TAC 2017-2018 dEhiN

[księżycowy]

I'm glad I was able to help!

I guess my advice would be to find what works to motivate you (whether that is setting weekly 'goals' or something else), but doesn't allow you to fall into that cycle.

[reineke]

Sorry, probably not much help.

Actually that did help! All of the responses helped. I like that you use the goals as more of a motivator than a goal. When it comes to goals for short-term things, like a course or a project, I can think of the goals as, well, goals. When it comes to long-term stuff like continued language study, whether it be for one language or languages in general, it becomes easier for my perfectionism to kick in and screw everything up.

"Have no fear of perfection — you'll never reach it."

Salvador Dali

“There is no such thing as a bad Picasso.”

Picasso

I like those types of quotes in general, and will even espouse them for others, but it's always been difficult for me to hold onto those perspectives for myself. I will believe it for a while, and then revert back to the view I'm more used to.

I don't think it's helping either that the counselling I'm doing is around my abuse (which I've finally accepted happened) and the core beliefs I have about myself as well as tendencies I've developed as a result. I think the cycle of thinking goes something like this:

1) I can't be vulnerable because I will get hurt, or I will hurt someone else.
2) So I have to hide my core behind walls and shit.
3) If I'm able to control everything about myself - how I think, act, feel, what I say - then I can build and maintain that wall
4) So let me always be analyzing my behaviour, my thoughts, etc. to make sure they are in line with the expectations I've set up for myself
5) Fuck, I failed; I couldn't keep up with the perfectionist expectations, or there was a chink in the armour/wall
6) So now I'm hurt or I've hurt someone else because I'm not perfect
7) I have to try even harder because (see number 1)

Here's another:

‘The learner’s task is enormous because language is enormously complex’ (Lightbown 2000)."

A few days ago I read an account by an IT professional (certified in several Microsoft products) in which he stated that learning Spanish was by far the hardest thing he ever attempted in his adult life.

If you look at perfection as "do your best" sort of thing, I'd say that"s OK as long as you don't let your efforts interfere with your health.

Setting a goal of "perfection" in several foreign languages is akin to setting a goal to "surround China". What are you supposed to do? Run up and down the Great Wall real fast?

[dEhiN]

Alright, finally did some new Anki. So, here's the Anki for March 3:

[flag=]fr[/flag] le gare train station
[flag=]fr[/flag] l'indigène [m.] native (person)
[flag=]fr[/flag] argenté/argentée/argentés/argentées silvered; of silver colour [m.sing./f.sing./m.pl./f.pl.]
[flag=]fr[/flag] [l'argot] kiffer [slang] to like; to love; to adore
[flag=]fr[/flag] finir to finish
[flag=]fr[/flag] bien well
[flag=]fr[/flag] avoir soif to be thirsty
[flag=]fr[/flag] être en mesure de to be able to
[flag=]fr[/flag] la poudrerie blowing snow [used in Quebec]
[flag=]fr[/flag] le doré walleye (fish)

[flag=]pt-br[/flag] a irmã sister
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] a degrau stair; step
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] estar com sede; ter sede to be thirsty
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] mais more
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] a emoção emotion
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] somar to equal
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] o programador / a programadora (computer) programmer [m./f.]
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] novembro November

[flag=]sv[/flag] Min familj? Jag har min mamma och pappa och en syster och en bror. My family? I have my mother and father and a sister and a brother.

[Dormouse559]

[flag=]fr[/flag] la gare train station

[flag=]fr[/flag] être en mesure de to be able to

I think the first time I saw this phrase was while helping translate an instruction manual. The text had a lot of measurements in it, so at first I thought "être en mesure de" had something to do with those.

[Osias]

O degrau*

[eskandar]

dEhiN, have you seen this channel? There are some videos geared towards learning Tamil, from a Sri Lankan Tamil speaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLQNPaRXK-A

[dEhiN]

[flag=]fr[/flag] la gare train station

Merci.

