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hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 1 of 96 28 December 2012 at 11:57am | IP Logged |
Welcome to my new log for 2013!
My previous 3 logs –
2010 – http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=22211 (without spaces)
2011 – http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=24465 (without spaces)
2012 - http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=30566&PN=1 (without spaces)
I’m in 2 teams this year, having been in only 1 during the 2 previous years.
TEAM - jäŋe / ledús (Finno-Ugric/Balto-Slavonic)
MOTTO - Csak az csatlakozzon hozzánk, aki ilyet szeret
TEAMMATES – A3, Anya, Cathrynm, Chung, Danac, DaraghM, Eternica, Evita, kisfroccs,
Languagenerd09, Mick33, Phantom Kat, Theodisce, Tiktok, Woodsei, Veel,
GUARDIAN ANGELS – Joshkaasik, Maecenas23, Maxval, Serpent,
FOCUS LANGUAGE – HUNGARIAN
SIDE LANGUAGES – POLISH, CROATIAN, RUSSIAN, ?...
I was in this team last year and am pleased to be able to continue in it and hopefully
it will give me an extra little boost of motivation to work on Hungarian. There are
more people and more Hungarian learners in the team this year, which will hopefully
mean more interaction and support for each other.
TEAM – CZECHOSLOVAK (KOFOLA)
MOTTO – Když se jí věnuješ, není co řešit / Keď sa jej venuješ, nie je čo riešiť.
TEAMMATES – Chung, Danac, Lapislazuli, Nuriayasmin70, Stelingo, Tajosto, Theodisce,
Wompi,
GUARDIAN ANGELS – Cavesa, Majka, Wyctory,
FOCUS LANGUAGE – CZECH
SIDE LANGUAGE – SLOVAK
I’m hoping the fact the we’ll all be studying mutually intelligible languages means
that this team will have a slightly different dynamic to jäŋe / ledús, because we’ll be
able to identify with each other more. Also we might be able to interact in our target
languages.
MY LANGUAGES
CZECH
CURRENT LEVEL – Listening & Reading C2, Writing and Speaking C1.
TARGET – C2 level in everything.
My passive level is obviously excellent, having spent 5 ½ years living in North Bohemia
and hearing and reading Czech very much every day. Speaking is my biggest weakness,
mainly because I’m quite shy at heart and get stressed and nervous when speaking to
people, because I want to say everything perfectly. I know this is a classic language
learner mistake and I fight against these feelings constantly, but it’s not really
getting any easier. I’m hoping my new conversation classes will continue to help me
combat this.
SPANISH
CURRENT LEVEL – Shaky B2
TARGET – Not to get worse.
My Spanish has been very slowly declining over the last 3 1/2 years, since I came back
from a 4 month period of heavy immersion in Costa Rica. I still use it here and there
with friends and just to practise, but not enough. My focus on other languages
probably means that this issue will continue this year.
I would like to have a more intensive brush up period in April/May ready for the
Polyglot Conference, so that I don’t embarrass myself in Spanish there.
HUNGARIAN
CURRENT LEVEL – Reading and Writing B1, Speaking A2, Listening low A2.
TARGET – B1 in everything.
As reflected in my levels, I write a lot in Hungarian and read quite a bit too. Skype
sessions this year helped my speaking and listening, but I hope to improve them more.
I’m planning to go to Budapest in May, so hopefully that will also increase my
motivation until then.
SLOVAK
CURRENT LEVEL – Reading B2/C1, Listening B2, Speaking and Writing A1.
TARGET – Nothing specific, just increase my knowledge of it and see where that takes
me.
My Slovak level is mainly as a result of my Czech, but I have also studied it a
reasonable amount and have several Slovak friends. My passive levels can be a strong
C1, but also at times I don’t understand simple vocabulary. My natural curiosity is my
main tool for learning Slovak.
POLISH
CURRENT LEVEL – A1 (better passively)
TARGET – maybe A2
I might be going to a Polish wedding in the Summer, so my motivation will increase if
that’s the case. I already have the resources.
