Chung at work / Chung pri práci / Chung työn touhussa

[stelingo]

Should I know what FIGS stands for?

Are you familiar with Easy German, Chung? Lots of useful authentic listening practice. There's also Easy Italian, but there are only about 9 videos so far.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbxb2fqe9oNgglAoYqsYOtQ

[jeff_lindqvist]

Should I know what FIGS stands for?

French, Italian, German, Spanish.

[Chung]

Should I know what FIGS stands for?

Are you familiar with Easy German, Chung? Lots of useful authentic listening practice. There's also Easy Italian, but there are only about 9 videos so far.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbxb2fqe9oNgglAoYqsYOtQ

Ah yes, thanks for that. I forgot about Easy German. I'll probably tune into the playlists for B1 and harder to stretch myself some more.

Thanks. I didn't know about Easy Italian, but first I gotta get some more of the basics down.

[Chung]

FINNISH

I've completed the first 3 chapters of Teach Yourself Finnish Tutor and already am having second thoughts. One problem is that I feel that I'm doing too little with Finnish. The second problem is that I'm not taking that well to the book. Each chapter focuses on a theme or two, and a couple of points in grammar. The exercises all go back to those foci. For example, in the first chapter, the themes are family and physical appearance while the point of grammar is the set of noun classes. The latter leads to introduction to stem forms for inflection and consonant gradation.

For what it's worth, here's the content of the first 3 chapters:

- 1: CEFR A2 - Family and appearances
Learning outcome: Describe your family and a person's physical appearance and personality
Grammar: Different noun types in singular and plural; consonant gradation
Reading task: Read an email about someone's family
Writing task: Write an email about someone's family

- 2: CEFR A2 - Daily routines
Learning outcome: Describe habits, routines and everyday aspects of your environment
Grammar: Different verb types in present tense (including the affirmative and negative)
Reading task: Read a short magazine article
Writing task: Write a short description of daily routines

- 3: CEFR B1 - Housing, rooms and furniture
Learning outcomes: Read advertisements for apartments and describe your home
Grammar: Locative case endings in singular and plural; existential clauses
Reading task: Look for information in advertisements for apartments
Writing task: Write about your home to a potential tenant

The exercises are rather few, and not a few times I've had to look things up in the dictionary since a chapter doesn't have a list of thematic vocabulary whose entries turn up repeatedly in that chapter's exercises and examples. The explanations for grammar aren't that great either even though I have a good idea of what's happening because of my background, and the book does live up to its title by being something like a tutor. It's meant as a supplement to another course or to be used with the help of a Finnish tutor/teacher. I definitely wouldn't recommend this to someone who wants to learn Finnish independently and from scratch. I'm already thinking about going back to Suomen Mestari 2. Anyway, I'll do a few more units and decide what then.


(Source: Mitähän sitä tekisi miljoonalla eurolla? from Office Animals)

1) "What in the world would you do with a million euros?"
3) "What're y'up to?" - "I'm making a business plan."

GERMAN

I've started the 3rd chapter in each of Geschftliche Begegnungen B1+ and Menschen im Beruf Bewerbungs-Training (A2/B1). I'm getting a review of forms of addresses (including when to use du and Sie) and modal verbs, while the latter is about talking on the phone for business purposes. It's been going more slowly over the past couple of weeks, but I aim to finish these units by the end of the month. I'm now reading the combat reports of JG 301/302 from early 1944 with much of the same going on as in late 1943. Namely some successes in bomber interceptions but plenty of losses from landing accidents at night as well as return fire from enemy bombers. It's a little weird to read since I know how things will turn out overall (i.e. switch to daylight operations, losses mount even more, Germany loses the war) but at least the details still hold interest all the while exposing me to non-fiction prose.

I've also taken up William Camden's idea of getting a mini dictionary despite my preference for larger ones. Because I use public transport a lot, I have some dead time to browse something handy. Instead of whipping out my smartphone or a textbook, why not leaf through a few pages of a mini dictionary instead? I've picked up this one for German as it's small enough to fit in my jacket's pocket (not to mention my laptop bag), has plenty of example sentences, explicitly marks the nominative plural of nouns, or stems of "strong" verbs, and the second past participle (this last one is handy because I haven't yet developed sufficient sense to know when the participle of an unfamiliar verb ends in -en or -t). The only downside is that it's really meant for kids in high school and I estimate that it has only about 10,000 entries of German to English and even then it's focused on everyday life. It doesn't contain many of the unfamiliar technical words in the business German textbooks at B1 that I'm now using, and for those I have to turn to my larger dictionaries or online ones like DWDS. Still, I can't complain about its compactness with explicit indications of grammatical information for every headword as I could use those kinds of reminders. It's certainly more discrete and in some ways more interesting than trying to do the same with my larger notebook of German vocabulary.

I've done something similar with Italian. See below for my first impressions of the dictionary.


(Source: Beule from Moby)

1) "Get the newspaper, Buckles"
2) "No way! It's freezing cold outside! I'd rather stay here where it's warm! And nothing's going to change my opinion!"
3) "OK. No treats*"
4) "My Achilles' heel consists of wheat bran, bone meal, and beef fat."

