dEhiN's Language Log

[dEhiN]

Hi all, I'm going to try and stick to a TAC for the rest of this year. Or, at least, use a TAC to chronicle my current language studies.

I recently started taking once-a-week Tamil lessons. My teacher is actually not really a Tamil teacher; I've known her for a few years now and I think I first met her through a Facebook Tamil learning group. She lives in India and runs a Tamil tutoring company with teachers under her. In the past, I've helped her with some English stuff. In April I started wanting to learn Tamil again and so I talked to her. At first, I was going to get her to refer me to one of her teachers, but since I know her, I asked if she'd teach me. Since she's not really a teacher, she's learning pedagogical principles and grammatical terms along the way, and I get to help her a little bit since I have some experience with those things (plus my learning style tends to be more grammar-based over example-based).

Anyway, I've had 2 lessons with her. Because we know each other, she's not charging me, although she did ask if I could help her with her English reading skills! Thankfully the Internet exists because last week I forgot to find something for her to read, so I quickly googled English texts for C1 and found something.

We're using her company's site, which is the curriculum that her teachers use: https://ilearntamil.com/. We went through the first lesson: https://ilearntamil.com/spoken-tamil-le ... n-lesson1/. We started the very first lesson with some reading from a Tamil children's story found here: https://www.siruvarmalar.com/kids-stories-list. Unfortunately, I don't remember which story it was, and so I don't remember the vocabulary from it though I do remember a little bit about what we read!

[księżycowy]

Viel Glück!

[dEhiN]

Viel Glück!

Danke!

(By the way, how is that pronounced - /fil glʏkː/?)

[vijayjohn]

[fiːl glʏk̚]

[księżycowy]

Let me know if you come across a good Tamil dictionary in your studies, that's one of the last things I'm still looking for myself.

[dEhiN]

[fiːl glʏk̚]

நன்றி.

Let me know if you come across a good Tamil dictionary in your studies, that's one of the last things I'm still looking for myself.

Online, offline, or both?

Update:

I didn't have my lesson last night. I postponed it to this morning because I wanted to hang out with a friend, but then this morning my teacher asked to postpone it to another day. Hopefully we have it; I don't mind skipping this week and continuing next week, but all too often when I skip a recurring personal task or event early on, I get derailed and end up stopping for good.

I've also been wondering whether I should start doing more Tamil studying during the week. Specifically, whether I should start using something like Anki again to help me learn and remember vocab. I saved all my cards from the when I was using Anki before, and I apparently have 607 Tamil cards comprising a mix of vocab and grammar! But I know that last time, the daily repetition of Anki became a chore that didn't really reap any rewards. One possibility is to start a new (second) Tamil deck and add only new vocab/grammar that I come across in my lessons. But I think for now, I'm going to stick with just whatever I remember from the once a week lessons.

[księżycowy]

Online, offline, or both?

In book form, preferably.

[vijayjohn]

What qualifies as "good"? Is there some reason why you're having trouble finding one?

I have this (back in Austin, of course).

[księżycowy]

Gut ist "gut". Verstehen Sie?

Außerdam, von Tamilisch bis Englisch. I habe ein Englisch-Tamilisch Wörterbuch. (Also, es ist ein Englisch-Tamilisch-Englisch Wörterbuch, aber es ist nicht umfassend. Ich möchte ein umfassendes Tamilisch-Englisch Wörterbuch finden.)

[dEhiN]

Gut ist "gut". Verstehen Sie?

Außerdam, von Tamilisch bis Englisch. I habe ein Englisch-Tamilisch Wörterbuch. (Also, es ist ein Englisch-Tamilisch-Englisch Wörterbuch, aber es ist nicht umfassend. Ich möchte ein umfassendes Tamilisch-Englisch Wörterbuch finden.)

My translation:
Good is "good", do you understand?

Besides that, from Tamil to English. I have an English-Tamil dictionary. (Also, it's an English-Tamil-English dictionary, but it's not full. I would like to find a full Tamil-English dictionary.)

I had to look up außerdam, möchte and umfassendes, so my translation uses the words Google Translate gave me for each individual word.

I was particularly proud that I figured out Wörterbuch from a combination of remembering the German word for book, the (or one of the?) German way(s) to form plurals, and the similarity between Wört and word.