OTHERS
Could really be anything. Slavic languages are my biggest passion so any of those
could become wanderlust languages for me. Most likely would be Russian (and especially
the Russian Cyrillic alphabet) and/or Serbo-Croat.
I’m also planning to improve my English punctuation in writing, as I think I’ve fallen
into a lot of bad habits and I don’t remember a lot of the rules I learned in school 17
years ago or the ones they didn't teach us.
I’ll post more about my resources in another post and I’ll also post my language story
in the next post. This post was long enough already.
Edited by hribecek on 30 December 2012 at 5:55pm
4 persons have voted this message useful
| Lapislazuli Tetraglot Senior Member Austria Joined 7033 days ago 146 posts - 170 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, ItalianB1 Studies: French, Hungarian, Esperanto, Czech
| Message 2 of 96 28 December 2012 at 6:08pm | IP Logged |
Sók sikert!
És én is reszt szeretnék venni a Budapesti konfernciában. Azt remélem, hogy akkor egy kicsit cseh is fogok érteni és beszélni!
1 person has voted this message useful
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 3 of 96 30 December 2012 at 5:53pm | IP Logged |
@lapislazuli – köszönöm az üzenetedet, válaszoltam csehül a te logban, abban az esteben, hogy nem értetted, írtam, hogy jó, hogy talán leszél Budapésten mayusban és ott beszélhetünk együtt csehül és magyarul.
MY METHODS FOR THIS YEAR
CZECH
Reading – Read as many novels as possible, I buy all my novels in the local bookshop or borrow them from friends.
Listening – I sometimes have problems with poetic films and comedy shows, so I’ll try to watch more of them, as well as my usual helping of soap operas and other films.
Writing – I try to write several A4 pages a week about films I’ve seen, trying to accurately describe the most complex scenes and then my wife corrects it. It works fantastically and I wish I’d started this a few years ago, rather than only a couple of months ago. I will also try to write more in my log here and in the logs of my Czechoslovak teammates.
Speaking – Twice a week I describe films, TV programmes, stories from life and my wife corrects my mistakes. I recently found a very tricky film to describe – Home Alone! Try to describe the different ways the boy tries to hurt the burglars in your foreign languages and you’ll see how difficult (and useful) it is.
General – As I keep saying, I need to break through my fear. I don’t have it in Spanish or Hungarian, only in English and Czech. In Czech it’s a fear of mistakes.
HUNGARIAN
Writing on the Hungarian thread here at HTLAL and getting corrections from Maxval hopefully
Watching films or TV series online.
Skype sessions with my 2 Hungarian language buddies.
Repeating my Teach Yourself Hungarian course.
Studying my flashcards, which I gathered mainly from the Teach Yourself course.
Having Hungarian set as the language of my Facebook, email etc.
SPANISH
Watching lots of films.
Emails to and from friends in Costa Rica and Belize.
Mobile phone and MP3 player is in Spanish.
Chatting to my Chilean friend in town and Spanish friend in Prague sometimes.
Code language with my wife when surrounded by Czech and English speakers.
More intensive study in April/May to make sure I do myself justice if I have to speak Spanish to people at the Polyglot Conference.
SLOVAK
Mental note taking when talking to Slovaks.
Following the logs of my teammates.
POLISH
Repeat my LEDA course.
Possible wedding in Krakow in the Summer.
1 person has voted this message useful
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 4 of 96 06 January 2013 at 6:49pm | IP Logged |
My first update of the year.
I've had quite a lot of free time since December 14th and have been trying to take advantage of it.
CZECH
I've had 9 Czech lessons in the last 3 weeks, so I've learned and brushed up on lots of phrases, vocabulary and grammar points.
I've also written maybe 20 or so A4 pages in Czech and had them corrected.
Other than that I've watched about 10 films, chatted a lot in the language and listened to a hell of a lot of Czech music on my MP3 player (I've finally moved into the 21st century).
HUNGARIAN
I had 2 skype lessons before New Year, studied lots of flashcards and reviewed my TY course bu listening to all of the dialogues a few times over, mainly while walking to places in town. I've also just written my first chapter for 3 weeks of my most recent rubbish Hungarian story.
