Tex does Armenian in one year

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LinguaTex
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:58 pm
Location: Texas
Languages: L1: American English
B2: Japanese
B1: Esperanto
A1: Greek
PRE A1: Armenian
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Tex does Armenian in one year

Postby LinguaTex » Fri Aug 16, 2019 6:57 pm

Introduction
Hello everyone, I'm Tex! I'm going to try and learn as much Armenian as I can before my month long trip to Armenia next year. I will be documenting my language journey here in order to visualize my progress along the way. I've been a lurker of these forums for a bit, but hopefully updating my log over the course of the year will become somewhat routine. Feel free to follow my log and leave comments.

If you'd like to know a little bit more about my background, I can tell you that I am currently a sophomore linguistics student at a certain Texan university. I've studied a few different languages to various extents before, but I do have a but habit of jumping around a little too often. Other than that, I do have some amateur experience in the field of JP-->ENG translation from when I worked briefly for a small Japanese company in high school.

But that's enough about that... let's get started!

Day One
Before diving into anything else, I decided that I should first familiarize myself completely with Armenian script. There are a lot of online resources out there for this, but the best materials I came across were two separate YouTube videos uploaded by the user Curious Chris.

>First video (Armenian alphabet explained with examples and pronunciation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFot-3vBSvU&t=

>Second video (How to write the Armenian alphabet/ letters handwriting video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFwfJ3kzw4E

I sure am grateful for the second video, for the hand-written letters deviate a bit from the nature of the printed/computer ones. :lol:

Based on the content presented in the videos and what I found on Wikipedia's IPA page for Armenian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Armenian), I don't think I'll be struggling to much with the language's phonological inventory. It's definitely far less formidable than the inventories found in other "Caucasic" tongues like Georgian. Also according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, stress seems to be fixed on the last syllable of the word unless it contains the definite article (which I assume is a prefix), in which case it falls on the penultimate one.

I couldn't find any rules pertaining to capitalization in sentences, so for now I'll just assume I only capitalize the first word in a sentence, proper nouns, etc... If anyone on here knows these rules or manages to find a resource online about them, please share them!

Reflection
That's all for today, folks! I know this post was incredibly brief, but I have to get ready for work soon. I may edit it one more time later this evening. I initially started the morning a bit intimidated of the Armenian script, but after obtaining a better understanding of it I have only grown more fond of it. I sure can't wait to visit the Armenian Alphabet Monument in Artashavan now! Check out the image below if you haven't yet seen what I'm talking about.

Image
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MorkTheFiddle
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Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Tex does Armenian in one year

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri Aug 16, 2019 10:46 pm

Texas, eh? Welcome to the forum. And thanks for the wonderful picture of the Guadalupe Mountains. From Dog Canyon, looks like? :mrgreen: ;)
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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LinguaTex
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:58 pm
Location: Texas
Languages: L1: American English
B2: Japanese
B1: Esperanto
A1: Greek
PRE A1: Armenian
x 14

Re: Tex does Armenian in one year

Postby LinguaTex » Sat Aug 17, 2019 4:23 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Texas, eh? Welcome to the forum. And thanks for the wonderful picture of the Guadalupe Mountains. From Dog Canyon, looks like? :mrgreen: ;)


Thank you for the welcome, and yes, born and raised!
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User avatar
LinguaTex
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:58 pm
Location: Texas
Languages: L1: American English
B2: Japanese
B1: Esperanto
A1: Greek
PRE A1: Armenian
x 14

Re: Tex does Armenian in one year

Postby LinguaTex » Sat Aug 17, 2019 7:28 pm

Day Two
So here's just a quick update. I've decided to set some short-term goals for myself to achieve. There's no set time in which I must achieve them, but I am aiming to have everything checked off before September 1st.

1. Create a playlist of 20 Armenian songs
2. Complete the first 6 lessons of the Peace Corps Armenian Video Course (2015)
3. Complete the first 3 modules of AYOlingo
4. Complete the first free trial lesson of Armenian on the Pimsleur app

This is actually isn't a whole lot of work but my current schedule will surely prove to be an impediment. Between my job and a new semester starting next week, I won't have an excessive amount of time.

As for the remainder of this day, I will practice my Armenian reading/ hand writing skills again until my evening shift starts. In the mean time, feel free to drop a link if you'd like to help contribute to my Armenian song playlist! Like many learners, I find music in my target language to be very motivating at times. Bellow is all I have so far...

Armenian Music Playlist
>Յարխուշտա by Sevak Amroyan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q13BMlWKZWU
>Գինի լից by Sevak Amroyan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM80m8k5dhw
>Գինի Լից by Adana Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_bT_Qn7xYM
>Իմը չես գիտեմ by Adana Project feat. Andre Simonian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaCN1KVwvEA
>Ansahman ser by Razmik Amyan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejRfXHEzWdo
>Bari Arakeel by Khatchadour Tankian feat. Serj Tankian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOkRCR40sqU
>Artsakh by Serj Tankian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttfk0QinrQk

Lastly, does anybody know how to make those little progress bars in your signature? I'm not very tech savy :P
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