AroAro's log (languages, books, certificates)

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AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Jan 21, 2022 7:21 am

DaveAgain wrote:
AroAro wrote:
Reading - still reading "His Bloody Project", a very engaging book. Even though we know from the very beginning who the murder is, the story is very compelling and I really liked that it's set in rural Scotland, in a village of Culduie that happens to really exist and is located near Isle of Skye (many, many years ago I worked on Isle of Skye during one summer - seems like it was in another life! - and could see the landscapes described in the book with my own eyes). I'm reading a paper book so I had to check some unknown words in my pocket dictionary, mainly related to rural Scotland - ghillie, fleece, flaughter, peat. I'm pretty sure I knew what peat means but somehow I forgot it.
The Skye boat song (over the sea to Skye) is a song you used to learn in primary school in the UK.

EDIT
I had to look up flaughter too! :-)


That's a nice song! I had to check the images on Google to get the idea of what a flaugher actually looks like:)

WEEKLY UPDATE

One of the teachers from my son's kindergarten was tested positive for Covid so he has to stay 10 days on quarantine, and that means I have to call in sick and stay with him - result: there won't be much language learning next week! Never mind, I just hope all the kids will be fine.

Russian - lesson 57 of "Perfectionnement Russe". I listened to the episode about Patrick White from "Литературный Нобель" and it was actually quite easy to follow (maybe because the guest was a woman and women generally speak more clearly?) whereas the episode about green energy from "Не верю!" was really hard

Hebrew - I did the first 3 lessons from "Hebrajski dla początkujących" - learned lots of phrases that are used in everyday life. Learned 487/625 words from Memrise

Reading - I finished "His Bloody Project" - the last 30-40 pages that described the trial were not that easy, the register was definitely different in comparison to the first part of the book which included the memoir of the murderer. I saw the verb to aver for the first time ever and had to check its meaning. Now, I'm reading Robert D. Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts" in Polish translation. I already have some issues with this book but will give an opinion once read.
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Jan 21, 2022 3:42 pm

DaveAgain wrote:The Skye boat song (over the sea to Skye) is a song you used to learn in primary school in the UK.


It became quite popular a few years ago thanks to the Outlander series:


Another rendition (English and Gaelic):
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Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

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AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Jan 28, 2022 8:14 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

It is the last day of my son's quarantine. It was not that bad after all, he's not having any bothering symptoms and spending a little time together was something we all needed, even though I had to log in every day to check my incoming mailbox at work... I still found time for language learning, I think that I used this time more efficiently than in previous weeks. I didn't do any listening activities though.

Russian - lesson 62 of "Perfectionnement Russe"

Hebrew - did 2 more lessons from "Hebrajski dla początkujących", learned 525/625 words from Memrise

Reading - still reading "Balkan Ghosts", it got better than initially expected
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AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Feb 04, 2022 2:27 pm

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - lesson 68 of "Perfectionnement Russe". Lesson number 67 was really interesting because it was about contemporary Russian literature - they even mentioned Ustinova whose book I read last year. And they talked about Ulitskaya - her books are supposed to be profoundly touching. I'm all for some emotional reading, will see soon if what they said about her is true.

Hebrew - did 2 more lessons from "Hebrajski dla początkujących", learned 575/625 words from Memrise

Reading - so I finished "Balkan Ghosts" and it was an interesting glimpse of Central Europe right after the fall of communism. One of the problems I had with the book is the insinuation by Robert Kaplan that nazism appeared in Austria and Germany because Germanic peoples lived close to Slavic and Balkan nations... I'll refrain from commenting on that. Now, it's time for something much more lightweight - I'm reading an autobiography of a half-Polish half-Bulgarian singer. She was mildly popular in the 90' and then disappeared completely from the music scene. A few years ago, she gave a few interviews and published this book - the cover screams "I was once a star but became a homeless volunteer". So dramatic!
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AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Feb 11, 2022 8:28 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - I finished "Perfectionnement Russe"! I admit I didn't go through the last 3-4 lessons in detail but anyway I am proud of myself. I'm not going to do the active phase. Now, I'm reviewing once again the grammar book I read last year - conjugations and declensions are now making more sense ;) then, I'll start working with "Mówimy po rosyjski" (I have the impression most coursebooks are called "We speak Russian") - it's an intermediate coursebook in Polish but it was published in the 80' in Moscow (I guess there are versions available in other languages). I'm not planning to read it very carefully and do all the exercices, I'm rather curious to see what it looks like.
I also finished my "Ostanovka Rossiya" magazine, I underlined 156 words to be memorized. Next issue of the magazine that I'm going to read is all about Moscow, its history and tourist attractions, so that will be interesting.
Regarding listening, I'm concentrating on the BBC podcast "Что это было?" - I understand much more of what is being said than a few months ago (all those "Russian with Max" episodes are bearing fruit now!) and during the work, I listen to "Радио России". "Becти ФМ" is geared heavily towards politics and news reports whereas "Радио России" is, how to put it?, closer to everyday life - there was for example a broadcast about collection of books for libraries in remote areas of Russia, and that was fun to listen to it and understand most of it.

