TAC 2015 - vijayjohn

[vijayjohn]

Happy New Year, everybody! Welcome to my new TAC!

Last year, I worked on all of the following languages, mostly by posting in or about them here:

English
Malayalam
French
German
Latin
Portuguese
Spanish
BCS
Russian
Turkish
Hindi/Urdu
Swahili
Dinka
ASL
Mandarin Chinese
Thai
Tagalog
Indonesian/Malay
Oirata
Teiwa
Krio
Australian Kriol
Light Warlpiri
Quechua
Mapudungun
Lnuismk
Michif

This year, I intend to work through the same languages...and get a job. Ideally, I'd make enough money to actually get a place of my own to stay, but that's not extremely likely to happen. I think it would be nice to start being financially independent, though. I feel I should be able to afford to at least take a trip, although we'll have to see whether that works out, either. I know getting a job is not part of learning a language, but the point is that learning languages while working at a job is an additional challenge since the job necessarily takes up some time anyway.

Yet another challenge for me would be to extend what I do for these languages beyond just posting on UniLang. I've used other means to learn languages before (after all, I've been learning languages as long as I can remember, but I only found out about UniLang shortly before I joined), and I've obviously used UniLang before, but I've never really used both. I would like to be able to do that.

I might even end up adding new languages to my list. It's not terribly likely (especially given everything else I just said I was thinking of doing so far ), but well, we'll see.

I realize that if my last TAC seemed ambitious, this is even more so. I'm not really claiming that any of this will actually happen (hopefully at least I'll get a job though ), but considering that I managed to do pretty much exactly what I was hoping for in my last TAC, I think that it's time to raise the stakes a bit and that it would be interesting to see to what extent this does work out in the end.

[Koko]

Yay! 2015 has finally taken you. Is it two hours ahead of BC in Texas ? Herpy Ner Yer! IMO, Italian is a great language you should add to your list, but… it's whatevs

I think I should try to find more ways to study my languages. There's the Colombo Lodge here that I could try and find somebody who'd be willing to let me practice my Italian with. What are some free ways you've learned your languages you could suggest? I need stuff to inspire me to actually follow my goals

[mōdgethanc]

Yeah, why is it Light Warlpiri anyway? Less calories?

[vijayjohn]

Oh yeah, I forgot to reply to this. Thanks for reminding me, mōdgethanc!

Is it two hours ahead of BC in Texas ?

Yes.

Herpy Ner Yer!

Thanks!

IMO, Italian is a great language you should add to your list, but… it's whatevs

It's supposed to be one of my "later" languages...although secretly, I do end up practicing it every now and then on Skype anyway.

I think I should try to find more ways to study my languages. There's the Colombo Lodge here that I could try and find somebody who'd be willing to let me practice my Italian with. What are some free ways you've learned your languages you could suggest? I need stuff to inspire me to actually follow my goals

Well...usually the free resources I use are just websites. For example, for Italian, there's italian.about.com (although I haven't used it much and don't know just how good it is. It's been a long time since I last looked at it tbh ), and the BBC also has Italian courses (http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/italian/).

Yeah, why is it Light Warlpiri anyway? Less calories?

Hahahaha, well, maybe in a way. Light Warlpiri is what its speakers call it. It's a mixed language basically made up of Warlpiri and the variety of English that they speak (and, to a lesser extent, Australian Kriol). It's only spoken in Lajamanu alongside English and the local variety of Warlpiri, and its speakers consider it simply another form of Warlpiri. It formed very recently, and sometime either last year or the year before, there were tons of news articles about how this "new language" had just been "discovered" (and whenever I saw those articles, I was like, "Really? I thought I heard about this language like months ago!" ).

[dEhiN]

Yeah, why is it Light Warlpiri anyway? Less calories?

