TAC 2017-2018 dEhiN

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-02, 19:50

vijayjohn wrote:I would've said "don't you just hate...?" but given what kevin told me about hassen in German versus hate in English, maybe that's just because we Americans tend to overuse the word hate. :D

I don't know what kevin told you, but we Canadians tend to overuse the word as well. (We probably got it from southern influence! :evil: :D ). I actually never noticed Car wrote "don't you just dislike..." because I read it as "don't you just hate...".
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-12-02, 20:18

dEhiN wrote:We probably got it from southern influence! :evil: :D

Or maybe the Brits do it, too.

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby Car » 2017-12-02, 21:13

I know "to hate" isn't as strong as "hassen", but even in English, it felt too strong to me at the time. Although reading it again, "hate" sounds more natural indeed.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-02, 21:49

Hate can be strong; a lot just depends, I think, on context. And if you're speaking, on intonation. But for me a phrase like "don't you just hate..." is a set one that colloquially doesn't really convey strong hatred, but more annoyance or being bothered and possibly also some dislike due to that annoyance. I also feel like the expletive version "don't you fucking (just) hate..." is essentially the same. The expletive can add a bit more oomph to hate, but that isn't always the case. The odd thing is that the phrase "doesn't it really bother you ..." or "it really bothers me ..." many times conveys stronger dislike than the ones with hate!
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-12-03, 3:18

I would say "don't you just fucking hate...?" (rather than "fucking just"). Maybe "hate" is even deliberately hyperbolic in this expression; compare "don't you just love...?" which is often used as a sarcastic question, too.

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-03, 9:25

vijayjohn wrote:I would say "don't you just fucking hate...?" (rather than "fucking just").

Yeah I could see that; I guess if I were to (over)analyze it, "just fucking" sounds more "proper English", while "fucking just" sounds more informal, spoken English. But I've heard both. (Heck, half the time you can put an expletive intensifier almost anywhere in the sentence!)

vijayjohn wrote:Maybe "hate" is even deliberately hyperbolic in this expression; compare "don't you just love...?" which is often used as a sarcastic question, too.

Oh that would make sense!
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-07, 7:03

Update time:

Anki
  • Add vocabulary from Language Learning notebook #7 to Anki

I went through and added about 13 2/3 pages worth of vocab for French, Tamil, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish. I added a few words in Albanian, but I still have about 3 pages of Albanian vocab and a few possible new Korean words to add. I didn't finish adding in Albanian because when I got to them, I started looking them up on Wikipedia and realized that I should really add the 4 nominative forms of each noun: indefinite singular, definite singular, indefinite plural, and definite plural. I do this with Swedish and the few Romanian words I still review. The problem is really that the 3 pages of Albanian words I added from the first few pages of the Peace Corps Albanian course, and of course they don't start off by introducing new vocab complete with all its declined forms.

I decided to stop my NAILC, which means I'm taking Mohawk off my list. The 24 hours or so I've been considering stopping Tamil permanently (well...for now...I don't know what the future holds). I'm not sure whether I will do it, though I'm leaning in that direction. If I do it, then I can see 3 possibilities for how I go about it:

1) I stop actively learning Tamil, I stop being involved with the Facebook and Whatsapp Tamil groups I'm part of, I permanently stop taking any and all Tamil lessons, and I delete all the Tamil vocab I have in Anki.

2) I do the same as 1 except instead of deleting the Anki vocab, I suspend them just in case I ever go back to Tamil. (This is what I've done with the few cards I have for Hawaiian, Indonesian, German, Frisian, Turkish, Tagalog, Italian, Latin, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean (because I still haven't started going through my Korean cards)).

3) I do a modified version of 2, which is that I stop actively learning Tamil and stop taking any Tamil lessons, but instead of exiting any social media groups I'm part of, I just ignore them for the time being.
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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 2017 dEhiN

Postby księżycowy » 2017-12-07, 10:59

I'm sad to see you drop out of the NAILC, but I certainly understand. I'll leave your thread intact in case you change your mind along the way. It runs until the end of February after all :)

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-07, 11:50

księżycowy wrote:I'm sad to see you drop out of the NAILC, but I certainly understand. I'll leave your thread intact in case you change your mind along the way. It runs until the end of February after all :)

Oh, right I forgot it runs for that long! To be honest, I can't see myself picking it back up this month, but I might perhaps be able to do some studying in January. Hopefully once the Christmas season is done, I'll be less depressed.
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-07, 11:54

dEhiN wrote:2) I do the same as 1 except instead of deleting the Anki vocab, I suspend them just in case I ever go back to Tamil. (This is what I've done with the few cards I have for Hawaiian, Indonesian, German, Frisian, Turkish, Tagalog, Italian, Latin, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean (because I still haven't started going through my Korean cards)).

