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Luso’s Silk Thread - Yürükler, TAC Rare | ||
Tags: Arabic (classical) | Sanskrit | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Penelope Diglot Senior Member Greece Joined 3655 days ago 110 posts - 155 votes  Speaks: English, French Studies: Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 113 of 162 03 May 2014 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck with your super challenge Luso!
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| Penelope Diglot Senior Member Greece Joined 3655 days ago 110 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English, French Studies: Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 114 of 162 03 May 2014 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
I know exactly what you mean. My biggest help in that change of mentality has been Michel Thomas. I understood just how important it is to use the knowledge of each language separately and creatively, and not try to be as elaborate as I can be in my native tongue. So, by the time I reach a very good lever I am already accustomed to thinking in my TL. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5847 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 115 of 162 03 May 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks. To be honest, I'm using it more to keep track of what I read, watch and listen to. Another plus is twitter practice. I'm still not very proficient at navigating some of these widespread new concepts, such as hashtags. As with everything in technology, some of these concepts will suffer from sudden death (you will be treated as a leper for mentioning them) and others will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones (you will be treated as illiterate for not knowing how to work with them). To be on the safe side, I'll keep an eye on those things, while living in the non-virtual world. Not that many people dwell out here anymore, though. :P Edited by Luso on 04 May 2014 at 4:52am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5847 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 116 of 162 04 May 2014 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Arabic
Having visited another person's thread, I was asked to give some advice regarding learning Arabic. Having learned the language for ten semesters with a teacher who's finishing a PhD in compared literature (and who remains a friend), I guess I can offer my personal view. So nancydowns, here are the (few) pieces of advice I can give, based on my experience: Advice #1: Work with the diacritics for as long as you can. I don't know how some people learn the language without them. Do they guess the vowels all the time? It's quite puzzling. Advice #2: Stick with MSA as long as you can. I know there's people with specific needs, like family from Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, or what-have-you. But you'll be narrowing the scope ahead of time. Advice #3: If possible, try to find someone native and educated to talk to. By educated, I mean someone able to separate his / her dialect from proper Arabic. Don't worry, this means someone with high school graduation (or less) in an Arabic-speaking country. You don't need Naguib Mahfouz for that. Advice #4: If you don't practice, you'll forget a lot. If you practice a little, you'll still forget a lot, but less. Try to practice. Advice #5: Arabic-speaking people are among the nicest one in the world. If you are talking to one, try switching to Arabic. I don't say engage in conversation, I just say switch. I actually go and talk to them, but I'm quite shameless when it comes to languages. Even if you have to switch back to English after a couple of sentences, you'll be perceived as someone interested in their culture. Nothing wrong about that. Caveat #1: This is just my personal experience. You may find someone who'll tell you that Egyptian is the way to go, because of cinema and stuff. Maybe they're right. Or maybe they've given up after three months. My experience is based on five years of learning. Experience #1: Last week, I overheard a group of guys speaking some sort of Arabic on the subway, late in the evening. All but one (the eldest) were dressed in Western clothes. I took a shot and asked one of them in Arabic where they were from (I'm a guy, I can get away with that). The guy was surprised and told me they were from Libya. I had to switch trains, and so did they. I tried to re-engage and heard the guy telling the others "speaks Arabic... fusHa". This was a sign for them to address me in "proper" Arabic, instead of dialect. By the way, Libyan dialect is one of the simplest there is to understand, but we continued in MSA. We ended up talking for the rest of the trip. They were doctors from a hospital in a town in the middle of the Sahara and were here on vacation. We never had to switch to either English or French, although I noticed they were being really understanding of my shortcomings. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3708 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 117 of 162 04 May 2014 at 4:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you, Luso, for taking the time to write all of this! I guess I am on the right track for some of what you said because I, too, feel
that MSA is the only way to go to begin with. Everyone wants you to take shortcuts with Arabic, but I want to learn MSA first so I know what is right, and then, like you say, you can figure out a dialect later. I do not have a need for a specific dialect, as learning Arabic, for me at the present moment is purely an academic endeavor. I am interested in the language and want to learn it, I have no need to learn it for a specific purpose. I have to admit that Palestinian would be the dialect I would lean towards right now, but I guess when that time comes, I'll see what I think. I have no one to talk to, no one at all, so all of my work is with my book, and I listen to the recordings that come with it. My practice consists of writing sentences, no speaking at all. I guess I should at least try to read out loud the sentences I write. I agree about the diacritics. I am mad that my book doesn't use them consistently. It only uses the full vocalization for the vocab at the end of the chapter, so I learn those first, then it's a bit easier to read the chapter. I found a dictionary online that uses full vocalization, most don't. So I guess the important part isn't necessarily how you learn, just to keep at it. I know Arabic is like an ultra marathon! I am so impressed that you were able to have such a long conversation! At this point in my studies, that seems impossible! But I definitely know more now than I did in January when I started, so I'll just keep working at it. Thanks so much for your help! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4437 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 118 of 162 04 May 2014 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Can you give a link to the dictionary, nancydowns? All the dictionaries I found don't do vowel signs...
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| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3708 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 119 of 162 05 May 2014 at 3:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Here's the link to that Arabic dictionary. Here
I haven't actually tried downloading it, so I have no idea how that works. Hope this is a help! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5847 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 120 of 162 15 May 2014 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||
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German, Italian, Arabic and Sanskrit
Yesterday evening I made a long post about the Arabic language. I was inspired by a hour-long documentary in Al-Jazeera about the pre-1948 Palestinian urban cultural scene. It was in Arabic with English subtitles, and I managed to pick up pieces of what was said. Today, after Italian class, I went to pick up my Sanskrit book. It is all I expected: in the end it has extensive passages from major works (the Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishads, Yoga-Sutras,...) with transliteration and traduction. As today we had our first day above 30ºC (already!) I went to the Goethe-Garten (the garden behind the local Goethe-Institut) to catch up on my Italian. As always, I talked to a few former teachers about my Sanskrit endeavours. I made the same mistake I always do, saying my teacher is "Indianer", when I should have said "Inder". I answered the usual questions ("rechts nach links oder links nach rechts?") and sat under a tree reading my Italian textbook. By mid-afternoon I was so confused I decided to come home. :P 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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