TAC 2017-2018 Iván

[Iván]

Finally, I decided to open my own TAC after binge-reading all the current ones. My goal for this year (actually this month) and for next year is to be more tenacious when it comes to learning new languages and maintaining the ones I already speak.



I study Translation and Interpreting as some of you might already know and my working languages are English and German. However, despite having many lessons taught in German, I still feel like my level is very low, well, actually, I sometimes think I have rather a passive knowledge - I can understand spoken German pretty well (Hochdeutsch, I mean), but when it comes to speaking, I don't trust my level at all.



Finnish is probably my favorite foreign language. I've watched many films and series in Finnish and even started reading a book, which was not originally written in Finnish, but it's translated by an excellent Finnish translator. However, lately, I haven't used it very often and I would like to use it more often and improve my level, especially my vocabulary. I should probably use Anki for that.



In September I enrolled in a Russian language course and it's been pretty great so far. We've already learned personal pronouns, possessive pronouns and a lot of basic vocabulary. I really want to take it slow with Russian because I don't want to stress and get unmotivated.

I'm also thinking about starting learning another language, but still, have no clue which one to choose. Swedish would be a good one. I even considered learning a Romance one, since my French is nearly rusty and Italian has always sounded interesting to me, however, the fact that it wouldn't be such a challenge - or at least this is what I think- discourages me.

[vijayjohn]

It can be a challenge to not mix them up, though! Plus French is...pretty different for a Romance language in some ways.

And if you don't think learning French is a challenge, then I might be able to interest you in TY Business French...because I promise you, if you buy that, it will definitely be a challenge no matter how well you speak French!

[Iván]

It can be a challenge to not mix them up, though! Plus French is...pretty different for a Romance language in some ways.

And if you don't think learning French is a challenge, then I might be able to interest you in TY Business French...because I promise you, if you buy that, it will definitely be a challenge no matter how well you speak French!

Yeah, I guess that I just enjoy learning languages that aren't too similar to my native ones. However, I still remember how much I used to like French and now when I think about learning it again I don't feel the urge to do so.

[OldBoring]

Isn't French quite similar to Catalan?

[Iván]

Some people say Catalan is between French and Spanish. However. according to this chart, Catalan is closer to Italian than to it is to French. It's true that speaking Catalan helped me a lot when I started learning French, especially when it comes to the use of "en" and "y" as we also use them in Catalan "en" and "hi". I also realised that we share a lot of similar vocabulary, but this is not very relevant to the connection between both languages, since it's one of the features of being part of the Romance languages.

[Saim]

French and Catalan are in theory meant to be genetically closer but I think French, by virtue of being in a peripheral part of the Romance continuum and hence more heavily influenced by Germanic languages, has kind of moved in a direction that the rest of the continuum hasn't. That's why Catalan and Italian have a higher degree of mutual intelligibility even though Catalan and French are both "Western Romance". In fact, I'd say Occitan and Italian are probably more mutually intelligible than Occitan and French, although the Frenchified accent of most modern Occitan makes it a bit more difficult. People say Romanian is the odd one out but I feel like French is almost just as much of a black sheep...

[vijayjohn]

I didn't realize French was that heavily influenced by Germanic. I thought it was mostly different from all its relatives because it went through so many more goddamn sound changes than all the rest of them, possibly combined.

[IpseDixit]

Some people say Catalan is between French and Spanish. However. according to this chart, Catalan is closer to Italian than to it is to French.

If I understand it correctly, that chart only takes lexical similarity into consideration, which is a very narrow and incomplete way to look at how closely languages are related. But in any case, I knew other data (you can see how French is closer to Italian in this chart):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_s ... _languages

I wonder how accurate the lexical similarity index is anyway. I don't know the exact method to work it out, but it seems to me that the measurement might be very sensitive to what kind of wordlist is used. For example Wikipedia says:

<<Ethnologue's method of calculation consists in comparing a standardized set of wordlists and counting those forms that show similarity in both form and meaning. Using such a method, English was evaluated to have a lexical similarity of 60% with German and 27% with French.>>

Which strikes me as odd when you think that almost 60% of English lexycon comes from either French or Latin and makes me wonder if the wordlist they used consisted of mainly core, basic words (which tend to be of Germanic origin in English).

[vijayjohn]

I wonder how accurate the lexical similarity index is anyway.

Not very. There are lots of ways that words can come to look very similar, and it's terrible for telling when the languages separated from their last common ancestor. This is why linguists tend to avoid it these days.

