Language log

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David1917
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Mon Dec 11, 2017 9:06 pm

Update: I started the Michel Thomas French Vocabulary course today, and I must say it is borderline unbearable. Even in the few years since Michel's original courses, the method has been dumbed down considerably, as is the norm it seems. The narrator talks to you like you're a child, with excessive congratulatory remarks and ruins the flow of the lessons by constantly reminding you of words/constructions like you're an idiot that has already forgotten something from a moment prior. It's also weirdly like a constant advertisement for the company, as if you haven't already been sold on it.

"How would you say, Michel Thomas's method is incredible? Remember, you will want to say 'the method of Michel Thomas'" :roll:

It's unfortunate because I know there is going to be some good stuff on here. Perseverance.
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basica
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Re: Language log

Postby basica » Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:27 am

I toyed with French a little earlier in the year and I guess I must've been using an older copy of MT's course. In mine there were 2 people there who were talking with MT. It was kinda weird to me at first, but I got used to it. Have you tried the older version? Maybe you'll enjoy it more?
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David1917
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Tue Dec 12, 2017 5:22 am

Yeah I've done the whole course up to this point - Foundation, Advanced, Language Builder. Those were all with MT. This course is newer (maybe posthumous?) and features a different person as the instructor. The 2 other people are also not learners, they are native speakers just repeating the prompts, which is good to hear but there is no sense of interaction. In the Language Builder course there are no students and it's just Michel talking you through.
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Wed Jan 10, 2018 3:40 am

OK, finals, vacation, laziness. Here we are though, I've still been working, just not as intensively until the last week or so. I'm really enjoying the methods I'm working with right now, and feel like I'm making great strides.

Russian - Assimil Perfectionnement is one of the methods that's really blowing me away. It sounds very much like normal, everyday conversational Russian - lots of "давай", lots of -ка, -еньк-, и тд. Great vocabulary, great "culture" stuff e.g. city transport systems like маршрутки. Since I don't speak French, I'm just using the dialogues as intensive reading passages. I'll check the French side for unknown words, in case it's something that's a direct transfer from English/Spanish, otherwise I'll look them up in Google. All unknowns go into Anki. So I'll start each session by doing an intensive reading/scriptorium of one lesson, then listen to/read along to the next 2-3 and repeat. I'm also working on translating some KGB docs for my work as a research assistant, so again, looking up unknowns for Anki. I'll drill grammar when I get a chance some days, too.

French - Almost completed the dreadful Michel Thomas vocabulary course. I have found it to be barely useful as compared to the rest of the series, but I have a compulsion to finish it anyway. That said I'm obviously taking my time and some days I "forget" my headphones :lol: I'm working through the Linguaphone course, Assimil course, and the Berlitz Self-Teacher. All are really great complements to each other, and are helping to sort out the sort of mangled Anglo-Spani-French I've been developing. I am about to buy some tickets for Paris for the first week of March, so really buckling down on this, minimum one hour per day. I'm doing scriptorium on all of the above, I think I'll add a serial to my life so I can get used to hearing French at full-speed, since the pace of the recordings on these courses is slow.

Chinese - Linguaphone and Assimil. I forget if the Linguaphone is the same material as the French one, if so, that will be enjoyable. I'm slower at this because I'm making sure to write everything out neatly, and taking more time to put stray words into Anki. I'm trying to bridge the gap between what I can say and what I can read, so I've been treating it like an Assimil active wave, reading the English and trying to write out the Chinese. Any character I can't immediately write out I make a card for, to be strict about it.

Persian - Right now I'm working with Living Language and the old TYS course. The LL dialogues are a bit too fast, and the text is obnoxiously laid out with a transliteration right under the Persian script - but of course from left to right, so any benefit that would be gained from it is lost as your eyes are jumping around and moving in different directions. That said the material so far is good. TYS book is good too for building up writing a couple letters at a time. Anki is usually a later-stage thing for me, but for this I'm starting right off the bat so most words in these introductory lessons are going into my deck.
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Tue Jul 21, 2020 3:19 am

I thought about starting another new log - I know I have a specifically Hindi one somewhere, but figured I'd just keep it all in here. It'll be great for continuity's sake. A lot of the below "life recap" has been sporadically posted around the forum, so for some this may sound familiar. Either way, now it will all be properly in order. All language related, of course!

