A language learners’ forum

I can’t believe it's been such a long time since I last updated my log but there was a lot of things that kept me busy during this time. Fortunately, I continued my streak of language study and just skipped it on two days so I think I can be proud of myself.

I continued to read articles and watch videos on YT in my maintenance languages. If I had to sum up the time spent on these activities in September, it would probably result in 1 hour of listening in each language (EN, FR, IT) and 4-5 pages of reading in each of them as well. Maybe not very impressive but these languages are not my priorities and I am just happy maintaining contact with them.

As for German, I read a book by a Polish publisher that can be translated as “Talk about everything”. It’s a list of common phrases that one can use in situations related to travel, meeting people, professional life and so on. Not very groundbreaking but definitely something that helps consolidating one’s knowledge.
And Romanian – I read a book “Drum bun” where the Romanian-French vocabulary is grouped by topics (so again – family, health and so on). The nice thing is that it contains a lot of Romanian sayings that you have to translate into French, so that was fun. The level is somewhere between A2-B1 for that one.

Hebrew – I have to admit that I am a book hoarder, so I started looking for coursebooks for Hebrew and got a series of books published by Shorr’s Foundation in Warsaw. It’s a set of 5 books – the first one introduces the Hebrew alphabet, the last one is a textbook all in Hebrew with texts on Israel. But first I have to move German or Romanian to maintenance mode before I take up any new language.

Oh yes, I totally forgot – I started reading my third book in Italian – “La lingua che visse due volte”. The author (Anna Linda Callow from Milan Uni) tells why she learned Hebrew and how biblical studies were impacted by this language because it’s different from Greek/Latin and some concepts are hard to translate in European languages. Quite an easy read so I’m happy that I have to check a new word only here and there. On the other hand, the book got a little bit boring, especially in sections in which the author talks about the interpretations of Talmud or Zorah. I found the first part to be very interesting and engaging because she summarized the history of Hebrew and showed its characteristics and I expected the remaining pages would also be about that. I hope the best is yet to come.

AroAro wrote:Hebrew – I have to admit that I am a book hoarder, so I started looking for Hebrew coursebooks and got a series of books published by Shorr’s Foundation in Warsaw. It’s a set of 5 books – the first one introduces the Hebrew alphabet, the last one is a textbook all in Hebrew with texts on Israel.

I bought their correspondence course a few years ago. It was quite good initially; later, they had problems sending the corrected material back, and I got tired of texts about antisemitism in Poland. But Shorr's Foundation was my beginning with Hebrew. They organize Hebrew courses in Warsaw regularly - I'm still on their mailing list, and from time to time, I receive their notifications.

cjareck wrote:

AroAro wrote:Hebrew – I have to admit that I am a book hoarder, so I started looking for Hebrew coursebooks and got a series of books published by Shorr’s Foundation in Warsaw. It’s a set of 5 books – the first one introduces the Hebrew alphabet, the last one is a textbook all in Hebrew with texts on Israel.

I bought their correspondence course a few years ago. It was quite good initially; later, they had problems sending the corrected material back, and I got tired of texts about antisemitism in Poland. But Shorr's Foundation was my beginning with Hebrew. They organize Hebrew courses in Warsaw regularly - I'm still on their mailing list, and from time to time, I receive their notifications.

I believe they do not send the corrections any longer. I did not ask about it specifically when they called me to say my books had been sent but they didn't mention it either. And what's more, the two books of this set are available only in pdf format because they don't have printed versions in stock so they put their efforts probably on on-place teaching in Warsaw. Anyway, when I finally start learning Hebrew, I'll use FSI course you recommended and Assimil in the first place. These books will be just a nice addition.
And of course I meant Zohar - not Zorah in my previous post.

When I had enrolled in their correspondence course, I received a booklet from them "Otijot" (Letters), and the lessons were numbered 1-10 in the first set and the 11-20 in the second one (I had to enroll the course separately). But yes, that were just separated printed pieces of paper. I remember that my University Library had other their booklets, and they were different from the lessons.

There is also an interesting "Israeli Hebrew Refresher Course," I don't remember if it's DLI or FSI, but unfortunately, it lacks audio. I have pdfs which I found on the web once. There is also contemporary headstart2 course:
https://hs2.dliflc.edu/hebrew.html
You need to login, but it was without any problems as far as I remember.

