Saim's log 2017-2019

[Bubulus]

I seem to always like your posts Saim. A couple things about Spanish though:

It's been fun hanging out with Latin Americans because there have been lots of moments where I used a word that I didn't even know was regional, like piso for apartment (in LA Spanish it means "floor", "ground").

I've never seen or heard piso with the meaning "ground", only "floor". A piso must be artificial, man-made, in my experience.

"pues lluvia. qué va a ser, sino?"

This should be si no. Yeah, there's a difference between sino and si no. I think you can easily map them to English as "but/but rather/but also" (<- sino) vs. the adverb "otherwise" (<- si no).

[eskandar]

Thanks for indulging my curiosity.

I might give it a shot anyway.

Do it! It's a beautiful song.

Also I kind of identify with the whole Jewish thing of being in exile and not having a homeland, as well as the mixed Central European/Middle Eastern influences that Israel developed after the different waves of immigration.

Makes sense, given your background. Do you know the book "Muslim Zion" by Faisal Devji? He argues for a reading of the Pakistani political project as a kind of Muslim Zionism, both Pakistan and Israel being states erected in the name of a religion.

[Saim]

I've never seen or heard piso with the meaning "ground", only "floor". A piso must be artificial, man-made, in my experience.

Ajá... es que en España suelo tiene las dos acepciones, y había supuesto que piso sería el equivalente americano de suelo. Pero vosotros diferenciáis suelo y piso, ¿dices? ¿O sería el piso un tipo de suelo?

Lo curioso es que en español ibérico se puede decir "el suelo de mi piso", lo que supongo que para al hispanoamericano mediano le resultaría completamente incomprensible (o hasta risible). ¿O no?

"pues lluvia. qué va a ser, sino?"

This should be si no. Yeah, there's a difference between sino and si no. I think you can easily map them to English as "but/but rather/but also" (<- sino) vs. the adverb "otherwise" (<- si no).

I remember learning this years ago but I guess seeing so many natives mess it up made me forget it again. Catalan has the same difference (sinó and si no), so I have no excuse. Thanks.

Thanks for indulging my curiosity.

No worries!

Makes sense, given your background. Do you know the book "Muslim Zion" by Faisal Devji? He argues for a reading of the Pakistani political project as a kind of Muslim Zionism, both Pakistan and Israel being states erected in the name of a religion.

I don't, but it sounds interesting, I'll take a look!

[dEhiN]

Yeah, there's a difference between sino and si no. I think you can easily map them to English as "but/but rather/but also" (<- sino) vs. the adverb "otherwise" (<- si no).

¿Si no significa literalmente "if not"? Creaba (¿creé?) que si no es una mezcla entre sí y no.

[vijayjohn]

Yeah, there's a difference between sino and si no. I think you can easily map them to English as "but/but rather/but also" (<- sino) vs. the adverb "otherwise" (<- si no).

¿Si no significa literalmente "if not"? Creaba (¿creé?) que si no es una mezcla entre sí y no.

Creía (o pensaba)

Sí, "si no" significa 'if not'. Si 'if' y sí 'yes' son palabras diferentes.

[Saim]

¿Si no significa literalmente "if not"?

Si lo traduces palabra por palabra, sí. Y diría que se podría traducir de las dos maneras dependiendo del contexto.

Te recomiendo la página Reverso si quieres ver ejemplos de traducción de castellano a inglés.

http://context.reverso.net/traduccion/e ... gles/si+no

Llamaré a seguridad si no vienes conmigo.
I'll call Security unless you come with me.

Miles morirán si no apagamos esas luces ahora.
Thousands will die if we don't get those lights out now.

Sería patético si no los tuviéramos.
It would be pathetic, if not for the children.

IMO when learning languages you don't need to think about translation so much. At a certain point you just have to start thinking of the language as an independent system and understanding expressions within the context of the language (rather than what they might mean in your native language).

Creaba (¿creé?) que si no es una mezcla entre sí y no.

En todo caso sería si, ya que sí (con acento cerrado) es la partícula afirmativa (yes).

Por cierto:

crear (to create) - creaba
creer (to believe) - creía

(Vaya, veo que ya te lo ha dicho el Vijay. )

[dEhiN]

Te recomiendo la página Reverso si quieres ver ejemplos de traducción de castellano a inglés.

Gracias. Sé del recurso Linguee pero no Reverso.

