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Jellyfish’s TAC ’12 - Teams ɬ and Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4579 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes  Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 1 of 35 19 January 2012 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||
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سلام
привет! Right, my New Year's resolutions for 2012 largely focus on Persian and Russian, and that's what my log shall mainly be about. Apart from those, Japanese also takes up quite a bit of my time (on account of living in Japan and studying at a Japanese university until July), and there exists a certain danger that I'll take up a course in introductory Thai in April, just because it's on offer for the next term, and Thai taught in Japanese sounds like a lot of fun. But for now, Persian and Russian are where it's at for me. Persian currently A1 Fell in love with the language (and the country, and the people, and the culture) in Iran this summer; started teaching myself about a month ago. I'm almost through the Pimsleur course (currently at lesson 26 out of 30), and have done the first 18 lessons on easypersian.com. The script has, surprisingly, not been as much of a challenge as anticipated; I can now easily read and write words I've seen before, and more or less successfully guess the spelling of words I hear spoken. My vocabulary and understanding of grammar are still pretty tiny. I can frequently pick out simple words and phrases when listening to Persian music, and it makes me very happy, hehe. Once I'm through with Pimsleur (which should happen this week or next), I'll continue with the easypersian lessons, and start on either "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" or "Living Language Farsi". Want to start skyping with my Iranian friends in Persian as soon as I've got some more things I can talk about. (Recommendations for further audio courses will be very welcome; there doesn't seem to be much beyond the very basic Pimsleur material...) Goal: As I'm hoping to go to Iran again in August (if politically feasible) and stay for a whole month this time, I want to reach B1 by then! Resources: Pimsleur Persian (30 lessons) ✓ EasyPersian.com 止 (abandoned) Teach Yourself Modern Persian 中 Russian currently A1 Started trying to teach myself last year before travelling to Central Asia, but was too busy with university and Japanese to actually learn much Russian. Felt linguistically handicapped in the 'stans, but my crush on the Russian language grew nevertheless, so now I really want to get it into my head. I've done the first level of Pimsleur's Russian (30 lessons) and think I'll complete the remaining 60 lessons as well, if it doesn't get TOO boring. If it does, I might switch to Michel Thomas instead for the audio aspect of my learning. Additionally I've played around with The New Penguin Russian Course a bit, and generally have more digital resources for all sorts of levels than I will ever be able to eat. So no definite plan, I think I'll see what suits me best. I can write Cyrillic fluently (cursive script and everything) if I know the spelling of what I'm writing, read familiar texts out loud without problems, and unfamiliar ones slowly and with a few mistakes. ;) I've also been taking a Russian conversation class at uni here in Japan, which has been rather inefficient, but fun; might take some other kind of Russian-related class in the next term (if it doesn't involve reading Anna Karenina in Japanese, which it might...) Goal: B1, maybe B2 if I can manage. Resources: One semester of "Russian II" conversation class ✓ Pimsleur Essential Russian one (30 lessons) ✓ Pimsleur Essential Russian two (30 lessons) 中 The new Penguin Russian course 中 (but on hold) Teach Yourself Russian 中 3 more hours of Russian classes per week 中 And the "lesser" one(s)... Japanese currently somewhere between B2 and C1 A bit of a love-hate relationship at the moment. Been studying it full-time for 2 years, can have relatively fluent conversations about topics of intermediate complexity, can understand Japanese university lectures about Mongolian linguistics, can read and write alright, light novels are okay, but newspapers are still largely incomprehensible to me, which is frustrating. I live in Japan now and don't like the place all that much, so I fear I'm falling out of love with the language (due to the insufferably dull language classes I have to endure at university here.) Planning to take more regular lectures for Japanese students in the spring term, rather than Japanese classes for foreigners, which will probably make the language much more enjoyable again. Might start actively studying it again once I don't have to anymore. ;) Goal: Umm... falling in love with it again. Not forgetting all of my kanji. Properly making it to C1 by the end of the year somehow, acquiring more technical vocabulary, and finally being able to read a bloody newspaper without disproportionate dictionary time. ;) Thai (not yet) I kind of fancy it, and have done so for a couple of years. I taught myself the script and tone rules in 2010 before travelling around Thailand, and it'd be easy to recall that. There's a course that I might take for 5 months from April. I hope I won't, but I probably will. Edited by jellyfish on 27 April 2012 at 5:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Isabliss_27 Diglot Groupie Brazil Joined 4539 days ago 68 posts - 74 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Russian, Latin, French | Message 2 of 35 19 January 2012 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Привет, jellyfish, and welcome to the team!
This is an interesting set of languages, I have already flirted with Persian by the time I was reading On Wings of Eagles. Charming language. :) By the way, do try Michel Thomas, I am a big fan of the course. I did not find it boring at all, Pimsleur, on the other hand... Anyway, let us hear what you think. Good luck! ~B 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 35 19 January 2012 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome, jellyfish, happy to have you on board - and I agree with Isabliss: that really is an interesting set of languages.
From your description of your Russian, you sound a lot more advanced than A1. I am sure you will be a great asset to the team. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6414 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 4 of 35 19 January 2012 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow! It sounds like you lead a really exciting life with all that traveling.
I had the same experience with Norwegian that you are having with Japanese. For a while after I moved to Norway, I simply hated it and couldn't make myself study it at all. I think living in a country where you can't quite do all the things you are used to doing because you don't have the necessary language skills can be very frustrating. You should definitely take courses meant for native Japanese students. That's what really brought my Norwegian up fast. From your description of your Japanese, it sounds like you're at a high enough level to manage it, so you should just go for it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6034 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 5 of 35 19 January 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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привет!
I'd love to spend some time with Persian, but I don't dare to until I've advanced some more with Russian. It's great to have a native speaker of German on the team, since many members do a bit of German as a minor language on the side. And living in Japan, you make us even more global, I believe we're now on all continents except Africa and Australia! I guess the Japanese perspective on Russia might differ a bit from the European one ... /aloysius 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4579 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 6 of 35 20 January 2012 at 7:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for all the welcome messages! Brun Ugle, how did you motivate yourself to keep up the Norwegian? Were those native-student lectures enough to bring back your interest in the language (and did you eventually come to enjoy the country itself)? I do hope it'll happen to me when I finally get some interesting lectures; on the other hand I'm slightly worried about my ability to produce an academic paper about, for example, the Soviet Union in Japanese... ah well, nothing like a good challenge, eh? :)
I shall, of course, be more than happy to help out with any German-related questions! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| playadom Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5747 days ago 18 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 35 22 January 2012 at 6:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the team!
I really need to resuscitate my Japanese one of these days. I had studied it for a while years ago (way before I learned how to learn languages properly). I think I managed to get to high B1-ish listening but no speaking skill over two years of extremely haphazard study. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4924 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 8 of 35 22 January 2012 at 6:23am | IP Logged | ||
When I was (briefly) considering studying Persian, I seem to remember there was also a "Colloquial Persian" course that included audio. I have no direct experience with the course, but I remember reading favorable reviews. Oh, and if I haven't said it before welcome to Team ɬ too! R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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