ITALIAN - Ho cominciato ad imparare l'italiano quasi 15 anni fa - il tempo vola! All'universita, ho dovuto scegliere un'altra lingua (accanto al francese) e potevo scegliere fra spagnolo ed italiano. Infatti, la scelta era per me facile peche non mi era mai piaciuto il suono dello spagnolo e cosi mi sono deciso per l'italiano. E poi, anche a quell'epoca, la maggior parte degli studenti scelgevano lo spagnolo ovviamente e oggi c'e tanta gente nel mio paese che studia lo spagnolo a scapito dell'italiano e del francese. Ma bene, tal'e la vita (oppure la moda...) e non me ne piango affatto. Dunque, ho studiato l'italiano per 3 anni all'universita ma dopo la laurea l'ho messo da parte e non ho studiato nemmeno da solo perche infatti all'epoca non ero abituato a studiare lingue da autodidatto. E poi mi sembrava che non era possibile dimenticarsi di una lingua gia studiata - come si puo vedere, non sapevo nulla dell'insegnamento delle lingue. Tutto e cambiato quando sono andato a Roma per una settimana con mia moglie - me la sono cavata piuttosto bene anche se non mi avevo preparato affatto prima del viaggio riguardo alla mia conoscenza dell'italiano. Per esempio, appena arrivati all'aeroporto, ho dovuto telefonare alla padrona per dire che eravamo in ritardo perche la metropolitana era chiusa per qualche motivo - era la prima volta della mia vita che avessi parlato italiano al telefono. Un giorno, alla stazione di treni, non riuscivo a comprare i biglietti al distributtore e ho dovuto chiedere aiuto ad una ragazza e abbiamo parlato italiano per circa 10 minuti. Per me era un'esperienza meravigliosa che mi ha aperto gli occhi - ho dimenticato tante cose di tutto quello che avevo imparato all'universita, pero potevo cavarmela con quel piccolo che mi e rimasto. Dopo essere ritornati a Cracovia, mi sono messo a re-imparare la lingua per non perdere quello che ho imparato. Oggi posso dire che parlo/conosco l'italiano abbastanza bene - forse non correntemente ma il mio livello e per me sufficiente. E una delle mie tre lingue che non imparo attivamente ma cerco di mantenere per non dimenticarle, e cio leggendo riviste/libri e ascoltando radio/podcasts.

AroAro wrote:ITALIAN - Ho cominciato ad imparare l'italiano quasi 15 anni fa - il tempo vola! All'universita, ho dovuto scegliere un'altra lingua (accanto al francese) e potevo scegliere fra spagnolo ed italiano. Infatti, la scelta era per me facile peche non mi era mai piaciuto il suono dello spagnolo e cosi mi sono deciso per l'italiano. E poi, anche a quell'epoca, la maggior parte degli studenti scelgevano lo spagnolo ovviamente e oggi c'e tanta gente nel mio paese che studia lo spagnolo a scapito dell'italiano e del francese. Ma bene, tal'e la vita (oppure la moda...) e non me ne piango affatto. Dunque, ho studiato l'italiano per 3 anni all'universita ma dopo la laurea l'ho messo da parte e non ho studiato nemmeno da solo perche infatti all'epoca non ero abituato a studiare lingue da autodidatto. E poi mi sembrava che non era possibile dimenticarsi di una lingua gia studiata - come si puo vedere, non sapevo nulla dell'insegnamento delle lingue. Tutto e cambiato quando sono andato a Roma per una settimana con mia moglie - me la sono cavata piuttosto bene anche se non mi avevo preparato affatto prima del viaggio riguardo alla mia conoscenza dell'italiano. Per esempio, appena arrivati all'aeroporto, ho dovuto telefonare alla padrona per dire che eravamo in ritardo perche la metropolitana era chiusa per qualche motivo - era la prima volta della mia vita che avessi parlato italiano al telefono. Un giorno, alla stazione di treni, non riuscivo a comprare i biglietti al distributtore e ho dovuto chiedere aiuto ad una ragazza e abbiamo parlato italiano per circa 10 minuti. Per me era un'esperienza meravigliosa che mi ha aperto gli occhi - ho dimenticato tante cose di tutto quello che avevo imparato all'universita, pero potevo cavarmela con quel piccolo che mi e rimasto. Dopo essere ritornati a Cracovia, mi sono messo a re-imparare la lingua per non perdere quello che ho imparato. Oggi posso dire che parlo/conosco l'italiano abbastanza bene - forse non correntemente ma il mio livello e per me sufficiente. E una delle mie tre lingue che non imparo attivamente ma cerco di mantenere per non dimenticarle, e cio leggendo riviste/libri e ascoltando radio/podcasts.