O degrau*

Obrigado

dEhiN, have you seen this channel? There are some videos geared towards learning Tamil, from a Sri Lankan Tamil speaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLQNPaRXK-A

No I hadn't, but thanks for sharing! I'm especially excited it's from a Sri Lankan Tamil speaker.

[dEhiN]

Tenho uma dúvida: somar pode significar "to sum" ou somente "to equal"?

[dEhiN]

dEhiN, have you seen this channel? There are some videos geared towards learning Tamil, from a Sri Lankan Tamil speaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLQNPaRXK-A

No I hadn't, but thanks for sharing! I'm especially excited it's from a Sri Lankan Tamil speaker.

So I checked it out, and she's from Toronto! I'm thinking of sending her a message. It seems her Tamil videos are recent, starting from September. Some of the content in the videos I knew, but the refresher is good. That particular video you linked to bothers me a little because, while the guy being able to speak Tamil is impressive, he uses and teaches Indian Tamil. That alone wouldn't bother me, but there's one point when the two of them are having a dialogue - Soniya is pretending to be a student and Jonathan Ripley is the teacher - and she says /oːm/ and he corrects her to say /aːm/ or /aːmaːm/. The way she says it is the correct Sri Lankan Tamil way to say yes, while his correction is the Indian Tamil way to say it. I would think that a teacher of Tamil should recognize that /oːm/ is completely correct and not correct someone using it, as if they made a mistake.

[dEhiN]

Anki for March 16:

[flag=]fr[/flag] l'enfer [m.] hell; purgatory
[flag=]fr[/flag] la vieille old woman
[flag=]fr[/flag] démonter to tear down
[flag=]fr[/flag] celui/celle this/that/the one [m./f.]
[flag=]fr[/flag] l'ami [m.]; l'amie [f.] friend
[flag=]fr[/flag] l'argot [m.] slang word/phrase
[flag=]fr[/flag] le/la commissaire commissioner; chief of police [m./f.]
[flag=]fr[/flag] le lavabo washbasin; sink

[flag=]pt-br[/flag] as senhoras you [nom. f. pl. form.]; madams
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] tricotar to knit
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] os tios uncles and aunts
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] dez ten
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] ontem yesterday
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] não no; not
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] emocionado/emocionada/emocionados/emocionadas excited; emotional [m.sing./f.sing./m.pl./f.pl.]
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] a polícia police force

So I'm slowly getting around to deciding which resource to use for French. I have a book called Alpha Teach Yourself: French in 24 hours, which is a beginner book and has a chapter for each "hour". I figured going through a beginner book might be good to cover any basic grammar that I don't fully know. That's because since I started relearning French in 2011, I've never taken a French course nor gone through a whole French textbook. I have read some grammar things along the way, but I've learned all that I know from talking to French natives and reading books, and looking up things that I didn't know. So it's been piecemeal, which means there are some basic rules and paradigms I don't quite know.

I'm thinking of using a pdf Johanna gave me of the book Swedish: An Essential Grammar before I use the TY Complete Swedish book.

I'm torn for the resource to use for Tamil. I looked briefly through my 2015 TAC and found this which Vijay had suggested for learning Tamil, and which I had bookmarked. I started going through the videos on the YT channel eskandar suggested a few posts above. I think they'll be good to go through, to pick out words I don't know and hear how another Sri Lankan speaker pronounces things. But the women who runs the channel doesn't have enough videos to learn grammar and such. I think it might come down to that site Vijay gave or the FB group lessons (see past posts). With the FB group lessons I think I'll get at least the literary Tamil vocabulary and grammar. So my Tamil reading will improve, and as well I'll learn "proper Tamil". (By that I mean the words and more so, the grammar, that is common to all Tamil varieties and found in (print) media.) With the site I'll get some interactivity in terms of sounds and pictures. But my experience with interactive sites that teach Tamil has been they all favour (Spoken) Indian Tamil, including when teaching grammar. I guess the best way to decide is to go through a bit of each resource and then see what works.

