Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

General discussion about learning languages
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zjones
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby zjones » Sat Dec 22, 2018 4:39 am

Mista wrote:I think you should join me and study Sami. It's an official language in Norway, after all :lol:


I totally forgot about Sami! :lol: I used to really love Scandinavia when I was younger (both of my cats have Swedish names because of this period in my life), and I remember wanting to learn Sami. Will you be learning Sami in 2019? I don't think I saw a post from you on this resolutions thread, but maybe I missed it.
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby Ani » Sat Dec 22, 2018 6:29 am

French:
1) Make more French friends, travel where necessary to facilitate.
2) continue to expand my facility with register
3) spend at least some amount of time improving comprehension of québécois
4) spend at least some time learning formal bookish things that I'd need for an exam.
5) go to at least 2 events at Alliance Française when I get to DC

Spanish:
1) B1
2) find something to get addicted to

Other:
If I get wanderlust-y, or have suddenly lots of time, go back to Icelandic because I absolutely love it.
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby Chung » Sat Dec 22, 2018 7:21 am

Brun Ugle wrote:
Mista wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:One of the problems is, I'm no longer in college. I have two college degrees, one from the US and one from Norway, and I'd say both my English and my Norwegian have atrophied somewhat from the level I had when I had to write papers all the time, but my English remains a bit stronger because it is my native language and because I use it a lot on the internet. I found my Norwegian level started to go down after I finished college and started working, because suddenly I didn't have to write anymore.


You didn't mention if you are planning to to any writing this year, but if you are, I'd be happy to give you feedback on it, if you like.

Sure, that would be great. I'm thinking of writing next year's log in several of my target languages, so I will probably include Norwegian. Ironically, although it is my best foreign language, it is the one I'm most ashamed to write in publically because I always feel it should be much better. I guess this is the result of learning a language mostly by just being in the country rather than having a solid foundation of study. Anyway, I would be happy to have corrections in any of my languages, so if it isn't too much work for you, I'd be glad to have you correct me, or just point out the worst mistakes if that's easier.

Mista wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:I can see how 2019 is going to be 365 days of everyone on the forum trying to trick me into learning a new language and me trying to resist. Rdearman will probably even start a challenge to see who can get me to start a new language. Hmmm. I wonder what the prize will be.... Maybe I should join.


I think you should join me and study Sami. It's an official language in Norway, after all :lol:
I would love to learn Sami, but it will have to wait until after 2019. There's something I've been wondering about though. Maybe you can tell me. I know there are several Sami languages and as I understand it, they are fairly different. Yet on official web pages and suchlike, you can usually just choose between Bokmål, Nynorsk and Sami. So, which Sami is it? And can all Sami speakers understand it? Is there perhaps just one written language and several spoken one's, like Arabic?


I'll jump in even though I'm not Mista.

If you're on a Norwegian site, then the most likely language under "Samisk" is Northern Saami, which is the most widely spoken Saamic language and has the largest Saamic speech community at about 20,000 people. However, you may also stumble upon media in Southern Saami (Sørsamisk) or Lule Saami (Lulesamisk) which are spoken by about 600 and 1,500 people respectively. The other Saamic language in Norway is Ume (Pite Saami is spoken in Sweden, however) and has a tiny community of around 20 speakers. You'll be hard pressed to find much material in it. Mutual intelligibility between Saamic languages varies, and today the languages are classified into two groups: Eastern and Western. Northern Saami, Lule Saami, Ume Saami, Pite Saami, and Southern Saami are in the western group, while Inari Saami, Skolt Saami, and Kildin Saami are in the eastern group. Northern Saami and Lule Saami are fairly close, but still distinct enough. Southern Saami is less similar. Pite and Ume seem in between Southern Saami and Lule Saami. On the eastern side, Inari Saami is kinda sorta between Northern Saami and Skolt Saami even though Northern Saami is a western Saamic language (a comparable situation would be to think of the similarity between some (Jutlandic) Danish dialects and (Low) German dialects spoken along the border of Denmark and Germany. They resemble each other more than what you may expect when looking at the language family tree which treats Danish as North Germanic and German as West Germanic)

You can tell the languages' distinctiveness aurally and visually (this is easier for natives to do!), although as far as I remember Pite Saami has no official alphabet. It's nothing at all like Arabic or even Sinitic languages since it's not at all the case that speakers of Saamic regularly use, say, Northern Saami as the common language like speakers of Arabic and Sinitic languages can do with MSA and Mandarin respectively. For example, in the Saami Parliament of Norway, I suspect that it's more likely that a politician there whose native language is Southern Saami would speak Norwegian to a colleague whose native language is Northern Saami, instead of going at it with each using his/her native Saamic language (unless either one of these people can speak Northern and Southern Saami, and so dispense with the Norwegian "bridge-language").

Any Saamic language is extra tough to learn without a background in Finnish or Estonian, but it must be feasible on seeing the classes and learning material meant for Norwegians or Swedes who can't cash in on the Finno-Saamic discount. An advantage that you and Mista would have over me is that your knowledge of Norwegian would let you use the available learning material printed in Norwegian or even Swedish with ease. I had to make to do with Finnish editions of books and dictionaries for Northern Saami and Inari Saami using my shaky knowledge of Finnish (and looking up stuff often enough in my Finnish-English dictionary).
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby Mista » Sat Dec 22, 2018 7:40 am

Brun Ugle wrote:I would love to learn Sami, but it will have to wait until after 2019. There's something I've been wondering about though. Maybe you can tell me. I know there are several Sami languages and as I understand it, they are fairly different. Yet on official web pages and suchlike, you can usually just choose between Bokmål, Nynorsk and Sami. So, which Sami is it? And can all Sami speakers understand it? Is there perhaps just one written language and several spoken one's, like Arabic?