* Lecklerli is a colloquialism for any edible treat. In standard German, it's a kind of spiced biscuit/cake traditional to Basel, Switzerland.

ITALIAN

The trip to Italy is still on, and so I'm still making my way through BBC Talk Italian 1, Painless Italian and Italian Demystified. In the first course I've just finished chapter 6 (of 10) which deals with location and asking for directions. In the second, I'm in the middle of chapter 6 and am about to start looking at the imperfect after having been put through my paces through the names for basic body parts, perfect with essere as the auxilliary verb, and direct object pronouns. In the last course, I've just finished half of the course, and have another 10 chapters to go. Chapter 10 was mainly about the imperative, which was surprisingly tougher for me to learn than expected. Maybe I'll expound in a future post in some detail about why I found it so. I have to say that it reminded me a little bit of what I had to do to learn imperative in Finnish and Hungarian, and it was definitely not as straightforward as the imperative in French. The other bits about the partitive and difference between sapere and conoscere were easier on me.

As mentioned above, I've sprung for this mini dictionary by Collins with a similar intention as I have by picking up a mini dictionary for German. This Italian mini dictionary covers a bit more than the German one that I got as it's meant for general use rather than high school students, and has an example sentence or two for about a quarter of the headwords. Because of the nature of Italian, I was looking for something that links verbs to patterns of model verbs, indications of stress placement and information about auxiliary verb (i.e. something other than the first approximation that transitives use avere while intransitives use essere). I scored the first two points out of the three, and I had no luck in finding a mini learners' dictionary with Italian to English comparable to my German one. Oh well. It's still compact, and considering that I plan to take German further than Italian (for now), I'm quite happy with what it as a beginner.

---

MISCELLANEOUS

Just an observation: I'm getting a really good taste of what a lot of people on this forum go through when sticking to just FIGS. It's very easy to get lulled into a sense of security or confidence about learning any foreign language independently after seeing how similar FIGS (and English) are to each other, the abundance of blog posts about your target language or an abundance of learning material carried on Amazon (and cheap too) complete with reviews and even sample pages. On a related note, I can find tons of classes, tutors and/or meetups for FIGS (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in CJK for that matter i.e. (Mandarin) Chinese, Japanese, Korean) around where I live which all makes me envious when I think of the lonelier situation that I (have) faced when studying my usual cast of "unpopular" languages (e.g. Finnish, Slovak, Turkish). The nearest that I've experienced before I got into Italian (and resumed German) is with Russian and Korean, although a lot of the material for the latter isn't the cheapest to begin with. Moreover, I found that the learning material that actually worked best for me was the more expensive stuff that I had to order from Korea (i.e. books published by Darakwon) as opposed to the better known (and cheaper) offerings in the Anglosphere from Routledge, McGraw Hill and Tuttle.

[Chung]

FINNISH

After working through Chapter 4 of Teach Yourself Finnish Tutor, I've set it aside and am going back to Suomen Mestari 2. I just can't keep things going with the former, and realize that I'm better off with the latter. I simply need a lot more exercises devoted to some feature of Finnish grammar or theme introduced in a given unit/chapter. The bigger problem though for Finnish is that I haven't had as much time free for learning languages, and what's been available has been used more for German and Italian for different reasons. Nevertheless, I can't push Finnish out of the rotation as I always feel like I'm missing something when I go more than a week without studying a language outside FIGS or rather: Not studying Finnish for seven days makes one week. Har har har.


(Source: Fuengirola.fi)

1) "Hi! How was your first day at work after summer vacation? - Well..."
2) "Do you remember when I said on my first day of vacation that I felt that my energy was coming back? - You probably said that."
3) "It works in the other direction the other way around."

P.S. This is rather topical for me considering that I just came back from vacation a few days ago.

GERMAN

My German studies slowed down because of short trip to Europe, and so I'm still on the 3rd chapter in each of Geschftliche Begegnungen B1+ and Menschen im Beruf Bewerbungs-Training (A2/B1). I've also got back to reading that war diary of JG 301/302 and am now reading reports from the spring of 1944 detailing combat against American air raids after one of its units had been detached to Finland to help defend against Soviet air raids. My plans to take a proficiency exam in German this year have become a little hazier. See MISCELLAENOUS below for the reason.


(Source: Shit Happens! - Ruthe.de)

THE GREAT BEE DIE-OFF "Are you watching this horror film with me? - That's a documentary."

ITALIAN

As with my German studies, my effort for Italian dropped off too because of my trip. However I had to postpone the trip to Italy, and so the reason to stick with Italian is still there (not to mention that I still very much like the language as it is). I did manage to finish BBC Talk Italian 1 a few weeks ago, and have just started BBC Talk Italian 2. I've also started work on Chapter 9 of Painless Italian and Chapter 12 of Italian Demystified. My biggest problems right now in Italian grammar are getting the endings right in imperative (especially in the 2nd person singular, and with reflexive verbs) - this was especially apparent when working in Chapter 11 of Italian Demystified and I wish that there had been more exercises in that chapter for me to get a better handle on things.