For down the road TAC plans, I would like to study other languages. I was tempted to add them now, but I'll wait. This time around though, I want to approach it differently than in the past when I've tried to do 20-odd languages. In the past I just said "I want to learn language X", added it to my "list of languages I'm learning", and then had no plan as to how to learn it. This time I want to focus on finishing specific resources, more than adding a language to my language list. For example, back in September 2016 I started a 3 week course in Frisian, online. I never finished the course. So instead of adding Frisian to my list, I would say specifically "I'm going to go through this course in Frisian".

[eskandar]

That particular video you linked to bothers me a little because, while the guy being able to speak Tamil is impressive, he uses and teaches Indian Tamil. That alone wouldn't bother me, but there's one point when the two of them are having a dialogue - Soniya is pretending to be a student and Jonathan Ripley is the teacher - and she says /oːm/ and he corrects her to say /aːm/ or /aːmaːm/. The way she says it is the correct Sri Lankan Tamil way to say yes, while his correction is the Indian Tamil way to say it. I would think that a teacher of Tamil should recognize that /oːm/ is completely correct and not correct someone using it, as if they made a mistake.

Did you keep watching, though? He later acknowledges that it's Sri Lankan and even makes an effort to use it, himself. I think that's pretty understandable. When I was teaching English to French students, I would occasionally correct what I thought was a mistake only to realize that they had said something that was acceptable in UK English but just sounded wrong to my US English-accustomed ears.

[dEhiN]

Did you keep watching, though? He later acknowledges that it's Sri Lankan and even makes an effort to use it, himself. I think that's pretty understandable. When I was teaching English to French students, I would occasionally correct what I thought was a mistake only to realize that they had said something that was acceptable in UK English but just sounded wrong to my US English-accustomed ears.

No, I guess I stopped before that point. I'm glad he acknowledges it, and yeah it is pretty understandable. I'm starting to recognize one of the difficulties I've probably always had with trying to learn Tamil, and what has probably been one of the causes in my lack of major progress. I have this drive and loyalty to learn solely Sri Lankan Tamil since that is my heritage and I don't want to lose my heritage. Or rather, when my parents and their generation are gone, I don't want to not have the language connection to my heritage. But this drive has meant I don't see my Tamil learning in the same way I see learning other languages. There's instead this sense of I have to learn Sri Lankan Tamil, and so instead of enjoying the journey, I'm always focused on the end goal. I've tried at various points to either focus on literary Tamil, or to learn Indian Tamil alongside Sri Lankan Tamil, after only trying to learn SLT for many years and not having any luck.

PS. I know I've shared this before in perhaps a previous TAC. I'm sharing it now because while watching the videos on Soniya's channel, I saw this thinking come up again.

[Osias]

Tenho uma dúvida: somar pode significar "to sum" ou somente "to equal"?

Na verdade significa "to sum". Você deve ter visto alguma frase como "2 e 2 somam 4" que seria uma forma abreviada de dizer "a soma de 2 e 2 é igual a quatro".

[dEhiN]

[flag=]fr[/flag] démontrer to tear down

That should be démonter.

[dEhiN]

[flag=]sv[/flag] jag har en moder och en fader och en syster och en bror I have a mother and a father and a sister and a brother

Johanna told me that basically moder and fader is never used in Swedish, except maybe in really older stuff such as the Bible. So I've decided to delete this card from my Anki.

[flag=]sv[/flag] Min familj? Jag har min mormamma och farpappa och en syster och en bror. My family? I have my mother and father and a sister and a brother.

Johanna also told me that even mor and far aren't really used in modern Swedish. She said mamma and pappa are used almost exclusively, both in formal and informal situations and for written and spoken Swedish. I've updated my Anki card.

ETA:

[flag=]sv[/flag] en fader -- fadern (a) father -- the father

Because of the above, I've decided to delete this card too.

And yes, Johanna actually said this in her reply here, but at the time I never changed my Anki cards, and then I forgot to. So now I've updated things to reflect modern Swedish usage.

[Meera]

dEhiN, have you seen this channel? There are some videos geared towards learning Tamil, from a Sri Lankan Tamil speaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLQNPaRXK-A

omg this is making me want to learn Tamil!

