Saim's log 2017-2019

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby Michael » 2017-01-20, 3:38

Saim wrote:Definitely. I remember getting into Turkish after Hungarian I didn't have to pay much attention to the grammar (I started with Duolingo, which doesn't do much grammar, but the grammar didn't start confusing me until the very end when they introduced some advanced verb tenses).

Indeed, I agree very much with the idea that Turkish and Hungarian are among the languages that are the simplest to learn (from a Eurocentric view, at least). The morphology is 100% (well, 99.9%…) regular, and together with vowel harmony aids in swifter acquisition and consolidation of vocabulary, making pronunciations "stick" better.

Sok szerencsét!

Köszönöm!

(By the way, could you just confirm for me whether these two phrases are pronounced, respectively, [ʃok ˈsɛrɛnt͡ʃeːt] and [ˈkøsønøm]?)

Turkish is going well. So far I've been using Duolingo (trying to get the tree gold, I burned through it quickly the first time around), Glossika Turkish (one or two sets of 50 sentences every once and a while) and translations of pop songs I've found.

I had a few on-and-off spurts of activity on Memrise, but I've never had the occasion to try Duolingo, simply because it's never occurred to me to do so. I'm quite stubborn and meticulous when it comes to my methods, and I've become habituated to and highly dependent on Anki to consolidate the vocabulary, and to a certain extent the grammar, from each lesson I complete, precisely because it allows me to exercise strict control over the content while keeping the format simple. As several members of the polyglot community can also attest, Anki can start feeling meticulous once I reach a certain point, but if I muster the willpower to fight through the feelings of tediousness, the results will speak for themselves, thus the tediousness will become weaker and turn into excitement.

I've never held a Glossika book before, but as far as I can tell, they could prove to be an valuable supplement used alongside a standard didactic language course. I find the Glossika didactic method, which focuses on sentences, and subsequently syntax, to be attractively simple. Would you go as far as to recommend I acquire one? If so, I'm all ears!

How far do I want to go? I'd like to take it to B1 or so this year.

Sounds good! With the overflowing proliferation of Turkish media available at our fingertips, you'll certainly become addicted to Turkish music, which will consequentially help you to grasp its vaguely-melodic rhythm as well as the word order, as you know very well to be true. Looking forward to seeing your future posts in Turkish, as well as to myself being able to to produce basic but grammatically-correct material in Hungarian!

Without the dictionary? A large portion of the words, but I wouldn't have been able to read it comfortably, no.

Hmm, OK, so you're basically where I was at from Dec '15 to Feb '16, the initial 3 months, when I was still consolidating my first couple hundred items of vocabulary as well as mastering the more basic yet important elements of grammar. I didn't so much as dare read a BBC Azeri article!

voron wrote:No. To be honest with you even when I am spoken to in Belarusian (it happens sometimes; for example we have a network of petrol stations whose workers speak Belarusian), I reply back in Russian. Sad but true; I'm indifferent to this semi-native language of mine.

(I apologize in advance to Saim, as I don't intend to derail his blog, but I must join in in this particular sub-discussion, since I poorly comprehend the language politics of Belarus and Ukraine.)

voron, I'm curious as to what percent of the time you personally use Belorussian in comparison to Russian? Like, what is the overall national ratio of Belorussian usage against Russian usage? Does the language and its speakers still have a stigma attached to them? Also, could you rate the current cultural health of the Belorussian language with a scale starting from 0 (best-case scenario) to 10 (worst-case scenario), and give a brief explanation for your choice? I've been dying to get a picture of this particular situation for years, so your answers shall be very well appreciated. :)
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„Çdo njeri është peng i veprave të veta.‟
Every human being is hostage to their own deeds.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-20, 5:19

I'm sorry to interrupt myself, but I thought Belarusian was a moribund language people barely spoke even in Belarus, sort of like Irish, and that UniLangers all knew this already (though maybe it's just a few specific UniLangers, or maybe even just one, who said anything to give me that impression). :P As for Ukraine, the impression I get is that roughly half of Ukraine is primarily Russian-speaking and the remainder is primarily Ukrainian-speaking.

Also, if you want good Urdu-language TV series, three years ago, this (white) lady who's done lots of fieldwork in both North India and Pakistan highly recommended this one to me (I've still never actually watched more than a few parts of the first episode, though):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMsSfxdd0zY

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby Saim » 2017-01-20, 5:52

voron wrote:No. To be honest with you even when I am spoken to in Belarusian (it happens sometimes; for example we have a network of petrol stations whose workers speak Belarusian), I reply back in Russian. Sad but true; I'm indifferent to this semi-native language of mine.


