AroAro's log (languages, books, certificates)

[Caromarlyse]

I listened to that Eine Stunde History episode on Bertha von Suttner too. I enjoyed it!

[AroAro]

WEEKLY UPDATE

English - I read one long article from "Time" about climate change and listened to 1 video by Lindie Botes, 1 by NativLang on Ancient Egyptian and 1 by "English with Lucy" about similar words and how to stop confusing them (e.g. especially vs. specially)

German - I finished "Practice Makes Perfect. German Pronouns and Propositions", unfortunately it would have been more suitable in early stages of my learning. I also finished listening to "Assimil Perfectionnement Allemand" and that was better, some lessons were quite challenging and I wrote down new words and will try to memorize them now. One of the lessons was about Heinrich Schliemann who discovered the location of Troy and they said he was a real polyglot and the knowledge of foreign languages helped him a lot in life. Supposedly, he learned several languages (Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian) in just two years while also working as a merchant and pursuing his archeological passion - a real role-model
Now, I'm working on "Teach Yourself Further German" and that will be the last German coursebook in my agenda! I hope to finish it quite quickly, I don't have enough patience (I'll just read the dialogues) and I want to move to my next project - Hebrew and Russian.
Reading - 3 articles from Der Spiegel. I also read some articles in German Wikipedia - I usually do it in English so I decided to switch finally to German.
Listening - 1 podcast from FunkNova (on genetics and race, I did not understand all of it but probably I would have problems even in Polish), 1 "Echo Der Welt" podcast and 1 podcast "Zwischen Hamburg und Haiti" from NDR Info

Romanian - I listened to the recordings from Assimil published in 1991 and just like I supposed, they clearly pronounce "sɨnt". The two Assimil courses (1991 and 2014 editions) were written by the same author and indeed the new version is very similar to the new one, some dialogues are basically the same. In the new version the dialogues are generally shorter but all in all the differences are quite small and I can recommend the two versions in the same measure.
Next - well, I think that's it, I'm done "studying" Romanian. I'm now going through the resources I have gathered for Hebrew and Russian and creating a study-plan for those two languages. I'll share my thoughts about it soon.
Reading - 3 articles from DeutscheWelle in Romanian
Listening - 3 episodes from "Istoria Romaniei by Calina", 1 video by Zaiafet (about introverts and extroverts) and 1 by Top Opt about paradoxes

Hebrew - I finished reading "Otiot, otiot", most of the later pages were dedicated to games and exercises with Hebrew letters and I skipped some of them. I will now try memorize the vocabulary from this book.

[AroAro]

HEBREW AND RUSSIAN PROJECT

It's finally time to take on new languages. I'm stopping now using coursebooks for German and Romanian but I will continue to improve my listening skills in these two languages. I will use the time freed up by German and Romanian to start learning Hebrew and Russian. I already know the Cyrillic and Hebrew scripts and I'll use Assimil courses in the first place for both languages. I will mix it with other resources in order to consolidate grammar points and vocabulary early on instead of covering courses one by one. With German, my problem was that I had gathered a lot of resources but was not able to sort them wisely so sometimes (especially in the last stages of studying) I picked up a book with texts/grammar exercises that would've been more suitable in the early stages of my learning process. And I want to avoid this error with Hebrew and Russian. I'll be using a lot of resources published for Polish students so most of the users here are probably not familiar with them but I'll try to give a short description when time comes.

So in practice, the list of resources I'll use in order to get past beginner phase is as follows:

Hebrew:
Assimil L'hebreu (2007 edition)
Samouczek języka hebrajskiego (published by Wiedza Powszechna in 2012)
Zeszyt 2. Ćwiczenia (Schorr's Foundation)
Assimil L'Hebreu Sans Peine (old version) - first volume (I will just listen to dialogues)
Zeszyt 3. Podręcznik (Schorr's Foundation)
40 lecons pour parler hebreu
Język hebrajski - kurs podstawowy (Edgar)
Hebrew From Scratch 1 (I'll use the last lessons as a graded reader)

