Sae's Log (Vietnamese, Tuvan & Mongolian)

[Sae]

hanks, and good call. I'll see if I can get a hold of it. Though I don't speak Turkish, I may be able to use a Turkish dictionary, or see if my Mongolian tutor would be willing help as she speaks it.

Fortunately my book of Tuvan Texts comes tomorrow, it's the Jungar dialect, but I am told it is mutually intelligible with the dialects spoken in Tuva.

And I'd maybe try to put my own study materials together from these resources when I get started with it again, which I feel may end up being the best bet. But in the mean time, I'm happy picking up as many resources as I can.

I've just checked the Jungar Tuvan words in the Turkic database and some words I've encountered are just like in my native Turkish, which belongs to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages. And also it seems to contain more words of Turkic or even Persian origin, like "alma" (apple), "nan" (bread), "ok" (arrow), "öw" (house) and "bal" (honey).

Ah nice. It is interesting see how intelligible Turkic languages are with each other, I have seen a few comparisons, where I've been able to understand some words I know in Tuvan, but in Turkish, Kazakh and Yakut.

And with the Persian, I guess it makes sense, Jungar Tuvan is spoken in the Uyghur Autonomous Region.

[Sae]

This arrived today:



It has some history, culture & religion, as well as some stories of personal experiences as well as folk tales and songs and there's also records of conversations in there. The way it's laid out is that it has transliterated Tuvan, then the literal English translation and then the interpreted English translation, so it looks to be a useful language book on top of the other things I wanted it for.



But it looks like it'll be handy. When it comes to it, I can see how I can make some self-study material out of this and it comes with a word list at the end for every word that's in there.

[Sae]

I had my 2nd full Mongolian lesson on Friday. My tutor is pretty much throwing me into the language and having me learn the grammar as I go and making conversations. My homework is to write about my day, just us a dictionary and what I've learned and write it with the aim of her helping me correct mistakes. So her aim is very much getting me immersed and using the language pretty much from the word 'go'. My Vietnamese tutor took the approach of easing me in, but I think both work. With something like Vietnamese, that's an approach I appreciated because I found it more difficult to get started with.

I did a couple of very basic sentences from what I learned in my first week:, which were basic sentences and questions (and covering the different question words):

Тани дуртаи дуучин хен бе?
Миний дуртаи дуучин Флоор Йансен. Тэгээд би Батзориг Ваанчигийн, Девин Тоwнсенд, Ийсан болон Кондар-ол Ондар дуртай. Би Чад Кроегер дургүй.

Тани Ямар улс зочлосон бе?
би Гыерман болон Испанид зочилсон байна. Би Вьетнам, Монгол, Тува зочло хүсч байна.

We also did some past tense stuff last lesson. This lesson was about present simple tense stuff and practicing the conversation we had last lesson. And we covered some time expressions and other bit.

Би өглөө бүр арваас босдог - Every day I get up at 10am.

So to get used to how the logic works, I need to think:
I every day 10am-from get up.
I Mongolian food eat
I cats like
My favourite food Mexican food is.
I yesterday Italian food ate
I like Yoda speak.

And Mongolian seems to rely on its suffixes and not just for verbs & tenses. Like with "at 10am", there's the suffix '-aas' which means 'from', so if you attach it to a country, you'd say somebody is from that country, eg:
би Англиас ирсэн - Bi Anglias irsen - I am from England
би Монголоос ирсэн - Bi Mongoloos irsen - I am from Mongolia
(with -as because there's already a vowel and -oos because of vowel harmony, but it's still the same suffix)

And then it seems, like Tuvan, it doesn't gender its pronouns: Тэр is used for he/she. Coming from Vietnamese's pronouns, it's a nice change of pace to only need to learn 1 word, though I do find Vietnamese's pronouns endearing but you not only have gender but relative age and relationship.

And I also had a Vietnamese lesson on Saturday, which was just a new conversation that was mostly natural, to the point where he'd go to ask a follow up question, but I was like "nope, I have more to say", so I am pleased I am getting to that level where I am expanding my sentences naturally before any follow up questions are needed.

I also delved more into Tuvan pronunciation and it is challenging to change my accent completely. I've got to produce vowels from deeper in my throat and not using my nasal cavity, but the consonants are at the front of my mouth so 'g' doesn't have that hard sound at the back of my throat. I also read more of my 'Jungar Tuvan Texts' book, it was interesting to learn about language in the Uyghur region and how Tuvans there end up multi-lingual because they may find themselves needing Kazakh, Mongolian, Uyghur and Chinese to make it easier to communicate and sometimes it is better to speak one language instead of the other.

[Sae]

I have been using Quizlet to create my own study material with for Mongolian based on what I've learned so far. And have created collections for "Basic Greetings", "Grammar" and "Questions". So I've got some very basic structures I can at least work with on a simple level, so I can:
- Use simple past tense
- Use simple present tense
- Use future tense
- Use first, second and third person
- Create sentences with basic time expressions
- Ask questions
- Use vowel harmony
- Go over some basic pleasantries.

