Deutsch and magyar

[Dagane]

en

That's my two cents as a native speaker of (Canadian) English.

Canadian? That comes as a surprise!

I may start recording English words unknown to me again. I did it in Spanish for a few years, but I lost the list when I changed mobile phones. I do remember the first two words I opened the list with: "rorante" and "crencha".

We never stop learning!

However, does learning vocab pay off beyond a certain limit? As a kid I was often told "en castellano, por favor", because I used formal or literary words without realising of it. Not particularly low frequency words but words that aren't so common in speech despite conveying different or accented meanings in comparison to their more widespread counterparts. An example: "atisbar" instead of "ver". I got scolded for that a few times. But... I was using the word right. Same in English, although that was a different story. I built up a huge vocabulary out of reading without sufficient speaking practice. Consequently, I had to painfully extricate formal and informal nuances from it.

[Dagane]

hu

Van eyy barátnőm, mint az iskola óta ismerek. Ő nagyon intelligens és szép, de egy kis csúnya is. Sosem nincs a barátja az iskolában. Tehát szomorú és reménytelen még volt. A helyzet a főiskolában ismételtelt és a barátnőm deprimált. Pedig a munkában sikeres, mert ő olyan szorgalmas.

A főiskola után találkozott egy fiatal fiúval. Egymásba szerettek. A barátnőm most terhes. A bébi a fiú. Bár a házaspár mindig vitatkozik. A véleményem szerint a férfi nagyon kellemes, de a barátnőm neki nem szereti már. Ő mindig úgy gondolja, hogy ő túl rút. Ezert nem engedi őt el. A helyzet a fiával nehezebb, mint eddig bármikor.

[tarvos]

Canadian? That comes as a surprise!

Yeah, Canadian. What did you expect, the States? I want no part of that :p

[coldrainwater]

enI believe I would have known the most common words in the list should I live in the States or learned American English. However, I learned British English and live in Britain. At the same time I noticed the use of American slang and the lack of British slang. The book lacks words that I hear around all the time and "should" have made it into such a funny book like: dodgy, tacky, knackered, mate, bloke, tad, faff around, chap, bloody, chuffed, bonkers, naff, easy peasy... You get the point.

I often read American books in the original, but I'd say the ironic tone and the dialogues of "Catch-22" are different to most...I may start recording English words unknown to me again. I did it in Spanish for a few years, but I lost the list when I changed mobile phones. I do remember the first two words I opened the list with: "rorante" and "crencha".

However, does learning vocab pay off beyond a certain limit? As a kid I was often told "en castellano, por favor", because I used formal or literary words without realising of it. Not particularly low frequency words but words that aren't so common in speech despite conveying different or accented meanings in comparison to their more widespread counterparts. An example: "atisbar" instead of "ver". I got scolded for that a few times. But... I was using the word right. Same in English, although that was a different story. I built up a huge vocabulary out of reading without sufficient speaking practice. Consequently, I had to painfully extricate formal and informal nuances from it.

It is uncanny that I notice a relevant parallel for almost everything you relate here. My experience learning German has introduced me to a boatload of British English that I have never seen before. So it is your situation in reverse. Two resources, learnwitholiver and dict.cc both offered tremendous exposure to British English. Dict.cc offers a very balanced presentation between American and British English and Learnwitholiver was very much based in British.

I am starting to actively include unfamiliar English terms right alongside new German words also. It is helpful to me now that I have a good base in German vocab and can afford the extra strain. It is useful because it helps me to be honest about how well I really know English words and it also enforces good L2 learning habits on L1. Staying fuzzy on English words I keep seeing just because I was too lazy to heft the physical dictionary back in the 1990's is nothing more than a bad habit. Conversely, it all provides a nice counter check to see if my L2 learning techniques are sensical or not.

There is a fallacy around English in my opinion since it comprises so many words (600k+). It is kind of like, so many words, why bother if current passive vocab >= 30k? As long as you have a structure to incorporate and use them, I think active pursuit is still rewarding. A former CEO of mine always said, if you aren't moving forward, you are moving backwards. For him, there was no maintenance. Yet for us, we almost have to consider the term. Actively reading challenging English has a carryover benefit even for natives, though for me it can take several months of exposure to show. Authors do it all the time to prepare for writing and think it is 'worth it to me' just to enhance written communication or at least give it interesting variety. After 30+ years of English and 10+ in corporate America, I would be kidding myself if I didn't admit that my English language skills need a refresher. As an analyst and developer, if there is one skills that I think everyone could improve on indefinitely, it is communication, in all forms and language is almost like a weapon allowing you to do more good for the world in that sense. I use Grammarly on nearly anything I write that is of appreciable length. It still catches some deeply ingrained errors.