Do you not want to help preserve it? What do you think of its use by opposition groups? I heard that there's a fair bit of use by artists depending on their political leanings, but I guess that's kind of more folkloric usage than anything real (similar to Occitanists who sing and write in Occitan but live their daily lives in French). Do you ever watch Belsat (I've watched bits of it myself, it's a fun language to listen to if you know Polish and Russian)?

(Samo onako pitam, znaš stvarno me zanimaju ugroženi jezici.)

vijayjohn wrote:I'm sorry to interrupt myself, but I thought Belarusian was a moribund language people barely spoke even in Belarus, sort of like Irish, and that UniLangers all knew this already (though maybe it's just a few specific UniLangers, or maybe even just one, who said anything to give me that impression). :P


Oh, it's not that I didn't know this. Just thought that given that Voro is interested in languages, and also knows another Slavic language at a high level, might use it occasionaly with some people.

Another thing is that although I keep reading about how Belarusian is near extinction, but then every Belarusian I meet claims to speak Belarusian fluently. I guess it has more to do with ethnic identity than with actual language usage -- whenever I've asked these selfsame Belarusians how do you say x in Belarusian, they've always taken a billion years to think of it (with some notable exceptions; I think some of my Belarusian acquaintances actually do speak it well, and some of them made their pro-opposition views very clearly known as well).

As for Ukraine, the impression I get is that roughly half of Ukraine is primarily Russian-speaking and the remainder is primarily Ukrainian-speaking


That's my understanding as well. It's irritating because so few people outside outside of Poland and the former USSR know this; I explain again and again that millions of Russian-speaking ethnic Ukrainians exist but very few people believe me (this is in online conversations on the Ukrainian conflict, so a lot of this probably has to do with their preconceived notions of geopolitics that have nothing to do with the interests of the Ukrainians or Ukrainian Russians themselves).

Check this dude out. He made me want to do my laptop in; he kept saying that if I believe that Russian is the dominant language in Ukraine I must be swallowing Putinist RT propaganda. :ohwell:

Michael wrote:(By the way, could you just confirm for me whether these two phrases are pronounced, respectively, [ʃok ˈsɛrɛnt͡ʃeːt] and [ˈkøsønøm]?)


Yes.

I had a few on-and-off spurts of activity on Memrise, but I've never had the occasion to try Duolingo, simply because it's never occurred to me to do so.


Meh, you're not missing out on much. Duolingo is for practicing beginner-level sentences in a semi-fun way, no more no less.

but if I muster the willpower to fight through the feelings of tediousness, the results will speak for themselves, thus the tediousness will become weaker and turn into excitement.


I go through phases where I love flashcards, and others where I hate them. I always end up culling my stock and starting afresh.

Would you go as far as to recommend I acquire one? If so, I'm all ears!


Yes, if you want to spend a lot of time studying a given language it's a good investment. It's quite expensive but it's good value for money if you have the time to use it along with some other studies.

Looking forward to seeing your future posts in Turkish, as well as to myself being able to to produce basic but grammatically-correct material in Hungarian!


:-D

Hmm, OK, so you're basically where I was at from Dec '15 to Feb '16, the initial 3 months, when I was still consolidating my first couple hundred items of vocabulary as well as mastering the more basic yet important elements of grammar. I didn't so much as dare read a BBC Azeri article!


Yeah, sounds about right.

Does the language and its speakers still have a stigma attached to them?


I'll let voron speak for himself, but my understanding is that Belarusian is seen as the language of yokels and Belarusian nationalists.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-20, 6:10

Saim wrote:Another thing is that although I keep reading about how Belarusian is near extinction, but then every Belarusian I meet claims to speak Belarusian fluently. I guess it has more to do with ethnic identity than with actual language usage -- whenever I've asked these selfsame Belarusians how do you say x in Belarusian, they've always taken a billion years to think of it (with some notable exceptions; I think some of my Belarusian acquaintances actually do speak it well, and some of them made their pro-opposition views very clearly known as well).

