Learning materials etc. [Eskimo-Aleut languages]

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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2012-10-13, 13:25

@księżycowy: There are some really good threads at the end of this forum containing short "lessons" with grammar for Kalaallisut and I wanted to ask if you could make them sticky or put links to them in the resources thread. They were created by nighean-neonach when this was still just the Kalaallisut forum, and actually this forum and these threads were what made me find Unilang and start learning Kalaallisut a few years ago.

Here is the link to the overview:
viewtopic.php?f=105&t=15699#p304885
Unfortunately the links in this thread don't work anymore but the threads are still there. Would it be possible to update them?

There is also this thread with a preview of some learning materials:
viewtopic.php?f=105&t=15445

Maybe they could be of use to other learners or people with an interest in the language.
[flag=]kl[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag]

księżycowy

Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby księżycowy » 2012-10-13, 20:59

I'd be happy to make them stickys.

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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2012-10-14, 12:21

Thank you, księżycowy! :D

Sorry to ask you again, but the links in the "Some Greenlandic grammar and structures - index" thread are not working properly. For example the link to the first "lesson" is
http://home.unilang.org/main/forum/view ... hp?t=15413
but it should be:
viewtopic.php?t=15413
[flag=]kl[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag]

księżycowy

Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby księżycowy » 2012-10-14, 13:00

I'll see what I can do to fix them.

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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2012-10-14, 13:05

Thank you so much! :D
[flag=]kl[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag]

księżycowy

Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby księżycowy » 2012-10-14, 14:20

They're all good now. :wink:

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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2012-10-15, 20:00

I have one more suggestion :oops:, there are three "person below me" threads in three different languages in the sticky section that have very few posts. Maybe they could be made normal threads until there is more interest or maybe they could be merged somehow?

Maybe also the questions/help thread could be moved because there is no activity and there is already a general discussion thread.

I just feel the sticky section is too cluttered and does not really have enough relevant information for beginners or people who are interested in learning.
[flag=]kl[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag]

księżycowy

Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby księżycowy » 2012-10-15, 20:24

Yeah, I feel the same way. I'll clean it up and move a few threads around.

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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2012-10-16, 17:13

Looks good! :D
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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2012-12-16, 13:34

It looks like there are some new books for learning Greenlandic:

http://www.atuagkat.com/product.asp?product=3558
http://www.atuagkat.com/product.asp?product=3932
http://www.atuagkat.com/product.asp?product=3936

I think the first one is a textbook (for intermediate learners???) and the other two links are the second and third part. There is also a separate book that I think contains solutions for the grammar exercises.
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Langgard
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby Langgard » 2013-02-07, 9:14

The 'Kalaallisut oqalutta' series that is mentioned in the last post are designed for Danish children in compusory school. I do not think they will have much appeal to adult learners (but I must confess that I never worked my way through the books - only skimmed them).

So for learners who need to understand Greenlandic structure but not really need to learn to speak the language the traditional grammar books (Mike Fortescue in English or Stig Bjørnum in Danish) are by far the best entrance.

If on the other hand one wants to learn to communicate the approach must be very different and proficiency measures set much higher. There is at the moment only one system with such a scope available on the market, namely my own 'Greenlandic for Foreigners/ Grønlandsk for voksne' Modul 1 and 2.

You might want to check out the system on www.learngreenlandic.com

And may I once again draw your attention to the many linguistic goodies you can access for free on www.oqaaserpassualeriffik.org. There you will among other tools find the biggest Greenlandic-Danish-English dictionary ever (at the moment but still growing covering 142,162 lexemes and 112,441 examples) and you will find a number of language technology based stuff for instance a word generator, a word analysor, and a disambiguation engine including syntactic tagging

deardron
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby deardron » 2013-02-10, 3:38

Langgard wrote:the traditional grammar books (Mike Fortescue in English or Stig Bjørnum in Danish) are by far the best entrance.

I don't quite share this compliment.. While Stig Bjørnum's grammar is excellent indeed (although it does miss a few things, like most of the paradigm for negative verbs with -nngit-, is not quite clear on pronouns etc.), Fortescue's book is absolutely unreadable, for more than one reason. First of all, it's the author's stupid decision to use the phonological transcript for Greenlandic examples, which means that he writes "irniqarpuq" instead of "erneqarpoq". This messes up the reading of the whole book quite a lot. Why, for what reason, is it a phonological work or what? It would be similar to if all examples in a book on English syntax would be given in phonological transcription like "Ðər iz ə wait teibl in ðə rum". The other reason is that the structure of the book is too sophisticated, the contents description is so little informative and there's no index catalog, that it's a hard task for itself to quickly find something that you need to know.

Langgard
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby Langgard » 2013-02-10, 13:37

Hi deardron

I am afraid that I both agree and not agree with your last post: For one thing I myself would not use Bjørnum's book because of - for my taste - too little analysis, too many "barren" surface forms, and too many shortcomings. But it is popular which is why I suggested it.

What comes to Mike's book the story is very different. It is a very good grammar book and it covers very much. But it is obvious that it is very hard to read among other things for graphical reasons.

