zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

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Jar-Ptitsa
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I can speak: Dutch, German, English, Spanish and understand Italian, Portuguese, Wallonian, Afrikaans, but not always correctly.
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Sun Sep 17, 2017 2:24 am

I hope that I didn't kill your log. :(

We were in Belgium and also one day in the Netherlands (Maastricht). The weather was so bad, always rain, and it seemed a bit sad, slow and poor in comparison with London, I mean Wallonia not Maastricht, but it rained in Maastricht as well.

That was my multilingual adventure haha. It's incredible that your country seems different after you have lived in a different country.
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-w- I am Jar-ptitsa and my Hawaiian name is ʻā ʻaia. Please correct my mistakes in all the languages. Thank you very much.
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zenmonkey
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Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Oct 11, 2017 10:58 pm

vogeltje wrote:I hope that I didn't kill your log. :(

We were in Belgium and also one day in the Netherlands (Maastricht). The weather was so bad, always rain, and it seemed a bit sad, slow and poor in comparison with London, I mean Wallonia not Maastricht, but it rained in Maastricht as well.

That was my multilingual adventure haha. It's incredible that your country seems different after you have lived in a different country.


You did not! :D

I was away ... doing things.

Took my four daughters to Mexico for August (before the quakes) to visit my brother and my different extended family. It was intense. And yes, it seems so different to go back.

It's a little like finding old ice cream in you parent's fridge. It seems familiar, you're wary of how it might taste, how long things have just been sitting there? And there you are - still trying to get a spoonful of the old experience, scrapping out what you can. Or maybe I am abusing the imagery because I really can't find what it is like. But there is both the joyful remembrance of the places and the taste that it's a bit old, a bit stale and it doesn't really taste like you thought it would. And you put it back in the freezer, thinking you might grab some later but forget about it, then.

But Mexico was great, I really enjoyed myself - I'm now taking care of the girl's double nationality so they can go back when they want. Because for them, there is a lot of romantic nostalgia of that old ice cream. And I want to go back a bit sooner, maybe next year.

While there I attended a conference on Yiddish, (a little Ladino) and Hebrew. And I have a Yiddish learning app in the works as a project with my aunt. Well, maybe. I was deeply disappointed by the lack of material for nahuatl and other indigenous languages in the local bookstores when I searched - I really only found a (quality) dictionary. It will have to wait.

Came back to Germany - and I got lost in work, project and more travel. I have continued my studies in German, Hebrew and Tibetan but Portuguese fell to the side for this period - so did my participation in the rdearman's study.

And last week we were in back in Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest. Too short a visit but some nice panoramas of these cities.

Language wise, I'm only going to note that Tibetan is moving nicely and I am starting to read the Heart Sutra. Now this isn't a religious reading on my part, but a reading exercise and I doubt anyone will find enlightenment out of my pronunciation but it is exciting to be able to access the texts of a language - this is only, at this point, the ability to read the words and pronounce them. I am far away, still, from the grammar and vocabulary necessary to form any understanding. But, for an approach to an opaque language, it is my long path around - and I sometimes do wonder if I am getting anywhere as I certainly can't yet hold the most basic of conversations. I am a monkey making noises.

But all is not dark.

བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས།
ṭāshi-te̲le' - hello
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Oct 12, 2017 6:34 am

And specifically about the study - I'm sorry about dropping out of it. I felt particularly poorly about it, having put in a lot of energy and, well, not carrying through. Life and time got in the way and Portuguese was the first thing that got dropped ... then it made little sense to track...

Actually, I think the constraint of only focusing on native material (while traveling) was a big barrier for me. I can easily transport my Assimil stuff, etc. but access to films while traveling (poor Internet, blocked access to Netflix) made that harder. Maybe that is a learning.

For the next two weeks, I'll see if I add Portuguese back to my study (and the practice of tracking) but I really want to focus energy on my other three.
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Jar-Ptitsa
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Thu Oct 12, 2017 8:34 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
vogeltje wrote:I hope that I didn't kill your log. :(

We were in Belgium and also one day in the Netherlands (Maastricht). The weather was so bad, always rain, and it seemed a bit sad, slow and poor in comparison with London, I mean Wallonia not Maastricht, but it rained in Maastricht as well.

That was my multilingual adventure haha. It's incredible that your country seems different after you have lived in a different country.


You did not! :D

I was away ... doing things.


But Mexico was great, I really enjoyed myself - I'm now taking care of the girl's double nationality so they can go back when they want. Because for them, there is a lot of romantic nostalgia of that old ice cream. And I want to go back a bit sooner, maybe next year.



Good, what a relief.

Wow, your daughters are luckiy that they will get double nationality with Mexico!!!

I would love to have double nationality wiht some countries. In England if you want the double nationality with your own one, you must live here 5 years, then pass 2 exams. one is the Life in the Uk, with some historical questions, and the other is a language test. We don't know exactly how long we will live in London, it's a couple of years, but about 2 more until 5. Then I don't know if I could pass those exams. You must get 75% or more in the life in the UK test!!!! I know about fish and chips, tea, etc but not about the 14th century history or the things in the test, here is an example:

Image

How can you know that if you aren't about 60 years old (or better, 100 years).