So where did we leave off? I did go to Paris in March of 2018, I did successfully check into my hostel (I even asked the lady at the desk if we could do everything in French so I could practice) and order meals. It felt great. I went to Russia on that same trip which is like second nature to me at this point, no issues there. I actually haven't been to Russia since and it's like a gaping wound in my soul (тоска). My visa is also expired, and now we've got the 'rona situation so...more below.

I also at that point in my life got accepted to various Master's programs in Eastern European Politics. One was at HSE St. Petersburg and I met with one of the people there, but left unimpressed overall. Another was at UCL SSEES which is one of the biggest in the field, and it was meant to be a 2-year program London + Moscow at HSE. Well, they offered me a scholarship but only on the condition that I go to Budapest in the 2nd year instead. No problem, I thought, I love Budapest and I always wanted to learn Hungarian. So I got hard to work on Assimil Hungarian, and bought an old copy of Trubner's Colloquial Hungarian. I tried the newer TYS Hungarian but, like most of their current offerings, found it to be more of an asinine phrasebook than a language course. My goal was to test into AT LEAST the 2nd semester of Hungarian by October of 2018. My literal nightmare at this point is what I imagine an introductory language class is like. As the weeks inched closer, I came to find out that my scholarship left me with only about 3,000 Euros leftover for living expenses, which can get one by for what, 6 weeks in London (including housing, which I had not secured by early August...) The US Federal Aid system did not support this program, and my credit was such that the private loansharks did not extend me any financial support either. So, I had to cancel the whole thing.

At the same time, I began my current romantic relationship, which of course only made the above story all the more difficult. "The day after I met you I submitted a series of applications to leave this country for graduate studies. Turns out we like each other a whole lot so, this is interesting!" She accepted my trajectory, and we planned a European vacation together before the end of summer, and she even bought a ticket to visit me in London later that year on my birthday. So cancelling left a sort of reverse shock of "guess what I'm staying!" In Europe we visited Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Czechia. I spoke decent German in shops, and visited a fantastic foreign language bookstore called Pequod Books where I picked up my first Langenscheidt volumes. I spoke bits of Hungarian in Budapest, too, but nothing really remarkable. Honestly, at least the trip and our subsequent cohabitation kept me from sliding too far into a depression over the school thing, but I did become depressed all the same. I all but stopped studying languages and just embraced a life of TV-watching.

January of 2019 meant a new series of applications would be due, and this time I reluctantly applied to schools in America. It's not like I'd somehow magically have the funding to move to London. I couldn't really stand how "political scientists" were talking about Russia at that time (or any time) and so I decided to abandon any pursuit of Russian politics at the graduate level. While American discussion on China isn't much better, I felt less emotionally invested and figured I would be fine to tolerate the discourse if it meant I'd have a great degree and the "marketability" of having either Chinese on my degree, or a good degree and an HSK cert. At this point I declared to the forum my 2019 resolution to sit the HSK. I got to work on refreshing myself with Assimil and began looking around The Chairman's Bao while trying to figure out my weak points and which resources would be best for moving forward. I got into the UT Austin program in Global Policy, but without financial support, as well as my local policy school. The latter was significantly less globally oriented, though, and so as a last-ditch I also applied to the history program at my local uni where I had a great relationship with the expert on Russia. Well this last-ditch gave me an assistantship and a stipend so, that was that.

In February of 2019, we went to Costa Rica to celebrate her birthday. I hadn't spoken Spanish in a great while but listened to an audiobook of Cien Años de Soledad in the weeks leading up to the trip and thus had no problems while there. Spanish has been a part of my life since the '90s so it wasn't surprising, but it was nice to pick it back up.