So I decided to go with option number 2.

I haven't yet thought of any goals for this week (or what's left of it), but I do want to try to achieve some. Offhand I'm thinking one for Irish, one for Korean, and one for Albanian. The Albanian one will most likely be to finish adding the vocab from my notebook to Anki, which will include looking up the 4 nominative forms for each noun as well as the infinitive and present tense indicative forms for each verb. But I'm not sure yet what to do for Irish and Korean; I need to take a look at the books I started and see what's doable.
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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 2017 dEhiN

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-12-07, 23:22

What's making you stop Tamil (as opposed to another language, if you don't mind me asking)?

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-08, 15:46

vijayjohn wrote:What's making you stop Tamil (as opposed to another language, if you don't mind me asking)?

I can't seem to approach learning Tamil in only a fun, enjoyable way like I do with my other languages. Because it's the language of my ethnic background, I've always felt a sense of duty: essentially, that "I'm good at learning languages, and I like learning languages, but I don't know my own heritage language, so I should learn it; how can I learn other languages and not care about or be interested in my own heritage language?" I also have been genuinely interested in learning Tamil, both as a language and as my heritage language. So I guess it's been a mixed bag of motivation. But lately, I've found this sense of duty, and the expectations it's created, to be too much.

For example, even though I stopped the Tamil lessons with that private teacher, a few weeks ago I joined a Tamil group on Whatsapp that consists of a few teachers from India who hold free weekend classes. In that group there are a few non South Asians who are interested in Tamil either because they like languages, or because they have a significant other who is Tamil. Joining the group and going through the classes have been helpful. But every time I see one of the other learners, especially the non South Asian ones, know a word I don't, those expectations kick in and I go "wth, I should know this word; David, you need to study hard/more and do better". The same has been the case with the Tamil group on Facebook, but I seem to be able to ignore FB group posts a bit more than Whatsapp.

So, all this expectation and sense of duty is making it not fun to learn Tamil. And I can't seem to separate out my motivations and focus only on the joy I used to get. Which is why for now I'm going to stop. Perhaps one day I'll be able to learn Tamil without that sense of duty.
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-12-08, 16:42

I guess the way that I see it, being a heritage speaker of a certain very closely related language myself ( :) ), is that these things take time. I'm familiar with the frustration of not being able to learn it fast enough, and I also remember that the path I ended up taking in order to learn Malayalam wasn't really the one I was planning on following to begin with. For a long time, I was trying to get through a first-grade textbook (like, one of those textbooks that kids in Kerala would use in their first year after kindergarten), looking up every single word in that book that I didn't know and keeping a log of it. I still have that log, but the font doesn't work anymore! :roll:

Anyway, what I did instead was to just read stuff, basically. I started out reading cartoons (specifically a series called Bobanum Moliyum, which is apparently the most widely read cartoon series in India, presumably due in part to Kerala's unusually high literacy rate by Indian standards), moved on to reading a children's book (translated ultimately from Russian but probably via English), read some short stories (from a book called Payyan Kathakal by Malayalee author/comedian VKN), and finally, when my dad thought I was ready, started reading my first novel (I read a little bit of it out loud to him every morning before going off to (grad :P) school).

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-08, 17:36

vijayjohn wrote:I guess the way that I see it, being a heritage speaker of a certain very closely related language myself ( :) ), is that these things take time. I'm familiar with the frustration of not being able to learn it fast enough, and I also remember that the path I ended up taking in order to learn Malayalam wasn't really the one I was planning on following to begin with. For a long time, I was trying to get through a first-grade textbook (like, one of those textbooks that kids in Kerala would use in their first year after kindergarten), looking up every single word in that book that I didn't know and keeping a log of it. I still have that log, but the font doesn't work anymore! :roll:

Anyway, what I did instead was to just read stuff, basically. I started out reading cartoons (specifically a series called Bobanum Moliyum, which is apparently the most widely read cartoon series in India, presumably due in part to Kerala's unusually high literacy rate by Indian standards), moved on to reading a children's book (translated ultimately from Russian but probably via English), read some short stories (from a book called Payyan Kathakal by Malayalee author/comedian VKN), and finally, when my dad thought I was ready, started reading my first novel (I read a little bit of it out loud to him every morning before going off to (grad :P) school).