Congratulazioni per il tuo italiano!

Progress update for the last 3 weeks:

English/French/Italian - I kept on doing my daily activities in these languages (each week is assigned to a different language). I also finished reading the book "La lingua che visse due volte" and there was some interesting stuff in the last chapters but overall I did not find the book so engaging/interesting as I thought it would be. I really expected to discover more from the linguistic point of view but I can only imagine it's not what most of the readers would appreciate and find thrilling. The author does not elaborate on interesting issues she mentions briefly throughout the book - she says for example that Biblical and Modern Hebrew are still somehow mutually intelligible but Modern Hebrew is changing fast and radically in everyday speech so in the near future knowing Modern Hebrew will not help at all in reading the Old Testament. I cannot check this claim myself but I just wonder if anyone really starts learning Modern Hebrew to read Old Testament in original? I think people would learn Biblical and Modern Hebrew for different reasons, just like people learn Latin and Italian for different reasons, but it's one of the questions left without an answer in the book.

German - I read two collections of texts about economics and business in German and now I'm reviewing the vocabulary I wrote down in my notebook. I learn German 4 days a week (Mo, We, Fr, Su) and each day I try to read 2-3 pages from a textbook/coursebook I'm currently working with, then I read one article from Der Spiegel and listen actively to 1-2 videos on YT. I also listen passively to the radio while working, mostly NDR Info but recently I discovered the podscats from DeutschlandFunkNova and I find them more interesting than listening to the news all day long. It's also a bigger challenge for me in terms of vocab or even different ways of speaking as these podcasts involve a lot of casual guests and not only professional journalists. And for example I listened to the interview with a "Tatortreinigerin" and that was quite creepy.

Romanian - I finished reading a Polish-Romanian phrasebook which is one of the 2-3 books ever published in Polish for Romanian language learners (it is simply impossible to learn Romanian through Polish). Now, I'm moving on to "Grammatica romena. Morfologia, sintassi ed esercizi" by Hoepli and I hope to finish it by the end of the year. It's also going to be the last book on Romanian grammar in my learning process, time to consume more native content! I learn Romanian three days a week (Tu, Th, Sa) and besides coursebooks, I read news in Romanian, watch YT channels (Top Opt, Zaiafet, Atentie cad mere) and listen to radio, so summing it up it would give 2-3 pages of reading and 1,5-2h of listening a week. But knowing already French and Italian helps enormously in learning Romanian and I can understand better Romanian than German even though I've been learning it for less time than German.

Hebrew - not much done, I only flipped through the Assimil Cahier d'ecriture and it seems to be a really good book to get started with the Hebrew script.

Russian - I learned the Cyrillic script a few years ago just for fun (this is the kind of fun I enjoy in my life). The script seems at first very nice and simple and one can definitely learn it in no time, however reading fluency takes a lot of time and commitment. Since last year, I regularly read some news in Russian to get accustomed to the script and I've definitely made huge progress here and can read more quickly now but it could still be better. What's more, I can usually get the general meaning of the text I read and I even understand the whole sentences from time to time (even though I have never learned Russian except for the script) but I really need to put the effort into deciphering the letters and reading smoothly. I wonder if non-Slavic natives find it probably even harder to read in Russian.

AroAro wrote:. I cannot check this claim myself but I just wonder if anyone really starts learning Modern Hebrew to read Old Testament in original? I think people would learn Biblical and Modern Hebrew for different reasons, just like people learn Latin and Italian for different reasons, but it's one of the questions left without an answer in the book.

Well, I am learning Modern Hebrew because of the Arab-Israeli wars, but since I am a Catholic, I couldn't resist checking the Old Testament in Original Well, only the Tanach since the Deuterocanonical books were written in Aramaic.
Do you know this page: http://tanach.leszek-kwiatkowski.eu/ ? It is an excellent resource with Hebrew -> Polish and Hebrew -> English translation of the Hebrew Bible.

