TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby księżycowy » 2017-03-08, 14:24

And replace it with "extremely", right? If so, I'm on board 100%!

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-09, 4:11

Why are you so jealous of me learning Amharic, księżycowy? Weren't you studying it at some point, too? :)

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby księżycowy » 2017-03-09, 9:46

I'm jealous cause I've always wanted to learn it!

I think I did start learning it once (more like fiddled around with it), but I didn't get far and I've forgotten all of it. I'll get back to it eventually. Priorities and stuff, you know. I've been fascinated with South Semitic languages (and Ethiopia in general) for almost as long as I've been interested in Hebrew and Arabic.
Some day, my precious.......Some day.......*sigh*

Out of curiosity, what are you using to learn it?

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-09, 13:27

So far, not much, actually! I've just been using Wikipedia to learn the fidel and LP to learn a few phrases. :P

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby księżycowy » 2017-03-09, 16:18

If you're the type that likes textbooks, I have and highly recommend Colloquial Amharic.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-10, 1:57

Oh OK, thanks!

Meanwhile, I've moved on to the English forum lol. Then I'll move on to Krio, then probably Dinka, Swahili, Hindi/Urdu, ASL, Thai, Tagalog, Indonesian, Oirata, Teiwa, Australian Kriol, Light Warlpiri, Quechua, Mapudungun, Lnuismk (Micmac), and Michif in that order.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-11, 7:47

So I posted some stuff in the English forum and then moved on to Krio. Now I'm actually done with Krio, but I might post something on the thread about Gullah in the Creole Languages forum before moving on to Dinka. (Gullah is a creole spoken mainly in the southeastern US and brought in by some of the earliest (black) slaves in this country from the Caribbean. It's in the process of decreolizing to the point where IMO it's getting increasingly harder to tell the difference between Gullah on the one hand and AAVE on the other).

I wonder what I'll even post on Dinka now. I'll have to see. Also, I might do Thai before ASL.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-11, 22:56

So I posted something for Dinka as well (even if I didn't actually learn much new vocabulary yet), and Swahili is projected to be up next. :) I think I'll also try to transcribe the two versions of a short movie I posted once both in Krio and in English (it's available in both languages). It's a movie from Sierra Leone about the importance of family planning. There are some parts I don't understand either in Krio or in English, so I'll have to leave those blank. I also intend to review my lesser-studied languages some more. (I really should do that with my other languages, too).

All of this is causing me to kind of ignore my Malayalam. :para: I still speak it with my parents, though, and did translate a bit of my grandfather's diary (still not done with that one damn paragraph!!). Oh, and I plan to read to my dad later tonight, too. :)

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-12, 3:12

I haven't started doing Swahili yet, but I started trying to transcribe the videos I mentioned earlier before coming to the conclusion that I just don't know enough Krio yet. So instead, I tried to look for a video where I could transcribe what was being said. I think the Krio in this clip (which I've also seen in the past, while I was taking the course where I was exposed to Krio) is easier for doing that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ESip8-zUOE
The only part I really can't seem to identify for some reason is the very last word (which is funny because to me, at least, the news broadcast is probably the easiest sample of Krio to understand out of the ones provided in that clip).

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-12, 6:15

Well, I sure have been going through my languages impatiently in this TAC! I'm already done posting stuff in Swahili and have moved on to Hindi/Urdu. It was easy to do Krio, Dinka, and Swahili in one day because no one else is currently studying the first two and I know of only one other active UniLanger who sometimes posts in the third. I might be stuck in the Hindi/Urdu forum for a while before I move on to Thai (I guess), though.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-19, 6:00

I did everything I could think of for Hindi/Urdu and have moved on to Thai now. I was stuck on the former language for a whole week! Before I did that, I think I was still pretty excited about the idea of doing all these different kinds of languages and making some progress in all of them (without actually making like any progress since I haven't even reviewed what I already learned yet :lol:). Sitting on one language I'm pretty familiar with for a whole week kind of killed that effect, I think (even though I still don't have negative feelings towards my (lack of) progress per se).

Meanwhile, I still need to look for a job once the contract for my current one ends (so I just did something to work towards that goal :)). Also, one of those two movies I was going to see in Turkish has been removed from YouTube, so I guess I'll just replace it with this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPGVrBgxe0Y
It's called Evim Sensin 'You Are My Home'. So far, the plot looks kinda creepy. :?

