Chung at work / Chung pri práci / Chung työn touhussa

[Chung]

This is the successor to my old log at HTLAL.

I've had some doubts about getting this going as there were many times with that old log when posting updates took more time away than I liked from studying and doing stuff in real life. However, I did like using it as a way to post stuff about languages in spare moments without resorting to new threads or resurrecting ancient ones, so I don't see the harm in having it here. Indeed, I caved in when I realized this week that the Turkic challenge had just ended, and so felt that it'd be good to make a few concluding remarks.

I don't expect to post as often in this version as I did in the heyday of the old one, but the nature of posts here will be the same as before with a slant toward comparative linguistics, and a few comic strips in at least some of my target languages. Lastly, my introduction to the old log still holds otherwise.

This will be a space that I will use as a store for interesting and uninteresting stuff that turns up as I study whichever languages will be holding my fancy.

At the moment I'm focused on Finnish with occasional forays into Polish or Slovak. I still hold places for other languages and may post something related to those dormant or "inactive" languages too. English will likely by used here most often but other languages may also get a shot. I can't guarantee that profane language will be excluded but I will try my best.

Chatter, comments, criticism or mild ribbing from the peanut gallery will be received with enthusiasm or indifference depending on my mood

[Chung]

With the end of the Turkic challenge on Nov. 30, 2016, I now look back on it with mixed feelings.

It was tough sledding as my motivation fell on realizing that satisfying a philological itch by learning languages as if I were needing them to communicate with native speakers was absurd. I would have been better off just rereading "Turkic Languages" and if I had been particularly intrigued by something in one of its grammatical sketches, I then should have looked up examples or a second explanation in the relevant textbook/course.

So many times I forced myself to stick to the challenge's schedule all the while wishing that I could spend more time on other languages (particularly Korean since its divergence from the other languages that I've studied demands a greater effort).

By the early part of this year I started taking on Turkic languages spoken in Russia with practically all the decent learning material available forcing me to use my passive abilities in German and Russian, the latter of which are even lower than my passive abilities in Finnish. Learning a language such as Bashkir, which while philologically interesting, was a real pain because here was a language for which I've never had a connection nor an illusion of using in my lifetime, and all the while I was studying it in German via Ersen-Rasch's course (I gave up using the Russian-based material because the double whammy of Bashkir being taught in the face of shaky passive abilities in Russian was too much). By the time I started Chuvash, I was largely going through the motions. I was forced to use a course in Russian with a little supplemental material in German. John Kruger's book for Chuvash in English is better for linguists, and I found the lack of Cyrillic in the Chuvash examples to be too much of a drag.

Of the languages that I surveyed, I came to like those which reminded me the most of Turkish. Thus I enjoyed (relatively speaking) Azeri and Turkmen, and even Uzbek and Crimean Tatar. Being able to study those four languages relying more on my background in Turkish than were the cases with the other Turkic languages countered a bit of the regret I had about doing the challenge. To a certain degree, having a lot of learning material issued in English also helped (Crimean Tatar was the odd man out with my reliance on Russian-based material). In particular if I could get the full Turkmen course by Oezel and Saparova with the audio without ruining my credit card, I'd be open to having another go at Turkmen. I missed my chance when Dunwoody Press was still in business as I could have got the books and audio then for about $350 instead of presumably just the books now for about $300 through Amazon. In any case, I got to like DLIFLC Headstart2 and the new .pdfs from the Peace Corps (especially "Colloquial Turkmen" and "Turkmen Language Grammar Guide"). I could take even greater advantage of my base in Turkish by studying more Azeri rather than Turkmen, but the material that I used for the latter was excellent despite the lack of audio for the Peace Corps' textbooks and got me more interested in the language notwithstanding that I'm unlikely to meet a Turkmen or visit Turkmenistan.

As for the other Turkic languages, Kazakh is the only viable candidate for me to revisit, and even then it's a low priority. On the plus side, I do like the mental challenge of grappling with a Turkic language that's not Oghuz Turkic (Azeri, Turkish, Turkmen) or showing a fair bit of similarity to that group because of longstanding contact (Crimean Tatar) or coincidence (Uzbek). In addition, I found "Colloquial Kazakh" in my three-month foray of the language to be a decent course, and it's backed up not only by some OK Kazakh-Russian/Russian-Kazakh dictionaries but also by a new manual in English on grammar published by Routledge, which I got not long ago from Amazon. On the other hand, I can muster only so much motivation for such a language no matter how much I like the learning material. Another problem for me (and my apologies to the Russian-speakers, and especially vonPeterhof for reasons which will become clearer below) is that I've never liked the sound of Russian or Russian accents and the palatalization and stress patterns of Russian do carry over to other languages much like how monoglots of English (sometimes painfully) mangle pronunciation of other languages. When studying Turkmen with this primer for the Peace Corps, I was bothered by the Russian twang of one of the speakers which vonPeterhof also noticed in part. Kazakh is no exception and the recordings in "Colloquial Kazakh", in addition to those of all of the dialogues/narratives in the courses that I've used for Turkic languages spoken in Russia, show various degrees of Russian pronunciation habits, and it took me a while to stop being bothered by it.