Then my serious language study resumed. I thought, I need to get my German and French up to snuff for historical scholarship, I need to make sure my Russian is top notch for doing research, and - why not? - I need to learn Arabic, too! For German I purchased the excellent Dichter, Denker, und Erzähler that Speakeasy recommended in his great thread on German reading materials. For French I continued with French Without Toil. I found that I could generally understand scholarly articles anyway, so I figured I'd extract everything I could in a systematic manner from that excellent little book. My idea was that I could spend the 6-7 months between my acceptance and enrollment really going in on languages so that they could move to maintenance during the school year. This included Arabic, Hindi, and Chinese. Hindi went slowly and deliberately, Arabic I spent 45-60 minutes a day working through the Linguaphone course and both Assimil courses just to expose myself to as much of it as possible. I got halfway through the newest Assimil, and almost halfway through Linguaphone. I was understanding a lot, able to read along and shadow at a decent rate, but I knew it was just the tip of the iceberg. I also got interested in learning Cornish and Old English. I did Say Something In Cornish, which was awesome, and then started working through some KDL stuff. Old English I just shadowed the TYS book. When school started I tried to maintain some semblance of language routine, even just 30-min a day rotating languages, but I just stopped altogether. Graduate work hit me HARD.

My first research project involved languages though, as I translated and analyzed an oft-overlooked Russian emigre radical newspaper from New York in 1917. I made small use of an NY-based German radical paper from the same time as well. No French needed, but the Russian was more than enough. I had to travel to Washington DC to use microfilm reels in the Library of Congress, and hope that all my captures were usable when I got home. Moreover, the pre-Revolution Russian made use of different spelling norms, and the author I was most interested in came from the general "Ukraine" area, so sometimes words I could not decipher Google would tell me were actually Ukrainian. All told though, I had a great time with this project and learned a lot not only about my subject, but about the language - at least as used at the time.

Over winter break I tried to partake in the Old English challenge that IronMike set up but of course life interfered, and moreover I found the book to be pretty dull. I also added Icelandic to my list, beginning with a daily lesson from the Linguaphone course. Arabic came back rather quickly as well. I completed a fair amount of Elwell-Sutton's excellent Persian Grammar course, too. But as soon as break really started it was over and a new semester began. Less Russian in the research, but a fair amount of French in the scholarship.

Another major problem I had over winter break was that I had to abandon my previous plan of "shadow first, ask questions later" since I was not alone in the house, as my partner was also on break from school. This same problem exists now during Summer break amid Covid. So I don't really shadow anymore and have instead opted to focus more on Grammar-Translation methods. Not to mention traveling is off the table for the foreseeable future so I am focusing more on Icelandic than, say, Swedish; reading German than speaking German; and Latin than Italian or Romanian. It's kind of liberating to not have an impending trip for the first time in a few years where magically mastering the target language of my destination acts as an all-consuming source of anxiety.

TL;DR by family:
Spanish - yr boy still got it!
French - pretty easy to comprehend written, have not conversed much
Latin - good time to begin due to covid relieving pressure on learning spoken languages
(Portuguese & Italian) - haven't looked at in ages

Russian - improved immensely through conversation, reading, and now research
Polish - a new addition as of a few weeks ago. Easy/hard.

German - improved greatly, focused on reading
Icelandic - good time to begin due to covid relieving pressure on learning more "popular" spoken languages
Yiddish - just one Assimil/day. Hope to use in future research on radical emigre communities
Old English - starting to understand more, good time to focus on...see Latin
(Swedish) - never really studied properly but my brief exposure has helped a little with Icelandic

Chinese - again, not working on speech but rather reading

Arabic - gave up for now. I think I would need to devote a considerable more amount of daily time than I currently can in order to make progress.

Persian - intermittent, I have some great resources but I always end up tiring myself out with other stuff
Hindi - ditto, TYS series is great, using both versions side by side is a joy

Cornish - just for fun anyway, making steady progress through KDL

Hungarian - bye bye
Last edited by David1917 on Tue Jul 21, 2020 2:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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David1917
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Tue Jul 21, 2020 3:37 am

What did I learn about myself and methods in this time frame?

I hate Anki, that's for sure. I understand that making the cards is part of the learning process, but for the 2-3 minutes I spent on each card trying to find a good image and a Forvo clip (sometimes they were recorded not so well) I realized would be 2-3 minutes lost on more in depth language study. It also just doesn't suit my style, especially when trying to learn several languages at once. I could spend an hour just doing reviews some days. It was exhausting.

