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Tarvos - TAC 2015 Pushkin/Scan

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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Hekje
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4453 days ago

842 posts - 1330 votes 
Speaks: English*, Dutch
Studies: French, Indonesian

 
 Message 921 of 1511
29 October 2013 at 10:18pm | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
I already went to one and played the guitar at it. :) My band threw a party at the
drummer/bassist's house and we did a "midnight set" consisting of one song :)
Oh nice!! I didn't know you
were in a band in addition to your language studies. What instrument do you play?
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4457 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 922 of 1511
29 October 2013 at 10:25pm | IP Logged 
Hekje wrote:
tarvos wrote:
I already went to one and played the guitar at it. :) My
band threw a party at the
drummer/bassist's house and we did a "midnight set" consisting of one song :)

Oh
nice!! I didn't know you
were in a band in addition to your language studies. What instrument do you play?


As it says in the post, the guitar :) I play both acoustic and electric guitar and
sometimes do backing vocals.

Today was all spent on the thesis and teaching, though I now also have happened to find
a new student who wants to learn Dutch but doesn't know anything... so I am teaching
him using French as a base language, of course. (My other student I teach English
through Russian!)

That should count for something on my CV, yes?

Edited by tarvos on 29 October 2013 at 10:28pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Hekje
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4453 days ago

842 posts - 1330 votes 
Speaks: English*, Dutch
Studies: French, Indonesian

 
 Message 923 of 1511
29 October 2013 at 10:45pm | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
As it says in the post, the guitar :) I play both acoustic and electric guitar and
sometimes do backing vocals.

Oy. In my defense, it's been a long workday. Word. Very cool.

Edited by Hekje on 29 October 2013 at 10:46pm

1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4457 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 924 of 1511
30 October 2013 at 1:24pm | IP Logged 
I rather be a singer actually but then you have to have the right voice. And
unfortunately my voice is not Pavarotti or Celine Dion. And being a guitarist is fun
because you can always be the band dictator/asshole. Especially if you play solos.

Edited by tarvos on 30 October 2013 at 1:25pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Hekje
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4453 days ago

842 posts - 1330 votes 
Speaks: English*, Dutch
Studies: French, Indonesian

 
 Message 925 of 1511
30 October 2013 at 3:39pm | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
I rather be a singer actually but then you have to have the right voice.

I guess it depends on what you play. I think most modern bands would sound pretty ridiculous if their singer
sounded like Pavarotti - as divine as his voice is. :-P

Do you guys have any recordings online? Or a website?
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4457 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 926 of 1511
30 October 2013 at 3:49pm | IP Logged 
Nope, but I have some very terrible recordings of things I plucked about with on my
Soundcloud if anyone likes laptop mic recordings. We don't really play live either.
Well, we should. But I think I am the only one who would go and do that, at least right
now. Or maybe the others would. I would like it anyhow. A funny parallel is that I have
the same attitude as a musician as I do to learning languages; "I am not a
perfectionist". I am not trying to play someone else's stuff down to the note, I don't
care. The others want to be a bit more perfectionistic before they think they are
ready, but I would have ignored that. (I also learned to play the guitar and do
recitals as a kid, I don't really have that stage fright. I would probably just jump
around like an idiot.)

I don't know, you could be one of those modern sympho-metal bands with operatically
trained singers. There's room for everything in this life. But I don't have a very good
clear voice or a great range either. The thing is, we also have a singer, and she's
just like ten times better than I am. Better use the stuff you got. Actually if we
wanted to use her voice better we should just play singer-songwriter or jazz (or
Portishead covers I guess). But I would be bored playing Am/F/G over and over again
until infinity.

We play some sort of rock music I guess. We're not too picky but we don't go into
really complex jazz, metal, or weird stuff. The song we performed was "Witchy Woman" by
the Eagles. But we have this whole list of songs we practice. Some are more folksy,
some more indie, some more classic rock, some more punk. Mostly songs people would
recognise.

We are not very good though. I think that is the biggest problem. We're just four high
school dudes plus a girlfriend who make music together. If I wanted to take my
musicianship more seriously I'd have to practice a whole lot more and find a different
band - and also, I'd probably play metal or punk music because that's fun to do on
stage.