As I was reading the introductions of each section of that new grammar book on Kazakh, I got a bit more information on the matter of Russian influence.

In the post-Soviet time, the language situation has changed, too. In 1989, the new language law was passed, and Kazakh was proclaimed the state language and Russian received the status of the official language. The official language policy has been promoting Kazakh in order to reintegrate it into the public life. [...] However, it is difficult to figure out the real number of Kazakhs who use Kazakh in everyday life. We can assume that the great majority of people from rural areas have better command of Kazakh than do the majority of people from cities. [...] Despite the institutional promotion of Kazakh, its domains of usage are still restricted. Russian still dominates in public life, and there are no incentives for Russian-speakers as well as Russian-dominate Kazakhs to learn Kazakh. [...] Kazakh borrowed words from Arabic, Persian and Mongolia and reveals an influence - lexical, syntactic and stylistic - from Russian.

Urban Kazakhs who received their primary and higher education in Russian and learned Kazakh as a foreign language deviate from the standard pronunciation previously described when speaking Kazakh. Examples are palatalizations of the consonants /g/, /m/ and /k/. Thus, the velar plosive /g/ is pronounced as the palatalized [g’], for example the converb özgerip ('changing') is pronounced as [wözgerip] is standard Kazakh and as [wözg’erip] by Russian-dominate Kazakhs. This is because according to Russian phonetics, consonants are palatalized before the palatal vowels /e/, /ja/, /jo/ and /ja/, for example Russ. beregja ('protecting') (Wade 2011:8).

The author goes on to cite more examples of non-standard pronunciation, and it's not exactly music to my ears. It suggests that if I were to go beyond "Colloquial Kazakh", I should expect to keep hearing more Russian-accented Kazakh in authentic material not to mention course recordings when urban Kazakhs are speaking.

Incidentally the subject of Russian influence in Kazakh reminded me a bit of Josquin's thread about Irish and about how Anglicized modern Irish can come off. I wonder a bit if vonPeterhof or anyone else could yield a story or two about a non-native speaker initiating in Kazakh only to be answered in Russian much like that example with the (now infamous) Irish shopkeeper.

In the end the challenge wasn't the worst experience because of all the sounds, new words, and grammatical features that I encountered, although I still can't retrieve the time spent on it. As for Turkic languages, I'm most likely to get back to Turkish (God knows when) to finish off "Elementary Turkish 1", "Fono Turkish Self-Study Course vol. 2" and "Teach Yourself Turkish", if nothing else. Kazakh and Turkmen are just pies in the sky now.

[vonPeterhof]

Glad to see your log again, Chung! Interesting to hear your thoughts on the end of your Turkic challenge. Dabbling in languages out of pure linguistic curiosity with no real intention of ever interacting with native speakers is something I do all the time, and even I couldn't stick with the challenge all the way, so I'm both impressed that you made it and feel sorry that it may not have been the best use of your time. I would love to hear your insights on Turkish whenever you feel like getting back to it, and also on Uralic languages, now that I've started Estonian.

As for the Russian influences in urban Kazakh, I'm afraid it really is something very hard to get away from, especially if most of your exposure is from the media rather than live communication with native speakers from rural areas. While the language teachers do strive to stamp out some of the more blatant hallmarks of russified pronunciation, in general if you've got your қ's and ғ's down and if you don't reduce unstressed vowels too obviously you won't hear them complain. Confusing н and ң is a borderline case, in that it will be treated like a mispronunciation, but some teachers may give up on you and be willing to overlook it as long as you don't carry it over into spelling (I'd imagine this wouldn't be nearly as big a problem for a native speaker of English as it is for a Russian native). Most other Russified features of pronunciation, like retroflexes and palatalizations, are generally tolerated. The pronunciation of ж is a curious case, in that [d͡ʒ] is commonly derided as "dialectal" or "rural", while the russified [ʐ] is routinely given a free pass, in spite of being markedly different from the supposedly standard [ʒ]. Melioransky's 19th century description of Kazakh phonology only mentions [ʒ] as a variant of /d͡ʒ/ "common in the western parts of the steppe", so it could well be that the standard pronunciation is itself a result of a Russian-influenced spelling pronunciation. And speaking of spelling pronunciations, I recall that the one time my Kazakh teacher told the class about the rule that ы and і are pronounced like ұ and ү in words with rounded vowels the other students in class vehemently protested against it, saying that nobody they knew talked like that, and some even suggesting that the teacher was trying to pass of "dialect" for the standard.

