Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

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Brun Ugle
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Nov 01, 2019 7:59 am

I’m definitely not getting through 6 languages a day like before and certainly not all 9 (or 8, since I don’t worry too much about Norwegian). In fact, I only managed six in total these past two days. Part of the problem is that my efforts have become very unbalanced. Before I tried to get 30 minutes per language. Even then, some languages barely got their 30 minutes, while others might get well over an hour. Now though, with Kurdish and Turkish at top priority, I feel I’m doing OK if I manage 30 minutes three times a week for the others. It’s not ideal for learning them, but slow progress is better than none, especially since I’m not willing to give up on any of them just yet, and eventually I will learn enough Kurdish and Turkish to have a basic conversation and then I might relax a little more on those.

Here are a couple of highlights from the last two days:

BCS
I did Assimil lesson 11 (passive). Technically, I had done this part of the book before, but I decided to start over, so I’m redoing some lessons. Anyway, this was the lesson that contained the (hotel) name “Stari mlin” and that reminded me of our trip to Bratislava. The was a little café that we went to the first few mornings for breakfast called “Starý mlyn”. Dave was doing his usual thing where he talks to everybody and he decided to ask the people working there what the name meant. I said I knew what it meant, “Old mill”, but he didn’t believe me and went and asked. I was right, of course. During the whole trip I was listening to what Dave said to people and then using those phrases myself, amazing him and Rick with my ability to pick up Slovak so quickly. Well, now my secret is out. I was basically just speaking Croatian with a few modifications. I’d listen to Dave and find that it was nearly the same with just a few sounds changed. Sometimes there was a word or two that was different and I’d have to actually remember them, but mostly it was just a matter of noticing the minor differences and modifying what I’d learned in Croatian. So, I might not be quite the linguistic genius Rick and Dave think I am.

Polish
There was one more pronunciation question I had about Polish, but keep forgetting to ask. It’s about the ę sound. I can hear the nasalization when it comes in the middle of the word, but when it comes at the end, like in się, it just sounds like a regular e, or maybe just barely nasalized. Is this right? Or are my ears missing something?

6WC
I had almost decided to choose Turkish as my target language for this 6WC and leave Kurdish for the next one, but last night my boyfriend’s second eldest brother called and his brother’s entire family (about 20 people, it seemed) was there wanting to speak to me and they only speak Kurdish, so all I can really say is “hi” and “how are you?” and that’s it. It didn’t stop them though. So, I’m really feeling the pressure to learn Kurdish as fast as possible, so it will be my target for this time. Hopefully, I’ll at least be able to manage some small talk by the end. I’d appreciate any tips for learning a language without a lot of good materials, but with access to a native speaker. I’m really more of a “use books up to B1+ and then start speaking” type of person rather than a “speak from day 1” type, so I think I’m going to have to take a big leap outside my comfort zone here. I did just get a new book. It came yesterday. It looks like it might be slightly better than most of what I have, but it’s in French! All my books have some kind of disadvantage. They either lack translations and glossaries for the Kurdish, or they have too few exercises, or they hop over stuff and don’t explain things well enough, or they are in a language I don’t know well. Or all of the above.
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cjareck
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby cjareck » Sat Nov 02, 2019 7:17 am

Brun Ugle wrote:I
Polish
There was one more pronunciation question I had about Polish, but keep forgetting to ask. It’s about the ę sound. I can hear the nasalization when it comes in the middle of the word, but when it comes at the end, like in się, it just sounds like a regular e, or maybe just barely nasalized. Is this right? Or are my ears missing something?

You're right. In most cases, we simply say "e" at the end of the word. It has grammatical meaning in the verbs of the present tense. Those ending with "e" are 3rd person singular and those with "ę" are 1st person singular. But many Poles do not bother to pronounce that clearly even then. In the middle, you may also hear it pronounced as "en".

By the way, "ą" is often pronounced as "oł"
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby Serpent » Sun Nov 03, 2019 12:08 am

I'm excited for you :D BTW gloss lessons are available for all your languages apart from Polish :)
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Nov 03, 2019 9:35 am

Serpent wrote:I'm excited for you :D BTW gloss lessons are available for all your languages apart from Polish :)

I know, but there aren’t a lot for Turkish and Kurmanji unfortunately. Once my level is high enough, I’ll do the few lessons they have though.

I once found another site that seemed a bit similar to GLOSS, but you had to pay about $5 per month and I think it had Kurmanji and also some languages not on GLOSS, like Tigrinya. I was sure I bookmarked it, but I can’t find it, so I think I bookmarked it on my old computer that is now dead. I’ve searched the web, but can’t find it again. I thought it had been mentioned on this forum too, (by IronMike, I thought, but I’m probably wrong about that), but I’ve searched and searched and couldn’t find it. I’m beginning to think I dreamed the whole thing.
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby Brun Ugle » Sat Nov 09, 2019 8:15 am

Tengo una pregunta para los hispanohablantes que lean mi bitácora. Hay un ejercicio en mi libro de texto en el que hay que completar unas frases con una preposición, y una de las soluciones me confunde un poco. La frase es: ¿ _____ qué persona de tu pasado te gustaría reencontrarte? Yo creía que la preposición adecuada sería "con", pero según el libro es "a". ¿Hay alguien que me pueda explicar esto?
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby iguanamon » Sat Nov 09, 2019 12:15 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:Tengo una pregunta para los hispanohablantes que lean mi bitácora. Hay un ejercicio en mi libro de texto en el que hay que completar unas frases con una preposición, y una de las soluciones me confunde un poco. La frase es: ¿ _____ qué persona de tu pasado te gustaría reencontrarte? Yo creía que la preposición adecuada sería "con", pero según el libro es "a". ¿Hay alguien que me pueda explicar esto?

Bueno, no soy un nativo, pero a mi ver es un ejemplo del uso del concepto de la "Personal 'a' " (aquí tenga la explicación en un sitio en inglés). Es que es necesario usar 'a' cuando referimos a personas específicas. No traducimos la " 'a' personal" en inglés. Solo existe para indicar que es una persona a quien estamos haciendo referencia. Este concepto de la gramática es algo que se ha pegado conmigo desde mis días (muchos años atrás) en el colegio asistiendo clases de español. Claro, siempre hay excepciones a la regla ;)
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby tiia » Sat Nov 09, 2019 2:36 pm

Obviously encontrar is often combined with a. The Finnish wiktionary has some more example sentences than the English or German one: https://fi.wiktionary.org/wiki/encontrar
The German wiktionary only tells that encontrar a alguien is a common combination. The translation in German, however, also tells that it's "to meet someone" an not "to meet with someone". And just like Iguanamon wrote, the a should be there due to the fact it's a person you're meeting.
In German you can have this construction with and without "with", the former however requires a reflexive verb (sich mit jemandem treffen), the latter not (jemanden treffen). I don't know how much that helps...

I'm too lazy to write this in Spanish...
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby Brun Ugle » Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:38 pm

Thanks, both of you! I was thinking of (re)encontrarse as going with “con”, but I guess it can go with “a” as well, apparently with a slightly different nuance in meaning.
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby smallwhite » Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:41 pm

> La frase es: ¿ _____ qué persona de tu pasado te gustaría reencontrarte?

Pero uno encuentra a alguien y se encuentra con alguien, ¿no?
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Re: Brun Ugle comes clean: Confessions of a wayward owl (NO/ES/DE/JA/FR/PL/TR/KMR/BCS)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun Nov 10, 2019 10:24 pm

Another lazy person here, but tiia's explanation is similar to the one I know - encontrar con is something you plan to do while encontrar a is more casual (as in meeting someone in the street).
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