SPANISH
Very little. I listened to my advanced TY course today for about 15 minutes. Apart from that, just a few short emails.
SLOVAK
Not much either. I've listened to a bit of Slovak music and had an interesting conversation with my Slovak friend about the language where I learned the words for camel, to skate and icicle (which are completely different from Czech) - Ťáva, korčuľovať and cencúľ (CZECH - velbloud, bruslit and rampouch).
1 person has voted this message useful
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7153 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 5 of 96 06 January 2013 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
hribecek wrote:
SLOVAK
Not much either. I've listened to a bit of Slovak music and had an interesting conversation with my Slovak friend about the language where I learned the words for camel, to skate and icicle (which are completely different from Czech) - Ťáva, korčuľovať and cencúľ (CZECH - velbloud, bruslit and rampouch). |
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It's funny that you mention ťava and korčuľovať since they seemed perfectly normal to me from my Hungarian background (teve, korcsolyázni) with the former a Turkic loanword (I suspect that it got adopted in Old/Middle Hungarian before entering the predecessors of Slovak) and the latter probably from Italian (I'm not sure though if it entered Slavonic or Hungarian first).
If anything, the Czech counterparts were weird to me when I first encountered them :-P
3 persons have voted this message useful
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5346 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian
| Message 6 of 96 06 January 2013 at 8:15pm | IP Logged |
Chung wrote:
It's funny that you mention ťava and korčuľovať since they seemed perfectly normal to me from my Hungarian background (teve, korcsolyázni) with the former a Turkic loanword (I suspect that it got adopted in Old/Middle Hungarian before entering the predecessors of Slovak) and the latter probably from Italian (I'm not sure though if it entered Slavonic or Hungarian first).
If anything, the Czech counterparts were weird to me when I first encountered them :-P |
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Cool, I should remember those two Hungarian words now, thanks. I think I might have encountered korcsolyázni before, but forgot it.
Do you know if Korčula has any meaning in Croatian? Having spent my Summer holiday there, I committed the new Slovak word to memory very quickly.
I saw a news item the other day where they tested Slovak people in Bratislava on Czech words and nobody (from those they showed) knew what 'židle' means! I was very surprised that they didn't know such a common Czech word (I know it's stolička in Slovak).
1 person has voted this message useful
| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5345 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto
| Message 7 of 96 06 January 2013 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
hribecek wrote:
Do you know if Korčula has any meaning in Croatian? Having spent my Summer holiday there, I
committed the new Slovak word to memory very quickly.
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From what I could find about its name, the name Korčula is based on the original name for the
island, Ancient Greek Kórkyra (Mélaina), or Black Corfu, and subsequent variations on this name in
other languages. None of my dictionaries (for the BCMS languages) had any information about any
words remotely similar to the name of the island, so my best guess would be that there's no real
"meaning" of this name. (Or if there is, I wouldn't know ^^ )
1 person has voted this message useful
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7153 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 8 of 96 06 January 2013 at 10:18pm | IP Logged |
hribecek wrote:
I saw a news item the other day where they tested Slovak people in Bratislava on Czech words and nobody (from those they showed) knew what 'židle' means! I was very surprised that they didn't know such a common Czech word (I know it's stolička in Slovak). |
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This reminds me of when I once responded to a Moravian's friend request on Facebook with hej. She thought that I meant "hi" when I was thinking of "yeah". She didn't seem to know (or remember?) that Slovak hej can correspond to Czech jo.
Another time I was talking to a Czech whose childhood was during communism and had recently spent a winter up in Canada. At one point I asked him if he liked to skate and since I had been speaking Slovak, I asked Rád sa korčuľuješ? He drew a blank and so I repeated in Czech Rád bruslíš?. It was a little surprising for me since I thought that he would have had substantial passive knowledge (surely many Czech men/boys followed the Czechoslovak national hockey teams and got at least occasional exposure to Slovak through a Slovak commentator. Those players have to bruslit / korčuľovať (sa)).
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