And yes, a lot of the things people have said in the Irish thread remind me of my experience with Kazakh growing up in Almaty. In fact it wasn't until this summer's trip back to Kazakhstan that I noticed just how much Kazakh was spoken in reality, even in and around Almaty. The trip to Turkistan was an especially eye opening experience though, in that I had previously been aware of the region being a Kazakh-dominant area, but actually walking on the streets and not hearing a word of Russian for hours was something very hard to fathom, as was the fact that hardly anyone switched to Russian when talking to me, in spite of my obvious difficulties with Kazakh. I'm afraid I don't really have "Irish shopkeeper" stories, but it was curious to observe how people would profile me based on my ambiguous looks. Among the circa 20 people I conversed with in Turkistan at least three addressed me in Russian before I even opened my mouth, whereas at least two were puzzled by my stilted Kazakh and asked me whether or not I was actually Kazakh (in Kazakhstan "What ethnicity are you?" isn't considered to be an awkward question to ask a stranger ); in about half the cases I was the one initiating the conversation, and people had no qualms with continuing it in Kazakh (although when I was looking for a place to print off my electronic train ticket I found that saying the Russian word for "to print off" worked better than any of the words suggested by the Kazakh dictionary). I never really tried initiating conversations in Kazakh in Almaty, but I remember only one person there addressing me in Kazakh (FWIW we were on a suburban commuter bus), whereas in at least two cases shopkeepers who had just been conversing in Kazakh with each other would address me in Russian before I could say anything.

With regard to the position of Kazakh in the public sphere, I guess it's not nearly as dire as the case of Irish, or even Belarusian, but it's still clearly struggling to compete with Russian. I don't really follow the Kazakhstani media landscape closely enough to make sweeping statements, but I may give an interesting illustration in the use of social media by three pop acts singing in Kazakh. Ninety One are an Almaty-based boy band heavily influenced by the K-pop aesthetic, and releasing both music and promotional videos almost entirely in Kazakh. Their social media presence is predominately in Russian: the Instagram and VK accounts are a mix, but the Twitter and Facebook accounts appear to be almost exclusively in Russian. Ğalımjan Moldanazar is a synthpop artist from Kyzylorda who admits to not being very fluent in Russian, but is nonetheless pretty popular among urban hipster-ish circles. His official VK fan-account is apparently evenly mixed between Russian and Kazakh. Qayrat Nurtas is a massively popular young singer from Turkistan whose fanbase is stereotyped as rural and uncultured - when there were riots after one of his concerts in Almaty I recall there being many exchanges in comments going something like "A: How could this happen in Almaty?! B: Did you see the faces in that crowd? No way there were any Almaty natives in there..." His official fan club's VK account is pretty much entirely in Kazakh.

[Chung]

FINNISH

I've been using "Suomen Mestari 2" for a while and have just started Chapter 5 which deals with indefinite pronouns (e.g. joku "someone", ei mikään "nothing"), declension of nominals ending in -(n)ut / -(n)yt (e.g. olut "beer", kyllästynyt "fed up") and the simple past and compound past indicative tenses (I've long disliked the (mis)labelling of these tenses as imperfekti and perfekti (and their translations in some of my books as "imperfect" and "perfect") because the criteria used to conjugate a Finnish verb in each tense contradict what the labels suggest. I suspect strongly that pedagogy appealing to superficially similar forms in Romance languages and German is the reason for this naming convention.

Finn Lectura has begun publishing Suomen Mestari 4 which would look quite nice with the other volumes of the series on my shelf. It's something to look forward to after finishing "Suomen Mestari 3", which I just might be able to start in the spring.


(From Oswald)

1) "My ball's in the tree!"
2) "Relax! I'll get it down!"
4) "This is harder than I thought."
5) "...just a bit further"
6) "Aaah!" - "My ball!"
7) "Hey, this isn't my ball!"
8) "Silly me! My ball is in that tree!"

***

GERMAN

I've been refreshing my knowledge using "Colloquial German 2" and just started Chapter 6 which deals with life's milestones (essentially birthdays, weddings, funerals). I'm planning to continue with "Teach Yourself Enjoy German" (a.k.a. "Teach Yourself Perfect Your German", "Teach Yourself Further German"), and based indirectly on gsbod's post about the series "Begegnungen", may even move on to the related series "Erkundungen" which is split into volumes for B2 and C1. On my way to and from work, I sometimes do drills from FSI German Basic Course - discreetly, of course.


(From Ruthe.de)

"Is it again Christmas already?" - "These are piercings."

***

HUNGARIAN

I've been refreshing my knowledge using "MagyarOK A2+" and am in the middle of Chapter 2 which deals with living spaces. I quite like the course for the many exercises provided, even though much of the grammar taught so far is old hat. I'm getting a fair workout in vocabulary for household applicances, rooms, and house/apartment-hunting. I'm planning to revisit Hungary this year, which would be a good a time as any to pick up "MagyarOK B1+" which was released after I visited the country last year. On my way to and from work, I sometimes do drills from FSI Hungarian Basic Course - discreetly, of course.


(From Cyanide and Happiness magyarul - Mond valamit...)

"The Adventures of Jake the Shy Guy"
- "Why are you staring at my breasts?" - "I'm not brave enough to look you in the eye."