Shadowing I love. I really got into a swing of things with the 7-lesson waves before my living situation became such that I couldn't really shadow anymore. For some reason, it never dawned on me until a couple of days ago to just try listening to the audio in headphones and...not shadow.

Love/hate with grammar-translation books. I prefer them 100x more than the weird phrasebook offerings from TYS these days, and my vintage TYS collection is actually out of control. The exercises are often great and very helpful for me. I'm definitely a methodical/analytical person so it speaks to me to work this way. On the other hand, a lot of these books went to print with errors/omissions. Some translation exercises will feature words not presented in the book so far and not found anywhere in the glossary. TYS Icelandic by PJT Glendening is a great example of this. Also every chapter presents more example sentences on exceptions than it does on "normal" usages. The best TYS I've seen so far is Polish. It has many more chapters, but each one only touches on a couple points and then gives you tons of exercises. The Trubner's Hungarian was good like this, too. It helps that I know Russian, but even still I wish TYS books were standardized more to this format.

Iversen's methods work for me pretty well. I've used word lists here and there but never got into the swing of it. I've got several pages in a notebook now of Russian wordlists and it's working really well. I think it's a much later stage tool for me. Persian or even Chinese the wordlists would be difficult to even do the first pass, and the repetition round would be basically impossible.

The green-sheet (I just use white sheets, but they're safe!) is a nice method, too. For something like Icelandic or Arabic where there is a bit of morphology to keep in mind, it's nice to have it all at hand and not have to flip around a book. It helps to make your own grammar reference because it follows your own internal logic. You can also save space leaving off things that might be superfluous or put in simple abbreviations. Color-coding helps a lot, too. I have a multi-pen with black, red, and blue ink that gets a lot of use on the grammar sheets.

Less-intense L-R has turned out to be quite interesting. As I understand it the "real" L-R is to be done for long periods of time. I think what I do sort of follows on how Prof Arguelles recommends shadowing, but with longer increments than Assimil lessons. I read a chapter in English, listening to TL, then immediately re-read the chapter in TL while listening to the TL along with it. I'm going to continue with this for French, German, & Russian and see what happens from there.
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David1917
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Tue Jul 21, 2020 5:19 am

Finally, a more detailed look at each language and what I'm doing this summer, and what I hope to be doing soon.

Russian is still and will probably always remain my number one priority. My thesis will require reading a lot of Russian newspapers and treatises from roughly 1916-22, maybe some more into the '20s as needed. On my trip to Germany in 2018 I found a very good little Langenscheidt book, 30 Stunden Russisch für Anfänger: Kurzlehrbuch. I just got it for my collection and didn't look at it until very recently but wow, lots of great words in these little passages, and since it's Soviet-era there are some things that carry over to my research (stories with emphasis on improving industry, agriculture, etc.) I'm wrapping up making wordlists from the whole book this week and then I'll read through the whole book again and see what stuck and what didn't. Will then go through and wordlist the articles I annotated in the fall semester and begin typing up more microfilm captures from the same newspaper which will play into my thesis. I was also doing LR with Метро 2033 but the audio and text don't sync up? The author must have made some revisions to the book or something - it's just a sentence here or there that's missing from one or the other; or slight re-wording. The story is cool but I think I might want to go a little more "literary" so I'm going to switch to Dr. Zhivago. My goal, after completing a thesis of course, is to read Russian lit for real. I've skimmed some, bilingual texts of others, but I need to actually just be able to pick up Булгаков and read it.

German is my second priority. For one, future research will undoubtedly require use of German documents, newspapers, philosophical tracts, etc. For another, I want to use all my cool Langenscheidt books as well as Buske books. I also want to really "get" the Germanic family. My daily routine involves either annotating Dichter, Denker, und Erzähler or extensively reading previously annotated sections of the book, as well as a couple chapters of LR with Bernard Schlink's Der Vorleser. This book is awesome so far, it's pretty easy to understand as I'm going through it and I like the story and style so far. Long term would include of course Goethe, as well as more historical/philosophical works. Medium term goal is also to learn Yiddish for research purposes, and I suspect that the stronger my German is, the easier that process will be. I wouldn't mind being able to read Middle High German lit either. Way down the line, though.