Hahahaha, well, maybe in a way. Light Warlpiri is what its speakers call it. It's a mixed language basically made up of Warlpiri and the variety of English that they speak (and, to a lesser extent, Australian Kriol). It's only spoken in Lajamanu alongside English and the local variety of Warlpiri, and its speakers consider it simply another form of Warlpiri. It formed very recently, and sometime either last year or the year before, there were tons of news articles about how this "new language" had just been "discovered" (and whenever I saw those articles, I was like, "Really? I thought I heard about this language like months ago!" ).

So why choose this and not simply Warlpiri?

[vijayjohn]

Because it's cool and I figure this would be a way for me to ease into Warlpiri. (OK, to be fair, usually I'm wrong about that, but oh well ).

[dEhiN]

Oh ok; so how goes Oirata?

[vijayjohn]

Fine, I guess. Last time I went through it, I covered a little more of the one story I can get any data from.

[dEhiN]

Fine, I guess. Last time I went through it, I covered a little more of the one story I can get any data from.

What do you mean? LIke did you do more analysis on it? I tried doing what I could (well I started to try then eventually got bored). But before I got bored, I found it was really hard to figure out what different words could potentially mean, even from context and repetition.

[vijayjohn]

Fine, I guess. Last time I went through it, I covered a little more of the one story I can get any data from.

What do you mean? LIke did you do more analysis on it?

Yeah, I guess you could say that. Each time I do it, I go through a little more of the story (one line at a time, though not necessarily one line per post). I try to figure out what each word means (to the extent that I can ).

[dEhiN]

Fine, I guess. Last time I went through it, I covered a little more of the one story I can get any data from.

What do you mean? LIke did you do more analysis on it?

Yeah, I guess you could say that. Each time I do it, I go through a little more of the story (one line at a time, though not necessarily one line per post). I try to figure out what each word means (to the extent that I can ).

Huh! Maybe we should do some analysis together one time .

[vijayjohn]

Fine, I guess. Last time I went through it, I covered a little more of the one story I can get any data from.

What do you mean? LIke did you do more analysis on it?

Yeah, I guess you could say that. Each time I do it, I go through a little more of the story (one line at a time, though not necessarily one line per post). I try to figure out what each word means (to the extent that I can ).

Huh! Maybe we should do some analysis together one time .

Oh, OK, sure. I'm sure I could use the help. There are so many words I've never been able to figure out.

[Meera]

Yet another challenge for me would be to extend what I do for these languages beyond just posting on UniLang. I've used other means to learn languages before (after all, I've been learning languages as long as I can remember, but I only found out about UniLang shortly before I joined), and I've obviously used UniLang before, but I've never really used both. I would like to be able to do that.

I think this is a good idea, just posting in the language here is useful but I think you need to combine it with other things lol

[Meera]

Happy New Year, everybody! Welcome to my new TAC!

Last year, I worked on all of the following languages, mostly by posting in or about them here:

English
Malayalam
French
German
Latin
Portuguese
Spanish
BCS
Russian
Turkish
Hindi/Urdu
Swahili
Dinka
ASL
Mandarin Chinese
Thai
Tagalog
Indonesian/Malay
Oirata
Teiwa
Krio
Australian Kriol
Light Warlpiri
Quechua
Mapudungun
Lnuismk
Michif

No Bengali?

[dEhiN]

No Bengali?

Aww, poor Bengali!

[vijayjohn]

No Bengali?

Nah, I still haven't gotten around to doing Bengali all that seriously yet. Besides, I'm doing enough Indo-European languages as it is so far. I'm afraid Bengali will have to come later.

[Meera]

Aww poor Bangla

[vijayjohn]

Aww poor other languages that'll have to wait, too

[Koko]

Aww poor other languages that'll have to wait, too

Come l'italiano anche . Sarà mai il ceco sulla tua lista?

Non hai ancora trovato un lavoro, vijay? How goes the improving of your languages too?

[vijayjohn]

Come l'italiano anche .

Giusto!

Sarà mai il ceco sulla tua lista?

Probablemente

Non hai ancora trovato un lavoro, vijay?

No. Hai trovato un lavoro tu?

How goes the improving of your languages too?

Hasn't started yet We'll see how it goes though.