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Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 10:55 pm
by Tristano
The 2016 has been a crazy year for me. I settled down with my Dutch girlfriend in a very Dutch place far from the expat bubble and put all my efforts in learning Dutch (succeeding) and having a very good start with my Dutch company where I have to dial, read, wrote and breath Dutch everyday, week after week.

The 2017 is going to be even more crazy, because I'm becoming daddy very very soon!

Short background.
Native language: Italian
Known languages: English (C1ish), Dutch (b2), French (b2ish), Spanish (b1ish)
Target languages for 2017: Hebrew, Russian

- Hebrew, started because of an Israeli colleague, I'm at the end of pimsleur 1. At the end of Pimsleur 3 I'm going to have a check out point: I'll try one Italki lesson and see how it goes. Probably it will be enough for my purposes, for now. I don't have big plans for this language. If I reach a a2 spoken only I can consider myself satisfied.

- Russian is a different story. It is my current language love. Got rid of my little project with Hebrew, I'll go through Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, the new penguin Russian, russianpod101 and assimil, to move to more advanced stuff later on. But no real plans, honestly: I aim to progress. What I will reach will be all good to me.

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2017 9:05 am
by Tristano
I forgot to mention that my ultimate goal with Russian is to learn it to a very advanced level (thing that can happen in 30 years, no problem), whether I don't have any ambition of learning Hebrew to advanced level.

Anyway, I finished Pimsleur Hebrew I and moved to the II. The most autopunitive part was the one where I had to repeat numbers endlessly. Now it is much better. I think that if I survived that point I can finish the course without too many problems.

(not that I find so interesting to endlessly repeat "Tel Aviv mehod mozzet khen beenhai", but ok :P )

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:10 pm
by Tristano
I'm having good fun with Hebrew. My colleague is always pleasantly surprised to see my progression. I'm now at the lesson 37/90. It looks like Pimsleur is giving me decent foundations though with limited vocabulary and no formal grammar explanations.

I'm partially regretting my choice of accepting the Hebrew challenge because it's delaying my Russian studies; on the other hand it will allow me to face Russian with more experience on studying non trasparent languages.

What really scares me of Hebrew is not the grammar, not the pronunciation, not the alphabet... But the fact that I will have to maintain it. If I no longer have contact with my colleague I'm afraid my motivations will drop. Again, one advantage of learning Hebrew is that it will make it easier to learn Arabic afterwards. I don't know much about Israeli culture and I've never been interested in it; I'm wondering if it will be the case. I find it a nice sounding language anyway.

My current plan is to become lower intermediate with this language and then let it grow with casual exposure, so that I can dedicate myself to Russian.

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:10 pm
by Tristano
I'm having good fun with Hebrew. My colleague is always pleasantly surprised to see my progression. I'm now at the lesson 37/90. It looks like Pimsleur is giving me decent foundations though with limited vocabulary and no formal grammar explanations.

I'm partially regretting my choice of accepting the Hebrew challenge because it's delaying my Russian studies; on the other hand it will allow me to face Russian with more experience on studying non trasparent languages.

What really scares me of Hebrew is not the grammar, not the pronunciation, not the alphabet... But the fact that I will have to maintain it. If I no longer have contact with my colleague I'm afraid my motivations will drop. Again, one advantage of learning Hebrew is that it will make it easier to learn Arabic afterwards. I don't know much about Israeli culture and I've never been interested in it; I'm wondering if it will be the case. I find it a nice sounding language anyway.

My current plan is to become lower intermediate with this language and then let it grow with casual exposure, so that I can dedicate myself to Russian.

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 12:36 pm
by Tristano
Finished lesson 41/90. My recall sucks and listening the dialogues at the beginning of the lessons is difficult. But I go through. I would really like to have explanations about how the language works and knowledge about the triconsonants roots.

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 10:18 am
by Tristano
Lesson 45/90 of Pimsleur Hebrew.
I'm increasingly more worried about what to do after. I decided to become a completionist so I will go through the whole course even if sometimes becomes very painful to follow. But what then? If I start Russian immediately I will lose my intestment. If I continue with Hebrew until intermediate I probably need one year so my Russian has to wait.