[vijayjohn]

That particular video you linked to bothers me a little because, while the guy being able to speak Tamil is impressive, he uses and teaches Indian Tamil. That alone wouldn't bother me, but there's one point when the two of them are having a dialogue - Soniya is pretending to be a student and Jonathan Ripley is the teacher - and she says /oːm/ and he corrects her to say /aːm/ or /aːmaːm/. The way she says it is the correct Sri Lankan Tamil way to say yes, while his correction is the Indian Tamil way to say it. I would think that a teacher of Tamil should recognize that /oːm/ is completely correct and not correct someone using it, as if they made a mistake.

I just watched the video, and I actually wasn't sure he meant to correct her at all, just neglected to mention the dialect difference until she pointed it out (and of course it's good that she did!). I mean, consider how that would translate into English, ignoring the dialect variation for a second:

"Is this a rock?"
"Yes, it's a rock."
"Yes, it's a rock."

That makes sense, but there's no correction, right? It's just repeating or perhaps confirming what the other person said; it's just that he's speaking a different variety from what she speaks.

That being said, I remember this community college professor of Malayalam back in my parents' hometown was once complaining to my dad about how young people aren't speaking Malayalam properly these days and he hears them saying [ʃ] instead of [ɻ]. Then my dad pointed out to him that that's just how people a couple of hundred km away from their hometown talk and there are more people migrating from there to work in that town.

I'm starting to recognize one of the difficulties I've probably always had with trying to learn Tamil, and what has probably been one of the causes in my lack of major progress. I have this drive and loyalty to learn solely Sri Lankan Tamil since that is my heritage and I don't want to lose my heritage. Or rather, when my parents and their generation are gone, I don't want to not have the language connection to my heritage. But this drive has meant I don't see my Tamil learning in the same way I see learning other languages. There's instead this sense of I have to learn Sri Lankan Tamil, and so instead of enjoying the journey, I'm always focused on the end goal.

That's pretty much exactly how I (used to) feel about learning Malayalam. I mean, I've enjoyed it to some extent for the most part, but finding resources for it was impossible. It was so bad I actually had to start out with Learn Malayalam in 30 Days (and believe it or not, it helped, as a starting point!).

This is why I feel that learning Malayalam is less like the usual combing through textbooks and more like documentary linguistics: It doesn't seem like anyone's bothered to find the data for you, in which case you have no choice but to get out there and find it yourself. You have to ask people how to say this or that, whether you can say something this way or that way, why people say stuff, whether they can share riddles or stories or whatever, and so on and so forth no matter how much of a weirdo it makes you look like. It's such a long, maddening process, it can make you cry, it's not unlikely to make you embarrass yourself in front of entire crowds of people, it will definitely make you frustrated, but hey, at least you do get the data in the end. *shrug*

[Michael]

David, my personal advice to you would be to use any Tamil resources you can get your hands on, even if it's only tailored for Indian Tamil. With the dearth of resources for the language in general, you can't really afford to be picky. Something is better than nothing! After you've attained sufficient progress in a course for Mainland Tamil, you can always just expose yourself to Sri Lankan Tamil media and take note of any differences you may come across. In addition, I think it would be a bonus to be able to compare and contrast the divergences that have occurred between the two varieties.

I happen to be in a similar situation as well with Albanian. I'm starting off learning the Tosk-based Standard Albanian for now, but once I've completed my course and have attained a sufficient level of proficiency in it, I'll start branching out into Gheg Albanian, since that's the predominant dialect spoken by Albanian immigrants here in Chicago.

Then again, I'm also the kind of person who is in favor of learning MSA prior to tackling any of the regional Arabic vernaculars, contrary to the majority preference of some learners of Arabic here on UL.

[voron]

I'm also the kind of person who is in favor of learning MSA prior to tackling any of the regional Arabic vernaculars, contrary to the majority preference of some learners of Arabic here on UL.

This majority are who? AFAIR every single dialect learner here on Unilang knows some (or big) amount of MSA, too.

[Saim]

Yeah, even I know a fair bit of MSA. I just don't bother to try to speak it or write it anymore, because it's not a priority.