[Iván]

Ich weiß, dass ich dieser Betreff ofter aktualisieren sollte...Ich habe die Absicht, mein Deutsch zu üben, deswegen ich ein paar Bücher aus der Bücherei ausgeliehen habe. Sie sind eine deutsche Grammatik auf Spanisch und ein großes Übungsbuch.

Kuten jotkut teistä jo tietävät, minä opiskelen kääntäjäsi/tulkiksi ja tällä hetkellä minulla on yksi oppiaine yliopistossa, joka on englanti-espanja simultaanitulkkaus ja tykkään siitä, miten minun opettaja opettaa, koska hän aina yrittää kertoa meille monista hänen omansa kokemuksista tulkkina. Hän on tosi mukava ja sen vuoksi ajattelin, että voisin puhua hänen kanssa tulkkaamisesta, joten saisin tietää enemmän siitä. Eilen puhuin hänen kanssa ja oli tosi mukavaa ja auttavaa, koska olen tosi kiinnostunut tästä ammatista ja hän suositteli minulle sopivia sivuja, joista saan harjoitella minun tulkkauksen taitavuuden.

Viime aikoina olen katsonut suomalaisia leffoja ja yritän lukea päivittäin uutisia suomeksi.

(Oman puhekieli) Sanoinkin sille osaavani suomen kieltä ja se kyseli multa niin paljon kysymyksii suomen kielest ja suositteli myös mulle, ettei mun pitäis koskaa unohda sitä koska espanjalaiset tulkit ei valitettavasti oo kiinnostunut siitä ja sen vuoksi voisin saada enemmän työtä.

[Salajane]

Kuten jotkut teistä jo tietävät, minä opiskelen kääntäjäsi/tulkiksi ja tällä hetkellä minulla on yksi oppiaine yliopistossa, joka on englanti-espanja simultaanitulkkaus ja tykkään siitä, miten minun opettaja opettaa, koska hän aina yrittää kertoa meille monista hänen omansa kokemuksista tulkkina.

Mahtava! Minä myös opiskelen kääntäjäksi/tulkiksi (arvelen, että olen sinulle sitä jo sanonut). Mutta minulla ei ole ollut vielä simultaanitulkkauta, eikä minä tiedan, kuinka se on. Mielestani sen täytyy olla hyvin vaikea. Kuinka se on sinulle? Onko vaikea tai ei? Teetko sitä hyvin?

Viime aikoina olen katsonut suomalaisia leffoja ja yritän lukea päivittäin uutisia suomeksi.

Sinun suomen kielen taso on kyllä paljon korkeampi kuin minun oman. Minä en saa vielä uutisia lukea tai elokuvia katsoa.
(Onko "leffa" sama kuin "elokuva"? Onko se puhekielessä?)

[Iván]

Mahtava! Minä myös opiskelen kääntäjäksi/tulkiksi (arvelen, että olen sinulle sitä jo sanonut). Mutta minulla ei ole ollut vielä simultaanitulkkauta, eikä minä tiedan, kuinka se on. Mielestani sen täytyy olla hyvin vaikea. Kuinka se on sinulle? Onko vaikea tai ei? Teetko sitä hyvin?

Aluksi olihan kyllä vaikea. Kuten sanoin, minun opettaja on tosi hieno ja hän aina yrittää kertoa meille, mitä meidän pitäisi parantaa silloin kuin lähetetään hänelle meidän tulkkaukset ja minusta on tosi positiivista, että opettaja voi seurata opiskelijoiden tulkkauksia. Jos minä teen simultaanitulkkauta hyvin, se riippuu ihan vaan jokaisesta puheista. Toisin sanoen, jos en ole todella hermostunut minun virheistä ja puheen aihe ei ole ankara minulle, voin kyllä tehdä sen hyvin.

Mitä kieliä opiskelet yliopistossa? Minä teen Englanti/Saksa - Espanja/Katalaani

Sinun suomen kielen taso on kyllä paljon korkeampi kuin minun oman. Minä en saa vielä uutisia lukea tai elokuvia katsoa.
(Onko "leffa" sama kuin "elokuva"? Onko se puhekielessä?)

Kiitos! Kauanko olet opiskellut suomen kieltä? Itse aloitin suomen kielen opiskelemisen melkein 5 vuotta sitten. Voinhan ymmärtää jos suomalaiset puhuvat minulle sekä puhekieleksi että kirjakieleksi, mutta olisipa jo minun taso vähän parempi!

Kyllä, "leffa" on "elokuva" puhekielessä.