In between some sightseeing in Germany, I visited some bookstores, and ended up with Langenscheidt Grund- und Aufbauwortschatz Italienisch A1-B2 and Prime Lettura / Erste italienische Lesestücke.

The first book is a thematic dictionary of Italian for German-speakers and so I'm trying to hit two birds with one stone by getting something in my current target languages. I like that it's quite compact and well suited to learners with an example sentence provided for almost every headword, gender marked for both Italian and German nouns, and infinitives of Italian irregular verbs cross-referenced to an appendix showing the irregularities in other moods or tenses. I warmly recommend this dictionary to anyone who's starting to learn Italian and already knows enough German (and vice-versa) because of the features that I just mentioned.

The second book is a dual-language reader for Germanophone beginners in Italian containing several (very) short stories in Italian on the left-hand page matched with translations to German on the right-hand page. My Italian is such that I'm struggling to read anything past the first 15 pages without relying heavily on the German translation, and/or often stopping to look something up in my Italian <> English dictionary. On the other hand, the texts are fairly uncomplicated and usually good for a chuckle or two and the German is often simple enough for me to read without relying that much on my "pocket" Oxford-Duden German <> English dictionary (a couple of German sentences per page are usually sufficiently unclear or unintelligible to me that I need to look things up in the dictionary to make sure that I'm on the right track). I'd probably be better off reading this otherwise simple book after having finished my current lineup of Italian textbooks to get a sufficiently large passive vocabulary and firmer foundation in grammar, and so get less tempted to read the German translation.

MISCELLANEOUS

I've been thinking about going back to Hungarian since an acquaintance recently let me know of plans to run proficiency exams in Canada (but not the USA as of yet) on a couple of dates in 2019. The first exam date could be in January or February with a second in October. This intrigues me especially if I find a sufficiently cheap flight to a city where the exams will be given, and arrange to use a couple of days of vacation even though I'd prefer a testing location in the USA as the flight would probably be a cheaper than flying to Canada. It'd certainly beat flying to Europe to do it (hey, I'm a language nerd, but not so much that I view taking a proficiency exam as worthy of a transatlantic flight!). If the dates, locations and flights were to line up in my favor, I'd look at taking the Hungarian exam for B1. As it is, I can't see myself being able to prepare for proficiency exams in both Hungarian and German that happen within a couple of months of each other. Since the Hungarian exams are likely to be offered less frequently than the German ones at the nearest Goethe Institut, I'm more comfortable about pushing out taking the German exam well into 2019 than doing it the other way around (especially if it turns out that I could make it to a Hungarian exam scheduled for the upcoming winter).

[Chung]

After working on some exercises in the imperative in Chapter 9 of Painless Italian, I think that I'm getting the hang of things. While I'm at it, I may as well as expand on the point from here on how the ways to construct the imperative in Italian are more varied than I had imagined and remind me vaguely of what I have to do when constructing commands in Finnish and Hungarian. This is something like a short comparison of the affirmative and negative imperative of "to listen" for 2nd person singular and plural.

Here's the summary:

"Listen!" || "Don't listen!" (2nd person singular informal)

FINNISH: Kuuntele! || Älä kuuntele!
FRENCH: Écoute! || N'écoute pas!
GERMAN: Hör(e) zu! || Hör(e) nicht zu!
HUNGARIAN: Figyelj! / Figyel(je)d! || Ne figyelj! / Ne figyel(je)d!
ITALIAN: Ascolta! || Non ascoltare!
POLISH: Słuchaj! || Nie słuchaj!
SLOVAK: Počúvaj! || Nepočúvaj!

"Listen!" || "Don't listen!" (2nd person singular formal/polite)

FINNISH: Kuunnelkaa! || Älkää kuunnelko!
FRENCH: Écoutez! || N'écoutez pas!
GERMAN: Hören Sie zu! || Hören Sie nicht zu!
HUNGARIAN: Figyeljen! / Figyelje! || Ne figyeljen! / Ne figyelje!
ITALIAN: Ascolti! || Non ascolti!
POLISH: Niech pan/pani słucha! || Niech pan/pani nie słucha!
SLOVAK: Počúvajte! || Nepočúvajte!

"Listen!" || "Don't listen!" (2nd person plural informal)

FINNISH: Kuunnelkaa! || Älkää kuunnelko!
FRENCH: Écoutez! || N'écoutez pas!
GERMAN: Hört zu! || Hört nicht zu!
HUNGARIAN: Figyeljetek! / Figyeljétek! || Ne figyeljetek! / Ne figyeljétek!
ITALIAN: Ascoltate! || Non ascoltate!
POLISH: Słuchajcie! || Nie słuchajcie!
SLOVAK: Počúvajte! || Nepočúvajte!