Edited by tarvos on 30 October 2013 at 3:56pm

1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4457 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 927 of 1511
31 October 2013 at 1:41pm | IP Logged 
Well, well, well. October has finally come to an end, I have recovered from working on
my thesis, and time will be less of a scarce commodity. So, before we do a yearly
round-up in 2 months, I'd like to give you all an idea of where I stand, what has
improved (and gone down the shitter) and what my plans are for the dying months of
2013, before 2014 presents new challenges, new loves, new hates, and hopefully new
experiences :)

Excluding Dutch and English, which I will always be able to use:

French

I have improved my French a lot over the last year. In particular, I am now working on
developing capabilities to use French for work in a manner similar to English or Dutch.
It's an ongoing, continuous side-project which takes up some time; but not much.
Speaking colloquial French is one thing - speaking beautiful academic French is
another, and much like emk, it is important to me that I obtain a good C1 level for
this reason. My French right now is a strong B2. I still have problems with the
québécois dialect due to exposure if it's too strong. One goal may be to get more
acquainted with that dialect in the future - I understand European varieties just fine.

German

Despite some reading and talking here and there, it's still not a language I care about
or do much with. It's there, I have it, and it's usable. I understand everything that
is written in this language, I'll continue to sound a little bumbling, but it works.

Swedish

Hasn't improved much in terms of reading comprehension but my listening is miles ahead
of where it was. I can speak to anyone in this language as long as they're not speaking
a dialect and that's good enough for me right now. In 2014, I am thinking of taking
Swedex B2 and seeing where this gets me. I also plan to travel and use this language in
practice, but the question is when I have the time to do so.

Russian

This is the language that I have made enormous strides in this year. My Russian is
finally at a level I consider fluent and I have lost the problems with listening
comprehension. I understand Russians very well, I still need to work a bit on literary
vocabulary and reading, but it's not a domain of Russian that causes me a lot of
headaches. My travels in Russia have shown that a good solid preparation works wonders
- and draws admirative stares in the process. (Тhe summit of which was a Novosibirsk
hostel owner with eyes wider than saucepans at my revelation that I spoke Russian...
and double when I spoke Hebrew.

Romanian

Went from "I don't know nuffin' bout nuffin'" to "very usable". Probably somewhere
between B1 and B2. I still have to travel more and work on my listening comprehension
here, but since I've got the background and the ability to read literature I should be
able to get it to a similar level as my Swedish fairly quickly. I plan to keep it there
after that - more than B2 Romanian is overkill unless I somehow get a job in Romania.

Breton

I can write and read a little (okay, quite a bit, but not as much as I would like to)
in Breton, but I can't really speak it very well. One of my plans in 2014 is to do a
week-long summer course or something for Breton just to get speaking.

Hebrew

I sadly neglected this language for too long, but recently I've been getting into it
again - and I still remember more than enough. I am sure I can improve this language
again and speak it fluently in the future because I've got the grammar down fairly well
- I mostly lack shittonnes of useful vocabulary because I really don't read or listen
to enough Hebrew. Exposure is the key here. We'll see how it works out.

Latin

Didn't I tell you this language was dead? It's dead, man.

Icelandic

Had to drop it (I regret that decision but didn't have any choice). I hope that I will
be able to get back to it next year. I really should make this a main project sometime,
but I have languages that deserve that treatment before Icelandic. Hebrew, namely.

Korean
My focus language until the end of 2013. What will happen after that we will see - but
I expect to continue with it in 2014. I quite like it so far and I'm working on getting
to speak Korean as well.

Because speech is my favourite!

Overall level estimations

Dutch: native
English: native/C2
French: B2-C1
German: B2
Swedish: B2
Russian: B2 (low)
Romanian: B1-B2
Hebrew: A2-B1
Breton: B1 written, A1 oral
Latin: is dead
Icelandic: A1
Korean: A1

Current targets for foreseeable future:

French: C1 (C2 eventually)
German: B2
Swedish: B2+
Russian: C1
Romanian: B2
Hebrew: B2+
Breton: B1
Icelandic: maintain A1 for now
Korean: B1 (for now)

Latin: stay dead

And I'm considering dabbling in some other languages until the end of the year,
probably Portuguese and Spanish somewhat. Not that I will speak them a lot but I can
and they're easy enough to learn.

Edited by tarvos on 31 October 2013 at 1:45pm

4 persons have voted this message useful



liammcg
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 4354 days ago

269 posts - 397 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 928 of 1511
01 November 2013 at 2:53am | IP Logged 
Just found this site and
thought you might be interested, an archive of native Breton speakers. it's still in its
early days but looks very promising!


3 persons have voted this message useful



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