Hebrew
- I finished "Hebrajski dla początkujących" which means my journey with Hebrew came to a halt for the moment but I'm going to finish the Memrise course (602/625 words learned) and then will search for an activity that will help me maintain what I've learned so far. And that means I can start learning Bulgarian! I will write more about it next week.

Reading - so I read the singer's autobiography I mentioned in the last post and it was badly written but at the least she was honest and said she didn't hire any ghostwriter and wrote it herself. Now, I'm reading another bad book - "La guerre au bord du fleuve" by Jean Hatzfeld and it's so dull that I have to force myself to open it. But I decided to read most of my paper books before I buy any new books in French or English, so I have to suffer a little bit... Actually, reading a bad book from time to time is beneficial because it makes me appreciate the good books even more :)
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AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Tue Feb 15, 2022 8:00 am

BULGARIAN LANGUAGE

As already mentioned, I decided to put Hebrew on hold and start a new language - Bulgarian. Learning Hebrew was a humbling experience but I'm glad I dabbled in this language because it made me realize how hard it is to study a language that is outside one's comfort zone and I admire the effort done by all those people learning Chinese or Japanese (or whatever other language unrelated to one's native tongue).

Why Bulgarian? I studied Romance languages at the university but actually, I had wanted to enter a faculty of Slavic languages and study Slovak and Bulgarian. Slovak - because it is the language most similar to Polish and Bulgarian because it's on the other side of the spectrum - it's the most divergent Slavic language from Polish. I was always intrigued by it, ever since I read that it has definite articles - a Slavic language with articles? That's insane! But hey, in Bulgarian there is no declension of substantives - that's even more insane because declension is such an intrinsic feature of Slavic languages, so I'm really curious to see what a Slavic languages without declensions looks like. Bulgarian may have dropped declensions but on the other hand, it preserved a complicated conjugation system with plethora of tenses that were lost in Polish or Russian. Not only that, Bulgarian even acquired an additional tense mood (I guess it came probably from Turkic languages) - inferential mood that conveys information not directly seen by the speaker. Learning Bulgarian will also be an opportunity to explore the group of Southern Slavic languages which are quite different from Western and Eastern Groups, although Russian adopted a lot of vocabulary from Bulgarian because Bulgarian was the first Slavic language to be written down and was used in Orthodox Church (as Old Church Slavonic). I'm also interested in Slavic linguistics, history and mythology so exploring other Slavic languages is quite exciting.

I guess I should have more success with Bulgarian than with Hebrew, not because Polish and Bulgarian are related (I don't understand much of spoken Bulgarian, and even in written form it is very different from Polish but now I can at least detect loanwords from/to Russian thanks to my study of Russian) but rather because I'm somewhat familiar with Balkan Sprachbund features thanks to Romanian, so lack of infinitive and postclictc articles are nothing new to me.

I'm going to start with Assimil's "Le Bulgare Sans Peine" and a Polish coursebook for beginners "Говорите ли български?" published a few decades ago. I will use them simultaneously, doing 1 lesson of Assimil and 1 lesson of the Polish course. The good thing about learning "small" languages is that there are not so many resources and that should push me to explore the native content in Bulgarian pretty soon in the process (I admit - I tend to drown in courses and grammar books in languages that offer a lot of resources).

So that's it. I'm now having a little bit more constraints on the time I can allocate to language learning so my progress will be slow, but we'll see how things will shake up in the end. I will also try to update systematically the master list of resources for Bulgarian.
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Caromarlyse
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby Caromarlyse » Tue Feb 15, 2022 8:26 am

How exciting! I shall be following with interest (I don't think I'll manage more than one Slavic language, so I'll live unrealised dreams and hopes vicariously through your studies...).
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Radioclare
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby Radioclare » Tue Feb 15, 2022 9:23 am

Me too! I went to Bulgaria for the first time in 2019 and found I could guess the meaning of a surprising amount of the written language either from Russian or Croatian/Serbian. I even bought a textbook and some children's books in the hope of starting learning. But then Covid scuppered any future travel plans and I gave up to focus on Russian. I started using the site Bulgaro which I thought was quite cool for the basics, but you can only do a certain number of lessons before it wants you to pay for a subscription, so I quit at that point.
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AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Tue Feb 15, 2022 2:45 pm

Caromarlyse wrote:How exciting! I shall be following with interest (I don't think I'll manage more than one Slavic language, so I'll live unrealised dreams and hopes vicariously through your studies...).


Thank you, I hope my studies will be a source of excitement and maybe even inspiration :)

Radioclare wrote:Me too! I went to Bulgaria for the first time in 2019 and found I could guess the meaning of a surprising amount of the written language either from Russian or Croatian/Serbian.


That's nice! I would love to travel extensively in Central/Eastern Europe but had always put it off, then the pandemic came and it's complicated to plan anything in advance (and I am a very bad travel planner anyway) but I'm sure I'll use my Russian or Bulgarian in these countries one day.
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cjareck
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Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby cjareck » Fri Feb 18, 2022 6:19 am

Well, it's a pity that you've dropped Hebrew, but Bulgarian is also extremely interesting. Good luck with this new project!
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