"Listen!" || "Don't listen!" (2nd person plural formal/polite)

FINNISH: Kuunnelkaa! || Älkää kuunnelko!
FRENCH: Écoutez! || N'écoutez pas!
GERMAN: Hören Sie zu! || Hören Sie nicht zu!
HUNGARIAN: Figyeljenek! / Figyeljék! || Ne figyeljenek! / Ne figyeljék!
ITALIAN: Ascoltate! || Non ascoltate!
POLISH: Niech panowie/panie/państwo słuchają! || Niech panowie/panie/państwo nie słuchają!
SLOVAK: Počúvajte! || Nepočúvajte!

***

Here's the boring-ass detail in the thought process to translate "Listen!" and "Don't listen!".

For 2nd person singular (informal) affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 1st person singular without the final -n. For 2nd person plural affirmative (also the formal way for the 2nd person singular) use the 1st infinitive but replace the infinitive suffix with -kaa/-kää.

Kuuntele! Kunnelkaa!

For 2nd person singular (informal) negative use the corresponding affirmative form as shown above but let it follow the particle älä. For 2nd person plural negative (also the formal way for the 2nd person singular) use the corresponding affirmative form as shown above but replace the suffix -kaa/-kää with -ko/-kö. Finally, let this form ending in -ko/-kö follow the particle älkää.

Älä kuuntele! Älkää kunnelko!

Use the respective forms of the present indicative tense of the 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural without the pronoun. The 2nd person plural form is also recycled as part of the polite and/or formal way to command regardless of how many people are addressed.

Écoute! Écoutez!

Let the conjugated verb fall between ne / n' and pas to make it a negative command.

N'écoute pas! N'écoutez pas!

For 2nd person singular (informal) affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 1st person singular without the personal pronoun. Dropping the final -e of this conjugated form is also acceptable and shortens the command by one syllable. For 2nd person plural affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 2nd person plural without the personal pronoun.

Hör(e) zu! Hört zu!

For negative of both 2nd person singular (informal) and plural use the respective affirmatives form as shown above but place nicht after the verb (its exact position depends on whether there's an object pronoun).

Hör(e) nicht zu! Hört nicht zu!

For polite affirmative commands regardless of the number of people addressed use the present indicative of the 3rd person plural with the verb followed by the pronoun Sie

Hören Sie zu!

For polite negative commands regardless of the number of people addressed use the present indicative of the 3rd person plural with the verb followed by the pronoun Sie and then by nicht

Hören Sie nicht zu!

For 2nd person singular (informal) affirmative add -j(ál)/-j(él) to the verb stem for indefinite conjugation or -(ja)d/-(je)d for definite conjugation. For 2nd person plural (informal) affirmative add -jatek/jetok to the verb stem for indefinite conjugation or -játok/-jétek for definite conjugation. Mind the assimilation of the -j- which begins the imperative to the stem's final consonant as applicable.

Figyelj(él)! Figyeljetek! (indefinite) Figyel(je)d! Figyeljétek! (definite)

For 2nd person singular and plural (informal) negative use the corresponding affirmative forms as shown above but let them follow the particle ne.

Ne figyelj(él)! Ne figyeljetek! (indefinite) Ne figyel(je)d! Ne figyeljétek! (definite)

For a (fairly) polite or formal affirmative command to one person add -an/-en to the verb stem for indefinite conjugation or -ja/-je for definite conjugation. This is the imperative/subjunctive form of the 3rd person singular. For a (fairly) polite or formal affirmative command to more than one person add -janak/-jenek to the verb stem for indefinite conjugation or -ják/-jék for definite conjugation. This is the imperative/subjunctive form of the 3rd person plural.

Figyeljen! Figyeljenek! (indefinite) Figyelje! Figyeljék! (definite)

For 3rd person singular and plural (i.e. fairly polite and/or formal command), use the corresponding affirmative forms as shown above but let them follow the particle ne.

Ne figyeljen! Ne figyeljenek! (indefinite) Ne figyelje! Ne figyeljék! (definite)

For 2nd person singular (informal) affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 2nd person singular but drop the personal pronoun and replace the final -sz with -j. For 2nd person plural (informal) affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 2nd person plural without the personal pronoun and replace the final -cie with -jcie. In some instances the -j- infix of the imperative will assimilate (or even disappear) because of the verb stem's final consonant (by coincidence this resembles the tendency in Hungarian).

Słuchaj! Słuchajcie!

To negate commands made in 2nd person singular and plural (informal) use the corresponding affirmative forms above preceded by the particle Nie.

Nie słuchaj! Nie słuchajcie!

For a polite or formal affirmative command to one person use the verb in its 3rd person singular conjugation for the present tense indicative (with a few exceptions) and let it follow the phrase niech pan (for a man) or niech pani (for a woman). If giving this command to more than one person then use the verb in its 3rd person plural conjugation for the present tense indicative (with a few exceptions) and let it follow the phrase niech panowie (for a group of men), niech panie (for a group of women) or niech państwo (for a group with men and women). These commands translate more closely as "let sir/madam/gentlemen/ladies/ladies and gentlemen (not) listen!" rather than "(don't) listen!"

Niech pan/pani słucha! Niech panowie/panie/państwo słuchają!

To negate these polite or formal commands place nie immediately before the verb with the affirmative commands immediately above.