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-21, 1:33

I think I'm ready to move on from posting in Thai to doing something with ASL and posting it on the relevant thread (and posting in some of the Tagalog-related threads after that, or possibly even some of the generic Southeast Asian language threads, depending on how soon anyone posts (again) in any of them).

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-21, 7:39

Aaand wrote a nice quick post on ASL just before going to sleep. :P I think I'll move on to Tagalog tomorrow or something.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-22, 6:22

So I did just that. I've already ended up actually using Tagalog in the translation thread more than I was expecting already. :P I'm still doing Tagalog, but once I"m done with that, Indonesian is next, followed by Oirata, Teiwa, Australian Kriol, Light Warlpiri, Quechua, Mapudungun, Lnuismk ("Micmac"), and Michif in that order. (Did I miss anything? I think that's it by now, right?).

I've also been trying over the past few days to just review what I'd already read in Mayura Sandesham (the poem I've been trying to memorize). It seems to have been going well, though I also need to start learning some new lines instead of being perpetually stuck on quatrain #36. I'm trying to review my Chinese, too, but I'd still like to see what I have left to review and/or learn with my other three-star languages, too. Not much luck with the job search yet, though.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-24, 18:11

OK, I think I'm finally ready to move on to Indonesian (and Malay). I've also managed to memorize the first 36 quatrains of Mayura Sandesam by now, even though #36 seems to be the hardest for me to remember off the top of my head. I haven't translated anything from my grandfather's diary yet this week, but it's only Friday, and this weekend seems to be a relatively low-key one (although I just remembered, we may be going over to someone's house tomorrow evening). Also, I briefly considered the possibility last night that maybe I should focus on trying to get my Russian up to a three-star level, but it would probably make more sense for me to try to do that with Portuguese since it's so similar to Spanish and my French is already at that level, too.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby voron » 2017-03-24, 21:26

vijayjohn wrote:Also, I briefly considered the possibility last night that maybe I should focus on trying to get my Russian up to a three-star level, but it would probably make more sense for me to try to do that with Portuguese since it's so similar to Spanish and my French is already at that level, too.

So, your reasoning basically is, I'll get it to a 3-star level because it's easier? Pff what kind of a language nerd are you. :whistle: :D

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-24, 21:37

voron wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Also, I briefly considered the possibility last night that maybe I should focus on trying to get my Russian up to a three-star level, but it would probably make more sense for me to try to do that with Portuguese since it's so similar to Spanish and my French is already at that level, too.

So, your reasoning basically is, I'll get it to a 3-star level because it's easier? Pff what kind of a language nerd are you. :whistle: :D

No, no, I'm thinking about getting some of my languages to a 3-star level (before attempting to get any of them to a 4-star level, other than Malayalam which it seems I've already done that for) because I have more languages at a 2-star level! ;) (I'm thinking of getting more of them to a 4-star level, too, but I think it might be fun to see to what extent I can balance out the number of languages I have at each level :D).

Also, thank you for posting on this thread because I was looking for an excuse to report that I'm thinking of moving on to Oirata. :P I've also translated some more of my grandfather's diary.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-25, 6:09

And so I did move on to Oirata and then Teiwa. I guess I'll post something for Australian Kriol later tomorrow (or technically today :P) and get some sleep first.

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-25, 18:04

Finished Australian Kriol and Light Warlpiri, which means I now have only four languages left on my TAC: Quechua, Mapudungun, Lnuismk, and Michif. It so happens that it's only 72°F (22°C) inside the house right now, so it actually feels like surprisingly good weather for studying these particular languages! (OK, it's actually a bit colder than it is here down where Cusco Quechua and Mapudungun are spoken, probably much colder where Lnuismk is spoken, and possibly even colder than that where Michif is spoken, but still, it isn't as warm as it's been lately down here, either!).

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Re: TAC 2017 - vijayjohn

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-27, 5:31

All right, finally! I've posted something for every language in my TAC. I didn't seem to be too much into doing Native American languages this time, though, probably because I'm distracted so much by Eurasian (i.e. European + Asian) languages like Portuguese and Hindi.


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