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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6049 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 57 of 270 07 February 2012 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know if you're familiar with the Swedish author Claes Hylinger (a favourite of
mine) but now I remember that he translated the Nasruddin stories a few years ago. I haven't read them, but I read about them and I would really love to. About Nasruddin (in Swedish) //aloysius 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5143 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 58 of 270 09 February 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
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@aloysius: No I am unfamiliar with him, but thank you for the link!
GERMAN Remember the discussions we have had about natives telling you that you are fluent when you are not? Well I had one of those on Tuesday – from my German teacher no less. I asked him whether he was familiar with the CEFR system, and whether he could confirm that I could claim basic fluency – B1, and he goes: “No, no, you are far more advanced, you are fluent”. Of course if we are talking quantity, he might have a point, if we in any way give any weight to quality, I am way out of my league. So from my point of view, we are in his case either talking drunkenness, insanity or a case of really, really bad conscience. I suspect the last. My colleague was sick, so the moment I entered the room, he had literally thrown the book at me. The grammar book. Before I had the chance to do what I am really good at, namely to talk so much that he doesn’t get the chance to start on the grammar exercises, I was all alone with a determined German teacher and his grammar book. Talk about being ambushed! The first exercise was about the past tense of verbs, and of course that was a piece of cake, because then I could just play it by ear. But then the mischievous devil continued with cases of nouns and adjectives, and that was when he probably detected that I felt I was being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and decided he needed to be a little nicer to me. After that I got him involved in a discussion about language teaching for children of foreign parents and use of head scarves in the police, and after that he just gave up, and we talked for the rest of the class. It is incredible what just a little practice will do for your talking abilities though. A month ago I felt super rusty, since I had hardly spoken German since my last class 18 months ago. And now after having gone to the school 3 times, although I am still searching for words, I notice that I have lost a bit of the terror I had of speaking German. RUSSIAN Have I ever mentioned that in my home any plan can always be changed at a moment’s notice, something which brings my American friend who visits us every summer to the brink of a nervous breakdown? We had decided to go to Tunis for the Easter vacation. I had made reservations, paid for the trip, bought an Arabic course and informed the girls that they needed to learn 100 words of Arabic before we left for Tunis. And then we got a letter from our Ukrainian friends, inviting us to stay with them for Easter, so today I cancelled the trip to Tunis, bought tickets to Kiev, and informed my daughters that the new regime was 100 words of Russian, “No problem” smiles the oldest one, “I am half way there already”. The smallest one had her first chatting session in Spanish today. Not that she actually speaks any Spanish, but between me, Google translate and her total lack of inhibitions in trying to write in it, she managed to have quite a nice written exchange with a Spanish girl. Now why can’t I do that in Russian? I am really excited about going to Ukraine again, by the way. My company has to save money this year, so there was no chance of any language course for me in any Russian speaking country in 2012. I thought my only chance was going to be the one day in St. Petersburg which is foreseen in August, but now I have 8 full glorious days in Ukraine to look forward to! Extra motivation for the 6WC and the TAC! I feel I have been doing really well with my Russian so far in the 6WC, but today most of my plans failed me. I got to do my earworms this morning, but my husband walking with me to work came between me and my quality time with Assimil on the iPod, then the three Russian classes I was supposed to have were cancelled since my teacher got sick. I went back to work hoping that I might get to do a little Russian there, but then of course things just exploded on the international railway scene, so I spent the rest of the day in meetings, going through documents, speaking on the phone with colleagues from all over Europe, and came home late, so exhausted that Russian studies were out of the question. This was also a tough week, because I had to take one of the two males in the house to be sedated, shaved, and castrated and tattooed. I brought my daughter to comfort him, and she ended up comforting me instead. But to quote Scarlett O’Hara: “Tomorrow is another day”, or to again quote the Norwegian song: “You will get a day tomorrow, which is clean and unused, and with fresh papers and new color crayons”. And I have the day off tomorrow, so I have every hope of getting done masses of Russian! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| drsarvo Diglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4521 days ago 143 posts - 149 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Russian | Message 59 of 270 10 February 2012 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that to avoid inhibition is the key in language learning. After all, it should be fun, shouldn't it? Cristin, as for the two males that were castrated, would you care to clarify which species they belong to? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5143 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 60 of 270 10 February 2012 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have two males in the house. My husband Kjartan and my cat, Angel. Only one of them went through the procedure. I'll let you guess which one:-)
