TAC 2016 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU, RO)

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TAC 2016 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU, RO)

Postby Levike » 2014-07-14, 20:32

Felt like I should do one just to have some records.

[flag=]de[/flag] GERMAN

Learnt it for 11 years, live in a place where there's a Saxon minority, just got to do it.

Almost every day I'm reading articles from Die Zeit
and I'm writing out all the unknown words in a small notebook to learn them.
My grammar's rusty, but the vocab part is the one that concerns me.

When I was in high-school there was a competition organised by the German embassy
and I won the 32th place in the country for writing a poem in German.
As reward one of the things I've got was a book that I want to start to read again.
Only got to the half of it.

Until now I got to the point where I can understand the most of TV news.

The next year an internship at an IT company is required
and currently I found one that I really do like and where German knowledge would indeed help,
so I'll mainly be focusing on this language.

[flag=]en[/flag] ENGLISH

Been learning it for 8 years, still hoping that I got to a somewhat decent level.

This year I had to take an English test at my university for Erasmus
and they rated my English knowledge at B2 for the reading/writing part
while at listening and speaking I got C1.

Regardless of this, I need to improve it,
especially that in the next semester I'll be learning in Warsaw University in English.
So the first time my grades will really depend on my foreign language knowledge.

I'm currently watching Game of Thrones, I hope that counts as exercise.
We also have like one or two English channels on TV so maybe I'll also be watching them.

[flag=]es[/flag] SPANISH

The first language I have no real use of, but I like it anyway.
I've been learning it for maybe 4 years now.
I would put it on the same level as English because at listening I feel more comfortable with it.
And my pronunciation is not so horrible compared to English.
So like a B2 level.

Since it's not a language that I'll be using soon
I'll only try to maintain my current level by watching Game of Thrones with Spanish subtitles.

I also dropped Portuguese, since Romanian is really enough when it comes to interference.
But Portuguese helped me a bit with understanding Spanish so yay.

Suffers from the same disease as English and German, the lack of vocabulary.
Have to work on that.

[flag=]hu[/flag] HUNGARIAN

Since it's my mother tongue, I guess I can say that I've been learning it my whole life.

I can speak it, but that's kind of it.

At school we always learnt literature, maybe a bit about how to write correctly, but not farther.
First I want to learn how vowel harmony works and also the names of the grammatical cases.

Finally I want to learn how it actually works.

This shall be a good start.

[flag=]ro[/flag] ROMANIAN

One of my favourites for many reasons, along the fact that I can actually speak it.

It's a Latin language that's slightly a bit more archaic, and it has a lot of features that I love, for example the definite article that comes attached to the noun's end.

And it's Latin, providing a good base for Spanish and for other Romance languages.

Hopefully I'm going to find out more about it's history and about the way it works.
Last edited by Levike on 2016-02-16, 19:29, edited 5 times in total.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby dEhiN » 2014-09-30, 20:17

Szia Levi, hogy vagy? How are your languages going? I see you haven't posted any updates. Are you still continuing to work on German, English, Spanish, and 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)

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby Levike » 2014-09-30, 21:03

dEhiN wrote:Szia Levi, hogy vagy? How are your languages going? I see you haven't posted any updates. Are you still continuing to work on German, English, Spanish, and Hungarian?
Oupps, I totally forgot about this.

Everything is going well.

Right now I'm learning Computer Science in Warsaw
and being at the English Department helps a lot.

While working in Greece I also had to speak with a lot of British and German clients
in their own mother-tongues, the Germans were the happiest ones since they didn't speak English.

Spanish I only spoke with a couple of Catalans in Mount Athos,
but now in Warsaw I also talked with a Spaniard who's also an exchange student.

Out of these German is the problematic one, especially at listening.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby dEhiN » 2014-10-02, 5:06

Cool! Do you know Polish as well?
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)

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby Levike » 2014-10-02, 13:42

dEhiN wrote:Cool! Do you know Polish as well?
I don't know any Polish, but I don't wish to learn it.

There are Polish classes for foreigners,
but I'm trying to switch to the English/Spanish/German ones.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby dEhiN » 2014-10-03, 1:52

Then how are you getting by in Warsaw without knowing any Polish?
Native: (en-ca)
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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)

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-10-03, 2:13

I think all the classes are in English.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby dEhiN » 2014-10-03, 3:21

vijayjohn wrote:I think all the classes are in English.

Oh ok, but still I imagine getting around in the city requires knowledge of Polish!
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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)

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby Levike » 2014-10-03, 6:48

dEhiN wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I think all the classes are in English.

Oh ok, but still I imagine getting around in the city requires knowledge of Polish!
No, usually people do know a bit of English or German or something else.
Especially in stores you don't need any language, you just take what you want and pay for it.
And the people I'm hanging out with do know good English or Spanish.

I'm only staying for 5 months and in that time I cannot reach a useful level.

