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TAC 2013 MIR Russian TEAM THREAD | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 89 of 586 10 December 2012 at 6:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Before I start up my own log, I'd like to say I'm really glad to join this team!
This is not my first attempt to learn Russian, and I've (re)started with the Assimil challenge, which has been working just fine. I'm likely to use different sources next year, for example the good Living Language Beginner's and Intermediate/Advanced. Russian is a language for which there are plenty of resources. I'd be glad to join Skype sessions as well. I don't aim much at conversational Russian, as it's not a country I plan to visit soon; I'd rather learn to read in other to read literature as well as to have access to resource on the languages of the Caucasus and some other Finno-Ugric ones written in Russian. It will also be my first consistent step into Slavic languages, after which others will follow, probably BSCM then Czech (now I'm supposed to copy this and paste it at my own log :-D). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 90 of 586 10 December 2012 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do I sense this right or are we slowly inclining towards Team Mir?
I think this would be a cool name, as мир not only means 'peace', but also 'world' and 'universe'. "We are the world..." ;) And last but not least, there's of course Война и мир by Lev Tolstoy, the mother of all Russian novels. And everybody knows this word because of the space station. What else could you ask for? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 91 of 586 10 December 2012 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks (if a little late) to Teango and Woodsei for the welcome! And Привет to all the members old and new of team Russian!
I totally agree, too! And as it means both world and peace, as I’ve just found out (thanks to Cristina, for being the first to point that out for all of us who still know too little Russian to know the meaning of Mir), it also has a very nice connotation. Plus it’s short! Among the names suggested so far, Mir is the one I prefer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 92 of 586 10 December 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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We seem to have reached a consensus for the name Team Mir here. We can let it float for a few hours, but if
no one has any serious problems with that name, I suggest that Tarvos, who suggested the name, tomorrow officially presents our new team name in the TAC signing up thread, with a little explanation as to the word's various meanings and connotations, so that all the other teams know what is behind it. I suggest that we let the official spelling be in Latin, for reasons I have explained, but I would not be surprised if some of us would prefer to write it in Russian letters in their log name. I suggest to let everyone have the freedom to chose there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 93 of 586 10 December 2012 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Oops, I completely overlooked that Cristina had already pointed this out. How embarrassing! Never mind, twice is always better ("doppelt hält besser" for those who understand German)... EDIT: Yeah, go Team Mir! :) Edited by Josquin on 10 December 2012 at 9:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 94 of 586 10 December 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Josquin
Well, you also added the meaning “universe”, so “mir” gets an even bigger scope. Any information that helps to get a better feeling for the meaning of a word is welcome. I mentioned Cristina only because I had already written my reply before turning the page and reaching your comment. Sorry I was lazy in not adding your name to the people to thank. I thank you now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 95 of 586 11 December 2012 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Now that it looks like we have agreed on a name, we should perhaps make a round of presentations? Some
of us know each other a bit or even quite well, but some of us are new, so we should have a go. And obviously nobody needs to share more information than they are comfortable with. Now we may get some late additions if less than 5 more people want to study Russian, but I suggest that they just present themselves when the time comes if that is the way it turns out. So. My name is Cristina, I am 50 years old and work for the railway infrastructure company in Norway as Head of International affairs, so I get to travel quite a lot (sitting 100 meters from the Eiffel Tower right now). I am married and have two wonderful daughters aged 13 and 16 who share my passion for languages, and I have two cats, one of which, Angel, adores Russian. I live right outside Oslo and my main hobby beside languages and traveling is gardening. This is my third TAC. I have started out on the Russian team all three years, but in 2011 my team desintegrated (we were only four from the start). I merged with some other single souls, and it ended as quite a good TAC, even though we were just two left standing in the end. Armed with the statistics that 75% quit, I supported larger teams for 2012, and also a higher level of activity. The Russian team was super popular last year so we actually had to turn people down when we reached 20 members. And I must say that this year has been amazing. The Skype sessions have helped us get to know each other, so even if we have not done all that much Russian, we have been there for each other and when motivation has been low, we have tried to pull each other up. I think that is the main reason why so many of us have chosen to continue on the same team. I am however really happy to have also quite a number of new members, and I really look forward to 2913, which I think will be a year to