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LanguageSponge’s TAC 2013 Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5560 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 9 of 92 26 December 2012 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Марк,
Having a degree in Russian means that I studied Russian at uni (among other things), and the Gulag was the Soviet government agency, established under the Cheka, which administered the forced labour camps during the Stalinist era from the 1930s to the 1950s. Jack 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 10 of 92 27 December 2012 at 12:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Congratulations on the Greek book and the mini iPad. Christmas does have it's advantages, doesn't it :-) I
love that you do your log this in the languages you study. I must admit that it s a lot easier to follow you in German than in Russian, though! I understood everything you wrote in German, but I would not have understood the Russian text without the translation. I trust that this will be better at the end of the year! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5560 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 11 of 92 27 December 2012 at 9:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you Cristina. I am not very technically gifted myself and it will probably take me
a while to understand quite how much the iPad can do. I'm convinced there are probably loads of apps that will be useful to me while studying Greek and Russian so I am spending the days before the beginning of the challenge seeking them out. I am glad you understood all the German without translation, but I was surprised that that was ever in any doubt. I am pretty sure your Russian will be better by the end of the year. Team MIR will make sure of that. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4850 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 12 of 92 27 December 2012 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for the answer. What was your main field of study, if it's not a secret? That's what I have known about ГуЛаг (главное управление лагерей), but you wrote it in the plural and with the definite article, that's why I asked. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5560 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 13 of 92 27 December 2012 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Марк,
In English it's referred to with the definite article, albeit in the singular. My teachers at school used to call it "the gulags", in the plural, because presumably they were under the false impression that the word "gulag" refers to the camps themselves, as opposed to the organisation that administered said camps. I can't believe a history teacher could be that incompetent but then, stranger things have happened. I wrote it wrong above because I was originally taught wrong. In English it's singular and is used with the definite article. It also refers to the Soviet government agency which administered the camps as opposed to the camps themselves. My degree was split into three equal parts in terms of language study - Russian, German and Slovene. Russian culture was the one I chose to focus on, so many of the supplementary courses I took were aimed at Russian culture - Russia under Stalin, Soviet Cinema, WWII from Russia's point of view as well as Russian literature modules. My Russian isn't actually that great because I chose to have a broader focus rather than just focusing on Russian. But that will be ironed out over the next year or two. I hope that answers your questions :) Jack 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4850 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 14 of 92 27 December 2012 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Спасибо. 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 15 of 92 27 December 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm sure you will make great progress in Greek, Russian and German in 2013! You are much more advanced than me
in all three, I'm sure, and I could only understand some of what you wrote in Russian. So it's a relief that I understood every word you wrote in German. I don't have an iPad myself but my iPod has been a great study help in the last few years. Most of all I use the Audible app for listening to audiobooks in several languages (I have a collection of Russian classics ready for next year). WunderRadio is great for streaming radio and I have FRANCE 24 and euronewslive, among others, for streaming tv news. In the latter you can choose between news reports in for instance Greek, German, Russian, Italian and French. I listen to Russian music with Spotify and have watched a couple of French films via Netflix. I guess many of those streming apps won't work in China, though. I've also paid for the Anki app and it does its job but I've never managed to use Anki consistently. There are a lot of other language related apps and I have tried out a few but none of them has impressed me much. Good luck! //aloysius 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5560 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 16 of 92 01 January 2013 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hi aloysius, Thanks for your post, some of those resources will come in really useful. I am sure that some of them won’t work in China but I intend to get around the Great Firewall eventually, whether I have to pay for it or not. It is really frustrating. Sometimes I can see no reason at all why they’ve blocked a particular website. I have downloaded Audible and thanks for that recommendation, I am going to really enjoy using that; I had never heard of it before reading your comment.
Hi Cristina, Christmas does indeed have its advantages! I am finding, however, that the iPad is getting the better of me. I am incredibly technically challenged despite having an iPhone for four years, there are still loads of things I can’t do on it which I’m sure you should be able to do. I don’t seem to be anywhere near close to its technical limits, its limits seem to coincide with the limits of my imagination. And it will get easier for you to follow my Russian. One of the problems is probably that my Russian isn’t very idiomatic and probably sounds horribly English (as a Russian friend of mine mercilessly pointed out a week or so ago). While I was at uni they didn’t really focus on making our Russian idiomatic, they only cared about the ideas we attempted to express and the grammatical accuracy with which we expressed them. Uni was no more than a glorified language course, despite my putting masses of effort into it. As such, my Russian learning begins again here. Thank you both for your comments and please feel free to chime in any time you like, it's great to know that someone other than me is reading this! Jack 1 person has voted this message useful |
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