[vijayjohn]

Gut ist "gut". Verstehen Sie?

Why "Sie"?

Außerdam, von Tamilisch bis Englisch.

Außerdem, which sounds kind of weird in context. I'm not quite sure what you were trying to say. "Anyway"?

I guess I'd say auf jeden Fall and I think also nach rather than bis. It sounds more natural after von Tamilisch nach Englisch.

Ich habe ein Englisch-Tamilisch Wörterbuch. (Also, es ist ein Englisch-Tamilisch-Englisch Wörterbuch, aber es ist nicht umfassend. Ich möchte ein umfassendes Tamilisch-Englisch Wörterbuch finden.)

[dEhiN]

Update time:

So, we didn't have last night's lesson either! My teacher forgot and so we rescheduled to do it this morning (10 am for me, 7:30 pm for her), but then she messaged me this morning saying she's tired. Truth be told, I can't be upset at her, for I've cancelled things last minute with her as well, in the past. She asked if we could do the lesson sometime during the week, but it's hard.

Back in August of last year, I found a part-time job working for an after-school type franchise called Code Ninjas. Basically, we teach coding to kids. The franchise in the city where I live didn't officially open until the end of Feb. Then, when COVID happened and everything shut down, we developed an online program to keep teaching the kids. Now, we're doing a mix of online and in-person summer camps. All this is to say, I now work during the week, running a camp in the morning and one in the afternoon.

So, finding a time to do the lesson when there's a 9.5 hour difference between EDT and IST is hard. If need be, I don't mind skipping this week again, although my fear with that is making sure we actually get started with the lessons again.

[dEhiN]

In other language learning news, on kind of a whim I started the French Duolingo lessons. I was reading some newsletter Duolingo had sent me about their anniversary and promoting their new Finnish course (which I've heard some bad things about from a Finnish native on a Facebook polyglot group). I think I accidentally clicked on a link in the email which took me to the Duolingo app on my phone.

I decided to check out the French tree, and went through the review quiz. I got a couple wrong, but only because I was going through it quickly. For example, one sentence was something like, "un garçon et un chat" and I picked "a man and a boy", or something like that. I suppose this does say that my French skills could stand improvement, since when not actively thinking about it, I misunderstood the sentence. I then took the test-out quiz for the first skill - which is Basic 1 - and I noticed that I had to actively pay attention, even though the words were extremely basic: homme, femme, garçon, chat, mange, etc..

I think it's because I don't use French all that often, and when I do, I don't tend to use those words. Or, put another way, my limited French usage consists of conversing with my girlfriend and so, I haven't needed to use some basic words because the topics of conversation didn't warrant it.

[księżycowy]

Why "Sie"?

Because I refuse to use "du" with you? (Or any other colloquialisms, for that matter. This is strictly a business arrangement.)

I'm not quite sure what you were trying to say. "Anyway"?

"Also."

I think also nach rather than bis. It sounds more natural after von Tamilisch nach Englisch.

Makes sense.

[dEhiN]

I think also nach rather than bis. It sounds more natural after von Tamilisch nach Englisch.

Makes sense.

Why does it make sense?

[Car]

I think also nach rather than bis. It sounds more natural after von Tamilisch nach Englisch.

Makes sense.

Why does it make sense?

Because "bis" is just wrong. "Bis" would imply something like "until" or so here.

[księżycowy]

Right, and nach is "to".

[dEhiN]

Danke. I thought bis meant to, but maybe it does only in some contexts?

[Car]

Yes. I mean just look at all the possible translations here.

[dEhiN]

Yes. I mean just look at all the possible translations here.

I'm curious: even though there are several possible translations into English, for a German speaker, does bis convey one sense or idea mentally? Or is it similar to a word like get for English speakers, where it's not just used in varied contexts but each use conveys a different sense mentally?

I was thinking about this the other day with French: the difference between using a foreign word when speaking another language because I know that's the translation of the English word I'd use in that context, versus using it because I implicitly know that word conveys the correct mental sense I'd like to express. (I'm sure there's a much more elegant linguistic way of saying that, but I can't think of the linguistic term for mental sense!)