It also depends on your audience and with whom you speak. In the right crowd, a crowd that loves learning, for example, all of that becomes highly relevant and enriching, normal even. My best Spanish LE partners were like that. We would talk about reading Miguel Delibes (has a dictionary devoted to him and I enjoyed reading Las Ratas) and watching a fun light-hearted western (Bone Tomahawk 2015) about troglodytes (cognate in both EN/ES) without batting an eye. The exchange on suggesting native materials was mutual.

I am a word lover and language lover to begin with so all my opinions are biased. Nevertheless, I had to go through the same atisbar/ver situation in both Spanish and English, respectively at different stages in my life. My heart would sink a bit every time I heard ver in placed atisbar, but I would have to accept it and was scolded in high school more than once for English equivalents thereof. A lot of times it is tricky and you have to know your audience, something a teenage me would have been incapable of. These thoughts do cast a bit of doubt on my strong tendency to use 19th century Castellano in 21st century USA.

After DaveAgain's last comment, Catch 22 went up another rung, fast climbing to the forefront of my EN reading list. Close to Lolita even.

[Dagane]

(...)
After DaveAgain's last comment, Catch 22 went up another rung, fast climbing to the forefront of my EN reading list. Close to Lolita even.

I did notice you're a word lover by reading your log .

As you wrote, it is difficult to discern when to use a particular speech register as a teenager. Gosh, I even find it difficult as an adult! Some attitudes motivated me to simplify my speech. It was hard because I always loved reading and I couldn't always separate formal from informal or old from new, but I tried hard because I didn't want to sound "weird".

Same in English. Not only do I talk about rare and arcane words, but simple words that you don't hear as frequently as I used to utter them as well. Say, "several" instead of "some". You can't stop learning, of course. I can't be perfect. I may hold a C2 in English, but I still misplace prepositions and my prosody isn't always right. The same goes for Spanish rare irregular plurals and so on and so forth.

The same people who bugged me because of my speech used to find my writing surprisingly accessible. I write since I was 6 and I especially enjoy writing poetry. I make a very conscious effort to write everyday words lit by an unusual light, but everyday words after all. If a word in a line rings slightly literary, chances are I modify the entire line. I'm not sure where this trait comes from since I enjoy reading books written in rather intricate styles.

Since you mention Delibes, have you read "Cinco horas con Mario"? It's probably one of my favourite books. I quite also liked "Lolita" and the love-hate feelings towards its charactets one develops while reading it.

[tarvos]

Ahora sí quiero leer tus poemas

[coldrainwater]

Since you mention Delibes, have you read "Cinco horas con Mario"? It's probably one of my favourite books. I quite also liked "Lolita" and the love-hate feelings towards its charactets one develops while reading it.

Not yet. I will add it back to my list. I came very close to reading Cinco horas con Mario several times but ended up choosing different books at the time. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Dagane]

Ahora sí quiero leer tus poemas

es

Uy, ¡qué vergüenza!

Hace unos años me publicaron algunos, incluso quedé segundo en un concurso (ésos también se publicaron). Entonces no pensaba en publicar. Ahora sí, y justamente ahora no acierto con el cómo; he escrito más y mejor durante los últimos años, sin publicarlo. Lo intento de vez en cuando (vale, quizá no demasiado en serio), e intentarlo sin resultado ha hecho que la confianza en mí mismo decaiga.

[Dagane]

de

Meine Freundin und ich haben anderen Freund, dessen Niveau optimal ist, zu unseres wöchentliche Gespräch eingeladen. Das heißt, wir könnten komplizierten Diskussionen verlaufen. Das erste Mal bemerkte ich, dass mein Niveau zurückgegangen ist. Das gleiches Problem habe ich mit alle meiner Sprachen und ich habe das Gefühl, dass ich durch ein paar energielosen Wochen durchgehe.

Was noch? Ich habe anderes Buch auf deutsch, dessen Titel "Wunderbare Jahre" ist, gelesen. Ich habe auch verschiedenen kurzen Dokus ferngesehen. Na ja, ich sollte jetzt schlafen. Es sei denn, dass ich mitten in mein Schreiben einschlafen wollte...

