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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 121 of 646 04 July 2012 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
That actually explains a lot! I have already been wondering why infinitives and present tense forms differ so much. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that my textbook introduces so many irregular perfective verbs, while there seem to be more regular imperfective verbs. However, Russian verbs are really my nightmare. I'm glad I don't have to use them actively at the moment, because I would certainly butcher them... On the other hand, I have only been studying for two months now, so what should I realistically expect? I guess half a year from now, everything will look much clearer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 122 of 646 07 July 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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SATURDAY, 07 JULY 2012
Today, I managed to do a good deal of Russian. I did all the exercises of unit 13. They went quite well, but as I had already feared I butchered the verbs regularly. To my justification: I had to use some verbs whose conjugation I didn't know. The author of my language course simply assumes that you can use the perfective form of a verb although you have only used the imperfective form by now. So, I didn't know that the present tense stem of показать was покаж- (although I could have known it, if I knew the rules for consonant shifts by heart), which made me use a wrong imperative form. But as we say in Germany: "Durch Fehler wird man klug" (You can only get wise by making mistakes). I also repeated the vocabulary of units 12 and 13 and listened to the recordings. Russian verbs are really giving me a hard time. Apart from not being able to conjugate them correctly, I just can't memorize them. I know most of them when I see them, but I can't remember them actively. Most of them are like "prefix + one or two syllables + infinitive ending", so I tend to confuse them when I manage to remember them at all. I don't know if it's my fault or if other learners are having this problem, too. Nevertheless, I ventured to take a look at unit 14, but I only read the dialogue and the reading section and listened to the recording. I didn't understand everything, but I wasn't in the mood for looking up all the vocabulary and learning the grammar. The perfective future tense is not too hard, as it is exactly formed like the imperfective present tense. The real problem is to know if a verb is perfective or imperfective in an unknown text. But I'll leave this problem for future me. I have also been doing some Faroese during the last few days, so my former fling has been reactivated. I simply love this language: It looks and sounds so cool. I have been skimming through W. B. Lockwood's Introduction to Modern Faroese again and enjoying it enormously. Additionally, I have read the first few chapters of Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, which is one of the most famous Icelandic sagas. Prof. Arguelles has used it for his introductory video of Old Norse. I must admit though that I have read it only in German, but I might want to read it in the original one day. Edited by Josquin on 08 July 2012 at 5:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4653 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 123 of 646 08 July 2012 at 1:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, heute komme ich zu Russisch zuruck (und nicht nur ein bisschen von «Одино́чество в Сети́» lesen und Filme fernsehen) , also... Die Konkurrenz kommt :D
(Weil jede Motivation ist gut!) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 124 of 646 08 July 2012 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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SUNDAY, 08 JULY 2012
Okay, today a very short update, because I have spent already too much time on this addicting forum... ;) I have started with lesson 14 in my textbook and learnt the rules for the future tense of the perfective verbs. Moreover, I reread the dialogue and the reading section and listened to the recordings. This time, I understood everything with the help of the vocabulary. Other topics of the lesson are numbers bigger than 40 and the use of нужен -- both not necessarily difficult, but I find numbers hard in every language. It's just so boring to memorize them. Moreover, Russian numbers are a bit irregular compared to most other languages I know. So, the word for 40 is сорок, which has nothing to do with all the other numbers, and the word for hundred changes like it's declined: 100 - сто, 200 - двести, 300 - триста, 500 - пятьсот... So, no Faroese today, but another bit of Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar and I returned to my long-term novel Demons (Бесы) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I am reading it in German, but I already started in December last year and have been reading it on and off ever since. I am nearly on page 500, but in a Dostoyevsky novel, this means there are 300 pages more to come. Well, I'm not going to surrender before it is done! @ prz_: In Deutschland gibt es ein Sprichwort: "Die Konkurrenz schläft nicht." Ich bin also gewarnt! :) Edited by Josquin on 08 July 2012 at 9:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 125 of 646 08 July 2012 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh my God, I have just realized I will have to learn some Danish, because I'll spend New Year's Eve in Southern Denmark... How do I fit that into my learning routine? I think I will just learn some essentials, but I absolutely can't go to Denmark without speaking any of the language, that's for sure! Okay, I think it will be enough when I start learning in September or Ocotber. That gives me enough time for my other languages... Until then, I'll just practise to say "rødgrød med fløde" and read some Kierkegaard! :) Farvel.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 126 of 646 13 July 2012 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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FRIDAY, 13 JULY 2012