And this:

Image

I know Turing, and I wouldn't vote for the last one becuase the name is more like a country, but I think that the people guess the responses.

Image

great!! an easy question. This is relevant as well if you live in the country that you know which currecny haha :D so I would get some points, maybe 5%

I haven't seen the English langauge test. That would be ok I think, if I didn't get too nervous, but it would depend on the questions, if they ask you spoken or written, and the topic. The best plan is tht my twin does the exams for me because he's very clever hahahaha (but he's male, so they would know, unfortunately). My parents said that we don't have to do the exams, so I'm not worried about it.
have you done exams for residency in a country?
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-w- I am Jar-ptitsa and my Hawaiian name is ʻā ʻaia. Please correct my mistakes in all the languages. Thank you very much.
: 1 / 50 Spanish grammar
: 5 / 50 Spanish vocabulary

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zenmonkey
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Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:45 pm

I've done the German Language exam for residency and will sit for the civics test later this year. I think there is a deck on Memrise with the full set of possible questions.

But since I am about 100 years old :) I could probably pass quite a few EU ones.

My girls won't need to pass a test since they are the offspring of a citizen.
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zenmonkey
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My grandmother's Spanish

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Oct 13, 2017 3:42 pm

This might be a little reading (and cooking) exercise for someone. Here is a page from my grandmother's cookbook. You can tell that she had quite a well practiced penmanship. She was a painter and artist.

FullSizeRender-1.jpg
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Jar-Ptitsa
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Sun Oct 15, 2017 11:10 am

zenmonkey wrote:I've done the German Language exam for residency and will sit for the civics test later this year. I think there is a deck on Memrise with the full set of possible questions.

But since I am about 100 years old :) I could probably pass quite a few EU ones.

My girls won't need to pass a test since they are the offspring of a citizen.


hahahaha :D you are very sporty for a person who's 100 years old. or maybe your photo was made in 1950.

There is a book for the UK life test. But I haven't done an exam for a long time, also for my highschool diploma I wrote an essay, so I'm happy that I haven't got to do this exam. it would be ok for the poeple who have done lots of exams I suppose, but if you haevn't, only that it's an exam is really difficult, but maybe they can giev you a different thing if you ask, I don't know. what a relief my family don't have to do it although my parents might pass it. I suppose that it depends on your job and maybe the lawyers have a different exam, but my job is different. it's great that your girls won't need to pass a test for the Mexican nationality.
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-w- I am Jar-ptitsa and my Hawaiian name is ʻā ʻaia. Please correct my mistakes in all the languages. Thank you very much.
: 1 / 50 Spanish grammar
: 5 / 50 Spanish vocabulary

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zenmonkey
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Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Oct 18, 2017 2:38 pm

This weeks acquisitions include:

Untitled.jpg


I fear that the Nahuatl is going to feed into the wanderlust. I've also got a post in prep for the language.
I skipped my italki class yesterday (Tibetan) because I was feeling ill. Back today, time to do some work.
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zenmonkey
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Nahuatl Notes - working post

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Oct 20, 2017 12:02 pm

Nahuatl notes - This is a working post that I'll be editing later.

So this is an eventual target language and something recently made me think about it. So I'll use this post as a notekeeper and it might eventually evolve into a profile and resources page for Nahuatl.

Why am I interested in this language?

Well, I keep running into it and it remains (with all its variants) the largest 'indigenous' language in Mexico. Everyone knows a few Nahuatl words that are loan words in most 'Western' languages - tomato, chocolate, avocado are usually cited.

But for me, my first intro to the language was also my first school - the name of my pre-school was Cipactli (means: crocodile) in the area of Cuahtemoc (means: one who has descended like an eagle) and my grandmother lived near the Chapultepec Park (means: grasshopper). So even at an early age some words were part of my background. My vocabulary in the language is probably a several dozen words and a few phrases.

Rather sadly, it has pretty much stayed almost at that level of knowledge, I've been in contact with a vairety of Mexican languages but without a way to pry open the process of learning anything. A major issue in Mexico is language and identity (and I'm not going to go into that here) and the efforts to develop material or propose ways of learning the non-Spanish languages were pretty non-existent or inaccessible when I was a young.

So there it sits, an itch to scratch, part shame, part return to my roots and an interesting challenge even as the number of resources and their quality tend to be an issue. And as a (semi-)opaque, rare language it adds another interest for me - learning Nahuatl ends up also being a research project.

ResourcesBooks
  • An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl by Launey & Mackay
  • Introduction to Classical Nahuatl by Andrews

LinksSpanish Language Resources
Last edited by zenmonkey on Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:04 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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reineke
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby reineke » Fri Oct 20, 2017 12:55 pm

You could post a list of resources in the resources section. Burying something you will be referring to repeatedly on page 20 of your log does not sound practical.
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