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MithradatesTAC’14 - 鹊-Lobo-Yürükler-Rare | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4956 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 17 of 21 19 January 2014 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
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Mithradates, aee you familiar with the book
Armenian for Everyone ? It teaches both varieties in parallel, quite effectively. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MithradatesG Newbie United States Joined 4065 days ago 30 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French, Armenian, Turkish, Italian | Message 18 of 21 24 January 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the recommendation.
Yes, I had a copy out from the library once. It's really good! However, as far as I know, it doesn't have audio, which is the reason I like the book I'm using right now. I actually have l'arménien sans peine waiting in the wings for when I feel my knowledge of Western is strong enough to withstand the interference :) I have a new impetus for Armenian since I just found out that my job is sending me to Los Angeles at the end of May. Hopefully I can get away from the conference for awhile and practice some Armenian face-to-face. I can also stock up on books... I need to update my log soon... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MithradatesG Newbie United States Joined 4065 days ago 30 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French, Armenian, Turkish, Italian | Message 19 of 21 26 January 2014 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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I have not been able to follow my learning schedule as well as I'd like because I've had a really bad sore throat that has made speaking very unpleasant. I've ramped up my listening and reading activities to compensate.
I'm also trying to increase my exposure to Spanish since I'm about a month away from going to Puerto Rico. Although not Puerto Rican Spanish, I really enjoyed some of the documentaries available on www.encuentro.gov.ar that dbag mentioned in his log. I was watching Hemisferio Sur: Una región contectada. It's quite interesting as the host talks to people from all over Hispanophone South America and so you get a good mixture of accents. I'm halfway through the DLI Headstart for Puerto Rico program. It's taking a little more time than I expected it would, although the exercises are definitely making certain sentence structures more automatic for me. On the weekends, I'm also going to start working through Colloquial Spanish of Latin America. Hopefully I can blast through the first several lessons without much difficulty. I'm somewhat surprised to discover that despite having seemingly intermediate listening skills, I've forgotten many of the details of Spanish grammar, particularly irregular verbs and preposition use. Thus the review of the first few chapters of Colloquial Spanish of LA will be very useful for me. I've only progressed glacially in Armenian these past few weeks. I'm in chapter 40 of a Practical Textbook of Western Armenian, which is a review chapter, which means that it's quite long with dozens of exercises. Even though I'm moving slowly, I'm happy with my progress this month. I listened to a children's radio show out of Lebanon and was surprised that I could understand noticeably more than I could a couple of months ago. That reminds me, one of the hardest things in learning a language such as Western Armenian is the lack of resources, particularly audio/video resources. I enjoy the TV/radio from Lebanon. OTV has an Armenian News show that I often watch. It's in very formal Armenian. The pronunciation and grammar are straight out of a textbook. In other words, it's very different from the Armenian as it's normally spoken. So I do most of my listening practice with native materials with Radio Sevan, also out of Lebanon. They have a wide variety of shows, about literature, current events, music, history, and the children's show I mentioned. Their hosts are not quite as professional as OTV's and they use a much more colloquial language. I'm still in that rosy-tinted beginning stage with Turkish in which each new phrase or item of grammar learned seems like one simple step closer to mastering the language. My delusion will evaporate soon, I'm sure, but I always relish the feeling. I'm in Unit 6 of FSI Turkish. Now that they've introduced the exercises (just variation drills so far), I'm warming up to the course. I'm finding the vowel harmony relatively easy to pick up. I wonder if it will be more difficult when I try to speak more quickly and for longer periods. That's how I found Mandarin tones: easy when I speak slowly, much more difficult in fast speech and in a longer discourse. I am also reading TY Turkish on the weekends to begin to obtain a larger overview of the language and to whet my appetite for further study. Relative to the time I intended to spend on it, I've probably neglected Chinese the most these last few weeks. I'm now in episode 6 of 舌尖上的中国. I've read a few more articles from Caixin. I also finished Chinese 24/7. It's really more oriented towards beginners, but I'll relisten to some of the audio since it contains common, but non-standard, Chinese expressions. Not much more to report. This last week of January is very busy for me since I have several reports due at the end of the month, hopefully I can maintain my language schedule intact. There's a great expression from Lu Xun(?), "Time is like water in a sponge, the more you squeeze, the more there is." 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4148 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 20 of 21 28 January 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the FSI review. You are way ahead of me. We use the two courses in the same way you know, and it's nice to hear someone is getting results out of this particular method.
