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Stelle’s Taga-log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3922 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 9 of 117 03 January 2014 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Today marks one week of Tagalog "study" using Memrise. I really like the setup of the Basic Tagalog course, that
seems to slowly and logically build sentence structure. It isn't the vocabulary that a beginner normally learns (hello, how are you, my name is…, etc), and I'm perfectly ok with that. I'll learn that in the Spring when I start working with tutors. But I definitely feel that I'm getting a head start. Here's what you can expect with six consecutive cards: cat - pusa yellow - dilaw yellow cat - pusang dilaw AND dilaw na pusa small - maliit The yellow cat is small - Maliit ang pusang dilaw I like how it builds logically, using patterns to teach basic sentence structure. I also find it interesting that there is no "the, a, an" in Tagalog - at least so far. Dec 28: 8 minutes in 2 sessions (plant, water) Dec 29: 14 minutes in 4 sessions (plant, water, overwater) Dec 30: 17 minutes in 5 sessions (double plant, water, overwater) Dec 31: 10 minutes in 3 sessions (plant, water) Jan 1: 16 minutes in 4 sessions (plant, water, overwater) Jan 2: 12 minutes in 4 sessions (plant, water) This is an average of a little under 13 minutes per day. The two days that I went over 15 minutes were by choice, since I overwatered a few times. For now, I like the pace. I also like that 12 minutes broken into 4 sessions feels like I'm putting no time at all into this - and yet I definitely think that this head start will pay off when I start learning Tagalog in earnest. edited to add dates for personal tracking purposes Edited by Stelle on 05 January 2014 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3922 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 10 of 117 05 January 2014 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To pluralize a noun in Tagalog, you add "mga" in front of it.
So… cat = pusa cats = mga pusa I'm going to make an assumption here that "yellow cats" would be "mga pusang dilaw", but I'll have to wait until it comes up in my Memrise course to be sure. I'm resisting the urge to look it up right now, since I'm trying to commit to using *only* Memrise until May. Today I learned my first two Tagalog words of Spanish origin: berde (green, from the Spanish verde) and asul (blue, from the Spanish azul). When I tell people that I'm learning Tagalog, their reaction is "oh that'll be easy for you since you already know Spanish!". (Actually, most people's reaction is more along the lines of "What's Tagalog?" or "Why?". Ha!) But - based on the little that I've learned so far - I haven't come across all that many Spanish-Tagalog cognates. I'm sure that I'll learn many more as my Tagalog journey continues. I'm really happy that I started this log at the same time as I started learning Tagalog. It will be interesting to have a record of my progress to look back on. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3922 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 117 10 January 2014 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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While I'm having fun puzzling out word order and grammatical structures in Tagalog, I can already tell that the
flexible word order will be tricky when I'm learning to listen to (and - hopefully - understand) native material. That said, I have all the time in the world to learn Tagalog. I had a deadline with Spanish: I wanted to be able to converse comfortably before March 2014 (9 months after starting). With Tagalog, I'll probably meander and dawdle. I've been part of a filipino family for 13 years already - what's another few years of slowly learning to communicate in Tagalog? That said, once I dive into learning, I'll probably want to spend more and more time. I'll probably also want to plan a trip to the Philippines to help motivate me even more. In the meantime, I've learned 84 words/terms in about 2 weeks. It's a very slow, very manageable pace - but when I actually think about it, 84 words is a great start! Memrise Tagalog, week 2: Jan 3: 8 minutes in 3 sessions Jan 4: 9 minutes in 2 sessions Jan 5: 12 minutes in 3 sessions Jan 6: 12 minutes in 1 session Jan 7: 9 minutes in 1 session Jan 8: 7 minutes in 2 sessions Jan 9: 10 minutes in 2 sessions I was right about my assumption re: plural nouns + adjectives. red truck = pulang trak red trucks = mga pulang trak Demonstrative pronouns are linked to nouns in the same way that adjectives are. So… that = iyan that truck = iyang trak OR trak na iyan 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3922 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 12 of 117 17 January 2014 at 12:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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"ng" is a possessive marker:
the man's car = kotse ng lalaki the man's cars = mga kotse ng lalaki the men's cars = mga kotse ng mga lalaki Memrise Tagalog, week 3: Jan 10: 9 minutes in 3 sessions Jan 11: 9 minutes in 2 sessions Jan 12: 9 minutes in 2 sessions Jan 13: 11 minutes in 3 sessions Jan 14: 8 minutes in 1 session Jan 15: 8 minutes in 2 sessions Jan 16: 10 minutes in 1 session 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3922 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 13 of 117 24 January 2014 at 1:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've now been using Memrise for a month - and I still enjoy logging on every day! As I add new words - and
review old ones - I find that I've settled into a rhythm of 2 or 3 short (3-4 minute) sessions per day. A FEW PROS: - multiple short sessions are very fun and motivating - interface is intuitive and nice to look at - forum allows people to post questions and concerns to course creators. The creator of one of the courses I'm taking quickly responded to my concern and made changes to some of the items. A FEW CONS: - because courses are user-created, there are some mistakes - mostly minor, but still something to watch out for. My husband sits with me when I "plant" new words, and lets me know if something's not right, so that I can ignore the word. It would be a shame to fossilize an error using Memrise. - lots of "mems" (visual mnemonics) for words early on in the course, and fewer for later words. This could, of course, be remedied by making my own mems, but I really can't be bothered. Memrise week four: Jan 17: none Jan 18: 15 minutes in 3 sessions Jan 19: 13 minutes in 2 sessions Jan 20: 9 minutes in 1 session (finished Basic Tagalog course) Jan 21: 8 minutes in 3 sessions (working on Foundation Tagalog) Jan 22: 9 minutes in 3 sessions Jan 23: 9 minutes in 3 sessions I now "know" 157 items. Pretty cool! I started learning possessives. They're a bit tricky! your = mo your dog = aso mo OK, no problem there. But "our" is differentiated based on whether or not the listener is included in "us". So… our house (talking to someone who lives in the house) = bahay natin our house (talking to someone who doesn't live in the house) = bahay namin (I realize that this log won't be of much interest to anyone who isn't learning Tagalog, seeing as how I'm mostly talking about word order and syntax. But it's useful for me as a learner, and I hope to tackle more interesting topics in the spring, when I focus more on Tagalog.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4444 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 14 of 117 24 January 2014 at 3:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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The really fun part is the verbs. As I remember, with a sentence like “I bought X for Y at store Z”, you can make anything – I, X, Y or Z – the subject of the sentence by changing the verb. This means adding prefixes, infixes, reduplicating the first syllable, or combinations of these.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4944 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 15 of 117 24 January 2014 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Your log is indeed interesting, Stelle! Even though you're no longer part of the Team
Rare and I won't learn Tagalog soon, several of the features are common to Indonesian which I plan to learn. Also, I've started to use Memrise for Chinese and it was nice to read about your experience. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3922 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 16 of 117 25 January 2014 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, that sounds like fun! ;)
I couldn't be part of Team Rare, since I won't be able to update every month. I'll be away for nearly 2 months in the fall, and Tagalog will be on hold during that time. But I'm keeping an eye on the Team Rare thread! I'm always interested in reading about people learning less common languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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