I'm also trying to increase my exposure to Vietnamese and Mongolian, which I know I've said I need to a couple of times before. I've set up a second YouTube account and set my location to Vietnam, weirdly I didn't see the option for Mongolia. However, I am subbed to Mongolian channels, so I will maybe follow them on my new account just so I get a mix of Mongolian and Vietnamese appearing in my recommendations and not have it diluted by anything else.

And I've been watching a Artger, whilst it's usually presented in English, not everybody on it speak English and you get a lot of Mongolian on there with subtitles, plus lots of cool food stuff. This will

My Vietnamese tutor has sent me a Vietnamese Spotify playlist, whilst not my taste in music, but no harm in listening to other things. Though I've found Vietnamese artists playing the kind of music I like, there's not a lot of choice.

But next month I'm going to see The Hu, a Mongolian band, so maybe I can learn some of their songs by then.

[Sae]

I kinda had a slack week for language learning and er, it showed when I came to my Mongolian lesson. But I've whipped myself into shape and have a notepad and pen with me to just write random sentences in Mongolian just to get the tenses and Cyrillic embedded into my brain. But I've also learned the present continuous tense. It uses -j/ch for the verb suffix in a positive sentence plus "baina/baigaa", but if it's a negative sentence, it's a past tense suffix used and "baina/baigaa" remains, which I guess is interesting, because the first part of the sentence is in the past and the other is in the present, it's like sentence itself is reflecting continuation.

I also definitely need to get more Cyrillic practice, it feels like I am a child again trying to read it because it's making me a slow reader, but having asked to do my lessons in Cyrillic, it is forcing me to use it, so it will improve. A sentence like "Танилцсандаа баяртай байна" can throw me when on the spot, because I've got a long word at the start, which is "Tanilcsandaa bayartai baina", or "pleased to meet you".

I also had a conversation with a couple of people living in Mongolia, and got an insight to what it's like as a foreigner. It's interesting to me, because I am very strongly considering moving abroad someday and have a list of potential countries, which Mongolia is on (so is Vietnam).
What I got to hear were some of the negative aspects, like one from a musician who embraces Mongolian traditions, in the city the guy often found himself gate kept, despite what he's actually done to help with things like cultural preservation and misses out on opportunities because of it. Which is a contrast to what I hear of Tuva, where they will pretty much consider you Tuvan if you live like a Tuvan and encourage foreigners into their traditional culture a lot more, and given I know who married into a Tuvan family, it sounds like his experience has been very positive. But what I am hearing is there's racism/xenophobia but it's among the older generations in Mongolia (which seems accurate for most of the world) and not so much among the younger generations and the nomads, however, are quite warm and welcoming. And hearing a couple of testimonials about people in mixed race relationships, they struggle to get the approval of their partners' families. However, the verdict is that for them, the positives outweigh the negatives. But hey, always good to know what challenges you might face if you were to move to a place, because nowhere is all sunshine and rainbows.

On the flip side for a positive, I spoke to a Mongolian guy who is training to be in the same industry as me and I asked him about job prospects in Mongolia for our line of work and he pretty much said "for you, it will be easy". Which I know is the same in Vietnam. Though if I do consider it, I'll do more research than simply asking a guy, but it is positive to know that I'd not have to worry too much about employment, because I'd hate to find myself unemployed (been there, I hated it) let alone unemployed in a foreign country, unless of course I come into sudden wealth. My decision of course will come after visiting both Mongolia and Vietnam.

[Sae]

I had another singing lesson over the weekend, where we went through more Tuvan and it seems my accent/pronunciation is almost there and I can start on the melody of the song I'm learning. It seems the main trick is keep vowels back and down in your throat and consonants at the front of the mouth and only half rolling an 'r' and putting on a Geordie accent for the long vowels. And generally avoiding nasal sounds. And we got into an interesting conversation about Tuvan national identity as well as the Jungar Tuvans, as he was interested in the book I found and he has friends out that way. And talked a little about the significance of the song Kongurei (which is one of the songs in the book), some of its origins and also a little of meaning of the national anthem, "Men Tyva Men". I think I'll share a version of Kongurei with Kongar-ol Ondar and Willy Nelson dueting, because it gives some of the context in English too (and is a really good version):



I also learned a little about about how Tuvan songs are composed.

However, I am fighting temptation right now. Seeing there's Tuvan resources in Turkish, living locally to Turkish people, knowing Tuvan is a Turkic language and knowing Turkic languages have a lot of intelligible words and features, that I am finding myself tempted to give Turkish a go, especially knowing there are pretty good resources out there for it and maybe get it to a B1 level and see if it helps improve with my learning elsewhere and reading the Turkish resources for Tuvan. And I see that Olly Richards' Storylearning for Turkish has a good Black Friday deal, which helps you get to a B1 level. And I'd do it if I didn't already have so much on my plate.

