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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 201 of 646 22 October 2012 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Oh, thank you, that's good to hear. Yes, hard ш and ж are somewhat difficult for me except at the beginning of words.
I think I pronounce т, д, н the German way, i.e. as alveolar sounds - not as dentals. If I ever wanted to sound native-like, I'd probably tackle that, but until then I'll happily sound a bit foreign. At least I think that's not my biggest problem at the moment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4850 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 202 of 646 23 October 2012 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, but it is easy to change and it gives good results. It also simplifies the distinction between hard and soft consonants. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 203 of 646 24 October 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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WEDNESDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2012
I have been working a lot for the last few days, but I nevertheless managed to study a little bit of Russian. However, the most important news is: I have purchased a big fat Russian dictionary from Langenscheidt, which I simply love. It has 140,000 entries and covers all the necessary grammatical information to every single word. Now learning Russian should be twice as fun! So I revised my knowledge a little bit with lesson 9 of Colloquial Russian and then proceeded to lesson 10. It mainly deals with verbs of motion. I had already learned the most important unprefixed verbs of motion during my Langenscheidt course, but Colloquial Russian now introduced me to some more verbs that occur in pairs: носить/нести 'to carry', водить/вести 'to lead', and возить/везти 'to convey'. Prefixed verbs of motion will be dealt with in a later lesson. Now, I was mainly busing deciphering the reading text of lesson 10, which contained some unknown vocabular. So I will concentrate on the grammar explications later. I already know how verbs of motion are used, but a little revision and consolidation won't hurt. Other than that, I have been reading a tiny section of Hrafnkels saga freysgoða and learning some Old English paradigms. I think Old English is morphologically even worse than Old Norse. It doesn't have as many different forms in a paradigm as Old Norse, but it's less regular and the i-mutation is really tricky. Maybe I only think this way, because I was introduced to Icelandic via a well-wrought language course, while my Old English textbooks simply throw me into the cold water of paradigms and original text samples. Nevertheless, I like Old English! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5676 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 204 of 646 25 October 2012 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I would vote for Old Norse sagas as nerdier :-)) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 205 of 646 26 October 2012 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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FRIDAY, 26 OCTOBER 2012
Today, I reread the text of lesson 10 and read through the grammar explanations. The use of the verbs of motion wasn't new to me, I'll only have to learn the conjugations of the new verbs. Because of that, I couldn't do the exercises, but I'll catch up on them during the weekend. Instead, I learned some Old English grammar. I repeated some pronunciation issues and the main declensions of pronouns and nouns. I also had a look at verbal conjugation and adjective declension. If you know German and Icelandic, Old English morphology is not that difficult. You only have to get used to some typical vowel mutations. The difficult part will be building up my vocabulary. I guess, in the beginning, I'll have to look up every second word in the glossary, which will be inconvenient but inevitable. I haven't been reading any Old Norse sagas lately, so no news from the nerd front! :p But I guess learning Old English is nerdy enough, isn't it? However, on a forum where there are people who learn Ancient Egyptian and Chinese minority languages, I'm in good company. See you soon, fellow language nerds! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 206 of 646 27 October 2012 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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SATURDAY, 27 OCTOBER 2012
It has been a busy day. I did all the exercises in lesson 9 of Colloquial Russian, which dealt with the conjugation and use of the verbs of motion. I did pretty well, but I confused идти and ходить once, as well as бегать and бежать. Additionally, I formed a wrong preterite form of вести. But I guess that's what exercises are for: learning from the mistakes you make. After doing the exercises in Russian, I read a bit about verbal conjugation in Old English. I then took one of the 'mini texts' that are provided here and there in Peter Baker's Introduction to Old English and translated it whith the help of the glossary. It was an Old English version of psalm no. 1. It wasn't very hard, as the glossary contains all declined and conjugated forms of words, so I could simply look up every unknown word without having to think much about it. I haven't finished reading Hrafnkels saga freysgoða yet, but I decided that simply reading it doesn't bring me any further. I am too lazy to look up every unknown word, so I only understand the gist of the story. I therefore started translating chapter 1 today, writing everything down - just the way I used to translate Ovid, Pliny, and Virgil when I still was at school. I have to say though that Old Norse prose is much easier to translate than Latin poetry or Pliny's Epistulae. Edited by Josquin on 27 October 2012 at 9:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Vinnet Newbie United States Joined 4208 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 207 of 646 28 October 2012 at 6:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have to say that I am very jealous of you. It must be incredible to be able to read Latin works as they were
intended. Especially with poetry, there is something precious about being able to get closer to the original feel for things. If you don't mind me asking, how would you best recommend jumping into Russian? I'm barely starting out, but I'm a little concerned about how things will pan out during the grammar portion. Especially since this is all self taught and I don't have any one to help me. Are there any sources or strategies in particular that have helped you? Thank you for taking the time to read this. Best Wishes, Amanda 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4638 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 208 of 646 28 October 2012 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello Amanda,
thanks for your question. Well, I'm not particularly good at translating Latin any more, so I might say there's little reason to be jealous. I could read Latin quite well when I was still learning it at school, but since I graduated my abilities have gradually deteriorated. If I were to translate Ovid's Ars amatoria or Virgil's Aeneid today, it would probably take me forever to untangle a single paragraph. But yes, it's very nice to be able to read literature in the original and breathe the spirit of the original language. As for your question about Russian: I'm afraid I might not be the best person to ask for advice. I started learning Russian with a German language course from Langenscheidt, which served me rather well. I'm not sure what might be good resources for native English speakers. I guess Assimil or Teach Yourself might be good. Russian grammar is much easier for a German than for an American, because German has cases, too. If you're not acquainted to the concept of case, Russian might be very hard in the beginning. I'd recommend you to use a mix of different sources. Assimil is said to be very good for learning a language 'naturally'. Other resources may be very 'grammar-heavy'. You might as well take a look at the logs of other students of Russian, such as tarvos, Solfrid Cristin, or other members of the Team Sputnik. I think you'll get a lot of inspiration there. If you need any help with certain aspects of Russian, please let me know. All the best for your studies, Christian aka Josquin 1 person has voted this message useful |
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