IMO when learning languages you don't need to think abou[t translation so much. At a certain point you just have to start thinking of the language as an independent system and understanding expressions within the context of the language (rather than what they might mean in your native language).

Yeah I try not to as much anymore; I used to do this a lot when all of my languages were at a pretty low level. I started doing that with French and then kept doing it with other languages. But then I worked on not doing it in French, and now I am able to not do it as much in other languages. But with all that said, I still find that for new words and expressions, in particular when my language level is B1 and lower, it's like a security net for my mind to use the translation. Otherwise I feel like I won't understand what's fully being said.

crear (to create) - creaba
creer (to believe) - creía

Creía (o pensaba)

Thanks for the correction! I forgot that crear and creer are two different verbs and looked up the conjugations for crear. (Also, yay, I'm glad that I guessed correctly on the use of the imperfect. We covered that in my French class over a month ago, and I'm still learning to figure out when to use the simple past (compound past in French) and when to use the imperfect.)

[vijayjohn]

el Vijay

Maybe I'm wrong, but that kind of sounds like a Catalanism to me.

[Saim]

el Vijay

Maybe I'm wrong, but that kind of sounds like a Catalanism to me.

It is and it isn't.

My understanding is that there are varieties of Iberian Spanish that do the same thing as Eastern Catalan, specifically those spoken in Andalusia and rural Castile. In Barcelona this is extremely common among native Spanish speakers (not just Catalan speakers), which may be down to the combined influence of their heritage dialects (mostly Andalusian) and Catalan.

In my case, it's natural for me to talk like that because of crossover from Catalan, but I don't bother correcting it (except if I were two write a more formal text; I could imagine them docking points for it on the DELE for example) because I know native Spanish speakers who do it as well.

[vijayjohn]

I don't bother correcting it (except if I were two write a more formal text

I think you just demonstrated your point.

[Saim]

Oops. I need to be more careful when proofreading.

[Saim]

Since the summer's underway I might just look through my goals for the first half of the year and see how close I came to achieving them.

[flag=]ar-apc[/flag]Levantine Arabic[flag=]ar-apc[/flag]

This is going to be the year when I get to a conversational level of Arabic, I can feel it. I've really been enjoying studying Levantine Arabic over the past couple of weeks. It's gotten a lot easier because I already had quite a lot of grammar and vocabulary internalised after years of uncomitted study, I just couldn't really use any of it. I'm also quite used to the Arabic script now due to spending so many dozens of hours reading Urdu news and working on Urdu flaschards, and knowing Urdu and Punjabi well has given me a stronger cognate discount. Hebrew also makes the grammar a lot easier.

I was initially planning to go through the entire Colloquial Syrian Arabic textbook before going onto media and tutoring, but I don't think that makes much sense. I've realised that combining sources makes stuff more likely to stick.

I think I'll also get a tutor for once or twice a week. I might do some fusha here and there as well, but it's not going to be my main focus. I'd like to finish the Qur'an this year as well (so far I've only finished Surat al-Baqarah), so while I'm doing that I'll keep an eye on the original text as well even though I won't actively study it.

So I've been thinking about my goals in Arabic and I've realised that I haven't really been focusing on the right areas. I don't really need a 'conversational level of Arabic' -- I don't know that many Arabs and I'm not going to any Arabic-speaking country in the near future. Spoken Arabic was more useful in Barcelona when I had access to so many Moroccan speakers, including a close friend. I would ideally like to spend some time in the Middle East after I've finished my master's degree, so it probably makes more sense to work more on passive skills (and vocabulary) and then activate the language when I really need it.

When I'm back at university I'll have access to a library with a number of fairly comprehensive Arabic textbooks. I'll go through some of them with a combination of SRS and bidirectional translation. I'll also try and get 30,000 reps of Glossika MSA book 1 done on the "relaxed" schedule (9 months). For the 3aamiya I'll use some of the resources I mentioned on the first page of this thread, but instead of just listening to them and leaving them once I've understood them once I'll do more shadowing (as well as more repeated shadowing -- rather than moving onto the next set of audio so quickly I'll make sure to do 10 reps of each file, as this level of repetition seems to help sear expressions into my my mind).

[flag=]tr[/flag] Turkish [flag=]tr[/flag]

I've really gotten into Turkish. I was a bit worried it would be the next language to push away Arabic, but so far I've been able to juggle both. I'll try and get my tree gold on Duolingo while learning songs (including lyricstraining.com) and practicing sentences from Glossika.

