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Small Expectations | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5255 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 265 of 431 16 September 2011 at 3:36am | IP Logged | ||
Oh yeah, you're right! I hadn't noticed that. I've just checked in my hard copy of the book, and it seems that hiragana and katakana are used to differentiate between similar sounds. So た is used for თ and タ for ტ, ぱ for ფ and パ for პ. I wonder if Kojima- sensei invented this transliteration system. I'll ask him next time I see him. I can imagine even Japanese people would find it incredibly difficult to read though, and it doesn't reflect real Georgian pronunciation at all. Far better to spend a day or two learning the alphabet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5255 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 266 of 431 06 October 2011 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Another milestone reached. I have finished my first untranslated Georgian novel, not
counting ჯინსების თაობა, which I read earlier this year side by side with its English translation. The novel is called ახალი წიგნი, which means "New Book", and it's by my favorite Georgian writer დავით ქართველიშვილი. He is my favorite Georgian writer purely because he is the only one whose books I can read without becoming lost by page 3. Fortunately, though, he also happens to be a very interesting and enjoyable writer. ახალი წიგნი is the story of a writer writing about another writer who exhibits suspicious similarities to himself. In perfect David Lynch-ian style, the story turns in on itself halfway through and the writers swap places in terms of who is "real" and who isn't. So it's all about life, and reality, and what is and isn't real, and what is death, and what part does Christianity have to play in all this, which all sounds terribly earnest and tiresome, but Kartvelishvili writes with such a lightness of touch, in beautifully clear and simple Georgian, that all these heavy philosophical questions don't seem ponderous at all. This guy is really talented and it is such a shame that he will never be read by more than a handful of people (unless some big publishing house pays me a generous advance to translate it into English). I have now exhausted Kartvelishvili's published works (a short story collection called 6 სიზმარი (6 Dreams) and the novel I have mentioned on and off for a while now, იყო საღამო იყო დილა, which I'm about halfway through and only pick up occasionally, but this is a good thing as it means I am forced to attempt another writer. I've decided to try a nice trashy crime novel called მგლები 2 (The Wolves 2; they only had parts 2 and 4 in the bookshop so I'll just have to fill in the blanks from part 1). So not high literature by any means, but I figured it might be quite easy and I would get some nice scenes of life in modern Georgia. Anyway, so far so good. The first paragraph was utterly incomprehensible to me, but after that I started picking it up well enough, so we'll see how it goes. Otherwise, I seem to be on a good streak with my spoken Georgian. I can rabbit away to Medea quite happily about relatively simple stuff, and sometimes even quite complicated stuff. I imagine I'll hit yet another wall again soon enough though. I don't know about anyone else, but for me speaking ability seems to come in short bursts. I'll be great for a month, then be completely tongue-tied for a month, then I'll pick up the flow again, and so on and so forth. After raving about all the TV programmes on Rustavi2 on another thread, I've only been back to the site once, to watch an episode of მელომანია, the Georgian "Name that Tune". One of the contestants was an extremely camp Georgian man, which was funny as he was the first camp Georgian man I've ever seen. My British sense of fairness in all things was shocked, though, at the leniency they showed with the answers to the quiz questions. 'Twould never be allowed in the UK. Edited by TixhiiDon on 06 October 2011 at 12:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5255 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 267 of 431 15 October 2011 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for a few brief updates. I have become a big fan of რა? სად? როდის?, the
Georgian version of Что? Где? Когда?, which, for those who do not know, is a highly intellectual TV game show pitting some of the best brains of the country against regular Joes and Joannes (or Giorgis and Ninos, or Ivans and Svetlanas, depending on the language in which you are watching). Members of the public send in intentionally difficult questions that are fielded by a team comprising members of the intelligentsia - teachers, lawyers, journalists, scientists, and so on. If the team get the answer wrong, the question sender gets 500 lari. If they get it right, they get a point. I'm not sure what happens at the end of the series, but it seems to be some kind of league. Anyway, it's a great show, fantastic for listening practice, and I love the fact that it's so unashamedly intellectual - very Soviet (apparently it has been popular since the dark days of the USSR), and unthinkable on lowest-common-denominator British and Japanese TV in the 21st century. You can find it in Georgian here. For Russian speakers there seems to be a few whole episodes on You Tube. It's definitely worth checking out. მგლები 2 is coming along quite nicely. I'm missing intricacies in the text but understanding all the important plot points, so I'll stick with it for now. I was hoping with the genre to get some insights into the darker side of life in modern Tbilisi, but it is actually set in Kharkov and St. Petersburg, so I'm a bit off the mark there... It's all very