.
When I was a kid we had to stand up next to our chairs and recite the Lord's prayer every day for the first 6 years I went to school. Now you would think that this would make an impression, but I have actually managed to forget most of that prayer. The German prepositions will however be with me when I have Alzheimer, and have forgotten my own name and the faces of my husband and kids. I will still be able to go "durch, für, gegen,ohne, um", "an, auf, hinter in, neben, uber, unter vor und zwischen", "aus, bei, mit, nach, zeit, von, zu" when everything else is gone. And that is not even the sad part. The sad part, is that knowing these rules does not help me at all when it comes to speaking correct German, because that is not how my brain functions. I need to learn language in context. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 37 of 270 29 January 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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That's how it was taught here too. My mother recites the same thing, haha...
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| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4597 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 38 of 270 29 January 2012 at 8:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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In terms of Pimsleur transcripts, this is the best I've found:
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 It seems pretty complete, although it doesn't always seem to match the edition I've got. And the author of the thread helpfully points out mistakes and generally unnatural sounding phrases in the Pimsleur script. Edited by jellyfish on 29 January 2012 at 8:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5293 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 39 of 270 30 January 2012 at 6:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Don't worry Cristina. I was bad too :D. I did some Finnish in place of Hebrew these past two weeks.
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5207 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 40 of 270 30 January 2012 at 10:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Is this the new confessional? =)
I have been playing with Catalan. But don't tell anyone. =) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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