Turkish is here to stay. I've abandoned Duolingo because I've come to the conclusion that it's, well, not particularly good. I managed to get through the whole A1 Istanbul textbook, although I didn't pay as much attention or do as much SRS in the last chapter. I've also done a fair bit of Glossika and would like to continue with that as well -- I'll try and get 5,000 reps done in September (equivalent to the first half of book 1). I've also gotten into Turkish pop music in a big way, so I'll try to translate some of my favourite songs in the Turkish forum as well.

[flag=]he[/flag]Hebrew [flag=]he[/flag]

I'm going to try and do as much input as possible to consolidate my upper-intermediate level. Thankfully it's not hard to find Hebrew media with accurate subtitles in Hebrew. I've already watched the first season of the Legend of Korra in Hebrew, so the next thing to do with that is. I can know sing along to Hebrew lyrics (before it was pretty hard without Romanisation) fairly easily so that's a good avenue that's opened up.

Lately I noticed I understand Hebrew songs I've been listening to for a while much better. I'm at the point where I can mostly just enjoy the language, although I'll try and do more focused study at least once a week.

[flag=]hu[/flag]Hungarian[flag=]hu[/flag]

My goal for Hungarian is similar to Hebrew, just that my Hebrew is probably a bit better. I will watch dubbed series with subtitles, the subtitles don't correspond perfectly to the dubbed audio but it's good enough and at this level is even helpful in teaching synonyms. I remember I also found the transcript of some old film so I'll watch that as well... can't remember where in my computer I put that though.

I didn't really do much Hungarian from February to June, although at the end of the month I'm going on a one-month intensive Hungarian course in Budapest so I've basically been doing Hungarian for the past couple of weeks. It's going fairly well and I think it's quite reasonable to think I'll reach a high B2 by the end of the course.

Russian, French, German

I've realised that I'll probably never manage to motivate myself enough to sit down and study these languages consistently, because I always think "shouldn't I be studying something weirder?". So whenever I feel like learning a bit of them I'll indulge myself. It's not like they're difficult for me at this stage.

I did a whole lot more Russian than I expected. Russian is a lot of fun when you know both Serbian and Polish and I think it would make sense for me to keep working on it at this level of intensity because 1) I know lots of Russian-speakers and people who study Russian and 2) given it's from the third branch of Slavic it's probably the fastest way to get a better understanding of the whole family at this point (I've been wanderlusting for Slovene, Ukrainian and Bulgarian but I can do more for those later, and I've noticed my comprehension of Ukrainian and Bulgarian has improved tremendously due to the amount of Russian I've learned).

I also did more French than I expected, but since I don't have much of a compelling reason to bring it to an advanced level of spoken production, I won't bother putting a huge amount of effort into it at this point. It's really interesting as a native English speaker but I can't find any reason to prioritise it right now, although if I ever do find a compelling reason to get much better at it I don't think it would take too long for me to break into B2.

I'm not sure if I'll find much time for German either but if I do I'll try to work mostly on reading simple texts (maybe doing Clozemaster, SRS and at least a bit of bidirectional translation) and understanding rap songs I like (there's quite a lot of it, incidentally). I'm subscribed to r/de and there's a lot of interesting discussion in there so it would be good to get better reading skills as I think once I can get the gist of most comments I'll be able to get into a good flow quite easily.

[voron]

So I've been thinking about my goals in Arabic and I've realised that I haven't really been focusing on the right areas. I don't really need a 'conversational level of Arabic' -- I don't know that many Arabs and I'm not going to any Arabic-speaking country in the near future.

Do you mean you will still learn dialects passively, or are you going to concentrate on MSA solely?

Also, if you dug into Syrian and generally Levantine music, can you share any of your findings, especially if they also have lyrics? Chances are I am going to like them too.

Turkish is here to stay. I've abandoned Duolingo because I've come to the conclusion that it's, well, not particularly good.

Is there anything specific to Turkish lessons on Duo that you don't find good, or do you have a general critique against their method?

I've also gotten into Turkish pop music in a big way, so I'll try to translate some of my favourite songs in the Turkish forum as well.

I am looking forward to seeing your posts! If you find translating whole songs too time consuming you can translate just a few lines. I could probably share things I like, too (although my taste in Turkish music is a bit odd - I mostly seem to listen to things which have to do something with the Kurdish subculture).

I did a whole lot more Russian than I expected.