***

KOREAN

I've been using "Korean Language for a Good Job 1" as my main course for a couple of months and have just started Chapter 10 which covers counting in large numbers and the informal polite forms. My secondary course is "Korean Made Simple 1" by Billy Go. I'm now reading Chapter 12 which by partial coincidence covers numbers (including large ones), 그렇게 "in that way", how to use 때문에 / 때문입니다 "because". I was using "Korean Made Simple 1" as my only course for a while after having set aside "Korean Made Easy for Beginners" with 8 chapters to go since I felt that I could benefit from a course designed by a native speaker of English who learned Korean to a near-native level. The one thing that I like very much about "Korean Made Simple 1" is that it teaches how to use the formal polite forms ending in ㅂ니다 / 습니다 instead of the informal polite ones ending in 요. As much as it's typical to speak with the informal polite forms (and the other textbooks that I've used so far focus on teaching these forms first), it's an extra pain for a learner because the 요 ending more than occasionally sets off changes to the verb stem which don't occur when using theㅂ니다 / 습니다 endings ("Korean Language for a Good Job 1" is a serviceable complement since it too uses just the formal endings in the dialogues; only the last five chapters of the course use the informal 요 forms).

However, downsides to the course which have become too much for me to handle are that the exercises are pitifully few (and to make things worse are very often merely translation tasks between English and Korean), and the vocabulary lists at the end of each chapter are often long. I get more benefit just from shadowing the dialogues and reading the notes, although as a small irritant, the notes are written very much in a non-specialist and even conversational tone. I've wanted to get out a red pen and strike out items such as "different than", "grammatically correct" or redundant phrasing such as "two different meanings".

I'm not sure if I'll continue studying Korean after having finished "Korean Language for a Good Job 1" even though "Korean Language for a Good Job 2" is on my shelf already. As much as I value Korean for keeping my horizons open, and preventing me from being linguistically Eurocentric (it's not enough for me to break free of SAE's chains by studying Finnish), I do want to make decisive progress in my studies. For that, I'm afraid that I need to drop all of my other languages so that I can at last focus on getting that stable foundation in Korean that has so far seemed elusive. I can't see myself without my daily feeding of Finnish, if nothing else...

***

POLISH & SLOVAK

I'm maintaining these two mainly by reading random stuff, posting on Facebook, and hanging out with friends (lately more with my Czech and Slovak crew, so I've spoken more Slovak than Polish in that time). I want to finish off "Kiedyś wrócisz tu... I Gdzie nadwiślański brzeg" and "Hovorme spolu po slovensky 'B' Slovenčina ako cudzí jazyk" sometime, and I'm not sure how long things will stay this way (and I'm not talking about just these languages).


(From Tori Komix)

1) "Come on, come on!" - "Are you guys watching the match?"
2) "Quiet, our guys are playing!" - "What do you mean 'our' guys? After all we're not playing in the World Cup."
3) "But Portugal is playing, and 'POR' on the screen is a bit like 'POL'." - "Almost as if it were a mispronunciation"
4) "And they're playing against Germany" - "And it's going badly for them" - "In these moments every team is made up of Poles."


(From S H O O T Y...som Grogy)

2) "What will you wish for the new year?"
4) (*Unrealistic*)
5) (*Absurd*)
6) (*Primitive*) "Actually I wanted to raise your salary!"
7) (*Lots of work*)
8) "Good morning! Do you have it [i.e. a wish] already?" - "When's the deadline?"

***

OTHER LANGUAGES

It's not just "Suomen Mestari 4", "Erkundungen B2" and "MagyarOK B1+" which are in my sights this year, but also "North Sámi: An Essential Grammar". This last one could be very useful in my ongoing but irregular work on my comparative guide to Uralic languages for non-specialists. It's about 65% done, and I need to finish more sections, and then proofread and verify everything.

[Chung]

FINNISH

I've just come back from a trip to Finland and picked up Suomen Mestari 4 which is meant for students at B1, and also got a couple of DVDs from friends. I'm still working on Suomen Mestari 2, and doing exercises sequentially in FSI Conversational Finnish Workbook, and Kieli Käyttöön. At this stage, doing anything in Finnish is fine with me. There's a good mix of exercises in the workbook and I like that a lot of a chapter's exercises draw from a smaller set of vocabulary than implied by the longer list in the corresponding chapter of the textbook. I can focus on getting case endings and syntax right and give answers to the oral drills at something close to normal speed.

---

GERMAN

In the spring, I switched Colloquial German 2 for Teach Yourself Enjoy German (a.k.a. "Teach Yourself Perfect your German", "Teach Yourself Improve your German", "Teach Yourself Further German"). The former was getting less interesting for me, and its relative lack of exercises started to bug me. I'm on chapter 4 of Teach Yourself Enjoy German and like the mix of exercises as well as the quantity. As with Finnish, it's just good to do anything in German. I'm now thinking more about taking Goethe's B2 exam later this year because of my local GI's apparent unfamiliarity with the Goethe-Test PRO (basically it's this exam for B2). Having a definite goal for German keeps me focused, even if it doesn't have the thematic slant (i.e. business) that I want. I'd like to over-prepare for this one, and already have the C1 and C2 volumes of "Erkundungen" and "C Grammatik" in the hopper to go with my B-level stuff such as "Hören & Sprechen". I'm not a fan of using online sources as the primary ones because of the distractions, but I'm looking at DW, GLOSS and Grüße aus Deutschland for extra practice.