AroAro wrote:Hebrew - not much done, I only flipped through the Assimil Cahier d'ecriture and it seems to be a really good book to get started with the Hebrew script.

I got in touch with Hebrew handwriting only at the beginning of my learning the language and then ignored it for a long time. Now I struggle to decipher the original documents and regret not learning it earlier regularly...

[/quote]
Well, I am learning Modern Hebrew because of the Arab-Israeli wars, but since I am a Catholic, I couldn't resist checking the Old Testament in Original Well, only the Tanach since the Deuterocanonical books were written in Aramaic.
Do you know this page: http://tanach.leszek-kwiatkowski.eu/ ? It is an excellent resource with Hebrew -> Polish and Hebrew -> English translation of the Hebrew Bible.

[quote="AroAro"]

Thanks for the recommendation, the site looks quite impressive and I can only imagine the amount of work behind it! I'd like to learn Hebrew because it would be my foray into non-Indo-European languages. I tried to dabble in some "oriental" languages in the past but with no success, however Hebrew struck me as the most accessible of these languages - I may be wrong of course, having no real experience beyond the alphabet and some basic words and sentences. Then, it's the only ancient/dead language that was purposefully revived and that's quite intriguing from a linguistic point of view, which matters to me.

GERMAN - ich lerne Deutsch seit 2016 und ich habe mich für diese Sprache entschieden nachdem ich mit einigen orientalischen Sprachen gescheitert hatte (ich werde darüber in einem anderen post schreiben). Ich dachte, Deutsch wäre leichter zu lernen als Japanisch oder Hebräisch. Außerdem, es wäre toll die Sprachen von den Nachbarn meines Landes zu lernen und übrigens ich finde, dass Deutch sehr schön ist und ich liebe ihren "Klang" (sagt man das über eine Sprache?). Ich wusste damals noch nicht, dass es ziemlich schwer ist, diese Sprache zu beherrschen oder dass, es seltsame Dinge gibt, an die es mir schwer fiel mich zu gewöhnen. (<= dieser Satz scheint nicht ganz natürlich) Die grosste Schwierigkeit für mich ist der Wortschatz, weil es wenige Lehnwörter aus Latein gibt, also ich muss mich wirklich bemühen um all diese Wörter zu behalten. Meine andere Schwierigkeit mit Deutsch beruht darauf, dass der erste Periode des Studiums fand genau statt, wenn ich und meine Frau unser erstes Kind bekamen, was mit unzahligen ungeschlofenen Nächten und Müdigkeit verbunden war. Das beeinflusste wesentlich, und nicht unbedingt auf vorteilhafte Weise, die Qualität meines Studiums.

Ich sehe selbst, dass ich noch viele Fehler mache, aber im Allgemein denke ich, dass ich mit meinem Niveau und all was ich bisher erreicht habe, ziemlich zufrieden bin. Vor allem, bin ich in der Lage ohne Probleme lesen und das war eigentlich mein Zweck, wenn ich angefangen habe Deutch zu lernen. In Bezug aufs Sprechen, ich habe Deutsch nur zweimal gesprochen (die Leute mit denen ich gesprochen habe, haben gesagt, dass ich eine ausgezeichnete Aussprache hatte aber ehrlich gesagt, glaube ich nicht, dass es wirklich so war). Veilleicht soll ich einige Unterrichten mit einem Lehrer nehmen, aber das ist nicht meine Priorität zur Zeit. Und in Bezug aufs Hören, ich arbeite ständig um diese Fahigkeit zu verbessern. Wenn ich zuhöre, verstehe ich die Mehrheit davon, aber ich muss mich jedoch bemühen und konzentrieren auf diese Aufgabe.

Zusammenfassend, Deutch ist toll aber es ist nicht leicht zu lernen und zur Zeit beabsichtige ich nicht, andere germanische Sprachen zu lernen. Aber wenn man kennt schon ein bisschen English und Deutsch, erscheint sicherlich die Verlockung um Nederlandisch oder Afrikaans kennen zu lerner, aber das ist ohne Zweifel eine sehr langfristige Absicht.