Am I the only one who doesn't think Turkish is easy? I think TY freaked me out :) On the other hand, you may never come to think of it as impossible or anything like that. Just because it's the norm, it doesn't have to happen to you. I think speaking relatively slowly and clearly is a good idea in any language. So, as long as you can understand fast speaking natives, why bother being too rapid yourself? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MithradatesG Newbie United States Joined 4065 days ago 30 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French, Armenian, Turkish, Italian | Message 21 of 21 17 February 2014 at 12:24am | IP Logged |
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Over the past couple of weeks I got quite busy with non-language activities and had to reduce my daily study time. On most days I still squeezed in Spanish, since that will be the language I need to use soonest. However, I've restarted my full schedule this week and feel great about it!
It's more than halfway through February, but I tallied up my study totals for January: Spanish - 16.5 hours Chinese - 10.5 hours Turkish - 5.75 hours Armenian - 4.5 hours Even though the last couple of weeks of January were not very productive linguistically, I'm fairly happy with these study amounts. I do think the amount of time I spent studying Armenian was too low and so I shall strive to stick to my Armenian schedule in February more assiduously. I have just finished Module 3 (of 4) of DLI Headstart for Puerto Rico. The course introduces new grammar and vocabulary at a glacial pace, but does provide numerous exercises for speaking Spanish, which I need. I've also been following Colloquial Latin American Spanish, I've zipped through the first 10 chapters. I have to say that I think TY Latin American Spanish is much better. The latter has much more natural sounding conversations, including background sounds. The language in Colloquial LA Spanish seems much too crisp and slowly spoken. At the same time, I'm surprised that most of the conversations in Colloquial LA Spanish use colloquial forms of the verb. I've finished the backlog of episodes of Borinqueando. I'm now watching clips from other shows on Univision Puerto Rico for 20min a day. I've also watched several episodes of Hemisferio Sur from the Argentine education website dbag mentioned. My Spanish is certainly improving and I'm activating what I have, but I leave for Puerto Rico in two weeks and I'm a little intimidated (in an entirely curious way)... I am now in episode 7 of 舌尖上的中国, which is the final episode in the series (as far as I can tell). I've enjoyed it immensely, but will probably try something more conversational for my listening practice. Perhaps I'll try GLOSS... I've finished Chinese 24/7. I'm going to work through Routledge's Speed Up Your Chinese, but I feel that I'm stalling and that I just need to find some Chinese speaking partners. I feel my Chinese listening abilities are better than ever, but my speaking level has atrophied since I stopped taking formal classes (which were wonderful since we ignored the textbook and just spoke in Chinese the entire time, getting explanations and corrections as needed). I've begun to really enjoy Turkish! I'm in Unit 8 of FSI Turkish, and it's starting to get a little more difficult! :) I really appreciate that FSI dialogues are spoken at full speed but it definitely takes me quite a few focused listens before I can parse the entire dialogue. On the week-ends I'm doing TY Turkish (1996). I'm in Chapter 42 of the Practical Textbook of Western Armenian. This chapter and the last have been noticeably more difficult than previous chapters. It's taken me a few more listens to get comfortable parsing the dialogues. (cf. supra - Perhaps I'm not listening well this week...) I need to take the time to listen to more radio and to read more, because I feel that at this point in the textbook, some of the radio programs I found are easier to understand than these dialogues. I can now do long division in Armenian and narrate every step... Also, although it's not part of my TAC, I've also been reading copious amounts of French over the past few weeks. I've been reading Les misérables and, in a break from that hefty tome, I read Sous le soleil de satan by Bernanos. I just finished the latter and have returned to Les Mis. Sous le soleil de satan has been surprisingly good. I'm not religious and was initially turned off by the very religious themes of the book. However, the book goes in bizarre directions that made me really enjoy it. It reminds me of a Hesse book, since the protagonist experiences semi-supernatural phenomena but the reader isn't sure whether he's insane or not. I'm also taking a Coursera course about Modernity and Post-Modernity (yeah, I know...) which started with two of Rousseau's discourses. I read them in French, of course! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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