---

MISCELLANEOUS

It's been about six months since I last posted here, and plan to post more frequently. I regret that I've had to stop studying Korean because of the lack of time. As much as I value it for keeping me intellectually honest by deprogramming my linguistic Eurocentrism, it's so different that I'm convinced that I have to drop my other languages to make tangible progress in studying it. At this stage in my life, I can't study Korean alongside other languages. I obviously want to get back into it but I can't see myself doing so for a while. On a related note, I've recently shelved Hungarian, and am just barely maintaining Polish and Slovak (namely reading some stuff here and there). I just don't have that much time to keep 6 languages on the go. I'm capping it at Finnish and German, and have to content myself with maintaining Hungarian, Polish and Slovak as opportunities present themselves. Indonesian/Malay, Italian, and Tajiki are nice ideas but I can't imagine starting any of those for a while.

A while ago, I received Routledge's grammar manual for Northern Saami, and feel a lot better about working on the sections for that language in my emerging comparative guide to Uralic languages. So far this year, I haven't been able to do more than proofread the parts that are already finished, and add a few paragraphs about definiteness.

[Chung]

FINNISH

I've just finished chapter 6 of Suomen Mestari 2 which covered the past tenses, possessive suffixes and nouns ending in Vus / Vys (e.g. salaisuus "secret", ystävyys "friendship", korkeus "height"). The themes were holidays and celebrations. Chapter 7 will focus on plural case endings with the theme being interviewing for a job. I've been working through Kieli käyttöön 1 at work. The book is quite dry but doing a couple sets of exercises sequentially every few days at my desk helps me recall basic grammar. I'm also still working through the workbook for FSI Conversational Finnish although in short bursts every few days.


(source: Viivi ja Wagner via Etelä-Suomen Sanomat)

1) *burp*
2) *fart*
3) "Gas equilibrium has been reached."

---

GERMAN

I've just finished chapter 5 of Teach Yourself Enjoy German which dealt with hobbies and free time, and am now on chapter 6 which deals with healthcare. I'm getting into phrases used for expressing an opinion, modal verbs and the genitive. Nothing new, but I like the practice. I'm getting a little restless about the other material on my computer and bookshelf - the GLOSS comprehension practice material, and Hören und Sprechen B2 in particular. I'd love to get into those things tomorrow since it's becoming apparent with Teach Yourself Enjoy German that I need to work more on my listening comprehension. I think that we can all relate to the buzz of delving into a new set of learning material.


(source: Auweia!)

Travel Companies Lose Even More Air Passengers - more on page 8 - "That explains a few things."

---

MISCELLANEOUS

There's nothing much to report on the Eastern European languages - just some light reading here and there. I found out last week that the Mari Web Project has recently released into the public domain its English adaptation of both volumes of Марийский язык для всех (Mari Language for Everyone) and the accompanying audio as .mp3. Anyone interested should download both volumes and their audio even if they had already downloaded the files for the first volume which have been available since 2010. These files plus an online Mari-English dictionary and morphological analyzer are available here. Combined with my copies of the grammar manuals from Routledge for Finnish, Hungarian, and Northern Saami, and Tuldava's textbook for Estonian, I now have a solid set of reference material in English to use for my guide to Uralic languages.

[Chung]

FINNISH

I’m in the middle of Suomen Mestari 2’s chapter 7 whose focus for grammar is the declension in plural (more precisely the cases that use -i-/-j- as the plural infix). I’m also still doing the exercises of Kieli käyttöön 1 at the office (I keep my copy at my desk), although it’s been harder to do much lately because of my workload. In short, there’s nothing exciting to report as it’s basically a lot of review (and good reminders of basic vocabulary) but progress has been much slower.


(source: Alkuperä via Betonisaappaat)

1) “Dad, where do kids come from?” – “From a mother’s belly.”
2) “Me too?” – “Of course, son.”
3) “How did I end up there?”
4) “We were covered in sweat and exhausted but passion made us continue.” – “Forget that I asked, Dad.”

GERMAN

I’m done with Teach Yourself Enjoy German, and have started using Geschäftliche Begegnungen B1+ and Menschen im Beruf Bewerbungs-Training (A2/B1). Over the past month, I’ve finished the first chapter of each although I’m missing a bit in that each book is really meant for use in a class. There are a few exercises requiring a partner or two such as assignments to talk briefly about one’s job qualifications or find as many derivatives or compound words using a base word without consulting a dictionary.

On the plus side, I’ve been quite keen on learning terms and structures relevant to the German-speaking workplace, and the education system (now I kind of know what my German friends talk about when they refer to going to Gymnasium rather than Realschule after finshing Grundschule) . After all, a good part of my life involves a job, and I did get a public education. A little interesting the differences in our systems.