[Dagane]

en

I keep learning Hungarian 4.5 months after having started. So far, so good. It started as a game: I'll download this app, study these few words and the lockdown may stop feeling so disheartening. Well, it worked. And I continue learning.

It hasn't stopped being sort of a game. I do follow a textbook, FSI's 2 volume course. Modern courses are outrageously expensive. But I also deviate from the course very often. I've only completed 6 lessons out of 24 because they don't engage me enough to go through the learning material quicker and because I don't want to "feel" I am studying. However, I do appreciate their value and I go back to the drills every time I lack focus. Also, I regularly go through the same lessons so they really stick.

What have I been doing since I posted my update on Hungarian last July? Where am I? Let's see.

GRAMMAR
I took a deep breath and dived into it. In particular, I studied and practised negated sentences, the 9 locative noun cases and some verb conjugations (present determinate, future and past tenses). I can't say I master them, but I do have some experience with them. I also played around with conditional conjugations, other modal verbs and possession, but I wouldn't say I know their rules yet.
I use a couple grammar books. Usually, I read one of them and try to understand what it says. I then make my own synthesis and practise the lesson. A few days afterwards I read about it in the second grammar book to reinforce my knowledge and fill in the gaps.

VOCABULARY
I first learnt short sentences and expressions to help me open conversations and comment on everyday topics. Sentences like "Kérem ismetelje meg", "Nemsokára itt van szombat", "Nos, mondja", "A vélemenyem szerint..." or "Mi a faszomat csinálsz?". That gave me a patina of (false) fluency.
Lately, I've been taking a different approach. Since I now know better grammar, I don't need to rely so much on pre-cooked chunks because I can create my own. It isn't proving as simple as that but that was my thought anyway. So I am now learning larger lists of short words. And I love the fact that Hungarian vocabulary seems very logical and that the most basic words are usually very short. I hope I can recognise many more by learning them.

READING
It still feels bloody hard. I managed to read three graded short stories. I will go back to it once my vocabulary improves a little. Because of my recent acquisition of large amounts of short words and the logic behind the language, I hope to recognise word formation patterns. My partner got me some novels but there's no way I can read them yet.

WRITING
I use Lang-8 every ten days or so. Although I make many mistakes, the message go through. Corrections helpsm me understand how to build sentences and how the word order affects their meaning.

LISTENING
I found a YouTube channel with hours of listening practice for beginners. Check this out as an example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kmj6R2kBofQ
Listening is also hard. I go through the videos in the channel as many times as I need to understand what's going on. Hungarians speak fast in YouTube, faster than face to face if you ask me, so I watch the videos at a reduced x0,75 speed. It usually does the trick.

PHONOLOGY
I brushed it up. Until a few weeks ago I mispronounced a few sounds (ly, sibilants before hard consonants).

SPEAKING
I am in the need for a speaking partner. I sometimes talk to my boyfriend but he wants to talk to me and not to my Hungariar-learner-me. Sometimes it goes well. Two days ago I had a good day and managed to hold a simple Hungarian conversation for some time. Yesterday, however, I couldn't distinguish between "unott" (bored) and "unalmas" (boring) and my boyfriend lost patience and switched to English. I don't want to drive him mad so I'll need to find a language partner. A couple of his friends are more patient with me because we never developed a relationship in English, but I don't see them often.

hu

A múlt héten volt egy problémám. Szabadságon voltam, mert a csadálomat meg akartom látogatni Spanyolországban. Az időjarás nem minden nap jó, de a szabadság nagyon szép. Az étel kítűnő, az emberek boldogok, és én nagyon elégedett voltam. Szükségem volt a barátoimmal és a családdal időre tölteni.

Londonban élek. Visszaérkezém után az első nap itt volt egy problémam. Nem volt hideg víz. Nos, nincs normális vízvezeték az lákasamban. Vezetékes víz helyett, a hazatetőn van kettő ciszterna vízzel. Egyik az enyém, és a másik a szomszédé. Mindkettő a lákasokat béreljük. A probléma nagy, mert fürödni nem tudtam. A fogokat mosni sem. A ciszternám nem működött, és a víz a lákasban forró volt, mert a hideg víz a ciszternában elfogyott.

A háziúr nem volt Londonban. Tehát, kellet valamit csinálni. A "tubus" a zuhanyról kaptam. A tubussal a vizet a ciszternából a szomsédé adtam, és a ciszternámba változtam. Nem túl, csak elég. Úgy tudtam a problémát rendez. Három nap múlva a háziúr a ciszternám rendezte.