But I certainly must object to your objections to his preference for phonological spellings. It is definitely a quality, not a drawback. I know from 40 years' experience as a teacher of Greenlandic L2 that students who focus on surface spelling never - and I mean NEVER - learn the language. Greenlandic is polysynthetic and words simply have no stable form. They change shape all the time. Greenlandic is most likely the one language in the world with the lowest type-token ratio!

Good language learners accept this constant fluctuation and base their learning on abstract representations with the power to generate the millions of wordforms that are needed, not the wordforms themselves.

Do also note that this is exactly what goes on in Inuktitut syllabics. Syllabics simply could not distinguish between say 'irniqarpuq' and 'erneqarpoq'. Because it is unneeded.

Per

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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2013-02-10, 16:34

Langgard wrote:The 'Kalaallisut oqalutta' series that is mentioned in the last post are designed for Danish children in compusory school. I do not think they will have much appeal to adult learners (but I must confess that I never worked my way through the books - only skimmed them).

So for learners who need to understand Greenlandic structure but not really need to learn to speak the language the traditional grammar books (Mike Fortescue in English or Stig Bjørnum in Danish) are by far the best entrance.

If on the other hand one wants to learn to communicate the approach must be very different and proficiency measures set much higher. There is at the moment only one system with such a scope available on the market, namely my own 'Greenlandic for Foreigners/ Grønlandsk for voksne' Modul 1 and 2.

You might want to check out the system on http://www.learngreenlandic.com

Could you give some more details on your 'Greenlandic for Foreigners'? At what level does Modul 2 start? I am looking for a course that you can use after Qaagit, Qanoq and the Grønlandsk for begyndere books.
I also have the grammar book by Stig Bjørnum and I really like it. I use it to look up word forms or example sentences if I want to know how a specific grammatical structure should be used.

I think the 'Kalaallisut oqalutta' books could still be useful for adult learners. Do they contain stories or only exercises?
Here is what they say on the Atuagkat website: "'Kalaallisut oqaasilerisa' er en selvstændig fortsættelse af "Kalaallisut oqalutta" og kan anvendes til undervisning i grønlandsk som andetsprog på folkeskolens ældstetrin samt i ungdomsuddannelser og til voksne." Doesn't that mean it can also be used for adult learners?
[flag=]kl[/flag][flag=]ja[/flag]

Langgard
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby Langgard » 2013-02-10, 17:15

Hi
Many questions and many comments. Let me try to take it from the top but before that I need to tell you that I have not yet had the time to check out Gitte's grammar books "Kalaallisut oqaasilerisa" so I would not be able to say anything qualified about that part.

What comes to Greenlandic for Foreigners a few observations:
NO, it is not a grammar book. NO, it is not a full overview of the Kalaallisut language, and NO, it does continue from where 'Qanoq', 'Qaagit', and all the rest ended.

I could even add to this: NO, you should not buy my DVD's if you just want to understand the structure. They are far too expensive and far too boring for that purpose. Read a few grammar books instead.

And then again! The many years in this line of business has taught me a number of expensive lessons that I would like to spare my students and descendants for. That is exactly what explains the format and the idea in my primers. They are designed for students who want to learn to understand and speak the language as it exists in real life Greenland 2013.

So if that is your goal, then YES, buy the DVD-s and invest the pain to make your way through all the tedious and boring explanations and exercises.

Here are a few headlines:
Modul 1 sets a low target, namely to teach the students how to pronounce Greenlandic at a near-native level and teach them to accept the fact that a highly productive language like Greenlandic cannot be acquired by means of words and real communication strategies. You must accept that the language is a machinery of extremely productive rules that work all the time (as a matter of facts close to an average of 4 creative processes per running word in grown-up language!). There is also a very serious reason for the extreme (exaggerated) focus on pronunciation. It is namely a fact that with anything but near-native pronunciation you will not be "allowed" to speak Greenlandic in real life. Anything but perfect or almost perfect pronunciation will namely inevitably produce a code-shift into Danish and the learner will get no input and no feed-back = no learning.
Modul 2 is much more demanding. It is based on a steep progression and designed to speed up processes in the learners' heads to make real communication realistic in spite of the many processes the learner must be able to control at a considerable rate of speed and correctnes just to get the chance to start learning.
By the end of Module 2 the learner will be able to recognize and produce more than half a million wordforms and understand the processes that build the many words fast enough to get going with the real language acquisition that ultimately and only takes place in real life with real people.

But without a "driver's license" in the shape of near-native pronunciation, creative understanding of the structures, and a considerable speed in the productive aspects one simply never gets far enough to get going.

Per

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limoneneis
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Re: Learning materials, web resources and suggestions

Postby limoneneis » 2013-02-16, 12:18

I had a look at the website for 'Greenlandic for Foreigners' and I am thinking about getting Modul 2. I think it's great that there is a course with audio that teaches spoken Greenlandic. Has anyone here tried Modul 2? It would be really good to have an overview or short description of what is covered in each chapter.
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