Oh no, it's Friday 13th! Until now, nothing terrible has happened, but who knows what's still to come?! Anyway, I officially started writing the first chapter of my dissertation a few days ago -- after three months of literature research and one month of writing applications. So, I will have to divide my time between writing and learning Russian, but I hope everything will work out fine. Today, I reread the dialogue and the reading section of lesson 14 and listened to the recordings. Then, I did some pronunciation exercises and finally the grammar exercises and a translation exercise. They all went quite well, but I'm not satisfied with my ability to produce sentences. I know Russian word order is relatively free, but my aim is to use the most natural way of saying things. So, I'm a bit disappointed that I always put adverbs and personal pronouns in a different spot than my textbook. Most of the mistakes I made in the translation exercise were mistakes in word order. Of course, I also used the aspects incorrectly two times. It's harder for me to use the aspects correctly in the future tense than in the past tense -- I don't know why. Perhaps, it's just a matter of getting used to it. Idiomatic expressions are another topic. As there is only one text and one dialogue per unit, I am not exposed to enough of the language to absorb words and expressions naturally, and I don't want to read the same text over and over again. Maybe, the Assimil approach would be better in this aspect? Well, after finishing the Langenscheidt course, I am going to buy the second volume of Colloquial Russian, which is aimed towards advanced students of Russian. I hope I can deepen my knowledge there. Additionally, I will buy Kirschbaum's Grammatik der russischen Sprache. It's said to be the best German grammar of Russian, so I hope it will be useful to me. Here is, as usual, the corrected version of my translation exercise: Привет Настя, извини, пожалуйста, что я не сразу ответила на твоё последнее письмо. Завтра у меня последний экзамен, а в субботу мы поедем к бабушке на дачу. Я очень рада, что увижу бабушку. Мы будем у неё жить всю неделю. Я буду каждый день кататься на велосипеде, купаться в озере, загорать и много читать. Я думаю, такой отпуск мне очень понравится. Я возьму с собой только один рюкзак. Бабушка мне, конечно, покажет, что нового они там опять построили. На даче я буду каждый день вставать рано: я там буду, конечно, не только отдыхать, но и помогать бабушке. На сегодня всё. Я напишу тебе ещё на следующей неделе. Пока, Лена 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 127 of 646 18 July 2012 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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WEDNESDAY, 18 JULY 2012
Hello all! I haven't had any time for studying Russian during the last few days, because I've had a few appointments and not all of them were pleasant. So, I had to cope with some stuff. Moreover, I had to concentrate on my dissertation and there wasn't much time and energy left for doing foreign languages. I hope I can get some work done during the next days. I'll let you know. I'm noticing that the intervals between my log entries are getting bigger and bigger. Sorry for that, but I'm just really taken up by other things than language learning at the moment. One might say life has caught up with me, so I just need some time to deal with everything. Nevertheless, working on my dissertation could be counted as language learning, too, as I have to deal with the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew text of the biblical book of the Song of Songs. I will go on examining musical settings of this text later, but I have to do some text criticism first. So, I'm not totally out of the game! :) It's really a fascinating and very poetic text. I'll show you the beginning in Latin here, as I will concentrate on musical settings in Latin (and very few in German), so-called 'motets': Osculetur me osculo oris sui, quia meliora sunt ubera tua vino, fraglantia unguentis optimis. Oleum effusum nomen tuum; ideo adulescentulae dilexerunt te. Trahe me post te, curremus! And so on, and so forth. If you wish a translation, please consult the Bible in your native tongue! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4653 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 128 of 646 18 July 2012 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Haha, welcome to the club. Because of my work and being extremely tired I have not much time and will to do anything constructive.
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