French is probably the next priority, both for better use of Assimil on future studies, as well as just getting into the literature in general. I don't think I need it for research any time soon, though one of my subjects did write extensively in French, he's kind of a secondary figure and I probably won't need to get too deep into his work just yet. I'm L-Ring Albert Camus's L'etranger and man, I'm glad I never read it in just in English before. Great book, and even better being able to understand most of it in French. Not sure of a long-term goal here; some of the greats for sure but I'm not like desperate to read Hugo or anything.

Spanish is a low "priority" but I do feel a need to demonstrably use it more. If I'm going to read a novel in Russian but haven't yet read one in Spanish, what am I even doing?? To that effect I've been reading (no L-R, just straight in Spanish without audio) Carlos Luis Zafon's La Sombra del Viento. I'd like to read all the great magical realist novels of Borges, Garcia Marquez, and Bolaño, as well as the all-time great Don Quixote. Zafon is pretty easy to read and understand so I think if I just keep reading, I'll be good to go.

Icelandic - it's hard to say what my next priorities for learning/improving are after the big 3 at the top. I think Icelandic is fascinating and I really want to unlock the Germanic family. My idea is that once I am good at Icelandic, the other 3 North Germanic languages will be that much easier. If I went the other way, I'd probably never actually learn Icelandic, and especially now with the travel issues it makes more sense to me to get it done now. I mentioned above how I don't really like the old TYS book, I also got Friðjónsson's Icelandic book but it had a similar problem with unglossed words (and there isn't even a glossary at all!) This book is great for reading passages and tons of exercises, though, and I do expect to go back to it. For now, I'm going to work through the Linguaphone and might try the Langenscheidt since it follows a reasonable grammar-trans approach. I have the great Buske course by Magnus Petursson as well, though it seems a little daunting. Reading in Old Norse is a long-term goal.

Latin like Icelandic, now is a great time to learn this. Then move on to refreshing Italian and using it to read literature, and then move on to Romanian or Catalan. I'm working through Hans Orberg's LLPSI series and find it to be pretty easy so far. I have two editions of TYS Latin and both of them right off the bat seemed a little obtuse. LLPSI is great for me because it allows me to work on my intuition to some extent (which I like from Assimil & Linguaphone) but also has decent explanations. That they're in the TL makes it even more enjoyable. I have the Exercitia Latina to really drill it home and the Colloquia Personarum as well.

Chinese I am focusing on reading exclusively. I love the DeFrancis series and since I'm not going to China any time soon I might as well finish it. I think working through those 12 volumes will be a massive accomplishment, and since they have supplementary lessons in simplified as well as corollary readers I have no worry about that issue. My goal would be more in the vein of reading the news in Chinese, and then more like classical lit but that of course is its own separate language so, I don't really have a long-term plan. Just want to be able to read much more fluidly. In some ways this is my favorite foreign language, but for practical reasons it fell to the wayside for the European ones.

Persian is such a treat and I wish I just had my whole day to devote to it. I really "get" the grammar for the most part, I think John Mace's TYS is fantastic and the Elwell-Sutton book was a tremendous follow-up to consolidate everything, despite the archaic reading passages. I have some of the Hillman books but they are incredibly dry and half of the exercises revolve around being in a literal classroom. Still, I think the methodology is great (Reading & Writing Persian starts with English/French loanwards and slowly adds Persian words from there, so it's almost like a "natural method" approach in that sense) and the material so comprehensive that I need to stick it out. I used to live with an Iranian woman and we still talk a lot and sometimes I'll send her long texts in Persian just for practice.

Hindi is probably my lowest priority, which is unfortunate because like Persian I think it's a real joy to study and know there is such a tremendous culture to access with it. Not to mention that Sanskrit is a long-term goal. I'm still chugging away at the TYS series using both versions in tandem one chapter at a time, but I'm not very far in and can't really form many thoughts.