Dammit!

I find amusing anyway that in Hebrew sometimes you need to say an incredible amount of letters in order to say something simple, and sometimes is the opposite. And sometimes it is even trickier than Dutch due to a very broad use of the kh (Dutch 'g')

- Anakhnu jekholim lalekhet la colnoa akhre avoda ve akharkakh anakhnu jekholim lishtot kos kafe. *cough cough cough hello doctor? I think I just got a throat disease. a bad one*

Other things are just funny and very weird sounding for Italians
- Ha khanuiott sgurott. Not sure why, but I imagine a rude farmer with dysentery.

I feel like a robot when I shadow sentences in Hebrew but I suspect that it's Pimsleur's fault.

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:09 pm
by Tristano
I took the painful decision. I'm going to invest on Hebrew. I like the language.

It's long time ago that I don't start a language from scratch and sticked with it, especially with languages that are not too easy for me like the Romance ones. It's a very nice challenge. And it will give me a big boost with Russian since I will become a better learner (I'm keeping listening to Russian music in the meanwhile and from time to time to cook some Russian dish).
I'm now at Pimsleur II lesson 21 (51/90). It's slow as hell but I'm kinda happy in this way. It is very easy to follow and I don't risk to burn out. If I don't feel like it I just switch to the Dutch radio when I drive.

I ordered 'The Routledge introductory course to Modern Hebrew' and started working with Anki to learn the alphabet and some new vocabulary. I'm working the slow and constant way. They say it brings you very far. No grand goal. No B2 in 3 months. I take the time I need.

--

I'm having more success with telephone calls in Dutch. I'm now able to manage the most of them. I went back to the fysiotherapist after one year. One year ago I needed to switch to English every time. Now I'm managing to do everything in Dutch and she doesn't switch in English anymore. Yeah! 8-) I guess that in a... mmmh 2-3 years I will be C1.

--

French and Spanish are in the freezer. From time to time I use some native resource in those two languages.

--

My English is horrible as always and I'm pretty much cool with it like always.

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 8:43 pm
by reineke
What happened with Arabic? You fell in love with the sister?

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Russian, Hebrew

Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 7:18 pm
by Tristano
reineke wrote:What happened with Arabic? You fell in love with the sister?


Hehe.
No, Arabic is still a huge one in my language list. It's also very intimidating though. I feel like I want to put other 3-4 languages under my belt before I face the challenge. A possible strategy would be to start with Egyptian Arabic, then adding MSA later on and last Levantine for example.
I have an Israeli colleague and it is a very tempting possibility to have some free practice, that's why I put myself on this boat and postponed Russian. I see Hebrew as a sort of "Esperanto for Semitic languages", a language I can learn before to "do the muscles". After Hebrew I will face Arabic with some shared vocabulary, an understanding of the triconsonant roots and having learned tips and tricks to learn a language where the vowels are not marked.
But more important I discover I like the language. After Hebrew I will most probably restart Russian and after Russian probably Arabic or a romance language (like Portuguese, or Romanian) or maybe Swedish. Or Arabic directly. Or something completely different lol.
After Arabic Persian and Turkish are very attractive languages... but we are years far from now.

---

I'm defining my strategy. My strategy is unsurprisingly to use my hidden moments (because I have practically zero time in the non hidden moments). Following a completionist multitrack approach I am going to complete
- Pimsleur (in the car)
- HebrewPod101 (in the car, after I'm done with Pimsleur)
- Assimil (in the lunch break)
- Duolingo (in the lunch break, probably after I'm done with Assimil).
- Routledge introductory course to Modern Hebrew (evening in the bed and weekend)

It should be possible to do all this in one year I think. Once I'm done with this things I guess I can start using simple native resources and start Russian.

Today I started Assimil. The first 8 lessons are difficulty 0, I knew most of the words already. Tomorrow I start from the 9.
I learned half of the letters and wrote them down. I think my name is something like טרישטאןו :)

Re: Tristano's log 2017: Hebrew

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 4:16 pm
by reineke
You can do it. I find it easier to hop in the car and grab what I want at the local store, before trekking on foot to the other side of town for that okonomiyaki, pad thai etc. But if you got the munchies....