They do tend to be lumped together, and when you are learning Sami, that can be very frustrating. At the library, for example, you find all the different variants of Sami on the same shelf, and often, there's no way to distinguish them unless you can do it in Sami. And on NRK, it's the same - the only way you can know if a program is in Northern Sami or something else, is if you know enough Sami to tell the difference by listening. Northern Sami is by far the most common, however.

On official web pages, I would expect that they use Northern Sami on sites with national scope, while the sites of the local authorities in your area, for example, would use Southern Sami. I don't know to what extent Southern Sami can be said to be standardized, but they do write it, publish books in it, and there are course books, too. So that's one more thing to consider before you start studying - which variant do you want to learn? While Northern Sami resources are generally more available, your local libraries and bookstores will be more likely to have Southern Sami books (if they have any at all).

As for the rest, I think Chung has already said everything I had to say and more.
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby Mista » Sat Dec 22, 2018 7:42 am

zjones wrote:
Mista wrote:I think you should join me and study Sami. It's an official language in Norway, after all :lol:


I totally forgot about Sami! :lol: I used to really love Scandinavia when I was younger (both of my cats have Swedish names because of this period in my life), and I remember wanting to learn Sami. Will you be learning Sami in 2019? I don't think I saw a post from you on this resolutions thread, but maybe I missed it.


I haven't posted my resolutions yet, but I have already been learning Sami for a little over a year, and I will continue to to so next year. My level is currently around A1.
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby cjareck » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:08 am

I'll stick to my almost traditional resolution for last two years ;) I'll finally finish FSI Hebrew Basic Course. This time, however, I plan to finish it in June and then I hope to switch free resources to the other language. I didn't decide which, but this doesn't matter. The decision of today will not be valid in June :) There are various possibilities (in alphabetical order) - Arabic, French, Mandarin, Russian. My French and Russian are on the level that I can use them in my work, but with difficulty. So the goal would be to improve the knowledge to be able to read in those languages without any problem. That is also a drawback because since I can handle original materials created in them, the motivation is not as strong as in cases of Arabic and Mandarin.
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby mrap » Sat Dec 22, 2018 12:35 pm

Norwegian
Maintain my A2 level, take some textbook reviews, Duolingo vocab reviews, daily listening. Passive input mainly, potentially will find a Norwegian living in my area to practice spoken language.

French
Maintain A2 level, take some textbook reviews, Duolingo vocab reviews, daily listening. Passive input mainly. No plans yet on active input, maybe if I don't find language partner for Norwegian, then maybe will try to fill my time with a French one.

Other
Want to dabble in a language with a different script - cannot choose between Hebrew (more study materials) and Georgian (not so much materials). Any input, why you would learn one or another, your opinions. Remember that this is just for fun and dabbling, so no other external motivations (I want to visit both Georgia and Israel, so this does not help me decide in anyway better). What would you take?
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby tarvos » Sat Dec 22, 2018 3:39 pm

Don't really do resolutions usually, but my goal is predominantly to maintain what I have (which is a day job in and of itself...) and improve my East Asian languages (Japanese, Korean, Mandarin). Right now I'd only claim some form of fluency in Mandarin, though I do have the basics of Korean and Japanese down a little as well.

Anything else... really, I'm okay where those languages are concerned. I can read books and everything in all those languages, without too much trouble, except maybe for Greek, but even there I am pretty ok. And all the languages I've dabbled in... well, they are just for dabbling anyhow.

The only exception is Hebrew, but Hebrew seems to exist in limbo by now. I'll fix it someday.
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby CarlyD » Sat Dec 22, 2018 7:25 pm

My goal for 2018 was a vague "work on German" according to the old thread. Part way through the year I started my 175-Day Challenge, and I've liked the results from that, so....

For 2019, I'm setting up my 365-Day Challenge, where I'll be working on something every single day. No exceptions. No excuses. As it gets closer I'm going to set up very clear goals regarding books or courses, but as long as I work on something every day, I'll meet my year goal.

Although at some point in the year I do want to learn the Russian alphabet at least.
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Re: Language related New Year's resolutions for 2019

Postby coldrainwater » Sun Dec 23, 2018 1:42 am

NoManches wrote:I'd like to spend more time this year consuming media from different Spanish speaking countries. Ideally, I'd find a show or at least a podcast from each country that I could work with for a reasonable amount of time. I'd like to learn a little more about each country and how the Spanish varies from each country. I'm hoping that doing this will help improve my listening skills for those harder accents, and will give me an even better appreciation for the language.
Brun Ugle wrote:I was considering doing the same thing. I was planning on trying to find TV shows from all the countries I'm still missing (which is most of them), but I suppose podcasts could also be good. I just tend not to get hooked on them as easily.

I am already in on this hook, line and sinker and am quite thankful that @NoManches kicked off the ES podcast thread as I feel it was much needed. Likewise, I seek harder accents and much tougher listening material in general to push the boundary. Accent and challenge level form a variety of litmus test for me prior to engaging with a new podcast and I will likely stick to an old personal rule of thumb and aim for 50-100 hours per podcast. Depending on the cast, I would devote a week or two to each, yielding a minimum of about 25 new podcasts for 2019, all above my current level.

I may keep listening to such a preponderance of audio that my vocabulary and even reading capacity slide a bit next year. That is intentional and is a very conservative trade to make. 2019 also seems like a good year for some casual excursions into Spanish forums (styled like this one for example) as a secondary focal point, which I think might give a small boost to productive skills and some really cool/unexpected net language benefits. I am considering skipping most formal grammar study for the year, and am willing to bet that the forum work turns out to be nearly as valuable. Grammar is likely my weakest area (hopefully I would test out of A2 range finally, but you never know).
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