And a 6th language would be an exaggeration.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby voron » 2014-10-03, 8:11

Levike wrote:And a 6th language would be an exaggeration.

Very rational thinking. I like your approach. :y:

IpseDixit

Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby IpseDixit » 2014-10-03, 10:47

Levike wrote:And a 6th language would be an exaggeration.


Well, but two of them are your mother tongues, so you would be studying four foreign languages, not six.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby Levike » 2014-10-03, 13:42

Hurray, today I managed to escape Polish and take English.

IpseDixit wrote:Well, but two of them are your mother tongues,
so you would be studying four foreign languages, not six.
Hungarian's my mother tongue. Romanian came later on.

Either way, better to have a few languages that you can speak well.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby dEhiN » 2014-10-09, 2:53

Levike wrote:Hurray, today I managed to escape Polish and take English.

I think it's spelled "hooray"; at least that's the only way I've seen it. For me, "hurray" looks too much like "hurry", which makes me want to pronounce the first part as "hurry" and not "horray".
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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-10-09, 3:35

Both spellings exist. I think I usually use "hurray" myself. :)

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby dEhiN » 2014-10-16, 15:45

vijayjohn wrote:Both spellings exist. I think I usually use "hurray" myself. :)

Didn't know that! Danke/Thanks/Gracias/Köszönöm!
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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-10-16, 19:23

Bitte/You're welcome/De nada/Szívesen (this time I got the Hungarian part right, I swear :lol:).

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby Levike » 2014-10-16, 19:38

vijayjohn wrote:Szívesen (this time I got the Hungarian part right, I swear).
:congrats: :congrats: :congrats: :congrats:

Update: I have to learn Polish after all.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby dEhiN » 2014-10-16, 20:34

Levike wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Update: I have to learn Polish after all.

Why?
Native: (en-ca)
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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)

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby Levike » 2014-10-16, 21:21

My home university requires me to get at least 30 credits for this semester.

Polish is worth 4.
And it's also the only subject that wouldn't cause overlaps with my other subjects.

I asked the Spanish guys what they learnt until now and they told me
that in 2 weeks the only things they were taught were the alphabet,
how to introduce oneself and the "to be" verb. So I'm going to be fine.

Until now I've been perfectly fine with English and Spanish, but 4 credits are 4 credits.

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Re: TAC 2014 - Levi (DE, EN, ES, HU)

Postby Levike » 2014-12-14, 0:23

[flag=]es[/flag]
I think this is the language that improved the most.

We have a lot of Erasmus students from Spain
and they quite enjoy speaking Spanish with people who want to learn the language.

One of my two best friends here in Warsaw are a boy from Valencia and a girl from Barcelona.

With the Catalan girl I talk both in English and in Spanish, but we switch to Spanish on the first occasion we can't find the appropriate term for some technical thing in English.
We had to make a project and it went like this: English -> Spanglish -> Spanish
And with the Valencian I always speak in Spanish, except when we're with someone who doesn't understand the language.

[flag=]ro[/flag]
There was a French guy who wanted to learn a bit of Romanian, so me and other two Romanians from Bucharest did it, it was really funny, his r's and his way of pronouncing the schwas or the diphthongs, especially the "oa" one.
But on the other hand my French would have been equally bad.

I've found a text written in Romanian at the time when it had a etymological spelling system.
It looked like invented it were by a Greek, too many letter combinations for one single sound.

The two students from Bucharest reminded me what I don't like about Romanian: its dialects.
When I want to say "it is" I usually say /jeste/, even though it's written simply as "este",
but they pronounced it always /este/.

[flag=]en[/flag]
This one went down-hill.
Maybe I learnt some new words, but my accent went full foreign-mode.

One British guy said about himself:
If I ever get back home I'm going to have a total "the"-less English.

[flag=]de[/flag]
I usually try to only say minor things in it, since it's not a language that I speak fluently.

Good or bad, I met one German from Cologne who said I speak German to a fairly good level, which resulted in him speaking to me only in German after a while. Sounds good, but not really. I tried to switch back to English, but he kept on in German.

The point is that I don't like speaking a language when I know that what I'm doing is in fact mumbling and not having a fluid conversation.

The god part is that I understood everything he said and vice-versa.

[flag=]hu[/flag]
I met one Finnish guy and we began talking about our languages
and about the supposed "relation" between them.
But at the end I had a lot of deja-vu moments with many unexptected words.

I looked a bit into the the Finnish-Hungarian relatedness and I found this sentence:

English: Live fish swim under the water.
Finnish: Elävä kala ui veden alla.
Hungarian: Eleven hal úszik a víz alatt.

Even with a little change in the verb to swim you can see the similar turn.

Finnish: Elävä kala uiskentelee veden alla.
Hungarian: Eleven hal úszkál a víz alatt.

Mostly Hungarians are overly skeptical towards this bond,
but I like that I can look at a language and see the that we're not alone.

One word that we discovered with the Finnish guy was the "hullu" and "hülye".
They both mean "crazy".


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