Russian:
Assimil Le russe (2008 edition)
Mówimy po rosyjsku (1975, Wiedza Powszechna)
Język rosyjski dla początkujących (1976, Wiedza Powszechna)
Assimil Russe. Cahier d'exercices debutants
Grammatika bez problem (WSiP)
Repetytorium od A do Z (Kram)
Repetytorium tematyczno-leksykalne 1 (Wagros)
Shkatulochka. Elementary texts (graded reader)

I'd like to have gone through these resources by September 2020. Of course, I'm going to be flexible and make necessary modifications in my journey when needed. I also expect to make a faster progress in Russian because of its similarity to my native language whereas Hebrew will be my first non-Indoeuropean language that I'll learn seriously. I would not (re)start Hebrew were it not for this Forum (I tried to tackle it a few years ago but failed miserably). I was inspired by language logs by people who are learning Hebrew successfully (I dare to name here cjareck and sporedandroid). I believed that yes, it is possible to learn this language, so if they ever happen to be reading this - big thank you!

I will also change my daily routine when it comes to my "maintenance languages" - so by now, I had assigned each week to either English, French or Italian as my maintenance language I worked on during that given week. But now, with 5 languages under the belt, I would have to wait another 5 weeks before having contact again with, let's say, English. So I'll try to read one page from a magazine and watch one YT video in English on Monday, in French on Tuesday, in Italian on Wednesday, in German on Thursday, in Romanian on Friday and again back to English on Saturday and so on. I am always more busy in my work in the first quarter of the year so that may create some problems and impact my study routine but we'll see how it all will pan out.

[cjareck]

Samouczek języka hebrajskiego (published by Wiedza Powszechna in 2012)

If Shoshana Ronen wrote it, then I heard it has errors in the conjugation patterns. I tried to use that resource, but I was defeated by the 5th lesson, which suddenly got very complicated.

Język hebrajski - kurs podstawowy (Edgar)

Could you please review it shortly? I think they are offering a lot of languages, but I never heard any opinion about them.

And I would encourage you to use FSI Hebrew because of the excellent drills! Also, iwrit.pl is an excellent resource - dictionary and also conjugation patterns.

I was inspired by language logs by people who are learning Hebrew successfully (I dare to name here cjareck and sporedandroid). I believed that yes, it is possible to learn this language, so if they ever happen to be reading this - big thank you!

All pleasure is mine Good luck with your study!

[AroAro]

Samouczek języka hebrajskiego (published by Wiedza Powszechna in 2012)

If Shoshana Ronen wrote it, then I heard it has errors in the conjugation patterns. I tried to use that resource, but I was defeated by the 5th lesson, which suddenly got very complicated.

Język hebrajski - kurs podstawowy (Edgar)

Could you please review it shortly? I think they are offering a lot of languages, but I never heard any opinion about them.

And I would encourage you to use FSI Hebrew because of the excellent drills! Also, iwrit.pl is an excellent resource - dictionary and also conjugation patterns.

I was inspired by language logs by people who are learning Hebrew successfully (I dare to name here cjareck and sporedandroid). I believed that yes, it is possible to learn this language, so if they ever happen to be reading this - big thank you!

All pleasure is mine Good luck with your study!

Yes, exactly, it was written by Shoshana Ronen. I have the 4th edition from 2012 so maybe they fixed the errors by then? I decided to add this book to the bunch because I have a soft spot for Wiedza Powszechna in general. I used their resources to learn English, French and German and I collect their old publications for lesser known languages (Romanian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian and so on). But indeed, the learning curve in their Hebrew course seems to be very steep even though the dialogues are quite short. It would be hard to use it as a primary course book at an entry level I guess.

Regarding "Język hebrajski - kurs podstawowy (Edgar)", it looks more like a robust phrase book than a real course book. I'm not sure anyone would be able to start from zero with this one and make much progress. There are 11 lessons and for each there's a list of words, dialogues and cultural notes (in Polish though). The grammar is not explained at all. I hope to expand my vocab with this book.

