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Tarvos - TAC 2015 Pushkin/Scan

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4916 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 737 of 1511
19 June 2013 at 3:26pm | IP Logged 
If you want more from Chinese in French, you should try Langues pour tous: Parler le
chinois en 40 leçons (this should have been my first book, before Assimil) and the one I
like the most, Chinois Pratique de Base (formerly known as Méthode 90), with 90 lessons.
There are the ones from Asiathèque but I think they are of less practical use.
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 738 of 1511
20 June 2013 at 10:59am | IP Logged 
Obrigado, Expugnator!

Сегодня утром русский учений взял урок со мной - он захотел, что мы с ним обсуждали
свой перевод статьи о материалиоведении. На последней неделе мы с ученем исправили и
улучшили перевод, и завтра он мне скинет посдленюю версию. Эта статья уже был
опубликованена на русском.

Мы тоже, к концу урока, немножко поболтали на русском языке. Он мне сказал что он
считал, что мой русский потрясающе - нельзя верить!

К тому же, у меня русская подруга мне попросила ((? Марк, можете помочь?) снять видео
для детей в лагере - это игра, где дети потверждают или опровергают факт. Я скажу
распостраненный факт о Голландии (на английском), и дети будет отвечать. Потом,
покажется правилный ответ.

Română

În plus, am studiat Mioriță (o baladă folclorică popular în România), și un text despre
istoria celticilor în România. E foarte clar că învățătoarea mea are foarte mult
încredere la mine... pentru că m-am cerut să scriu o jumătate(!) de A4 despre Mioriță.

Vorbesc deja curent????

Mă gândesc că nu!

Edited by tarvos on 20 June 2013 at 7:58pm

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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 739 of 1511
23 June 2013 at 10:29pm | IP Logged 
I have not done too much with my life this weekend, preferring to spend it in the
company of my girlfriend, but there were some linguistic tidbits to be noticed during
that trip too. For a first, my girlfriend may not be a polyglot but she does master the
school languages that we are taught here, and I just had some fun poking around in
French at the birds in the zoo (well, bird park). To the point where the other visitors
thought we were French tourists...

For a second, at this zoo called Avifauna, there exists a "Filipijnenhal" (hall of the
Philippines), which is dedicated to those birds that are common in that part of the
world (sort of like a tropical aviary). In this part of the zoo, you can find some
signs written in Tagalog. It is a pity that some of the signs intended for children,
which explain the help given to the local environment, describe the language as
Talagog. Tagalog, people.

Aside from this, I studied some Romanian on Saturday morning in class, where we
discussed Romanian cultural traditions related to the summer solstice, and the spirits
of the dead roaming the earth. That went well, and my Romanian is feeling quite good in
my hands as a play-toy.

I had a Hebrew lesson today though and I feel quite incompetent speaking Hebrew. Of
course it is not so bad, as I do get my point across eventually but it feels...
hopelessly slow and unnatural. I somehow wish or think I should have been further than
where I am now, but on the other hand, I do understand quite a few things. I just feel
like I should be better than this, and my improvement in Hebrew has been frustrating
over the past months, whereas that of Romanian has skyrocketed. This annoys me, because
in my heart Hebrew is a much "closer" language.

Edited by tarvos on 23 June 2013 at 10:29pm

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 740 of 1511
25 June 2013 at 11:17pm | IP Logged 
Today I had some time to spend finally on some languages, so I spent it with Icelandic,
where I spent an hour constructing basic sentences in Icelandic and conjugating verbs
in that language (with pronunciation leaving much to be desired, not so much in the
actual phonemes as where to put them, and sentence stress, which I tend to put further
back in the word; it's Germanic, so it makes no sense to do that!). However, I do
remember all that I learned quite well and learned some new expressions in Icelandic
today. I don't know when my next Icelandic class will be but it will not be super-soon.

Furthermore I have gone through three Assimil lessons for Romanian today (both active
and passive), and I have passed lesson 87 now. Maybe I can get to lesson 91 (it's a
review) tomorrow? And then I'll soon be done with the passive wave.

I still have to write the letter for class, but I'll do that tomorrow I think.

Finally I watched an episode of Svetofor for Russian class. It was quite funny, but the
characters are starting to annoy me a little; I positively hate Tamara, ugh... (and I
think Pasha is a bit of a liar and Seva is just a coward... I only like Edik, but
he's... just... you know. He's also kind of an ass, but he's honest about it).

