TAC Meera 2016

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Meera
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TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-01, 18:20

Not making a language heading yet because I'm still deciding but my languages will mostly like be the same as last year. So we have:

Hindi/Urdu
Arabic
Japanese
Wild Card

Hindi/Urdu:
I am basically only including this because its my favorite language and want it to get some love. However I'm not sure what I should do for it. I was thinking of maybe posting articles and posting thoughts about the article or like a little review. Books I use for Hindi/Urdu:
Teach Yourself Hindi
Elementary Hindi
Intermediate Hindi
Intermediate Hindi Reader
Teach Yourself Urdu
Urdu Reader (I forget the whole name its a blue book)

Arabic:
Starting Intermediate Arabic 2 on January 20th. I will actually be writing an update soon for this. I have just got Al-Kitaab part 2 :para: for my class. I will be focusing on MSA and Shaami.

Japanese
So I might be doing another Japanese class and I'm excited for it. For Japanese I use:
Genki
Elementary Japanese
Japanese the Manga way


Wild Card
So still deciding on another language. The nominees are Swedish, Punjabi,Indonesian, Thai, Bengali,Nepali or French.
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IpseDixit

Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-01-01, 18:50

Why do you need Elementary and Intermidiate Hindi if you give yourself 3 stars in Hindi? :hmm:

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-01, 18:52

I think maybe the titles of those books are pretty misleading. :P But also, I do this a lot even for languages I give myself three stars in because reading books I've already read is still useful for review, plus often there are curious words or constructions even in textbooks for lower-level learners that are never really explained. For example, in an intermediate French textbook, I noticed the term figure symbole, which was never explained anywhere in the book, and was wondering what exactly it means. So I had an interesting (well, at least mildly interesting) discussion about it over on the French forum. And if you haven't read these books already, you never know when they'll just happen to cover stuff you don't already know.
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2016-01-01, 18:58, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-01, 18:54

IpseDixit wrote:Why do you need Elementary and Intermidiate Hindi if you give yourself 3 stars in Hindi? :hmm:


Because these are old books I have had for a long time :P
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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby OldBoring » 2016-01-02, 3:02

So basically the same languages as last year. Oh, you're including Arabic too? That's you what you study at the university anyway. :P

Meera wrote:Wild Card
So still deciding on another language. The nominees are Swedish, Punjabi,Indonesian, Thai, Bengali,Nepali or French.

Only one or more than one allowed?

vijayjohn wrote:I think maybe the titles of those books are pretty misleading.

Then I hope my Elementary Vietnamese (which I've never literally opened) is really elementary. :lol:

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-02, 5:10

OldBoring wrote:Only one or more than one allowed?

She means to pick only one of them, I'm pretty sure. Otherwise she'd probably feel she was putting too many languages on her TAC from the beginning.
Then I hope my Elementary Vietnamese (which I've never literally opened) is really elementary. :lol:

Me, too! I hope it's elementary enough for you to actually learn some Vietnamese from it. :lol:

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-02, 17:42

Youngfun, I haven't used Elementary Vietnamese but I've heard good things about it.
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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-03, 7:10

Really? Cool! I don't even remember hearing about it before. :shock: That may just be my bad memory, though. :lol:

księżycowy

Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby księżycowy » 2016-01-03, 15:25

I haven't exactly used it before myself, but I have looked it over quite a bit and its a pretty solid text. I just wish there was a bit more to the grammar explanations, but that's not to say there isn't enough.

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby OldBoring » 2016-01-03, 15:40

Meera wrote:Youngfun, I haven't used Elementary Vietnamese but I've heard good things about it.

At least the author is very qualified. He's a PhD and the Director of the Vietnamese Language Program in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-03, 18:34

Wow!

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-03, 22:28

OldBoring wrote:
Meera wrote:Youngfun, I haven't used Elementary Vietnamese but I've heard good things about it.