Oh - and I sent my first SMS in Russian today!!! I also changed my settings on Facebook to Russian today. My daughter has sworn to help me get back into English if I get stuck. They just changed their settings in Facebook to Spanish, and I could not be less brave than them. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 10 February 2012 at 8:52pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5143 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 61 of 270 12 February 2012 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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SECOND WEEK OF FEBRUARY, AND SECOND WEEK OF THE 6 WEEKS CHALLENGE
RUSSIAN I am – about to overdose on Russian grammar. I am working with a number of different grammars in different languages, but “TY Russian grammar” is my main focus. I like the way they have 2 pages for each theme, one with the rules, one with the exercises. I write the answers in a separate note book, in order not to clutter up the grammar book, but I write the date of when I went through the chapter on the top of the page. I note with sadness that some of these chapters I went through in 2010, 2011 and now for the third time in 2012. One of my goals for this year is to finish the whole book, with all the chapters, and I have made a big leap towards my goal right now this weekend. I have cancelled two parties this weekend, because I wanted to stay home and do my grammar. I am going to turn into a recluse by the end of this 6WC! It does feel really good to actually get somewhere though. My main problem with Russian has been that I never seemed to find the time to study enough, and now that I am really giving it all I’ve got, it is amazing how much more I understand. On Thursday particularly I really did everything I could to cram in as much as possible. I started with an hour grammar at 7 in the morning, continued listening to Pimsleur and Michel Thomas during the day, did more grammar in the early afternoon, and when I went to the gym in the afternoon I listened to Michel Thomas in the car and Sosiedi ( a Norwegian Russian book) while I was working out. I read somewhere that if you do something physical while you are learning, you learn faster, and I actually felt like I was focusing better while working out. I felt such a surge of energy that I decided to do a zumba class right after my 90 minute workout, but at that point I had to stop my iPod. During work out everyone had iPods on so it was possible to focus. During the zumba class, the music was at disco force, so it was not humanly possible to listen to Russian in any meaningful way. Besides I had listened to so much Russian that day already, that it felt like my head was about to explode. I love zumba by the way. As long as I do not see any mirrors, I can feel like Jennifer Lopez, but of course the moment my eyes catch the mirror, the illusion is shattered. ENGLISH We are absolutely addicted to the series “Bones”, and are watching masses of it at the moment. We always use English subtitles, but yesterday I asked my oldest daughter to put the Norwegian ones on, to see if I could catch some of the medical terminology which escapes me, but my 12-year old protested vehemently. She is so used to English subtitles now that she thought it felt weird with the Norwegian one. I felt like lifting her up and twirl her around, but given that she is taller than I am, I figured it probably would be a bad idea. And again, the difference in English Twitter time and English time on my log, is that I only count half the time for films on Twitter. Any other discrepancies are due to my really, really bad math. Also I notice that English is not something I actually plan for or set out to do. It just happens naturally. I wish I could make Russian a natural part of my life too. I am thinking a tall, dark, sexy Russian with a university education and a lovely datcha on the Black Sea... What? A girl can dream, right? And it would of course only be to improve my Russian :-) Studies this week: Russian: 27.40 German: 3 hours 05 minutes English : 18.10 Total this year: Russian: 73 h 25 min German: 13 h 35 minutes Greek: 2h 10 min Spanish: 8 h 55 English: 31 h 50 minutes French: 40 minutes Italian: 3h 30 minutes Icelandic:20 minutes Mandarin: 45 minutes Ukrainian: 30 minutes Arabic: 1 hour and 5 minutes Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 12 February 2012 at 9:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5365 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 62 of 270 12 February 2012 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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A great week of language learning there, Cristina - how on earth do you ever manage to juggle everything? Incidentally, my better half is also crazy about zumba at the moment and is even considering becoming an instructor. She's already hinted at me joining in several times, but as the only bloke there I'd probably end up feeling like General Custer (if I could indeed stand at all by the end of a lively session) and just don't think my hips could take the strain (lol).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5143 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 63 of 270 12 February 2012 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
Whatever makes you think I manage to juggel everything? I am supposed to work out 3 times a week, because of my back, but so much has come up since Christmas, that I think I have been there 4 times all together. Lots of really bad conscience right there. I would go for the zumba if I were you, it is great! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4606 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 64 of 270 13 February 2012 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||
I was rather shocked when I read about a male being sedated, shaved, castrated, and tattooed until around halfway through the sentence, when I realized, it couldn't POSSIBLY be human :D Your comments certainly make my day :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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