TAC Meera 2013

[Meera]

No I haven't heard that one either. To be honest I'm not really into Islamic music. (I hope that doesn't sound mean/bigoted or anything )

[ceid donn]

No worries, Meera. I listened to it and it was interesting and I liked the harmonies and call-and-response structure. But like with a lot of very religious music, if you're not listening to it for religious reasons, it's likely not going to really engage you in the long-term.

That's funny your parents seem to want you to study Arabic. I suppose they have their reasons. I've been thinking of doing some Arabic in 2014. I don't know. I really would like to learn some more Arabic, but I find it so hard to study on my own. I get discouraged easily.

[Meera]

Yeah I feel the same way about Arabic, sometimes I really like it while other times I just feel too dicouraged to do it.

[bluejay390]

[flag=]fa[/flag]/[flag=]tr[/flag] Not sure if I want to do Farsi, Turkish or Indonesian. Its quite tough for me to decide.

Bahasa Indonesia! Bahasa Indonesia!

[vijayjohn]

No I haven't heard that one either. To be honest I'm not really into Islamic music. (I hope that doesn't sound mean/bigoted or anything )

No worries, Meera. I listened to it and it was interesting and I liked the harmonies and call-and-response structure. But like with a lot of very religious music, if you're not listening to it for religious reasons, it's likely not going to really engage you in the long-term.

Yeah, I'm not really into Islamic music, either, or even religious music in general. The only reason why I know about either of these is because one day, many years ago, I was bored and decided to try searching for some random (but pronounce-able) combination of letters on Google. What I ended up searching for was "zuljanah." Boy, I had no idea what I was getting myself into!

Bahasa Indonesia! Bahasa Indonesia!

You know what? If I can somehow manage to go to India through Malaysia and stay in Malaysia for at least a few days (something my dad and I were actually kind of hoping to do this summer...) - and I'll admit that's a big if - then I'm definitely doing Malay/Indonesian.

[Meera]

[flag=]fa[/flag]/[flag=]tr[/flag] Not sure if I want to do Farsi, Turkish or Indonesian. Its quite tough for me to decide.

Bahasa Indonesia! Bahasa Indonesia!

Bagaimana saya bisa mengatakan tidak? Bahasa Indonesia yang paling menyenangkan

[Meera]

[flag=]hi[/flag]/[flag=]ur[/flag] I read the first story in my Urdu reader which was from the Panchatanra. It was actually quite enjoyable. the first chapters of my reader uses a huge font so I can make out the words. I also learned some more words from Rosetta Stone. I finished the Living Language Script book (it was so easy!) and I finished the first two chapters of the "Essential" book. Anyway here is some of the vocab I learned from RS and the Urdu readings (I typed them in Devangari but I will add the Urdu typing later)



महासागर-Ocean
महाद्वीप-Continent
द्वीप-Island
पेंगुइन-Penguin
नीरस-boring/humdrum
रोचक-interesting/lively
गहरा-deep/close/intimate
विद्वान्-scholars
जमा होना-to gather
फ़ायदा-profit
दरबार-court
इज़ात होना-to be honoured
पूरब-east
अनपढ़-illiterate
इकठ्ठा-gathered
जोड़ना-to join
फुर्ती-briskness
खाल-skin or hide
हड्डी-bone

These words come straight from the stories glossary so I think some might be very archaic.



[flag=]fr[/flag] I'm trying to get through this string os lessons on my tree but its pretty hard. Anyway I got many of lessons gold so thats good I guess. I've also been listening to news in slow French. Which is a great help!

[ceid donn]

Yes, the French tree on Duolingo is a bit of a mess once you get to that point. They start throwing some pretty confusing concepts at you and don't really explain them. The Pronoun 2 lesson is pretty bad like that, as is the two Compound Past lessons (you'll be getting to those soon). I am having the same issue with the German tree but since my grasp of German grammar is a little more solid, it's not as bad for me. The Duolingo model, as it is right now, works better for more basic grammar. I think they are relying too much on the community to assist with explaning grammar, and that kind of fails the learners when you get to those more complex concepts, because people often don't know what questions they need to be asking. I'm sure if you've never studied French or another Romance language before, celui, celui-ci, celui-là, cela and ceci just seem absolutely bizarre and intimidating. I know they were to me when I first studied them and they still give me fits.

