TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu)

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, others)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-02, 4:50

vijayjohn wrote:Could I ask you for some help with a certain Tajik song, though? :doggy:

Forgot to post here, but I've responded in the Persian forum, though I don't think I was of much help.

Notes from day 1 of Italian: I really wish Duolingo were a better resource, since I'm a phone addict and it's one more thing I can do on my phone aside from Anki cards. I did a bunch of it today but I think it's not a great use of my time. I also spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to install Learning With Texts, which I know voron likes. I was eventually able to get it running, but the default settings for Italian weren't working - it wouldn't translate any of the words from my text. Rather than continue to mess with it, I gave up and decided to stick to analog materials. (That being said, if anyone knows of any good websites or apps that focus on teaching Italian grammar I'd welcome suggestions. It's the verb tenses, prepositions, and other grammatical bits that I need to quickly master, as much of the vocabulary otherwise is easy enough to recognize).
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, others)

Postby Car » 2019-01-02, 10:48

If you like to general idea of LWT, you might want to take a look at LingQ. It's quite buggy, but it offers quite a lot of material (including for Italian) and lets you import more and more material nowadays. They've increased the price for new subscribers, but it seems this offer for an annual subscription still works: https://www.lingq.com/en/accounts/subsc ... /checkout/

But they might still have regular reductions for non-subscribers of people wanting to downgrade, I'm currently on a 3 months for $4.99 offer I got when I wanted to downgrade.

Not exactly grammar focused on grammar, though.

Maybe those sites are useful to you:
https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/italian/italian.html
http://www.locuta.com/eclassroom_gramm.html
http://parliamoitaliano.altervista.org/
https://www.lagrammaticaitaliana.it/
https://www.italian-online.de/grammar/t ... online.htm
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, others)

Postby voron » 2019-01-02, 11:12

eskandar wrote:I also spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to install Learning With Texts, which I know voron likes.

which voron likes because other apps couldn't be customized enough to let me translate from Kurdish. :P It was good for translating songs, but for books I prefer paper or an e-reader.

Among the applications with a similar functionality, I recently tried https://readlang.com/ which I know Saim likes, and it seems functional and easy to use, and besides it works on a mobile phone too. I am not going to use it myself though, I don't want more strain on my eyes. Even for the Arabic reader we're doing together, I printed it and read it from paper, and use the mobile phone only to translate new words.

since I'm a phone addict

Unfortunately I am, too. :doggy: I installed an app to keep track of the phone time recently, and it shows me that I spend 3 hours on my phone daily on average; and I don't do anything productive on the phone. I am trying to reduce it to at least 2 hours.

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, others)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-01-02, 13:34

I barely ever even turn my phone on, but that's because I have a desktop computer at home and don't usually go anywhere else besides work...
eskandar wrote:Forgot to post here, but I've responded in the Persian forum

Yeah, I saw. I'll respond there, too, once I've done my job in some of the other language groups. :P
though I don't think I was of much help.

Maybe not with this one particular song, but you've been a huge help with all the others! Thanks! :)

If you're not too comfortable with Tajiki, how about Hazaragi? :whistle:
if anyone knows of any good websites or apps that focus on teaching Italian grammar I'd welcome suggestions.

Not sure how useful these would be for you but:

https://www.cyberitalian.com/en/html/grammar.html
http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/grammar/

The Wikipedia article on Italian grammar looks pretty good at first glance, too.

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-04, 5:18

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Will take a look at these Italian grammar sites and see if I can find what I need. I remember I tried Readlang before for Arabic and it wasn't very good, but maybe it's better for Italian - worth a try.

Today I did the first disc of Michel Thomas's Italian Foundation. I don't know how exactly to assess my progress on Duolingo--18 crowns, level 7, whatever either of those things might mean--but I've completed 19/68 skills, so I'm about a third of the way through.

vijayjohn wrote:If you're not too comfortable with Tajiki, how about Hazaragi? :whistle:

How about Iranian Persian, the dialect I actually know? :lol: But sure, ask anything you want about Hazaragi, I'd be willing to try. I'm just happy there is one person interested in Persian at the moment. It's the language that brought me to Unilang, since there was a really good community of learners here (more than a decade ago), so it's kind of sad how dead the forum is these days.
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-01-04, 6:19

eskandar wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:If you're not too comfortable with Tajiki, how about Hazaragi? :whistle:

How about Iranian Persian, the dialect I actually know? :lol: But sure, ask anything you want about Hazaragi, I'd be willing to try.

Oh, trust me, I have plenty to ask you about Iranian Persian. I'm not going to stop doing that anytime soon! :P I was just wondering about whether I can ask you about Hazaragi, too. I'm trying to establish boundaries. :lol: (Also Afghan Persian just sounds so intriguing!).
I'm just happy there is one person interested in Persian at the moment. It's the language that brought me to Unilang, since there was a really good community of learners here (more than a decade ago), so it's kind of sad how dead the forum is these days.

I've probably said something like this before, but Persian has a special place in my life. I've known Persian-speakers in person since I was four or five years old. My brother's best friend was Iranian, my cousin married an Iranian American, and several of my classmates were Iranian or Iranian American. Most of the (Iranian) Persian songs I've posted on this forum are songs that I played over and over again in this same house when I was smaller, annoying my entire family to no end (before YouTube existed). :lol:

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-04, 7:29

vijayjohn wrote:I was just wondering about whether I can ask you about Hazaragi, too. I'm trying to establish boundaries. :lol: (Also Afghan Persian just sounds so intriguing!).