silly and cliched, so I might abandon it for something a bit more interesting at some point, but we'll see. And for my trip to Tbilisi in December it looks like I'm going to get some tutoring with a Georgian as a Foreign Language teacher at Tbilisi State University. It's only going to be four days, so it's not going to bring me up to near-native level or anything like that, but I'm very excited about it. The Tbilisi University building is very beautiful and I am having daydreams about getting on the metro every morning to go to my lessons at the university, just like any other Georgian student. What a treat! Edited by TixhiiDon on 15 October 2011 at 2:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zecchino1991 Senior Member United States facebook.com/amyybur Joined 5049 days ago 778 posts - 885 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian | Message 268 of 431 30 November 2011 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is very inspirational. I probably already posted in this thread (like a year
ago...), but I need to do it again! I started learning Georgian in January but only did it for a few months because I have been studying about 6 other languages this year. My goal was to learn a new language every three months, and I was planning to do that again this year. But now I decided I want to focus on Georgian and a couple others. The reason is that my mom just told me her grandmother was from Georgia and that she has always wanted to go there and visit the village where she grew up. So now I am planning to take her there, because I have wanted to go there for a while, too! We'll also go to Russia, which is good because I happen to be learning Russian as well. So anyway, I just had to say all that so you could know how much this inspires me to take up the language again. I hope that soon I'll be able to read those books you mentioned a couple posts up. So far I only know the basics... Thanks for posting this log. Maybe I'll post my own. After I finish Romanian for the six week challenge. ;) დიდი მადლობა! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5255 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 269 of 431 01 December 2011 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Zecchino, thanks very much for the post! It's always nice to know that other people are interested in Georgian. Keep me updated about your progress, and don't hesitate to ask any questions, although I can only guarantee to be able to answer the easiest ones. How exciting to find out the news about your great-grandmother. That would be a huge motivation for me to get studying!
To all readers, I'm back in the UK at the moment, relaxing at home before I pop over to Georgia next Wednesday. I'm just too relaxed and lazy right now to provide a full update, but I promise I will update with news of my wintry comings and goings in Tbilisi! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| orandajin Tetraglot Newbie Japan Joined 4530 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Russian Studies: Japanese | Message 270 of 431 04 December 2011 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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TixhiiDon, I had a remarkable teacher in Tbilisi. She has taught Georgian at several universities in Germany and
used to be a professor of Classical Languages at Tbilisi State University till her retirement. Over the years she has developed a great system of teaching Georgian to foreigners. She gives private lessons in her home. If you're interested, I can send you her contact details. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5255 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 271 of 431 05 December 2011 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Orandajin, thanks very much for your post. I have already organized my teacher for this trip, so I am ok for
the time being, but for sure I'd like to know the name of your teacher in Tbilisi for future reference. Maybe you could send me a PM. It's also interesting to know that there is another Georgian speaker in Japan! We are a rare breed! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5255 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 272 of 431 07 December 2011 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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So here I am in Tbilisi again. I was feeling kind of lazy and unmotivated on the plane, thinking "Why do I
keep doing this to myself? Why can't I just stay at home like normal people?". My dark mood wasn't helped by my pathetic attempts at conversation with the hotel driver who picked me up from the airport. After some pitiful Georgian and even more pitiful Russian I managed to explain that I had waited for him for about 20 minutes, when in actual fact it had been only about 2... Understandably, the driver decided silence was probably a better bet after that. But then we got into the city, and I saw the beautiful lights and buildings and all the people catching buses home from work and walking along with their shopping bags, and then I got to my hotel and found that my Georgian teacher in Japan had got her cousin to buy me a ticket to see Rustavi at Tbilisi concert hall the day after tomorrow and leave it at reception, and then I was shown to my nice hotel room with a huge balcony overlooking the Mtkvari, and of course I'm now really excited and eager to get on with my trip. I'm meeting my Georgian teacher tomorrow afternoon in a cafe near the university. Again a small part of me is thinking I should have just enjoyed wandering around and not bothered with the lessons, but I'm sure it will be fun. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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