Olesya is okay though. And Dasha is funny.
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 741 of 1511
26 June 2013 at 4:27pm | IP Logged 
Half a year passed, how are the goals coming dear Tarvos?

Good, you say?

Let's get to it then.

Icelandic

It's bad, but it could be worse. I think. A1 maybe? A1 sounds good. A1 sounds very
generous, but I can combine enough in the language that A1 is sensible. I really need
practice, but actually less practice than I need time for this language - which is why
it is the butt-monkey of my languages. I didn't plan to start it this year but then I
did and it was good.

Romanian

I improved my Romanian by leaps and bounds. I can write texts and speak and chat. I'm
probably a B1 in this language. A low B1, but a B1 nonetheless. Not so bad, huh! And
all in less than 6 month's work :)

Hebrew

It's not bad for half a year. But it could be better. It should be better. A2, maybe.

Breton

I have no idea to judge my Breton. Except that I can more or less read it if I know the
source text in another language. It's not so bad in writing and reading, but anything
involving spoken Breton sounds like it is nightmarish. And it won't be dealt with any
time soon.

Russian
I've improved my Russian very much in the past six months. Quite happy with my progress
here.

Swedish/French/German

Can speak it.



My goals for the next half year will be to find out what the hell I am going to do
after my thesis. It is drawing its close. I have some more small chapters to write and
to tie up the loose ends, but we're getting there finally. However, my goals are:

to improve Russian and Romanian to the level where I can use them freely (they are
close to that level but not entirely there yet)

to improve my level of Hebrew such that I am conversational and overcome the A2 plateau

to improve my level of Icelandic so that I can read texts in it (much like Breton I
guess). Actually it would be nice to speak icelandic fluently and unlike Breton here I
have speaking opportunities; but it's a minor language that is nice to have in my
arsenal for now.

The fluent languages will need maintenance, in particular Swedish.


Particular projects for the second half of the year (given time);
-complete Hebrew textbooks and move on to native materials
-complete Icelandic textbook and move on to native materials

-acquire the basics of at least two new languages. There may be more here if time
allows, or if the learning curve is fast. I've been looking at several languages
already and gathering materials and there's a long list of languages to get to that I
might consider here. Some I've been flirting with for ages (Portuguese), some are
curiosities (Malagasy), and some belong to the arsenal of any good polyglot (Mandarin).
And some are none of these or all of these.

Since I hope to take part in the 2014 Polyglot Conference in Berlin, Esperanto seems to
be a language that I will need to learn before that time. So in the coming year I guess
Esperanto will show up somewhere.

Furthermore, Serbian, Swahili, Persian, Tagalog... the list goes on forever. I don't
know which I'll pick and let life take me.

The only experiment I will do though is that if I pick Mandarin, all other new
languages are off. Juggling Esperanto and Serbian with related languages is one thing,
taking on Mandarin while doing Swahili and Turkish is another.

1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4916 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 742 of 1511
26 June 2013 at 5:11pm | IP Logged 
tarvos, you're becoming a legend! And that comes with the bonus of no fancy words, no
self-promotion and no vanishing promises. I'm still impressed at how quickly you managed
to learn both Russian and Romanian. I'm sure you'd pick any other language from the
Romance-Germanic-Slavic combo really quick. You just seem to go from one language into
another and it works!

I've been working on Norwegian for 10 months now and I'm far from being fluent, maybe a
low B1.

I wonder how things will come along with Chinese for you, maybe you'll find a way to
speed up things.
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 743 of 1511
26 June 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged 
Ah. Well. Russian took me 1,5 years to get to a level where daily conversation was not
problematic. I still miss out on a lot of slang, sometimes words... for example the
level 3 GLOSS units I find hard with audio (texts are better). Since that was a) my
first of a new family and b) well, it's Russian, that one has taken a while.

Swedish was fast, yes, but I had the benefit of having three Germanic languages already
plus having dabbled in that area a bit made it easy.

Romanian also came from having a background in French and Latin and knowing Russian
helps with some of the Slavic words.

As you can tell, my speed isn't nearly as high in Russian and it's also not nearly as
high in Hebrew or Breton. (Though it's respectable).
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4916 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 744 of 1511
26 June 2013 at 9:05pm | IP Logged 
Well, I can only speak for myself. I've spent 1,5 year on Georgian and 2 years on Chinese
and I'm only at a very low B1 =D So, still impressive to my standards. I'm really
interested in seeing your plans for languages outside of the IE range thus.


1 person has voted this message useful



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