That's pretty much what I've heard for Irish as well: that Irish people claim to be able to speak Irish but never do even when presented with a situation where they may need to (and insist on speaking and being spoken to in English).
That's my understanding as well. It's irritating because so few people outside outside of Poland and the former USSR know this; I explain again and again that millions of Russian-speaking ethnic Ukrainians exist but very few people believe me (this is in online conversations on the Ukrainian conflict, so a lot of this probably has to do with their preconceived notions of geopolitics that have nothing to do with the interests of the Ukrainians or Ukrainian Russians themselves).

Check this dude out. He made me want to do my laptop in; he kept saying that if I believe that Russian is the dominant language in Ukraine I must be swallowing Putinist RT propaganda. :ohwell:

Weird. I've barely ever touched RT, certainly not in relation to anything related to Russia or any part of Europe, but just from reading American media, it doesn't seem unreasonable to conclude that Russian could be the dominant language in Ukraine.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby dEhiN » 2017-01-20, 7:53

Saim wrote:I go through phases where I love flashcards, and others where I hate them. I always end up culling my stock and starting afresh.

Kind of like me! :D Except I don't cull so much as abandon, then decide to restart thinking that this time I'll go through the whole deck - I currently have just shy of 1900 cards in total - and get partway through before I change my mind. I don't hate them or Anki. I think maybe I just don't push through the tediousness Mike was talking about.
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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby voron » 2017-01-20, 13:37

vijayjohn wrote:
Saim wrote:Another thing is that although I keep reading about how Belarusian is near extinction, but then every Belarusian I meet claims to speak Belarusian fluently. I guess it has more to do with ethnic identity than with actual language usage -- whenever I've asked these selfsame Belarusians how do you say x in Belarusian, they've always taken a billion years to think of it (with some notable exceptions; I think some of my Belarusian acquaintances actually do speak it well, and some of them made their pro-opposition views very clearly known as well).

That's pretty much what I've heard for Irish as well: that Irish people claim to be able to speak Irish but never do even when presented with a situation where they may need to (and insist on speaking and being spoken to in English).

All of the above is true, and I think the situation does resemble the one with Irish.

My generation, that is people born in 80s, was exposed to Belarusian because of
1) Media - we had TV and radio broadcasting in Belarusian, films in Belarusian, radio dramas - which I loved! - and for those who like reading, there was an abundance of Belarusian literature, including books for children and young adults;
2) Education - we had some 8-10 lessons per week where we would speak only in Belarusian (language, literature, history and geography lessons), so it's basically a couple hours every day, and after the collapse of the USSR, some colleges and universities taught their curricula at least partly in Belarusian;
3) Our grandparents. Depending on the region old people speak dialects more close or more distant from the standard.

In my case, I gained passive knowledge from 1) and 3) (in particular thanks my mother who's a literature and theatre fan), and active knowledge from 2).

Just as in every USSR country, the Belarusian language and nationalism in general experienced a boom in 90s. Schools and universities offered education in Belarusian, and its use was increasing both in official settings and on the streets. However with the rise of Lukashenko to power, it went to decline. Government programs for promoting the Belarusian language stopped, and Belarusian language schools underwent pressure and eventually closed or switched to education in Russian.

Children born in 2000s and subsequent years did not get as much exposure as we did. I once read a thread on an educational forum that the current school curriculum for the Belarusian language class causes many problems for children and their parents, because it assumes they know the language at least passively, while in reality many of them cannot recognize even basic words (those which are different from Russian), and need to learn it from scratch as a foreign language.

So as you can see, even in my generation the language was already half-dead as we used it actively mostly in artificial settings (at school or when having to fill official papers). It could have been easily revived provided if the government showed interest to it, just like it happened in Ukraine, but instead after a short revival it went further to neglection to the point that its foreign to most modern kids.

voron, I'm curious as to what percent of the time you personally use Belorussian in comparison to Russian?

I don't use it actively AT ALL. I don't remember when I naturally talked in Belarusian last time, and the last time I wrote in Belarusian was perhaps here on Unilang in the Belarusian thread. Passively, it's kinda still around on street signs, TV and such.

Like, what is the overall national ratio of Belorussian usage against Russian usage?

I can say for Minsk (the capital) - there 's probably 10.000 speakers or so (which makes 0.5% of the population) which speak Belarusian regularly and make an effort to teach their children. Needless to say they are all bilingual.

Does the language and its speakers still have a stigma attached to them?