Arabic I had to give up. I need to devote considerable time to it and while trying to focus on knocking out a bunch of work on several European language families and writing a thesis, it's not really working out. I'll get back to just doing some Linguaphone I think, though, so when I graduate it will be a bit more straight forward with some grammar book or other. I also don't have a real *goal* since I don't know much about Arabic literature. I know that there is a lot and that much of it is good, but nothing specific. I'd also probably more likely be interested in reading the news in the Arab world, and eventually visiting various Arabic-speaking countries. Really I am also influenced by the "chic" factor of going after such a difficult language.

Cornish I became interested in when I found out that it seems my ancestors on one side came originally from Cornwall. I wanted to learn Irish already, but figured this would be more fun. No goals, no pressure, just doing KDL and seeing where it takes me. For some languages, I just want to know what they're about, be able to read/pronounce them, but not necessarily reach some highly advanced level.

English is my native language but there is plenty to do and learn. First, Old English is oddly easy and difficult. Easy because as a native speaker I can "get" some texts with minimal glossing, but at the same time I haven't really gotten a good grammatical overview which includes example sentences and things like that. Blakeley's TYS is the best book I've looked at so far, but it's basically like "here's a couple notes on grammar now read this bible passage." Goal is Beowulf, then Middle English. Moreover, I'm interested in modern English dialects, especially Caribbean variants. I'm reading a novel from Barbados right now and it's written in a vernacular style which is really pleasant. I'd like to read some Jamaican literature as well. A corollary, though maybe not a dialect, is to be able to read Scots. Since I think it diverged sometime during the Middle English period, my plan would be to look at it after I read some Middle English.

Polish is the newest addition to the club. The old TYS book is great and makes the transition from Russian super easy. I don't know many Polish authors and I'd probably be more likely to use the language for political/historical reading. Next would be BCMS for the same reason. Being able to read old newspapers at critical points in history is my main goal. Czech, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian would follow.

Future ideas include Japanese or Korean; Turkish and at least Tatar, but maybe Kazakh and more; Classical Greek; Yoruba or Wolof; and lord knows what else. If I lived in the Matrix I would take all the languages and no martial arts. I recognize that in many ways I'm more in love with "learning languages" and collecting language materials (which are two DISTINCT hobbies!) than anything else, and that I'm not going to be reading Chinese, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Greek literature fluidly in any foreseeable future. I'm flexible in that when travel re-opens, the first place I go I will direct more study time to that spoken language. I'm perfectly fine being simply conversant in 12+ languages while only being eloquent and well-read in 4, and anything that goes beyond that will be an absolute treat. That's my story, this is the end of my 3-post update on language studies. Maybe I won't wait another 2 years to make another entry in here :D
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Re: Language log

Postby cjareck » Tue Jul 21, 2020 6:40 am

David1917 wrote:Polish is the newest addition to the club. The old TYS book is great and makes the transition from Russian super easy. I don't know many Polish authors and I'd probably be more likely to use the language for political/historical reading. Next would be BCMS for the same reason. Being able to read old newspapers at critical points in history is my main goal. Czech, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian would follow.

If you need help, just let me know. I'm subscribing to your log :)
There is very good source for old materials called "Federacja Bibliotek Cyfrowych". Here is an example search for the paper "Gazeta Pomorska": https://fbc.pionier.net.pl/search#fq={!tag=dcterms_accessRights}dcterms_accessRights%3A%22Dost%C4%99p%20otwarty%22&q=Gazeta%20Pomorska

Here: http://repozytorium.encysol.pl/wiki/Skorowidz_WCB you may find a lot of samizdats from the last years of the communist regime in Poland.
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David1917
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Tue Jul 21, 2020 2:39 pm

cjareck wrote:
David1917 wrote:Polish is the newest addition to the club. The old TYS book is great and makes the transition from Russian super easy. I don't know many Polish authors and I'd probably be more likely to use the language for political/historical reading. Next would be BCMS for the same reason. Being able to read old newspapers at critical points in history is my main goal. Czech, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian would follow.

If you need help, just let me know. I'm subscribing to your log :)
There is very good source for old materials called "Federacja Bibliotek Cyfrowych". Here is an example search for the paper "Gazeta Pomorska": https://fbc.pionier.net.pl/search#fq={!tag=dcterms_accessRights}dcterms_accessRights%3A%22Dost%C4%99p%20otwarty%22&q=Gazeta%20Pomorska

Here: http://repozytorium.encysol.pl/wiki/Skorowidz_WCB you may find a lot of samizdats from the last years of the communist regime in Poland.