And if the three of you all decide to study Indonesian/Malaysian next year, I will have to join you! I love Indonesian. I just need motivation to keep at when it gets confusing for me!!!

[Meera]

Yeah, it's very overwhelming, i studied French in High School but I don't even think we got this far, so it's so confusing. I finally passed and got to the compund past verbs that don't seem as bad (well yet anyway it will probably get worse).


And yeah I might do Indonesian. I will be doing Japanese so I might need an easy language

[Meera]

Happy New Year everyone!


I haven't decided if I want to change my languages or not so I guess they will stay the same.


[flag=]hi[/flag]Finished book 1 of living language. It's not as good as the Arabic or Korean Living language course, although so far it's okay. I wish they would release the flashcards on the site soon! Read some more of my Urdu reader, will update with some more words soon.




[flag=]fr[/flag] Finally finished that awful hard lesson on Duolingo. And I just finished the compound past tense verbs which I found extremely easy, unless maybe duo is working and my skills are getting better I doubt it though. I also translated some of my first French article, I hope it was okay, I'm not sure though, I hope I won't get banned for giving bad translations But I felt proud I could understand a lot of it. I also have been watching France 24 and reading Le Monde.

[flag=]ja[/flag] I learned all of Hiragana. I think I have most of it down but I'm still confusing tenten (I think that's what its called ) For example I keep messing up bu, fu and pu. And be and pe.

[ceid donn]

I'm glad you aren't having any problems with the passé composé. My brain reads it as a perfect tense, and in a way, it is a perfect tense, but you don't translate it into English as a perfect tense, not exactly. It's all weird and I overthink it and I have had too many people over the years try to explain it to me but badly. When I'm just reading it, I'm Ok but when I have to translate it into English I get mixed up. Besides when I was doing the Duolingo units, for some reason they were giving me sentences to translate and when I did using the passé composé (you know, because it was the unit on that tense), it would mark them wrong because it wanted the simple past and I'd be like WTH??? This was on the Kindle app so it may be a problem limited to that specific app. I'm so glad to be past those units although now I have to drudge through another infinitive unit (the third one! ).

Living Languages has flashcards? On their site? I could use some for Spanish. I have the book/audio set. It's my mom's actually--she's never used it so I'm going to.

[Meera]

Yeah it is kind of confusing maybe duolingo gives way more freedom on the translations lol becuase it is deffintly a confusing concept.


And yeah the living language site has flashcards. Not for every langauge but they have it for Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Here is the link if you want to look at it:

http://livinglanguage.com/languagelab/

i think are meant to be used with the coursebooks burt I think they are still useful if you don't have the coursebooks.

[Meera]

[flag=]hi[/flag] This is a random rant, but I'm the unit of "tools" in Rosetta Stone Hindi, and I have no idea what this things are in Pashto or English. lol

[ceid donn]

I reminds me of how in my Gaelic classes sometimes we'd read older stories and there'd be words in them for tools that no one knew what they were, like adzes or quern stones.

[Meera]

Haha yeah, I hate when that happens

[Meera]

[flag=]ja[/flag]Some randome vocabulary I learned in Japanese

おはよう
(good morning)

こんにちは
(good afternoon)

こんばんは
(good evening)

さようなら
(goodbye)


ありがとう
(thanks)


いいえ
(no)

すみません
(i'm sorry)

ただいま
(I'm home)


あに
(umm...)


いま
(now)


せんせい
(teacher)

[TeneReef]

Have you started with Kanji already?

[Yasna]

ただいま
(I'm home)

This forms a pair with おかえり, which means "welcome back". Another related useful pair is いってきます (said by the person leaving home to the person staying at home) and いってらしゃい (said by the person who is staying home to the person who is leaving).

[Meera]

Have you started with Kanji already?

Nope not yet Im nervous for Kanji.

[Meera]

ただいま
(I'm home)

This forms a pair with おかえり, which means "welcome back". Another related useful pair is いってきます (said by the person leaving home to the person staying at home) and いってらしゃい (said by the person who is staying home to the person who is leaving).

Oh cool, thanks Yasna!