Niech pan/pani nie słucha! Niech panowie/panie/państwo nie słuchają!

As a rule of thumb, affirmative commands use a perfective verb while negative ones use an imperfective variant, although the converse is also grammatical and/or idiomatic in most instances.

For 2nd person singular (informal) affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 2nd person singular but drop the personal pronoun and replace the final -š with -j. For 2nd person plural affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 2nd person plural without the personal pronoun and replace the final -te with -jte. The 2nd person plural form is also recycled as a way to a polite way to command in the 2nd person singular. In some instances the -j- infix of the imperative will assimilate (or even disappear) because of the verb stem's final consonant (by coincidence this resembles the tendency in Hungarian)

Počúvaj! Počúvajte!

For 2nd person singular (informal) and 2nd person plural negative commands attach the prefix ne to the corresponding affirmative forms.

Nepočúvaj! Nepočúvajte!

As a rule of thumb, affirmative commands use a perfective verb while negative ones use an imperfective variant, although the converse is also grammatical and/or idiomatic in most instances.

***

Compared to the above, Italian has its own quirks, which I wasn't expecting. I was actually expecting something closer to the French or German techniques.

For 2nd person singular (informal) affirmative of regular verbs use the present indicative tense of the 2nd person singular without the personal pronoun but for -are verbs then change the final -i to -a. For 2nd person plural affirmative use the present indicative tense of the 2nd person plural without the personal pronoun.

Ascolta! Ascoltate!

For negative of 2nd person singular (informal), use the infinitive preceded by non. For the 2nd person plural use the corresponding imperative in the affirmative but again place non immediately before the verb.

Non ascoltare! Non ascoltate!

For polite/formal affirmative commands to one person of regular -are verbs use the present indicative of the 2nd person singular (i.e. the informal way in that tense) without the personal pronoun but for regular -ere and -ire verbs then change the final -i to -a.

Ascolti!

For polite/formal negative commands to one person place non before the affirmative version of this command.

Non ascolti!

What throws me off right now in the Italian imperative are the nature of the intricacies of the tu and Lei forms, although I realize that the number of considerations isn't that great compared to most of the other languages I'm used to.

***

To keep this comparison from getting too complicated and long, I'm skipping impersonal commands that don't really use imperative, those polite Hungarian commands starting with tessék, considerations of aspect and/or telicity of imperatives in Finnish and Slavonic languages, or intricacies in Italian imperatives related to the placing of object pronouns and formal plural commands in Italian using the 3rd person plural whose place is being increasingly taken nowadays by the 2nd person plural imperatives.

[Chung]

FINNISH

I'm resumed working in Chapter 7 of Suomen Mestari 2 and finished several exercises with the plural declensions. It's one of those things that I still struggle to get consistently right since the declension can involve consonant gradation, and changes to the final stem vowel depending on the stem's nature itself. It's not as elaborate as in Northern Saami, but it's still a lot for me to remember and Suomen Mestari 2 uses a rules-based approach that refers to the stem's endings (usually just the vowel). It seems that the way for me to improve my handling with these declensions is more practice so that at least some rules get ingrained allowing me to decline correctly some nouns consistently, while I start to build more intuition so that other times I decline a less familiar noun on the model of a more familiar noun based on their shared characteristics rather than using the rules as the starting point.


(Source: Fok_it in Helsingin Sanomat)

1) "Cool aviator [sun]glasses" - "Are these aviator [sun]glasses?" - "Well, aren't they?" - "Damn it."
2) "I'm no pilot. I thought that these are cop [sun]glasses" - "Well, one can also call them that, I suppose." - "Damn it."
3) "I'm no cop. I thought that these are called successful person's glasses." - "I'm not going to guess anymore what you're getting at." - "Haha, damn it! Seems like my trolling*-glasses are working!"

*hämmentäjä translates here literally as "confuser" and perhaps "agitator" although Finnish already has the terms agitaattori and kiihottaja for the latter.

GERMAN

I've finally finished Chapter 3 in Menschen im Beruf Bewerbungs-Training (A2/B1) but am still in the same chapter of Geschäftliche Begegnungen B1+. I'm in the middle of reviewing the Konjunktiv II of the latter, which makes sense with the chapter's theme of business contact and social interaction, laden as it can be with hedges or polite requests. I'm getting into a routine with the activities of JG 301/302 as the spring of 1944 goes on, with descriptions of occasional administrative/organizational changes to the units mixed in with the more frequent but usual combat reports. It's actually getting a little dry and it could be just the writing style with lots of jargon, preterite and passive constructions. I've read similar books about other units of the Luftwaffe, but those were in English. Even so I didn't find the writing style in those books being as detached. It could also be that they were published in English thus making the act of reading less of a chore. I've ordered another book in German about a fighter unit by a different author, and so I might find that book easier to get into.