Which stigma do you mean? The stigma of a rural and uneducated person is long dead. Now there is a strong stigma of a different kind: if you speak Belarusian (the standard, not a dialect), you are considered this:
http://lurkmore.to/%D0%97%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80
(a person who strongly opposes the government, Russo-phobic and pro-European)

Also, could you rate the current cultural health of the Belorussian language with a scale starting from 0 (best-case scenario) to 10 (worst-case scenario), and give a brief explanation for your choice?

Let's say 8. It is still alive on paper, but with the current trend it will die after a couple generations (see my explanations above).

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby eskandar » 2017-01-21, 19:01


OK, I don't feel too terrible about my spoken comprehension now! He speaks too quickly for me to get every single word, but I understood most of it (and also enjoyed him taking the piss out of this dumb, sexist prank!)

Saim wrote:Have you tried Urdu dramas? I'm no expert, but they seem to use something that's not as saaf as what you see on the news, but it definitely doesn't arrive to the extent of the flagrant Hinglish you hear in most popular films as well as on many political talkshows. Mera Sultan, although originally a Turkish series, is quite good because it uses courtly Urdu, but in a very conversational context.

I would watch more of them, but what has happend with the last two I tried is that I was bored for the first two episodes, got really into it for the next ten or so, then got bored again and stopped watching; I guess I've just never been one for dramas. Although I guess if I do that with enough series I'll end up learning a lot despite not finishing a single season of any of them. :lol:

I have a similar problem with getting bored. I've watched some of Humsafar and some other shows, but I'm just not that into dramas, in any language.

voron wrote:It's Muhteşem Yüzyıl right? The most boring Turkish series I've ever watched. :P The Turkish that they use in the series, they throw in some Ottoman terms here and there, but overall it's quite modern. Oh and all the Russian that women in harem supposedly speak, it makes my ears bleed. The sentences are unnatural and the actresses' pronunciation sound like they don't even bother trying.

I wish I didn't hate this show, because it was wildly popular in many languages (Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and apparently Urdu) so it would make for great language practice...

voron wrote:I can say for Minsk (the capital) - there 's probably 10.000 speakers or so (which makes 0.5% of the population) which speak Belarusian regularly and make an effort to teach their children. Needless to say they are all bilingual.

Are there any salient differences between how Russian is spoken in Belarus with how it's spoken in Russia (or, for that matter, Ukraine? Pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, or otherwise?
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-22, 5:48

Saim, I'm just stopping by to say I like your avatar (and that apparently, I've worked up the nerve to say "avatar," which feels so weird for someone who's familiar with Hindu mythology :silly:). :) At first, when I was trying to see whether I could figure out what it means, I thought of ألمانية and the Urdu word ہل and was thinking something like "the German lady is a plow?" :lol: I was also going to say I like calling flashcards, Anki, etc. "linguistic Viagra," "linguistic Cialis," etc.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby Saim » 2017-01-22, 11:36

eskandar wrote:OK, I don't feel too terrible about my spoken comprehension now! He speaks too quickly for me to get every single word, but I understood most of it (and also enjoyed him taking the piss out of this dumb, sexist prank!)


Glad you enjoyed it! :)

vijayjohn wrote:Saim, I'm just stopping by to say I like your avatar (and that apparently, I've worked up the nerve to say "avatar," which feels so weird for someone who's familiar with Hindu mythology :silly:). :) At first, when I was trying to see whether I could figure out what it means, I thought of ألمانية and the Urdu word ہل and was thinking something like "the German lady is a plow?" :lol: I was also going to say I like calling flashcards, Anki, etc. "linguistic Viagra," "linguistic Cialis," etc.


Thanks. I also associated علمانية and ألمانية in my head before I realised علمانية clearly comes from عالم. :lol:

For anyone else who's curious, it says العلمانية هي الحل (secularism is the solution).

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby voron » 2017-01-22, 14:35

eskandar wrote:Are there any salient differences between how Russian is spoken in Belarus with how it's spoken in Russia (or, for that matter, Ukraine? Pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, or otherwise?

They are negligible. As you know, Russian is known to have surprisingly little dialectal variation, and it extends to Russian spoken Belarus and Ukraine, too.

Pronunciation: Vowel reduction is slightly different. One particular phenomenon is that we don't reduce pre-tonic /ja/ to [ji]: язык in Russia is pronounced as [jizɨk] (which sounds funny to me), and here as [jazɨk].