One problem that I’ve had with many non-beginners’ courses such as Teach Yourself Enjoy German is that the thematic material varies widely and inevitably touches on subjects that bore the hell outta me (I bounced from the workplace, to the environment, then to fitness, and then to external perceptions of Germans, among other subjects in the course). I like learning new subtleties in grammar, making vocabulary stick, and getting better at using certain structures, but learning phrasing and words that are confined mainly to topics that hold little relevance or interest is a turn-off. Unless I’m getting a lot of exercises and/or useful grounding in idioms and colloquial usage, then studying a foreign language while also juggling boring subjects just makes the process a drag. Oscar Swan’s textbooks for Polish and Slovak are among the best that I’ve used because of all of the everyday language and idioms that they introduce (and let me practice). The lack of a tight thematic connection in the chapters was no hindrance at all with Swan’s books.

On a related note, I’ve started reading little by little stories from Der kleine Nick (i.e. German translation of Le petit Nicolas) and a book about a German fighter squadron in World War II. For me it’s a good balance of the light with the heavy. I’ve liked Le petit Nicolas since I was young when our teacher read a few of the stories aloud to our class in the original, and I’ve been interested for many years in military aviation. Reading about the day-to-day activities of a fighter squadron is fine with me in any language. I may as well improve my grasp of the Passiv and Präteritum by constantly seeing them reused when recounting how Oberleutnant (~ (first) lieutenant) so-and-so led the third Staffel (squadron) against a Pulk (~ formation) of Dicke Autos (“fat cars” – enemy bombers) escorted by hundreds of Indianer (“Indians” – enemy fighters), or how Gefreiter (~ airman) such-and-such survived his first dogfight. If my textbooks taught grammar and (to the extent possible) vocabulary using thematic content that interested me, I’d enjoy the process as much as I did when using Swan’s books.

I’ve also started making a greater effort to increase my vocabulary. Recalling one of the weekly exercises from my eighth grade English class, I’ve started writing down German words found in Geschäftliche Begegnungen or Bewerbungs-Training whose meaning I couldn’t recall or quickly figure out in context. For each word, I write down inflectional hints (e.g. after der Betrag “sum” I put down –(e)s and Beträge for the genitive singular and nominative plural respectively, whereas after sich verabschieden “to say goodbye”, I put verabschiedet, verabschiedete, and verabschiedet for the 3rd person singular of present and imperfect, and past participle respectively), and on the following line an example sentence that’s either lifted verbatim from the textbook or an example found in a large monolingual dictionary.

I then leaf through this growing list on my way between home and work, and in some instances look up the word in the German-English index of Farrell’s Dictionary of German Synonyms to see more example sentences and nuances (I strongly recommend this book if you to want to get a better grasp of vocabulary). An example of a small revelation for me from Farrell’s book involves die Anlage which I learned initially as a synonym for die Beilage “attachment, annex” (especially useful in e-mails or mailing documentation). I didn’t realize that Anlage can be translated also as “parkland/grounds (that surround a building)” , “setup” or “disposition”. This seems to help my retention and lowers the chances of mixing up words. A recent bugbear has been with derivatives ending in -trag (from tragen “to carry; hold; wear; produce; support”). After some digging, I now know the difference between such words including der Auftrag “assignment, job”, “der Betrag “sum”, and der Vertrag “contract; treaty”.

I’ve given up on the local Goethe Institut organizing the business-oriented TestPro which I mentioned here and am now looking at my options for taking a general test and might take the exam for B1 this summer (it’s about 3 hours long). I doubt that I can pull off B2 soon without a huge pick-up in vocabulary and ease in producing mainly error-free German on a dime especially after being told by a couple of instructors at the local Goethe Institut that big differences between passing B2 compared to B1 are:

i) vocabulary that’s big enough so that you don’t unduly make the native speaker dumb things down very much nor stress his/her comprehension ability. In other words, you’re not expected to ask for clarification or restatement too often nor are you expected to resort to more than a couple of circumlocutions because of the holes in your vocabulary. Falling into awkward pauses because you don’t quite get what’s been discussed or your vocabulary is so small that you can’t express yourself reasonably spontaneously is a bigger killer on the B2 exam than on B1.

ii) a very short leash at B2 with grammatical mistakes (usually wrong gender and/or wrong inflectional ending) that are more likely to be overlooked at B1 to a certain extent. Assuming that your vocabulary is large enough, then if in doubt, go with the phrasing that you know is grammatical if not a little bland rather than getting cute with the phrasing or word choice and ending up making a mistake in grammar.

Incidentally, these observations also make me both a little skeptical and a little curious of s_allard’s project to pass the Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam this spring starting from zero notwithstanding his ability in English, French and Spanish. None of those languages is especially close to German but if he knew Dutch or even better, Luxembourgish, then I think that his chances of pulling it off with just 3 months of preparation at roughly an hour per day (from what I’ve read in his log) would be much greater.


(source: Die Frühreifen)

1) “The mother-ape first chews the food for her offspring and then passes it on to him mouth-to-mouth.”
2) “Scientists suppose that this is the origin of the human French kiss.”
3) “Supper!” – “Aaaaah!!!”