As part of my need to shore up my vocabulary, I've added Hallo! Wortschatztraining für Deutsch als Zweitsprache to my routine. It's a workbook like Schaum's Outline of German Vocabulary but meant for those who want to build a vocabulary expected of someone who's earned the Goethe-/ÖSD-Zertifikat B1, and more finely divided than the version by Schaum's Outlines. It's divided into 22 themes with each theme splitting further into 4 or 5 subjects (or sub-themes). For example, the second theme deals with social relations while its subjects are kinship, love, relationships, and personal traits. Each subject gets some exercises designed to expand your word stock or reinforce an existing one, and most chapters have at least one exercise that's tied to downloadable audio on the publisher's website. I'm liking this book so far (I've already completed the first theme "Greetings and Information about People") even though it's probably a little below my passive level. It never hurts for me to review, and it's definitely not been as dry as working with Schaum's Outline or German Vocabulary. It's perfect for evenings when I can/want to do less than half and hour of German since I can polish off a subject in that time or less. Here's a review of the book in German with some photos of the contents.


(Source: Der Flix)

1) "Are you a cat?" - "Yeees!"
2) "What sound does a cat make?"
3) "Bow-wow!"
4) "A cat with foreign language knowledge." - "Bow-wow! Mooo!"

ITALIAN

Since my last update I've finished off Painless Italian, and have already finished the first three chapters and the first "extra" chapter titled "In più 1" in BBC Talk Italian 2, and Chapters 12 and 13 in Italian Demystified. I now have a slightly better grasp of the imperative in Italian thanks to being assigned even more exercises in the last two chapters of Painless Italian.

So far in BBC Talk Italian 2 I'm not learning anything new in grammar, but do like its emphasis on using short audio-based exercises (mainly listening comprehension, but a few guided ones for speaking where I have to answer orally to some cue using what I've learned in the chapter) while Italian Demystified has me covered with its written exercises (too bad that its audio exercises don't work as well for me). With Italian Demystified I revisited the demonstrative pronouns and imperfect (I got my introduction to them in Painless Italian) and am set to learn about the pluperfect and past absolute (passato remoto) in chapter 14, which will be new for me. I think that I'll stick to just two books for Italian for now as I'm OK with having a little more time available to work on Finnish and German. Juggling 3 books for Italian meant my progress was slower, and left me taking away time from working on Finnish and German (the former more than the latter).

[Chung]

FINNISH

I did nothing more exciting than more work on plural declensions in chapter 7 of Suomen Mestari 2. I'm starting to take to the rules-based approach in the book but it's not as solid as I'd like it. I looked up the drills on plural declension in FSI Conversational Finnish but didn't feel satisfied after doing them as they weren't as extensive as I would have liked. Oh well. I'll have the figure it out one way or another.

Over the years I've never ceased to be impressed by the amount of online material that's available for foreigners to learn or improve their abilities in Finnish at no charge considering that foreigners don't usually study the language from scratch unless they plan to live in Finland for an extended period. In addition to old standbys such as Tavataan taas!, Supisuomea, and Ymmärrä suomea, I've found a nice set of videos, Suomi taskussa, which is meant to teach basic Finnish that's useful for (im)migrants (e.g. shopping, registering your kids at a school). The videos are short, provided with subtitles in Finnish, and watching them is a nice change from plowing through Suomen mestari 2 but still a way for me to recall some basic vocabulary.

Infopankki and the Social and Healthcare District of South Karelia have good collections of links for anyone interested in studying Finnish independently ranging from the free primer (with downloadable .pdf and audio) for migrants, Hauska tavata! to Meillä päin suomea which is an introduction to dialects. I should update the links in the Finnish profile.


(Source: Oswald via sarjis.info)

1) "Erkki, there're five holes іn your head!" - "What?! Where?!"
2) "Mouth, ears, nostrils - five holes! Hahaha!"
3) "A friend without a sense of humor."*

*Huumorintajuton translates literally as "humor-sense-lacking" and acts as an adjective.

GERMAN

I'm still working on Chapter 3 of Geschäftliche Begegnungen B1+ and studied a bit about language used for establishing initial business contacts via email or phone. I've also done a couple sets of exercises related to vocabulary of social relations in Hallo! Wortschatztraining für Deutsch als Zweitsprache. I should start Chapter 4 of Menschen im Beruf Bewerbungs-Training (A2+/B1) next week. I just received that second book about a Luftwaffe fighter unit, JG 51 (JG = Jagdgeschwader "fighter wing"), and in comparison to the one on JG 301/302 which I'm currently reading, it seems a little less dry. The one on JG 301/302 is rather like a diary and understandably presents things matter-of-factly even though it gets repetitive (namely: unit scrambled from base -> weather conditions are excellent as pilots encounter the bomber stream -> Lt. so-and-so succeeds in shooting down a Lancaster -> squadron mate Cpt. so-and-so bails out with injuries after his plane gets damaged by a bomber's defensive fire -> Cpl. so-and-so dies in a crash-landing while returning to base) while this new one is written more like a history book. I think that I'll stay with the first book until I finish it (or can't take the monotony anymore).


