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Cristina’s way TAC 2013 TEAM MIR/SPARTA | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 49 of 248 06 January 2013 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@tarvos: And do you not know that the punishment for making fun of your fierce captain is to walk the plank. Right into space:-)
JANUARY 1ST - TO JANUARY 6TH 2013 RUSSIAN Film I have seen a Russian animated film for children called something in the vicinity of Soiuoz zvere. I thought it was Timon and Pumba from the Lion King, because some of the characters were deceptively similar, but it was not a Disney film. The main idea seemed to be the folly of man destroying the planet. I am not totally sure that this subject automatically makes a good film though, but I may have gotten more out of it if I had understood more. Looking at Russian without subtitles can be really, really puzzling. Listening comprehension I listen to as much Russian as I can – Assimil, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas – whatever I can get my hands (or ears) on. I do not have much time to sit down and study, so listening to Russian while I am doing something else is a good way of keeping up my comprehension and reinforce the vocabulary. I guess I have done about 2 hours this week. Conversation I have even had the briefest of conversations in Russian. My New Year’s Eve hostess, has a sister-in-law from Latvia who called her up to wish her Happy New Year, and my friend said to her: “Oh, here I have got someone who can speak Russian”, and handed me the phone. All I could manage to do was to tell her that my Russian is really bad – but I have said that sentence so often, that this is probably the only sentence in Russian I am really good at - so she of course complimented me and said it was really good, then I wished her Happy New Year, which I thankfully remembered how to say in Russian, and then I just passed the phone to my friend. Her sister-in-law said she could be my conversation partner, and I thought, “Hey that is going to be an interesting conversation – I’ll say my name, how old I am and how many languages I speak and that’s the end of that conversation”. It’s nice to know that I have an option for later tough! GREEK I have done the first two lessons of Assimil, the two first lessons of Pimsleur, and the three first lessons of Michel Thomas. Theoretically, this should not take all that much time, but since I need to listen to the same material again and again, it actually represents a lot of work. I have done about 12 hours of Greek. It is such a beautiful language, though. I do not know why we do not all learn Greek at school. In Spain my friends used to learn Greek, but ancient Greek, and that is not quite the same, though of course they did get to learn that awesome alphabet of theirs. I adore Greek, but I have come to the curious conclusion, that they both have a lot of words which seem very familiar, because they have in some form entered most of the European languages (this I knew), but at the same time a lot of the words that are common in most other languages I know, have completely different words in Greek (this I did not know). Words like wine, water, pink, orange, have a completely different origin. At some point I will have to get hold of a good book about the history of the Greek language. If anyone knows of one, please let me know! FRENCH Books I FINISHED MAMDAME BOVARY THIS WEEK! Did I mention that I finished reading Madame Bovary this week? Oh, and by the way, I finished reading Madame Bovary this week:-) By now most of you are probably wondering whether I have completely lost my marbles. The thing is that this book by Gustave Flaubert has been the impassable mountain of French literature for me. I have started reading that book a number of times, but it bored me so much, that I was never able to get beyond page 50. Then due to the Super Challenge, where I have entered with an Advanced Super Challenge in French, I have to read 200 books – or at least 2000 pages of French. And since Kanewai recommended it, I decided that I was at a phase of my life where I would not let myself be daunted by a book, so in June I went for it again and read the first 160 pages. Then I went on a vacation, and things have not really calmed down until now, but on January 1st. in the afternoon I swore to myself that I would not eat or drink until I had finished the cursed book, so most of the evening and until 11.45 next morning was spent reading it. All 312 pages that was left of it. And I have finished it. I waited 50 years to read it, I will wait at the very least another 50 years before I read it again, but it is done, finished, fertig, fini, hecho, ferdig. Did I mention that I hated it? Or actually, I did not hate it, a part of it was quite good, I just thoroughly hated the end of it. In case someone is planning to read it, I won’t give any details, I’ll just point out that I am a big fan of the American tradition of happy endings. Flaubert was not. But at least I entered the Tadoku challenge with a big bang, and I will have covered 3 more books for the Super Challenge – not bad for an evening and a morning’s work. Films I have seen 12 episodes of Supernatural in French as well as 4 episode of “How I met your mother”. Not bad for a week’s work. SPANISH Ok. So every muscle in my body is hurting right now. In fact I hurt in muscles I did not even remember I had. And why? Well because I have not worked out in 18 months, and then this morning I did a Zumba class. And why do I mention that fact on a language forum? Well that’s simple. All the music was in Spanish, so I got to do some listening comprehension. It is of course debatable how much comprehension I get when I am busy putting my two left