During all that time, did you try speaking as well, or only reading and the speaking came later when you started reading your first novel aloud? Perhaps if I go back to Tamil, once thing I could do is take a cue from you and go at it on my own, at my own pace. That will hopefully cut down on the expectations and comparison, or at least the frustration. And I do have my parents. In fact, my mom and I have tried to do a bit of reading in the past, but I would always pick books that were too challenging and would never stick to it.
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-12-08, 17:55

dEhiN wrote:During all that time, did you try speaking as well, or only reading and the speaking came later when you started reading your first novel aloud?

Only reading. I didn't really start making a concentrated effort to speak it with my parents without using English until much later. (I'm positive I must have talked about doing this somewhere on UniLang before, but I forget where. EDIT: Okay, maybe I didn't, but I think I started doing this around late 2014 or early 2015? Not sure).

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-09, 1:38

vijayjohn wrote:Only reading. I didn't really start making a concentrated effort to speak it with my parents without using English until much later. (I'm positive I must have talked about doing this somewhere on UniLang before, but I forget where. EDIT: Okay, maybe I didn't, but I think I started doing this around late 2014 or early 2015? Not sure).

Huh! That makes sense, and probably helped you solidify vocabulary and grammar and such first. What do you mean by "speak it with my parents without using English until much later"? Do you mean when you started speaking in Malayalam, you would code-switch a lot, perhaps only adding in the occasional Malayalam word at first and slowly increasing it? Or do you mean you spoke to your parents in English at first, while you read in Malayalam, and then in late 2014 or early 2015 you started speaking to your parents in Malayalam? (I guess for me your sentence is a bit ambiguous.)
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-12-09, 1:45

Nah, I was pretty unclear there. The thing is, while I was growing up, I was learning Malayalam, just very slowly, so I tried to talk to them in Malayalam sometimes (usually when I remembered to try and wasn't afraid of being made fun of or misinterpreted) but would have to switch to English pretty soon. Then eventually, I started reading novels in Malayalam, and after that, I started making a concentrated effort to speak to them only in Malayalam. Now I actually don't always manage to speak to them only in Malayalam because I've kind of adopted their mindset that it's rude to speak a language around people who don't understand it, and my sister-in-law comes over almost once a week. :P

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-09, 1:47

Since there's only 2 days left into the end of this week (because my goals are from Monday to Sunday), I'm going to just try and add all the Albanian vocab I have to Anki.

Goals for 09/12/17 - 10/12/17:

Anki
  • Add Albanian vocabulary from Language Learning notebook #7 to Anki

As I mentioned before, my plan is to look up all the nominative declensions for the nouns, and the present tense indicative conjugations for the verbs.

On a separate note, for anyone who has learnt some Romanian (I'm looking at you Vijay!), how did o become the feminine singular article? Wiktionary says it came from Latin ūna but that seems to me like quite a stretch! French une, Spanish una, and Portuguese uma (I don't know what Italian is) all make more sense because we're only talking about one letter/phone change: a > e for French, and n > m for Portuguese. But for Romanian, it's like u > o and n,a > ∅.
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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-12-09, 1:52

Not really, deleting stuff (including entire syllables or more) is really common. I'm guessing the /u/ changed to [o] before /a/ and then the second syllable was dropped.

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Re: TAC 2017 dEhiN

Postby dEhiN » 2017-12-09, 2:49

vijayjohn wrote:Not really, deleting stuff (including entire syllables or more) is really common. I'm guessing the /u/ changed to [o] before /a/ and then the second syllable was dropped.

So maybe it went something like /una/ > /ona/ > /o/ or /una/ > /ona/ > /on/ > /o/ or even possibly /una/ > /ona/ > /on/ > /õ/ > /o/ (if Romanian ever had nasal vowels at some point)?
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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