Vocabulary: We have maybe at most a dozen words which Russians don't recognize or use differently. The most famous example is шуфлядка (a drawer), which is выдвижной ящик in Russia, and they usually have no idea what шуфлядка is.

There aren't any differences in syntax but there is one grammar detail that I can think of: the Plusquamperfekt tense is still alive in some people's speech (я была ходила, я был смотрел). I bet it exists in some regions of Russia too, but I never heard it from my colleagues from Moscow and St.Petersburg.

Besides these differences, we sometimes deliberately speak with the Belarusian accent or use Belarusian words when speaking Russian, for comical effect or when describing things specific to our culture.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby Michael » 2017-01-22, 16:51

Ya voron, bu tartışma tahtasındaki yazdığım gönderiye hiçbir düzeltme yapmadın. Yani gönderimde hiç yanlışlık mı yoktu, ya da deli miyim? :P
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„Çdo njeri është peng i veprave të veta.‟
Every human being is hostage to their own deeds.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby voron » 2017-01-22, 18:06

Michael açıkçası nasıl düzelteyim bilmiyorum. Gramer hatalarını düzeltebilirim tabii, ama sorun şu ki yazdığın cümleler anlaşılıyorsa da bana pek doğal gelmiyor. Mesela:

Macarcanı geliştirmekte uğurlar

Gramer bakışından bu cümle doğru da olsa, benim bildiğim 'good luck' anlamında 'uğurlar' ifadesi kullanılmıyor. 'İyi şanslar' gibi bir şey kullanılabilir. İstersen şuradan örneklere bakabilirsin:
https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/searc ... =good+luck

Son haftalarda benim ilgimin altında bile düştü!

"İlgimin altına düşmek" - bunu kelime kelime İngilizce'den çevirdin, değil mi? Benim bildiğim Türkçe'de böyle bir deyim yok. "İlgimi çekti" gibi bir şey kullanabilirsin.

Yani cümlelerini düzelttiğimde kulağa daha doğal gelen alternatifleri sunmak zorundayım. Bunu bence native speaker'lar daha güzel yapar.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-01-23, 1:38

voron wrote:There aren't any differences in syntax but there is one grammar detail that I can think of: the Plusquamperfekt tense is still alive in some people's speech (я была ходила, я был смотрел). I bet it exists in some regions of Russia too, but I never heard it from my colleagues from Moscow and St.Petersburg.

For whatever it's worth, I found this, where a user apparently from Krasnodar uses "я был смотрел."

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby Saim » 2017-01-23, 3:10

Don't Ukrainians and Belarusians also pronounce <г> as [ɣ] even when speaking Russian? Or is that trait dying out? Come to think of it, I do think I've heard [ɡ] among Ukrainians.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-02-06, 12:24

Saim wrote:There was also a scene where Pargali Ibrahim (the emperor's right-hand man) was supposed to be speaking Italian to a Venetian diplomat (and not Venetian, although I understand that it's harder to find a translator for that than for even Ukrainian), and although Ibrahim's Italian was stilted it was at least understandable, I didn't even recognise what the other dude was speaking as Italian. Maybe it actually was Venetian? :P


Who's the other guy? The ambassador or the interpreter?

None of them is incomprehensible to me, I would say all of them have more or less the same level, that's to say stilted but quite clear. If I had to say who has the best pronunciation, I'd say the ambassador, 'cause he's more fluid in his speech. (Although he has a much shorter sentence than Ibrahim has, so that might have played in his favor).

Here's the transcription:

Interpreter: Il Sultano ringrazia i vostri più sentiti auguri. (A better phrasing would've been "vi ringrazia per i vostri più sentiti auguri").

Ambassador: Durante questo periodo di pace...

Ibrahim: Certo che il Sultano Sulimano accetti i suoi migliori auguri, ma parla anche di un dettaglio molto importante: vuole che Venezia mantenga le sue promesse senza aizzare nessuno e rispetti la nostra giustizia.

Ambassador: Ho capito. Ma come mai Lei parla così bene la nostra lingua?

Ibrahim: È la mia madrelingua (LMAO), mia madre era veneziana.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby voron » 2017-02-06, 12:59

Saim wrote:Don't Ukrainians and Belarusians also pronounce <г> as [ɣ] even when speaking Russian? Or is that trait dying out? Come to think of it, I do think I've heard [ɡ] among Ukrainians.