I think Kabuli Persian would be easier for me to understand than Hazaragi, but I don't know. I'm not sure I've ever actually heard Hazaragi. I've heard some Afghan nowhes and other Muharram music which would presumably be made by Hazaras, but as far as I remember they were in standard Persian.
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-01-04, 13:42

eskandar wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I was just wondering about whether I can ask you about Hazaragi, too. I'm trying to establish boundaries. :lol: (Also Afghan Persian just sounds so intriguing!).

I think Kabuli Persian would be easier for me to understand than Hazaragi, but I don't know. I'm not sure I've ever actually heard Hazaragi. I've heard some Afghan nowhes and other Muharram music which would presumably be made by Hazaras, but as far as I remember they were in standard Persian.

This is a Hazaragi song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B92Zey-ZqC4
Lyrics: http://www.afghanpedia.com/projects/mus ... 8%A7%D8%B1

I think it's mostly understandable apart from a few words I don't know yet and I have basically no idea what the first line means. :P Does it make any more sense to you than it does to me?

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby voron » 2019-01-04, 15:42

vijayjohn wrote:This is a Hazaragi song:

Is it even Persian? It sounds very Hindi. :D

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-04, 18:59

vijayjohn wrote:I have basically no idea what the first line means. :P Does it make any more sense to you than it does to me?

The only word in the first line that gave me pause was بوری which, according to a quick search, means برویم ("let's go") in Hazaragi. So, "come on, let's go to the motherland, let's go, [O] patriot."
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-01-05, 3:07

So بیه just means the same thing as (Iranian) بیا?
voron wrote:Is it even Persian? It sounds very Hindi. :D

I kind of think everything east of Iran sounds a lot like Hindi whereas Iranian Persian sounds a lot more like Kurmanji! Afghanistan also is really culturally close to India in a lot of ways.

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-05, 4:26

vijayjohn wrote:So بیه just means the same thing as (Iranian) بیا?

Yep. Hazaragi has no written standard, so بیه is just a transcription of [biya] which means the same thing as (standard) Persian [biyaa].
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-01-06, 3:15

Incidentally, I saw that Limagne helped me out with the part of the Tajik song neither of us could make out. Yay! So I can try to translate that into English and also do "Watandar" and an Iranian song! :partyhat:

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-17, 0:57

Finished CD 3 of MT Italian Foundation. Working my way through Duolingo as well.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby voron » 2019-01-17, 12:02

eskandar wrote:Finished CD 3 of MT Italian Foundation. Working my way through Duolingo as well.

Bravo! Complimenti! Ben fatto!

(That's all the compliments I could remember :D)

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-20, 5:25

Grazie voron!

Today I read a short story in Urdu. Of all the languages I can read in besides English, Urdu might be the most satisfying - even though my reading abilities are much stronger in Persian (and probably Spanish as well). I don't know whether it's because there's just a lot of stuff I really enjoy reading in the language, or because I built such fond associations with the language when I was studying in India, but it gives me great pleasure. I made about 50 flashcards for an 8 page story; somehow I feel I wouldn't have had the patience to do that if I'd been reading in Arabic.
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-01-22, 1:01

I love reading in Urdu, too, even when I have no clue what I'm reading. :lol: It's fun to practice reading it, I guess, precisely because it's so hard!

Congratulations on your progress with Italian btw! :)

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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-27, 23:07

Italian: Finished CD 5 of MT Italian Foundation. Duolingo doesn't give you a good way to measure your progress through the tree, but I have completed 29 skills (at crown level 1), with 39 skills left to go. I try to finish about one skill each day. After I complete the tree I'll assess whether it's worth practicing more (probably not) or moving on to readers. So far I haven't been taking any notes or making any flashcards; almost everything is cognate to Spanish or French, so I don't have to work to retain anything. Maybe that will change when I try more difficult tasks in the language like reading (especially "real" non-pedagogical materials).

Hebrew: 26 skills down on Duolingo, 58 to go! That should keep me busy for a while. Meanwhile I've surpassed 1700 cards in my Anki deck, meaning I have less than 300 to add and master before I hit my goal of 2000 by June.
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby Trapy » 2019-01-28, 4:15

Italian- are you doing the laps on Romance languages? Soon Romanian will creep up on you ;). Also, i started but couldn’t get far as I already had French and Spanish like you, so Italian was very repetitive. How do you keep it interesting? And, consider reading Dante or such in the original? (I swear I can read most Italian just via context, and suspect you are able to surpass that).

Also, good to see you still on unilang- what was it, like 11 years since we met near your college? :p.
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Re: TAC eskandar (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian)

Postby eskandar » 2019-01-28, 5:53

Trapy wrote:Italian- are you doing the laps on Romance languages? Soon Romanian will creep up on you ;).

No plans for more Romance, just learning Italian because there are some specific things I'd like to read that aren't available in translation. Many years ago I briefly fooled around with Portuguese and, yes, Romanian!

How do you keep it interesting? And, consider reading Dante or such in the original? (I swear I can read most Italian just via context, and suspect you are able to surpass that).

It's been fairly boring so far, but I'm motivated enough to soldier on. I feel the same way about reading Italian, but there are still just enough words I don't understand to put it just out of my grasp. No Dante, just some history that happens to be in Italian.

Also, good to see you still on unilang- what was it, like 11 years since we met near your college? :p.

Wow, I somehow don't remember that! Remind me? (Also, I just noticed that we both joined Unilang within a half year of each other in 2006!)
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