On the Mongolian side, I've been curiously taking a look at Bichig. I know the Mongolian government has been working on making it an official script, which is already used in Inner Mongolia too and to kind of move away from Cyrillic. I know a guy who is currently working on putting a series of Bichig lessons together, so once they're out I'll be jumping on them. I ended up having a chat with him and a couple of others about it because I was curious, it looks like the biggest challenge with the script is technology, although fonts support it, it's apparently not always accurate or consistent and technology is not really build around vertical scripts and although the web can handle it, there's a lot of practical issues particularly in translated websites. Like News.mn has a bichig option, but it looks like they've had to change a lot of design to get it to work and even then it only displays correctly for me in Chrome. So the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets will definitely be here to stay. But I am a web developer, so it does make me tempted to play around and see what I can do with Bichig on the web.

[Sae]

It have been a whilst since I've posted here, I've been keeping on top of my language stuff, maybe more slowly with being busy.

On the Mongolian front, I've been playing around with different approaches to learning a bit, trying to favour more handed written practice. I've picked up a Mongolian language textbook and a kids book written in English & Mongolian to get me started at a basic level. Somebody recommended me a Mongolian book app with some fairy tales and such in there that might be a good place to get started too. I am still at a pretty basic level with Mongolian, so it'll no doubt be a lot of translating...once the app is working again, it hasn't worked since he recommended it (seems to be a server issue). And I've started using writing prompts from when I was starting out with Vietnamese and translating them from Vietnamese into Mongolian...to er, kill two birds with one stone.

For Vietnamese, practice has been going well and still learning new ways of saying things and building my Vietnamese 'instinct'. But I am just trotting along improving and getting more fluid with what I already do know. And I've kept up some writing, not as much as I should admittedly. But it's getting close to when I said I'd go and book my Vietnam trip, as I said "in the new year". So I'll need to plan exactly how I want to do the trip, I plan to meet up with my Vietnamese tutor, so I'll need to see when he is free, fortunately he lives near the airport, so that's convenient.

And on the Tuvan front. In my effort to build on my Tuvan materials so I can put together some study material for it, I've bought the "Tuvan Manual", it wasn't cheap, but it was on sale, so probably best price I'm gonna get it. So it set me back £110...but finding anything on Tuvan grammar that's in English has been a struggle. But I'll end up creating my own study material and do my best to keep it accurate as possible and just post somewhere online. Other books I could find on it seem to be out of print and not for sale anywhere. This is kind of incentivizing me to making material I can share, though with some disclaimers perhaps, at least until I actually use the language with Tuvan speakers and maybe recognise potential mistakes I will probably make. I'm not a linguist or a Tuvan speaker, but I can regurgitate information in a way I wish it was presented to me.

Also, almost 2 weeks ago I went to see The Hu in London. I loved it and had a great time. I also snagged a couple of recordings and got pretty close.

[księżycowy]

Given the lack of Tuvan materials in English, I'd very much love to see anything you create, once you are able to create it.

I bought the Tuvan Manual myself some years ago from The Mongolia Society in the US (based in Indiana, if I'm not mistaken), for far less than 110£, but I'm not sure if they still sell it, nor am I should they'd ship overseas (or how much that would come to). At any rate, if I happen upon any other Tuvan resources, I'll let you know.

[Sae]

Given the lack of Tuvan materials in English, I'd very much love to see anything you create, once you are able to create it.

I bought the Tuvan Manual myself some years ago from The Mongolia Society in the US (based in Indiana, if I'm not mistaken), for far less than 110£, but I'm not sure if they still sell it, nor am I should they'd ship overseas (or how much that would come to). At any rate, if I happen upon any other Tuvan resources, I'll let you know.

Thanks, I'll likely post here as I put stuff together, I'll see how good the material I've gathered is and see if I can find more and think about how I put my study material together.

As for the book, I wish I was able to find it for less, because yeah, I figure it wasn't originally sold for that kind of money, but I guess it's out of print and rarer, though I ended up buying it through the publisher. But it seems the retail price is now £145 and what I would have paid without the discount.

[księżycowy]

I did double check the society's webpage yesterday, and it looks like they may not sell it anymore. They used to have a few other "manuals" like it too (Yakut and Chuvash). A shame really. They are a good spot to check for Mongolian resources though. I bought the Sain Baina Uu? series there. It was a bit pricy, but worth every penny.

Do you have a copy of "Let's Learn Tuvan"? If not, I have a copy I'd be willing to scan for you. I should note I won't be able to scan it until I'm with my scanner, and that's not going to happen until May. But if you don't mind waiting, I don't mind scanning it for your personal use. (Unfortunately I don't have the audio that was suppose to go with it.)