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HUNGARIAN

I’ve had a bit of a revival in my interest in Hungarian and went through a fairly intensive period of working through Halló, itt Magyarország!. So far I’m down to 10 more chapters left in the 2nd volume. As the course is meant for use in a classroom, the amount of self-check exercises is a little lacking, but I’ve been creating dialogues using the examples given in every chapter. Basically every chapter has four or five examples of dialogues linked to an illustration. The assignment is to create similar dialogues by taking cues from the other illustrations in the section, and drawing on what you know so far as well as the example dialogues. I’ve had a couple of Hungarian friends check my dialogues, although the pace of correction is uneven and my effort to work through the book comes in fits and spurts. I’m thinking about finishing off what I started with MagyarOK A2+ as well as ordering MagyarOK B1 later this year (even better would be if I could get also Magyar OK B2 which is due to be released this year).


(source: Versengés from Garfield, magyarul)

7) “You don’t have to turn everything into a competition!” – “Says the loser.”

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MISCELLANEOUS

There’s nothing worth mentioning about my work with Polish or Slovak. I haven’t used my Polish in a while, but have used my Slovak a little bit recently when hanging out with some of my Czech and Slovak friends. Tomorrow is Fat Thursday (something like Pancake Tuesday) for the Poles and some Germans, and so I guess that provides an excuse for me to use a little Polish while picking up some chruściki and pączki at the Polish bakery.

[cathrynm]

Hey, nice to see you again!

[Chung]

Hey, nice to see you again!

   O/
 / |
  /  \

[Chung]

FINNISH

I'm still in the middle of Suomen Mestari 2's chapter 7 whose focus for grammar is the declension in plural. Because of a change in plans (see below), I've switched to using Teach Yourself Finnish Tutor as my main resource. This has nothing to do with the quality of the Suomen Mestari series which I've come to like a lot for its no-nonsense approach, ton of exercises (with answer keys too) and obvious focus on teaching Finnish which a newcomer to Finland (i.e. exchange student, (im)migrant, foreign employee at a Finnish workplace) needs to know. The storyline of the entire series also hangs better than the ones used in each of Teach Yourself Finnish and Finnish for Foreigners to say nothing of Colloquial Finnish whose dialogues have a revolving door of semi-anonymous speakers named Juhani, Kaisa, Liisa, Mrs. Marple, Norman, Paul, Päivi, and Sanna among a few others. I was very much looking forward to finishing the 2nd volume, and getting going with the 3rd volume as that volume and the 4th one use colloquial Finnish in their dialogues, and have subsections devoted to colloquial Finnish alongside introduction to more specialized vocabulary and exploration of more advanced points in grammar. With the way things are going, however, I've had to conclude that I don't have enough time to make the best use of it, and have to resort to maintaining (sort of) my knowledge by using a workbook.


(source: Kielikylpysuolaa via Musta hevonen-sarjakuva)

1) 1:00 “I can't sleep... Maybe I'll read something.”
2) 1:01 “The Serbo-Croatian language is a South Slavonic language belonging to the Indo-European language family.”
3) 1:02 *snoring* (N.B. This gag would work with any language whose alphabet uses ž)

GERMAN

I've finished the 2nd chapter in each of Geschäftliche Begegnungen B1+ and Menschen im Beruf Bewerbungs-Training (A2/B1). In the former I got an introduction to language related to income and what to do with that income (i.e. savings, budgeting) while with the latter I plowed through material about the language of job offers/postings.

It's bugged me a fair bit more as I've been studying that I have so many holes in my vocabulary. In addition to the problems with derivatives of tragen mentioned in my last entry, I've started thinking about derivatives of ziehen “to pull” as in der Abzug “(account) statement” and erziehen “to educate”. I've learned many such words over the years, but even now still get a little confused or struggle to get the gist of some of them.

I spent a good part of this afternoon filling in a few pages in my notebook with a special section devoted to prefixed forms of tragen and derivatives (e.g. der Ertrag “output, yield”) complete with an example sentence for each. Once I'm done with those, I'll do the same for ziehen and any other roots in the future if I get sufficiently bothered by being tripped up by derivatives. Man, I can already see myself doing this exercise with zählen “to count” etc. too after realizing how I had to look up die Anzahl a couple of weeks ago. I also have been working haphazardly with Practice Makes Perfect German Vocabulary and will look into using Schaum's Outlines - German Vocabulary if needed.

I'm still slowly making my way through that book about the German fighter squadron in WWII (Chronik Jagdgeschwader 301/302 «Wilde Sau» by Willi Reschke) and am now getting into more action as 1943 comes to a close. Casualties are mounting despite some successes against British bombers. Because of how dense the text is I'm happy enough to read a page or two in bed with a German-English dictionary at my side every night or two before falling asleep. I've resisted the temptation to get the English translation of the book although the much higher price makes it easier for me to stick to the German original.


(source: Die Dramatik der Dinge by Katharina Greve)

1) *Ring, ring* - “Yes! Press me!”
2) *Ring, ring* - “Quiet down there!” - “Yes! Yes! Harder!”
3) “Slut!” - “Yuppie!” - “This is what I just hate about blocks of flats!”