I was considering the FSI course as well but I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume - almost 600 pages if I remember correctly. So kudos to everyone who did all of it

[AroAro]

WEEKLY UPDATE

Hebrew - I did the first 8 lessons from Assimil. That seems quite a lot but the first lessons are very short - the dialogue from the lesson 1 is literally "- Boker tov, - Boker or". They assume the student does not know the Hebrew alphabet so they introduce the letters step by step and they'll continue to do so till the 21st lesson. That's fine for me, I like these short dialogues, I can listen to them several times before moving on to the next lesson. I believe that in the old version of Assimil Hebrew course, the dialogues are much longer from the beginning so the lessons were probably more overwhelming. For the initial lessons, I relied on the vocabulary I acquired from Cahier d'ecriture, Otiot Otiot and Hebrew Script Hacking but now there are more new words in each lesson so next week I will definitely not rush through them so quickly. I will also do a lot of overtime before Christmas so language learning will sadly not be my priority.

Russian - I also did 8 lessons from Assimil, though the dialogues are longer than in the Hebrew course. What puzzles me is the Russian phonology - even though Polish and Russian are both Slavic languages, they differ a lot when it comes to pronunciation. In Russian, from what I understand, almost each consonant can be hard or soft - in Polish, not really (I believe the letters "t" or "r" are hard only). Moreover, these soft versions are pronounced in Russian differently than in Polish. For example, the female name Надя - the letter "d" is soft in both languages, but in Russian it's pronounced almost as if it were spelled "Nadźa" in Polish (but at the same time the quality of the soft "d" in Russian is different), or at least that's what I hear. So I'm reading the dialogues multiple times aloud and try to match the pronunciation from the recordings.

Maintenance languages - progress on track, I still find time to read one page and watch one video on YT daily. I listened to an interview in German with a guy who lives in Norway by a fjord and he pronounced "genug" as "genuch" ("ch" like in "machen"). I wonder if it's some dialect or maybe my ears played tricks on me. As for Romanian, I discovered on YT the channel "Romania, te iubesc" which is a series of tv reports on current Romanian issues - I like this format. I watched the episode about external debts - Romania did not have any debts by 1989 but many countries owed money to Romania, however Romania cannot get them back now. I also continue to listen to the episodes of "Istoria Romaniei by Calina" on Spotify, I'm at the episode 19 out of 43.
On Wednesday, I had a 1.5 hour call with my French chief accountant and Indian back office team. They do not speak their respective languages so I translate the exchanges between them. These calls are very tiring and confusing and I always end up speaking French to Indian guys and English to the French lady. I would not make a career as an interpreter!

[Dagane]

I listened to an interview in German with a guy who lives in Norway by a fjord and he pronounced "genug" as "genuch" ("ch" like in "machen"). I wonder if it's some dialect or maybe my ears played tricks on me.

I recently wrote about this because I used to pronounce "g" as "ch" and nobody ever corrected me. I realised of it myself and asked a German frienda, who told me it isn't Standard German but it is common in some dialects. He was never bothered by my pronunciation of the letter and he didn't regarded it as a mistake. I decided to corrected it nonetheless.

[AroAro]

I listened to an interview in German with a guy who lives in Norway by a fjord and he pronounced "genug" as "genuch" ("ch" like in "machen"). I wonder if it's some dialect or maybe my ears played tricks on me.

I recently wrote about this because I used to pronounce "g" as "ch" and nobody ever corrected me. I realised of it myself and asked a German frienda, who told me it isn't Standard German but it is common in some dialects. He was never bothered by my pronunciation of the letter and he didn't regarded it as a mistake. I decided to corrected it nonetheless.

Thanks, good to know! I was really wondering what was going on, I had never come across this pronunciation before.

[cjareck]

The German dialects that I've heard are Berliner (sorry for Polish transcription), "jut," "jenał" (in English spelling it would be something like "ut, yenau") for "gut" and "genau" and Freiburger (Schwarzwald) where they say "donnersztag" (in English "donneshtag") for "Donnerstag."

[AroAro]

The German dialects that I've heard are Berliner (sorry for Polish transcription), "jut," "jenał" (in English spelling it would be something like "ut, yenau") for "gut" and "genau" and Freiburger (Schwarzwald) where they say "donnersztag" (in English "donneshtag") for "Donnerstag."

I am exposed basically only to Hochdeutsch, so whenever I hear some deviations from the standard pronunciation, it makes me question my listening skills. The number of German dialects is just staggering.