Young Belarusians in most parts of Belarus definitely don't. Among Ukrainians it's perhaps more widespread but for the last 10 years or so I visited only Kiev in Ukraine so I can't say for sure.

Btw my father who's from Ukraine speaks quite a heavily accented Russian, to the extent that some of my friends who study Russian had problems understanding him, while they would understand other people fine. His native language was Ukrainian surzhik (a mix of Russian and Ukrainian) until the age of 14 when he moved to Belarus to live with his aunt. Now he cannot speak surzhik, while his sisters and brothers who stayed in Ukraine cannot speak standard Russian.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby Kenny » 2017-02-07, 19:06

dEhiN wrote:
Saim wrote:I go through phases where I love flashcards, and others where I hate them. I always end up culling my stock and starting afresh.

Kind of like me! :D Except I don't cull so much as abandon, then decide to restart thinking that this time I'll go through the whole deck - I currently have just shy of 1900 cards in total - and get partway through before I change my mind. I don't hate them or Anki. I think maybe I just don't push through the tediousness Mike was talking about.

I'm the exact opposite - I've been piling up cards for the past 3.5 years and it got to the point where I now have 65k+ total cards. I'm pretty sure I only know maybe half of those actively.
They're also spread across 6 languages, predominanty English and French, with Spanish, Catalan and German having about an equal number, but no more than a tenth of the other two and a sprinkling of Italian and Portuguese, the latter of which I just started on recently. I also have like 60 cards in Icelandic for some very basic conversational stuff as a springboard for when I actually get around to studying it.

Reading your conversations makes me want to delve into something brand new outside of the scope of my boring language choices. I've been contemplating studying Persian, as I have previously stated in other threads, which was further reinforced this past week-end when I met a couple at a dinner party - Hungarian hubby, Iranian wife, both speak the other's language. I'll get started any minute now...(still nowhere near as interesting as all the languages you guys are studying - but it's a start and I find the language very appealing).

And now that I'm done hijacking Saim's blog, hajrá Saim! Mire legközelebb találkozunk (ha lesz ilyen), csak magyarul szólhatsz hozzám. :lol:

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dEhiN
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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby dEhiN » 2017-02-08, 6:05

Kenny wrote:it got to the point where I now have 65k+ total cards

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:

Kenny wrote:still nowhere near as interesting as all the languages you guys are studying

So what language do you find really interesting? Pick that one. If it's Persian, great. If not, go with what will keep you interested for a while.

Kenny wrote:Mire legközelebb találkozunk (ha lesz ilyen), csak magyarul szólhatsz hozzám

I can't tell if that's Hungarian or not, but I'm going to assume it is and say: now you make me want to learn Hungarian. Perhaps if a certain person could be persuaded into helping a fellow language nerd learn Hungarian...?
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

IpseDixit

Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-02-08, 9:51

I think Anki can be a bit alienating at times, having to memorize all those long lists of words almost like a robot... I've also come to doubt about its method, I mean, I don't think learning words devoid of context is very helpful (ok, you can actually put a context in the flashcard, but I'm not sure how many people do that, it would seem a very tedious and lengthy thing to do for each card). It also seems to me that Anki can kind of encourage some obsessive behaviors in certain people.

Personally, I think a much better method to memorize words is read stuff in your target language on a regular basis, ideally on a daily basis, without worrying too much about noting down each and every new found word, since if you read regularly, it's very likely that you'll come across the same words over and over again and finally will remember them.

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Re: Saim's blog 2017

Postby Michael » 2017-02-08, 14:02

Kenny wrote:Reading your conversations makes me want to delve into something brand new outside of the scope of my boring language choices. I've been contemplating studying Persian, as I have previously stated in other threads, which was further reinforced this past week-end when I met a couple at a dinner party - Hungarian hubby, Iranian wife, both speak the other's language. I'll get started any minute now...(still nowhere near as interesting as all the languages you guys are studying - but it's a start and I find the language very appealing).

Persian? Not that interesting? Bollocks!
American English (en-us) Neapolitan from Molise (nap) N Italian (it) B2 Spanish (es) Portuguese (pt) French (fr) Greek (el) Albanian (sq) B1 Polish (pl) Romanian (ro) A2 Azerbaijani (az) Turkish (tr) Old English (en_old) A1
„Çdo njeri është peng i veprave të veta.‟
Every human being is hostage to their own deeds.


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