Конечно же, я желаю тебе успеха с русским!

[Saim]

Do you mean you will still learn dialects passively, or are you going to concentrate on MSA solely?

It depends on what you mean by passively. I'll pretty much only study from audio with transcription, but I'll study it 'actively' in the sense that I'll shadow every audio file ten times as well as putting some new words into Anki. I won't be worrying if my spoken production isn't up to scratch, but I'm not going to do low-effort extensive listening as I would be able to do with a Romance or Slavic language.

Also, if you dug into Syrian and generally Levantine music, can you share any of your findings, especially if they also have lyrics? Chances are I am going to like them too.

Of course!

Is there anything specific to Turkish lessons on Duo that you don't find good, or do you have a general critique against their method?

It's more about the method. I think Duolingo is only really useful if you find it fun/use it to make dead time more productive (which is why it's ridiculous the app still has no offline functionality!). In my experience I find going through a normal beginner's textbook less boring and I also go through it faster.

One of the things that's both good and bad about Duolingo is it doesn't allow you to skip any vocabulary; under normal circumstances I would never go out of my way to make sure I really know words like fıl and etek, so in that sense it gives you a solid base in vocabulary but that's also kind of torturous because it's not immediately useful. The sentences are all random and disjointed, so I think it would be better to work with actual texts or if you really want unconnected sentences, Clozemaster (it allows you to study what you want rather than forcing you to learn every single sentence from the very beginning, it lets you ignore sentences you don't need or are already familiar with) and Glossika (much better audio, and you can go through it at your own pace and using your own learning style).

Duolingo may be good for who are totally new to language learning, but I imagine it'd be insanely boring for most people who've already been doing self-study for years. Unless it gets offline functionality, in which case it could be useful to study on the tram or while waiting at the doctor's or whatever (or you could just do Anki or Memrise, or work on some audio instead...). The only reason I managed to get through the Turkish course was because I was bored and kind of down about my whole experience in Islamabad.

I am looking forward to seeing your posts! If you find translating whole songs too time consuming you can translate just a few lines. I could probably share things I like, too (although my taste in Turkish music is a bit odd - I mostly seem to listen to things which have to do something with the Kurdish subculture).

Things in Kurdish or things in Turkish having to do with the Kurds and Kurdistan?

Конечно же, я желаю тебе успеха с русским!

Спасибо.

[voron]

The only reason I managed to get through the Turkish course was because I was bored and kind of down about my whole experience in Islamabad.

Why? What happened in Islamabad?

Things in Kurdish or things in Turkish having to do with the Kurds and Kurdistan?

The latter. For example I like this performer a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2823OOf-eI

In this song he tells a story of a Kurdish family which moved to Istanbul, and mishaps which it went through.

[Saim]

Why? What happened in Islamabad?

Kind of a long story...

-I had a terrible time at Quaid-e-Azm University signing up for an Urdu course. I spent four hours running between offices to try and sign up before they would actually give me any information on the course (at least 40 minutes of it was waiting for one secretary to find my file; it was difficult because they had no filing cabinets and had everything strewn all over their desks in a seemingly random way). Then they put me in the wrong class (for people who had zero knowledge of Urdu, they were doing alif be ) even though I had talked to the Head of Department in Urdu, mentioning that I know how to read and write. Then the teacher of that class (seeing how absurd it was), took me to the class above it, but it was still pretty easy. Then the Head of Department came into class and got on my case (for HER mistake!) for being in the wrong class. And I'm like, yeah it's the wrong class, even this is too basic!

I also felt like I was back in high school (which I hated most of) because the classes were 5 hours a day, the teachers would get cross with students for not doing homework (which they would expect to be completed the next day, which was ridiculous given that the classes themselves already took out most of the day!). I'm glad I didn't keep going.

-My aunt wasn't particularly nice to me. Whenever I walked into a room, she would give me ugly looks or immediately walk out. To be fair to her, I'm pretty sure she's dealing with some sort of personality disorder and anxiety. But feeling unwelcome kind of wore down on me over the months. She would also mock me for spending too much time on the computer whenever any guests came over and I'm thinking: "I'm normally pretty outgoing, but where am I supposed to go here on my own?"

-I also felt kind of imprisoned because I can't drive and there wasn't really any public transport or much of interest that was in walking distance, besides a restaurant that I would occassionally escape to and have mediocre pizza. I kind of relied on my grandma's driver to get around, which it took me a while to get particularly comfortable about.

