A language learners’ forum

Morgana Thanks for the correction!

Morgana wrote: "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Does Polish say something similar?

In Polish, there is a similar proverb, but it is a religious one, and since there are fewer believers in our society, it is not very common now. But it says "czołowiek planuje, Pan Bóg krzyżuje". This means "a man plans, the Lord God crosses". This translation is direct, but my old dictionary says that "to cross" can also mean "to tangle", so I used the same word as in Polish.

New plans for the rest of the week are:
HEBREW
- flashcards
- daily 20 new words from the text in "Hebrew Military Reader" (there is 200 of them left)
- prepare audio for part 1 of the Lesson 23

ARABIC
- flashcards
- finish adding to Anki lesson 7 of the DLI Sound and Script
- one video of Madeenah Arabic

MorganaThanks! Do not worry. Now I will remember not only to put an article but also not put them before the title We do not have articles in Polish, so the whole concept of them is difficult for me.

It is time to summarise my achievements in the last week
HEBREW
- flashcards Done, but not every day - once I felt not well and was unable to do flashcards
- daily 20 new words from the text in "Hebrew Military Reader" (there is 200 of them left) Done - Since at the beginning I was doing 50, there is 120 left (I didn't work today on that)
- prepare audio for part 1 of the Lesson 23 Done

ARABIC
- flashcards- Done
- finish adding to Anki lesson 7 of the DLI Sound and Script - Done
- one video of Madeenah Arabic - Done, but I watched the wrong one - I have already seen it. Nevertheless Repetitio est mater studiorum (Repetition is the mother of learning)

So my goals for next week are:
HEBREW
- flashcards - I hope to see all the cards from Lesson 22
- finish translating words from the first text in "Hebrew Military Reader"
- prepare audios for part 2 and 3 of the Lesson 23

ARABIC
- flashcards
- add Lesson 8 of the DLI's MSA Basic Course Sound and Script (This is little complicated since I do not have audio for lessons 7 and 8 and I have to ask people on "hi Native" to record the exercises for me).
- one video of Madeenah Arabic

I keep my goals rather modest because I have to finish an article "German Army on the Eastern Front in November 1918" until the end of July, so language learning is not on the first place.

I don't know if you are familiar with the internet archive, but since you are a language learning historian:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.278737

https://archive.org/details/militaryvocabula00zimmrich

renaissancemedici wrote:I don't know if you are familiar with the internet archive, but since you are a language learning historian:

Thanks for the links! I know the internet archive website, but I didn't know those materials. I know German military terminology in some cases better than Polish one, but with English, I sometimes have difficulties. I remember trying to figure out how to translate "wstrzeliwanie się" (DE: Einschiessen) into English. It is simply "registration".

The Author of this log decided to write in formal English. He is doing so not to offend any of his Readers but to practice what is the most essential for him - the academic style. He hopes that this will meet with the understanding of the Readers. If not, the Author will, of course, change his style.

Unfortunately, I caught some virus from my children and was unable to do anything more than repeating flashcards during the last two days. The illness affected my plans and made impossible to keep up with the goals for the passing week.

HEBREW
- flashcards Done
- daily 20 new words from the text in "Hebrew Military Reader" (there is 200 of them left) - Not Done - unfortunately 24 left
- prepare audio for part 1 of the Lesson 23 Done

ARABIC
- flashcards Done
- finish adding to Anki lesson 7 of the DLI Sound and Script Done
- one video of Madeenah Arabic Not Done

Goals for the upcoming week are:
HEBREW
- flashcards
- finish the text from "Hebrew Military Reader" and start preparing sentences for Anki
- If the number of the Flashcards drop below 50, start adding drills from the lesson 23 of the FSI Hebrew Basic Course

ARABIC
- flashcards
- add to Anki exercises from DLI Basic Course - Review 1-4. They have no audio nor the answers, so perhaps I will have to ask on "Hi Native" about them
- one video of Madeenah Arabic
I have modest goals because of my article which I should finish very soon.

The author has excellent academic English one correction "there are 200"

Those don't look like terribly modest goals, tbh. Juggling work for three languages isn't easy!

Ani wrote:The author has excellent academic English one correction "there are 200"

The Author would like to express his gratitude as well for the correction as for the praise of his achievements. Nicolaus Copernicus University organizes special courses in Academic English. For researchers they are free, but it is 90 hours during one semester from 5 pm till 8 pm or something similar. In the Author's opinion, the same results may be achieved, or perhaps even exceeded, by writing text in formal English.

Ani wrote:Those don't look like terribly modest goals, tbh. Juggling work for three languages isn't easy!

Please do not exaggerate! Log's Author does not learn English but only practice output in this language instead of input only. The goals are unfortunately not 100% clear and thus give quite a wide field of manoeuvre with rating them. In a few days, it will be clear if this was a well-planned goal setting.

For a historian, a minimum is to be able to look at the page of text and decide what is essential and needs to be translated. In Author's opinion, he achieved this in Hebrew and French, possibly exceeded in Russian. He is proficient in English and German, as the passive skills are considered. One could say that such a situation results in the necessity to improve Arabic first, but other opportunities (travels, contact with eyewitness and someday archival research) make reaching a higher level of Hebrew a need. Since the Author researches Arab-Israeli conflict, he has to learn at least some Arabic. He can use various modern tools, such as Google Translate, much more effectively, just knowing basic of the language.

American history has many wars, including civil. I found a very detailed historical resource where the events of the past centuries of America are described. I was very interested to learn about the role of women in the history of America, such as Eliza Hamilton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dorothea Dix and others. Read this informative.

It is time to analyze the goals for the last week:

HEBREW
- flashcards done
- finish the text from "Hebrew Military Reader" and start preparing sentences for Anki done
- If the number of the Flashcards drop below 50, start adding drills from the lesson 23 of the FSI Hebrew Basic Course done

One may consider the goals for Hebrew as done, but they were so unclear that they cannot be rated explicitly.
With Arabic, the task was rather clear:
ARABIC
- flashcards done
- add to Anki exercises from DLI Basic Course - Review 1-4. They have no audio nor the answers, so perhaps I will have to ask on "Hi Native" about them not done
- one video of Madeenah Arabic not done
The log's Author read a book about Arabic dialects this week, and he was rather astonished to find out that the differences between literary language and dialects are grave. Even on TV, when literary language is read, the dialect of the reader may influence the resulting speech. Nevertheless, the log's Author is going to proceed with learning MSA since reading books is the essential skill for him.

This week there will be no goals set. The Author has some things to do, like polish the Article in Polish and prepare a new computer to work. Such duties will undoubtedly have their negative impact on language learning.