break all records. Russian remains my main focus language, and I hope this will be the year when I reach the illusive B1. I will give detailed goals once I have created a new log (sometime next week) but I passionately want to get to a position where I can say that I speak Russian - even at a very basic level. My second priority is Greek. I adore Greek I am at A0- level, but I will do my best to get to an A1, possibly a low A2 during the year. My third priority is German. I speak German, and am probably at a B1, but I would like to reach a solid B2. My fourth priority is Italian, where I would like to get back to the B2 I once had. It is getting so rusty that it hardly moves these days, and I need to do something about that. Through the Advanced Super Challenge I will also keep up with my French, which orally is somewhere in the C1-C2 range, and through my daily activities I expect to keep up my English and Spanish which are both at C2. And then I get to the fun part, which are the dabbling languages. They tend to be heavily influenced by my traveling plans. I have firm plans to go to Egypt in January, so Arabic is on the horizon, and I have half baked plans of going to Greece and/or Turkey, so they are definite possibilities. And although I have no plans whatsoever of going to China I would love to do a little Mandarin plus some of my umpteen other language courses. I would like to go to the polyglot conference in Hungary in May, but I do not think I have enough guts to do any Hungarian. There is a limit even for me. So how about the rest of you? What do you do, where are you from and what are your linguistic plans for the year? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 13 December 2012 at 1:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5767 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 96 of 586 11 December 2012 at 3:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Go Team Mir! I really like this name as it has so many different connotations - world,
peace, the Universe and the Russian space station launched into orbit in 1986. Also, although it has nothing to do with Space, there were also two Russian submersibles called MIR which were used in the 1990s and 2000s to explore the wreckage of the Titanic and the Bismarck - I think that constitutes another Russian achievement to add to our list of connotations :) My name's Jack, I'm 22, and I mostly grew up in Northwest London. My mum's family are all Welsh and most are Welsh-speaking. My full brother and I both grew up with Welsh and English, but both of us no longer use Welsh. My father's family is Italian. I have a half-brother who is seven years old and who can speak English, Italian and German, Italian thanks to our dad and German from me. This is my third TAC as well. My first two TACs officially concentrated on French and German, but I ended up wandering on to Modern Greek, Latin, Dutch for a very short time and messing around with Russian, which I had already been studying as part of my degree. I would love to do something with Modern Greek again as the only reason I haven't been is time. I may do that this year sometime. I have a very strong affinity for anything to do with the Greek language (Ancient dialects or Modern) and I love the country. I recently posted a thread about my passion for German, but I do feel like if I had encountered Greek before German, it would be Greek I'd be reasonably fluent in now, and not German. The next language on my list after Mandarin is unquestionably going to be Modern Greek. Both of my first TACs were marred by illness due to a long- standing medical condition. I hope the worrying trend ends this year. My focus languages for this year, in theoretical order of priority, are Mandarin, Russian and German. I've wanted to tackle Mandarin for a few years now, but my Mandarin is basically non- existent - I can actually read and write better than I can speak. Speaking, I can fumble through asking where stuff is at the supermarket and give some very basic personal details but that is my lot in Mandarin for now. My main goal is simply "to become functional" - but I will detail more on how I plan to do that in the coming weeks. My story with Russian is a little long. I started Russian on Christmas Day of 2006, when my uncle bought me a book of Russian short stories and my parents bought me a copy of the New Penguin Russian Course. I also did Russian at uni, which means I have, or had, a reasonable command of Russian by the end, but I had to be assessed under special circumstances due to being hospitalised for a month during the Final Exam period. In broad terms, my goal with Russian is to become comfortable using it as I never was. I also need to work on my listening comprehension as it is atrocious (and always has been). Lastly there's German. German speaks for herself. German is my best foreign language by a reasonable margin and it will probably always be that way. I can do anything in German that's asked of me and I surprised myself last year by translating a sizeable chunk (about thirty pages) of an archaeological report on Ancient Egypt for a friend who was studying archaeology at the time. My German is probably at C1 but I don't know for definite. My goal with German is to start using the kinds native materials that I'd not usually bother with in English - like poetry, just for curiosity's sake, and medical journals. If I can get my hands on some I'd also like to read more archaeological reports in German as the one I partially translated for my friend was fascinating. Looking forward to this year's challenge and to reading everyone else's introductions. I apologise for the length of my introduction. I will try to keep my posts shorter but that won't last long :) LanguageSponge EDITs: to try and cut this monster post down Edited by LanguageSponge on 11 December 2012 at 4:48am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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