(Source: Kobi Köter)

2) "10 [meters]"
3) "Do you think he'll make it into the Guinness Book of World Records with this?" - "If he hits it." (i.e. the tree)

ITALIAN

I finished Chapter 4 in BBC Talk Italian 2 and Chapter 14 in Italian Demystified. In the former, I studied Italian for describing homes while in the latter I got my introduction to the pluperfect and past absolute. I understand the basics of those tenses, but I'll need more practice to get a better handle on their endings and when to use them (especially with the past absolute whose usage is interchangeable with the recent past among some native speakers).

MISCELLANEOUS

While retrieving links for this thread, I stumbled on some more downloadable material hosted by Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seura for lesser-known Uralic languages or Uralic linguistics. Of certain interest to me are a grammar manual for Veps (in Finnish), the .mp3 files for the audio of “Олмапу”, which is a textbook of Meadow Mari for Finnish-speakers, “Materials on Forest Enets”, and “A Linguistic Map of Prehistoric Northern Europe”.

[Chung]

FINNISH

I've finished Chapter 7 of Suomen Mestari 2 which entailed review of relative pronouns in plural, use of past tenses, and more practice with plural declensions. To vary things a little, I watched a few videos from Suomitaskussa whenever I wanted to do something quick with Finnish and not plow through the textbook.


(Source: Musta hevonen)

1) “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”
2) “If only I had my neighbor's gardening skills.”

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GERMAN

I've finished Chapter 3 of Geschäftliche Begegnungen B1+ which meant doing some exercises related to a text on Karin Günther and her work in the fashion industry, and reviewing pronouns in accusative and dative. I'll have to get back to Meschen im Beruf Bewerbungs-Training (A2+/B1) by tomorrow as I still haven't started Chapter 4 despite planning to do so earlier this month. I've read a few more entries in the war diary of JG 301/302 and am now into the spring of 1944 but because of the fairly repetitious prose, can't read more than a couple of pages at a time. I wonder if I'll make it to June 1944 when many fighter units were transferred to France in response to the Western Allies' landing at Normandy.


(Source: Kevin & Kell)

1) “Happy first anniversary, Kell!” - “Flowers!”
2) “Oh, Kevin! You're so thoughtful! Any other husband would have brought something that he truly would have given to himself!”
4) *chewing noises*

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ITALIAN

I've finished Chapter 5 and the review chapter "In più 2" in BBC Talk Italian 2 as well as Chapter 15 in Italian Demystified. With the BBC course, I learned some Italian used to describe clothing and footwear while in the latter I reviewed some finer points about certain classes of nouns such as those with masculine and feminine variants (e.g. il dottore / la dottoressa) or the Greek loanwords (e.g. il programma), and learned something about placement of the handful of adjectives that can precede or follow the relevant noun often to yield a distinct nuance (e.g. l'amica vecchia "the old/elderly friend", la vecchia amica "the old/long-time friend").

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MISCELLANEOUS

Another trip is on the horizon, and Italy now doesn't seem as likely a destination. While I don't think that I'll drop Italian altogether since I've come to like it too much, I do think that I'll have to work some Polish and Slovak into my routine somehow since I'm planning to zip through Poland and Czech Republic to visit a couple of friends (yes, I'm doing the usual thing of using Slovak when in Czech Republic, fully aware that I'd be getting Czech in return). I don't see scaling back German since I still have the Goethe test in mind (and I'll be visiting a German friend on this trip anyway) so maybe Finnish gets scaled back. It's a first world problem, HTLAL style.

[Chung]

AZERI

After a hiatus of over three years, I'm (kind of) back on the saddle with Azeri. While on my last trip, I was hosted by a German couchsurfer who had learned Turkish while in Turkey in the Erasmus program and whose ex-boyfriend was Turkish. It was great to reminisce over our experiences in Turkey and even speak a bit of Turkish among ourselves. Since that time I've wrestled with the idea of resuming my study of Turkish partially to break out of the more FIGS-heavy path that I've been taking lately, and partially to satiate my curiosity. On the other hand, I've hesitated because studying it has an opportunity cost, and then there's deciding on how to restart. By the time I dropped Turkish a couple of years ago, I had already finished the first chapter of Turkish Self-Study Course 2, chapter 8 of Elementary Turkish 1, and unit 7 of Teach Yourself Turkish. Even though near the start of this log, I did think that I'd be most likely to continue with Turkish out of all the Turkic languages that I had studied/examined, I realized that picking up cold where I had left off wouldn't be that great considering how faded my knowledge is. Restarting these courses at the beginning (or first volume) again to resurrect my knowledge doesn't fill me with that much enthusiasm either.

And then I stumbled on muğam, which got me thinking about Azeri, and more specifically my copy of Elementary Azerbaijani which I never got to use during the Turkic Challenge after completing a couple of primers in the language. If I were to start Azeri as a false beginner, I'd also have a bit of a discount from my faded Turkish, and could start with a course from scratch without the awkwardness of restarting a course midway.

I have the first edition of Elementary Azerbaijani whose answer key is only for the audio drills; to my annoyance, the translation and other written exercises have no such key. However the 2nd edition of the course does have a full answer key, and the publisher was kind enough to send a .pdf of it to me after I had explained that I was reluctant to buy that edition when I had already shelled out for the 1st edition several years ago.