feet in the same order as our instructor - and failing miserably - and the loudest sound in my ears are my heart pumping and my breath heaving, but detail, details. I’ll count it as language training anyway. I started the year speaking Spanish, since my friend from Peru had invited me over to celebrate New Year’s eve with her family, and since her mother speaks Spanish only, we spoke a LOT of Spanish for an entire evening. I have also watched 2 episodes of Dexter and 4 episodes of Numbers in Spanish this week, so my Spanish has been well taken care of this week. GERMAN Not a priority this month. ITALIAN I have spent 30 minutes reading the first 22 pages of Italian – Agatha Christie of course – and I am reading it out loud, because my mouth needs to get reacquainted with speaking Italian – I have not done it for so long. Also I see that when I read it out loud I understand 95%, and if I don’t, I understand only 90%. I so need a trip to Italy, but although I have a thousand plans for this summer, Italy is not in any of them. I should probably take my girls to Italy, it is a tremendous confidence booster, and it would be nice to guide them through and interpret some of the attention they would get, but unless I win the lottery and get to quit my job and start just traveling around as I please, that is simply not an option right now. ARABIC So, trying to learn the numbers. Not doing a very good job at it. Why on earth are we told that we use the Arabic numerals, when they do not look like ours at all? Only the 1 and the 9 are recognizable. Remembering how to say them is difficult, and how to write them in letters – forget it – I do not have time to relearn the Arabic alphabet right now. Ughh! The zero looks likes a point, the two and three like a 7 turned the wrong way, with an extra blip for the three, the four looks like a 3 turned backwards, the five like a zero, the six looks like a 7, the seven looks like a V and the eight like a Russian d, or a v upside down. My brain could vaguely remember how to say four and five when it got the reminder, but I could not help smile at the six which is called “sitta” which in Norwegian dialect means to sit, and the nine, “tissa” which means “peed” in Norwegian. The last one had my 13 year old chuckling all day. After one full hour’s work I can recognize 0,1,4,5,6,7,9 and 10. Not exactly impressive. Well, I still have next week I guess. NORWEGIAN I have started reading the Norwegian grammar in English, It is REALLY weird, to read about your own language in another language. It is however good fun, and I have already read 4 of the 5 chapters I had planned for the month. And that was what I had time to do this week:-) Language This week Russian 3.5 Greek 12 French 12.30 German 0 Italian 0.30 Spanish 11.30 Arabic 1.10 Norwegian 0.30 Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 06 January 2013 at 10:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4494 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 50 of 248 06 January 2013 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You may be the captain, I am the pilot, and without me, you're lost in space. :)
Looks like you are making as much progress as I am! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 51 of 248 06 January 2013 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Fair point :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4475 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 52 of 248 06 January 2013 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I had no idea you were going to be doing anything with Arabic. Take the Arabic 2 and 3, rotate them each 90 degrees counter-clockwise/anti-clockwise, and tell me what you see...any better? You can do the same thing with the 7, but the resemblance is SLIGHTLY lessened. Edited by geoffw on 06 January 2013 at 10:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5182 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 53 of 248 06 January 2013 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
You so stole that from me. :-) Btw - where did the Arabic come from?! Edited by Kerrie on 06 January 2013 at 11:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 54 of 248 06 January 2013 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wasn't:-) It is just that I am off to Egypt in 8 days(provided there is no war going on or anything like that) and I figured that learning the numbers and simple greetings would be a good idea. I knew a little Arabic 33 years ago, but now all is forgotten. I know how to say thank you, hello and good morning and that is about it. And it did help turning the numbers :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 06 January 2013 at 11:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 55 of 248 06 January 2013 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Great minds think alike :-) Holiday in Egypt in 8 days is the immediate Arabic reason. I get to fight and protect a 13 year old beautiful, blonde Norwegian girl (my daughter) who thinks she is and looks like she is 18. I am doing push ups already to improve my strength to fend of the suitors, and will not accept anything below a million camels :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 06 January 2013 at 11:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4475 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 56 of 248 06 January 2013 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I travelled to an Arabic-speaking country a number of years back and, every little bit helped. I still recall the reaction I got from a porter at the airport: Me: Shukran. He: "OH! YOU SPEAK OUR LANGUAGE! WELCOME!" YMMV. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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