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6WC - Mongolian (Khalkha) | ||
Tags: 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 1 of 8 14 April 2007 at 10:23am | IP Logged |
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Here we go.
I'll finally be using the Colloquial Mongolian kit that has been sitting on my shelf for the last 7 years. Because this is part of Sprachprofi's experiment, I'll restrict myself to 30 minutes per day (or 3.5 hours per week) on Mongolian. I don't expect to be able to spare much more time than this because of my other commitments. The goal is to give myself some familiarity with Mongolian and I'm not too worried if I won't have finished the course after six weeks. This experiment also gives me a chance to satisfy partially my long-time curiosity about Central Asian culture. My resources will be Colloquial Mongolian and online Mongolian dictionaries. If necessary, I'll also ask for help on phrasebook.com's Mongolian forum. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 2 of 8 14 April 2007 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
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Good luck with your studies!
Mongolian is certainly a very exotic choice. It attracted my attention once because of its weird script, but I heard that they now use Cyrillic instead :-( 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 8 14 April 2007 at 6:28pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck! Very cool choice of language.
Here's hoping it goes well; I'll be curious to read your log for your observations. :) You inspired me to read about it a little; it seems to have some really interesting grammatical features, like an optative mood (like Persian! - and, for that matter, like Japanese - I'd never seen a good description of -tai before). Also, Mongolian throat-singing sounds really cool; there are some videos of it on youtube. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7142 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 4 of 8 15 April 2007 at 6:08pm | IP Logged |
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Chung, I suspect you may likely be already aware of it, but if you go to the ERIC website at http://www.eric.ed.gov/ and search for "Mongolian", you can get some PDF materials for Khalkha Mongolian produced for the Peace Corps. There's a Learner's Dictionary, in which the print is awafully hard to read, but there's also a 202-page guide to the language (Mongol Language Competencies for Peace Corps Volunteers in Mongolia. Second Revised Edition) which seems to be very user-friendly. There's no audio, but it might be a useful adjunct to the Colloquial Mongolian book. There's also a phrase-book which I haven't looked at.
In any event, good luck with a seldom-studied language! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 8 17 April 2007 at 11:31am | IP Logged |
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Thanks Daristani. I actually liked the approach in the Peace Corps material since it wasn't as dense as that in Colloquial Mongolian, but the advantage of Colloquial Mongolian is that it has audio which is helping me come to grips with the fact that Mongolian spelling isn't quite phonetic.
Sprachprofi, I'm glad that the modern Mongolian uses the Cyrillic instead of the Classical (Uigur) alphabet. I would have been even happier if Mongols used the Latin alphabet, but you can't win 'em all... From what I can tell, the Classical script looks elaborate but each phoneme has two or three versions in writing to designate whether the sound is initial, medial or final and certain pairs of sounds use the same character thus making some words seem unclear or unintelligible. It reminds me somewhat of the irregularities of English spelling. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 8 17 April 2007 at 11:50am | IP Logged |
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Week 1 (part 1):
Completed the section on pronunciation and still working through Chapter 1. Aside from the unphonetic spelling that I have briefly touched on in the previous post, Mongolian has been somewhat what I had expected. On one hand, my knowledge of Hungarian means that concepts such as agglutination and vowel harmony aren't extraordinary. On the other hand, I've been paying close attention to the notes in Chapter 1 that describe how Mongols use verbs. Instead of conjugating every verb depending on the person AND the tense or mood (as I've been used to when learning other languages), Mongols use the appropriate pronoun and then onto the verb's stem attach a suffix that marks the appropriate tense or mood (so far I've seen the suffixes for the simple present, perfective past and imperfective past.). So far, so interesting... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 8 25 April 2007 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
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Week 1 (part 2):
I've just finished Chapter 1 and will start Chapter 2 tonight. I'm slowly getting used to writing in Cyrillic, and have a few of the basic words and expressions memorized already thanks to listening to the audio several times. I will warn anyone who uses Colloquial Mongolian not to be intimidated by its heavy focus on grammar. The textbook presents a lot of grammar even in the first chapter. I've already read the first chapter's explanations about the plural, dative/locative, ablative and genitive, a few markers of verbal aspects, tenses and moods. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 8 03 May 2007 at 10:18am | IP Logged |
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Unfortunately I must drop Khalkha for a couple of reasons.
1) I have had to deal with some family emergencies lately which have affected my linguistic pursuits other than that of my Hungarian study. 2) One of my friends has convinced me to visit Slovenia and with the need to confirm time for vacation with my boss, I will be off to Europe next month. What little free time I have these days is now being used to work through "Teach Yourself Slovene". Since this course is rather skimpy (and of lower quality) compared to other Slavonic courses from "Teach Yourself", I should be able to work through at least 75% of the course (if not complete it) before I leave. I expect progress with Slovenian to be a little faster than with Mongolian because of the brevity of the Slovenian course, and the fact that Slovenian has several similarities with the Slavonic languages that I already know. (BTW "Colloquial Slovene" and "Teach Yourself Slovene" (both are by the same author) are disappointing and skimpy especially compared to more comprehensive courses such as "Teach Yourself Serbian", "Colloquial Czech" or the full set of Russian courses by Teach Yourself (e.g. "Instant Russian", "Teach Yourself Russian", "Beginners' Russian" etc.). These Slovenian courses are more suitable for people who already have some knowledge of Slavonic languages or like me want to know just enough for a short trip to Slovenia.) I intend to continue with Khalkha at the same pace of approximately 30 mins. per day in the summer but outside the bounds of a fixed 6-week challenge or something similar. I've got enough exposure to it by now that I'm fascinated and want to know more as time permits. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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