As far as I can tell the 2nd edition differs in some details from the 1st edition when it comes to explanations of grammar, and more obviously with the sequence of exercises. The answer key that I got for the 2nd edition makes this latter point clear. However, the sequence and number of chapters are the same in both editions, and looking at the free sample of the 3rd chapter in the 2nd edition, its dialogues and contents are the same as in the same chapter of the 1st edition. I'm left to conclude that the overlap between editions is very high excepting the rearranging of exercises.

Because of a certain weakness in the course in which some items taught are unidiomatic calques of Turkish, I'm using also Azerbaijani for Beginners which shouldn't be afflicted by the same problem considering that its author is a native Azeri instructor instead of a Turkish professor who learned Azeri as a foreign language.

Since picking up Azeri at the start of the month, I've already completed the 1st chapter in each of Elementary Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani for Beginners. In the first book, I relearned greetings, a few pronouns, and the basics of the present tense of "to be" (more like copula suffixes rather than conjugation) in affirmative and negative. In the second book, I covered the same topics plus adjectives of nationalities/ethnic groups. A couple of irritants in the second book are the typos or subpar editing, and that the set of exercises in every chapter is smaller than in the first book. Oh well, I'll do my best.

I've set a pretty low bar for Azeri, and am doing this just to get a certain grounding in the language. It's more than dabbling but I'm held in check by the absence of textbooks or courses for people who've cleared the beginning stages. I also have no plans to visit Azerbaijan seeing that it's a lower priority than other places on my travel list. It's tough for me then to muster enough enthusiasm to let Azeri crowd out Finnish, German or other languages, but it's sufficient to see me through finishing a couple of beginners' courses even if I work only intermittently with them.

It's nice to reacquaint myself with things that I last saw when studying the language as part of the Turkic Challenge, as well as recall a few bits of Turkish given how much it resembles Azeri. It feels good, man.

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FINNISH

I've started Chapter 8 of Suomen Mestari 2, by reading the dialogue, looking up unfamiliar words in the vocabulary list, and reviewing the notes on grammar which cover plural for genitive and partitive, comparatives and superlatives, and case governance of more verbs. I've decreased the pace of Finnish for now as I review some Polish and Slovak before going on vacation, but will stick to it anyway.


(Source: Kamala luonto via Ilta-Sanomat)

1) "I've had certain feelings that I'm also a butterfly."
2) "I see... Since when have you had these feelings?"
3) "Ever since I was a baby."*

* Toukka is a pejorative or humorous way to refer to a baby. In standard language, it means "larva".

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GERMAN

I've finally started Chapter 4 of Menschen im Beruf Bewerbungstraining (A2+/B1) which deals with CVs in the German-speaking world, and completed the first set of exercises. So far the only substantive difference that I've picked up between our CVs and ones over there is that we rarely ever include a mug shot on the CV, which is a frequent practice among Germanophones. I've also completed the exercises in Units 2 and 3 in Hallo! Wortschatztraining B1 which cover respectively social relations, and numbers pertinent to personal life (e.g. postal codes, phone numbers, dates, time).


Touché - Tom des Tages

1) "You? A head-first dive* from 10 meters up? Really? Is there a picture?" - "Sure!" - "There's nothing there. Haven't you posted it?"
2) "I have! It was on the internet for a bit. I already had a few likes! Then it was deleted! I have no idea why!"
3) "Hey! The header from 10 meters! Nice tits!"

* Köpper is a colloquial term in central and northern Germany for a dive done head-first (standard: der Kopfsprung).

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ITALIAN

I've finished Chapters 6 and 7 as well as the review chapter "In più 3" in BBC Talk Italian 2 in addition to Chapter 16 in Italian Demystified. With the BBC course, I learned some phrases used for taking directions, reporting lost items at the police station and describing the weather. In the latter I reviewed the future tense, and learned about the future perfect. I'm right now looking into taking a non-credit evening course of Italian this fall to get myself out of the house more often, and add a little bit of variety to my studies - especially when it comes to speaking and listening.

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POLISH & SLOVAK

As free time is at a premium these days, I've settled on just reviewing and refreshing my knowledge of these languages. For Polish, I'm dipping into Supermemo's Polski bez problemu! - zaawansowany which I bought a few years ago when I wanted to unload some extra złote. For Slovak, I'm just rereading Colloquial Slovak and shadowing dialogues. Resuming work right now with good textbooks such as Kiedyś wrócisz tu... cz. I or Wśród Polaków, part 2 for Polish, and Hovorme spolu po slovensky! Slovenčina ako cudzí jazyk - B for Slovak would be too much even though I do look at them a little wistfully.


(Source: 50 lat Mafaldy - latynoska filozofka z komiksu nadal śmieszy)

1) "Hey! Are you the dove of peace?"
3) "Long live aggression and the H-bomb!"
5) "It IS him!"


(Source: Mr. Lovenstein via klocher.sk)

1) "Don't forget to open your fortune cookie."
2) Will you marry me?
3) "Yes."
4) "She's gonna marry a cookie... A cookie..."