Dziękuję! I will definitely look at the samizdaty in the future.
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David1917
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Re: Language log

Postby David1917 » Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:38 am

Russian:
Today I extracted 24 words from lesson 28 in Langenscheidt's 30 Stunden. Tomorrow I will do a repetition round and then do the same for Lesson 29. After I complete this Kurzlehrbuch my plan is to start to annotate the newspaper articles I need for my thesis. I'll wordlist those daily as well. Google Translate is turning out to be somewhat of a bother and I really wish that I had a good Russian dictionary. I end up on Russian wiktionary from time to time but wonder if there's something better. The Учебный Словарь I posted about in the thread on dictionaries looks like the best but I cannot find it. I can ask a friend in Moscow to buy and ship it to me, but in the meantime something online would be good as well.

As I said before I didn't really get into Metro 2033 and the audio had discrepancies with the text. Rather than try to find a different copy of the Russian book, I figured that although I like sci-fi, I should read more "classic" material for now. I had posted about Dr. Zhivago but that is a 22 hour audiobook and so doing it twice would take me 44 hours or somewhere between 6 weeks and 3 months. Instead I began tonight with Evgeniy Zamyatin's We/Мы. I did 2 chapters in both English & Russian with the Russian audio. If I finish this before school starts back up I'd like to read something else of comparable length and difficulty - any suggestions? All the Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev is going to have to wait until after school, I simply can't try to get into one of those and then abandon it in 4 short weeks. I'd also rather stay 20th century.

German:
I thought I'd do a run through of various lessons in German Without Toil today, but after 3 I was too distracted thinking about the more "real" things I could be doing with languages instead of reviewing a book that I've already worked through - despite there still being unknown words in the lessons. At some point you just have to let it go. I did however complete Chapter 7 of Der Vorleser in English & German.

Icelandic:
Here's where I went earlier in the day after putting down GWT. Yesterday I reviewed lessons 14-1 in Linguaphone and today I did lessons 15-8, and 1. I also annotated Lesson 16 for tomorrow's session. Since the Linguaphone format is not as convenient as Assimil I find that I have to do it this way rather than flipping the books back and forth. Yesterday I also begin the Langenscheidt book on Icelandic and found it to be much better than the other courses I've tried so far. Despite the dialogues being overly "practical." The exercises are excellent and thorough and I'm finally feeling that I *get* some things. For instance, the a-ö morph comes with a following u (except -ur) and in strong neuter N/A plural. I'd picked up on barn being börn from other books, but hadn't gotten a hard fast rule yet. It's also ridiculous how random Icelandic nouns are, though - only a few guidelines for each noun type, the rest you just have to memorize. Also, Langenscheidt oddly puts the declensions as NGDA rather than NADG so reconciling the tables with my grammar sheet is annoying.

Polish:
Yesterday I did lesson 15 in the excellent TYS book. Reflexive pronoun się, a distant cognate of the Russian -ся or -сь. Already it's more straight forward just having the one się but its detachment from the verb and changing position gives its own quirk. Polish in general does feel more straight forward though spelling-wise. Not to mention the fixed stress. There are 41 lessons in the book so if I keep up at one a day or every other day as things happen (I didn't do one today) I should finish the book before school starts back up. Ideally I'll get one of the Assimil books before then (or the Linguaphone since it's the same course as Icelandic!) and I can squeeze in 15 minutes of shadowing here and there.

Persian:
The last two days I've worked through parts of Hillmann's Reading & Writing Persian. Again, dry and exhaustive/exhausting. I can't tell what I want for this language - nothing seems to really speak to me. Perhaps a proper graded reader or Thackston's grammar would be a better move.

Latin:
Yesterday I shadowed Capitulum Quartum twice through. Meant to begin on the Pensa today but didn't.

French:
Chapter 2 in L'etranger in English & French.

Spanish:
Started Chapter 3 of La Sombra del Viento but it's 1:30 AM and I'm feeling exhausted - aka perfect time to write a language log instead of continuing to study/use languages.
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