At least the author is very qualified. He's a PhD and the Director of the Vietnamese Language Program in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.


Yeah tuttle is good!
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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-03, 22:35

Oh, so it's a Tuttle book!

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-04, 18:15

vijayjohn wrote:Oh, so it's a Tuttle book!


Yeah it's part of their Elementary series. They have one for Japanese, Elementary Korean, Elementary Tagalog, Elementary Hindi and Elementary Vietnamese. Some of them have two volumes, some don't. But the Hindi and Japanese ones are really good. I always wanted to try the Korean one.
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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-04, 18:42

Wow, I'm not familiar enough with Tuttle Publications! That must be because I have way too many books already as it is. :lol:

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-07, 22:32

So I'm honestly thinking about adding Mandarin or Korean. I did want to do another Indian language and was serioulsy considering Bengali, however I think TAC's work best when you know very little about the language and your progress shows throughout the year. When I look back at my old Japanese posts I can't believe how much I learned from the time I was a begginner. I could barely read Hiragana when I first started.I can already read the Punjabi and Bengali script. With Bengali I know a lot fo the grammar so it would basically be boring updates saying I read this article or I listened to this song. There isn't really a lot to do with it :( I know both Korean and Mandarin are really challenging langauges and I'm not planning on being fluent and I will be doing them strictly for the TAC and just for fun, of course my other languages will be more of proitority. Out of both I am not sure which one I want to do, I think Korean would be interesting because it is a lot like Japanese and it has a very cool script. Mandarin would be interesting becausse I have never really done a tonal language before, there are many many speakers and a lot of good resoruces. I'm interested in both cultures So yeah hopefully I'm not too crazy for doing this :P I also may drop Arabic from my TAC since I'm doing at UNI I really don't need a TAC for it or maybe only update it ocannsionaly, I'm not sure yet :P
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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-07, 22:46

Go for it! Do Mandarin! :whoo: It's a really useful language these days anyway. :) And it helps with kanji, too! Plus of course I'm doing it. :P I know I'm not a native speaker or anything, of course, but I have studied Mandarin for quite a few years by now, so I could probably help you with it if you need help with anything.

You could leave Arabic off your TAC if you want but still use this thread to post updates/complaints ( :P ) about Arabic class. :D

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-07, 23:38

vijayjohn wrote:Go for it! Do Mandarin! :whoo: It's a really useful language these days anyway. :) And it helps with kanji, too! Plus of course I'm doing it. :P I know I'm not a native speaker or anything, of course, but I have studied Mandarin for quite a few years by now, so I could probably help you with it if you need help with anything.

You could leave Arabic off your TAC if you want but still use this thread to post updates/complaints ( :P ) about Arabic class. :D


Haha yes that is one of the reasons I was considering Mandarin because of Kanji :P I was looking at Mandarin a couple days ago and I got so excited I recongized some things from Kanji! For example like 猫,子,女 and 人. And the fact that a lot of people speak it here (well You and Youngfun) :P
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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-07, 23:55

Meera wrote:And the fact that a lot of people speak it here (well You and Youngfun) :P

Yeah, there's also a few native speakers who are pretty active on the Chinese forum FWIR (though not so much elsewhere). There are also a few people who never post much. :hmm: Oh, also ling. And Serafín! And mōdgethanc, razlem, Itikar, and Babelfish all know some Mandarin, too. :)

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Re: TAC Meera 2016

Postby Meera » 2016-01-08, 0:02

vijayjohn wrote:
Meera wrote:And the fact that a lot of people speak it here (well You and Youngfun) :P

Yeah, there's also a few native speakers who are pretty active on the Chinese forum FWIR (though not so much elsewhere). There are also a few people who never post much. :hmm: Oh, also ling. And Serafín! And mōdgethanc, razlem, Itikar, and Babelfish all know some Mandarin, too. :)


Is the Chinese forum pretty active? That would be another awesome reason to do Mandarin :P
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