ITALIAN

This might not be as big a surprise as when I revealed a while ago that I was studying Russian in preparation for the Turkic Challenge, but with a (probable) trip to Italy looming, I've bitten the bullet and embarked on a crash course to learn Italian. It's weird for me to be a beginner in FIGS as I haven't really been in this position since I started learning German long ago, and French even farther back (I started dabbling in Spanish last year but it ended soon after it had started once my plans to visit South America had fallen through). It's early days but things are coming to me pretty quickly compared to how they were when I was a beginner in Hungarian or any language outside the FIGS bubble for that matter. I'm not bothered by grammatical gender or pronunciation, and the discount in vocabulary thanks to knowing English and French is welcome. The first thing that has given me pause is the set of alternations when combining prepositions with definite articles, and I suspect that it'll take me some time to figure out the prepositions. I can already sense that it'll take some effort to work off the French interference when I get to a, di, da, in and per which I'll probably keep seeing as à, de, en and pour for the first little while. As a bonus, I do like the sound of the language and it falls better on my ear than the other Romance languages. Yet it will never speak to me as Finnish, Hungarian, Polish or Slovak do.

To learn it, I've been using a few courses. My main course with audio is Alwena Lamping's Talk Italian. For grammar, I'm using Painless Italian and Italian Demystified both by Marcel Danesi. To kill time on the way to and from work on the bus, I'm flipping through See it and Say it in Italian by Giuseppina Salvadori and Margarita Madrigal as an alternative to reading my notebook of German vocabulary.

Lamping's course is meant for beginners with short lessons anchored by phrases or sentences useful to visitors (e.g. greetings, ordering food, reporting theft, booking accommodation), although it doesn't shy away from grammar and where necessary does present brief explanations of some of the nuts and bolts buried in the phrases and situational language. Many of its exercises are also meant to develop some skill in listening comprehension and speaking which is fine by me since I have no Italian friends to practice with. So far, I've already finished the first 3 of the 10 chapters in the first volume.

Danesi's Painless Italian is a textbook for beginners in high school, and has a conversational tone in its dumbed-down explanations of grammar, complete with contrived texts in the point of view of children as they describe their homes, friends, favorite foods, hobbies or life at school. Despite its adolescent setting, it's not that bad for an adult and it has a lot of exercises to practice grammar and basic vocabulary. It would have been nice if it had recordings of the dialogues/narrative although it is meant for use in a class for beginners (7th, 8th, 9th grade?) lasting at least 20 weeks with the teacher building his/her course around the book, and then using its exercises as part of the daily homework. Speaking and listening exercises would be handled by the teacher rather than the book. I've already finished the first 4 of its 10 chapters. The other book of his that I'm using, Italian Demystified, is a textbook on Italian grammar for beginners but its CD offers a bit of speaking practice that complements the slightly drier exercises and quizzes in the book. I like the layout and concise explanations of grammar. I've just started work on the 8th chapter (of 20).

See it and Say it in Italian is the Italian counterpart of Madrigal's See it and Say it in Spanish which in turn is a heavily reduced version of her Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish. See it and Say it in Italian is a bit like a phrasebook with each page containing about a half dozen simple questions and answers (e.g. “Did you buy a suit? Yes, I bought a suit”.). The idea is that by seeing the same type of sentence with different vocabulary over several pages, you'll pick up some bare basics. I like it just because it's not mentally demanding and sometimes better than flipping through a deck of flash cards, reviewing a long list of vocabulary or reading a language textbook.

I also have a second-hand copy of Oxford Take off in Italian but haven't been using it because I'm happy what the other courses so far. I'm quite sure though that it's good too if it's anything like the volume for Russian.

After about a few weeks of study, I've already picked up some survival vocabulary, the present tense, plural, in/definite articles, and cardinal numbers to 1000. Let's see how far I take this.

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MISCELLANEOUS

In spite of the preceding, I've actually scaled back my language-learning a fair bit recently and it'll stay this way for a while. I'm spending more of my free time on work-related projects, and what time is left for languages will be for Italian (as long as the trip is on), and German as I have an exam in mind. If it'll be Zertifikat-Deutsch (B1), then the earliest when I could see myself taking the exam is this summer. If I choose to go for B2 instead (and thus skip taking B1), then this fall would be the earliest when I could envision taking it. What I ultimately do depends on my confidence after having completed some practice exams, and how my stuff for work progresses. I have exam prep books from Cornelsen and Hueber for B1 and B2 ready to go in addition to the freebies from Goethe Institut. I'll have to work on my listening and speaking abilities too and may need to sign up for advanced conversation classes at Goethe Institut if I can't find a suitable (and affordable) tutor to improve my spontaneous output. Of course, I already have bookmarks for Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten, DLI GLOSS and Grüße aus Deutschland to provide some listening practice. My Finnish studies will be down to plodding through Teach Yourself Finnish Tutor in a spare moment. My plan to continue with Finnish for Foreigners 2 and the rest of Suomen Mestari will have to wait. I can't see my life without Finnish. My stuff for Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak is back on the shelf, unfortunately. Occasional exposure will have to do not to let my knowledge fade unduly in the next while.