-The house also had terrible insulation and heating so I was freezing my arse off for most of winter, I remember even two metres away from the gas heater I could actually see my own breath.

-A couple of people got on my case for being a vegetarian, saying that because hazrat Ibrahim killed a goat Muslims can't be vegetarians (most people didn't care, to their credit). Other times people would ask me whether I'm Muslim, whether my dad is Muslim, whether my mum is Muslim, "but if your mum isn't Muslim you must be Muslim because your dad is Muslim right?", whether I do namaaz, whether my parents do namaaz, "why don't you do namaaz?", "I'll teach you namaaz!".

-I did an internship where I felt kind of like the odd one out at the office and was never really sure how long I was supposed to stay there, and there were points where I wasn't really even being given work, and others where I was suddenly given a lot of work that overwhelmed me. There were moments where my boss would randomly mention to everyone that I was learning Punjabi and then it would suddenly become a group conversation about how funny Punjabi is, and then people asking me if I know Punjabi swearwords and such -- I felt really singled out and wasn't really sure what to say a lot of the time. It was good to get out of the house but it was frustrating feeling so shy and asocial in an office full of people I didn't feel that comfortable talking to.

Despite all this, I'm glad I went there. I got pretty good at Urdu and made my daadi ji happy. I also know a lot more about Islam and Pakistani politics -- I don't feel like a coconut anymore. I also started going to the gym (I can't imagine how many kilos I would've gained otherwise...), which I've kept doing since then.

Also a lot of these points are things I would've been fine (like all the religious stuff) with on their own but all of it together kind of took its toll on my general happiness and wellbeing.

The latter. For example I like this performer a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2823OOf-eI

In this song he tells a story of a Kurdish family which moved to Istanbul, and mishaps which it went through.

That looks really interesting! One day I'll understand it, inşallah.

[voron]

Kind of a long story...

Thanks for the story! It was really interesting to read. I could match it with my own experience in Turkey, which was similar in some points. In particular being surrounded with people who spoke only Turkish, and not being able to follow their conversations, which drove me mad at times, especially when we were sitting at the same dining table, so I felt terribly singled out which affected my morale.

I deliberately made this transfer to a Turkish only speaking company, and my Turkish was intermediate at the time I arrived, so I could understand clear input without slang, but I got totally lost when I tried to follow casual conversations. I remember how I was bewildered that even basic words like "thank you" were nothing like I learnt from a book (they would casually say "eyvallah" for thank you).

Eventually this helped me improve a lot. And yet another level of it was when I found myself in Kurdish speaking environments, so I had to experience the same frustration anew. I learnt to understand Kurdish too after a few months. It was a special triumph inside me then I was invited to a Kurdish family with a girl who married to a Turkish guy, so when we got together at the dining table he was completely blank to what they were talking about, despite being a local, while I could take part in the conversation.

[vijayjohn]

Welcome to India, Saim Bhai!

(insert angry Pakistani political meme here about how Pakistan is NOT INDIA)

[Saim]

I deliberately made this transfer to a Turkish only speaking company, and my Turkish was intermediate at the time I arrived, so I could understand clear input without slang, but I got totally lost when I tried to follow casual conversations. I remember how I was bewildered that even basic words like "thank you" were nothing like I learnt from a book (they would casually say "eyvallah" for thank you).

Yeah, stuff like that is hard to avoid when you move to the target country. Not sure how much study can actually prepare you for actually being there.

I learnt to understand Kurdish too after a few months. It was a special triumph inside me then I was invited to a Kurdish family with a girl who married to a Turkish guy, so when we got together at the dining table he was completely blank to what they were talking about, despite being a local, while I could take part in the conversation.

That must have been an awesome feeling.

(insert angry Pakistani political meme here about how Pakistan is NOT INDIA)

INDIA OUT OF KASHMIR!! AZAD KASHMIR ZINDABAD!

...Balochi-what?

[vijayjohn]

(insert angry Pakistani political meme here about how Pakistan is NOT INDIA)

INDIA OUT OF KASHMIR!! AZAD KASHMIR ZINDABAD!

...Balochi-what?

That's like how Indians make such a big deal about Manipur (and northeast India in general) and yes, especially Kashmir (and frigging Aksai Chin!!), but if Sikhs want a free Khalistan, then oh noes they can't be independent because they're so small! (My mom actually said something like this to me once).