Just finished lesson 28 of 90 in the Pimsleur Russian series... finally re-introducing the familiar "Tbi" for "you". I'm actually getting into words and areas that I really had not ever had in College (in your basic courses, you tend to talk about family, colors, and parts of the body a lot, while Pimsleur wants you to know how to ask someone out to dinner and get directions to the restaurant - a bit more practical). I still haven't decided how far I'll go with this: Russian is still a cruel language, and I still don't ever want to GO there.
Swedish: I'm doing a good bit of reading on this, but my evenings have been a bit crazy, so not as much time on this. I did find a cool site with interactive Swedish lessons not unlike the Deutsche Welle site: Learn Swedish The only problem is that you NEED to use a dictionary with the site: All of the instructions are in Swedish, and there are no pop-up translations... but it's very good for slang and colloquial, and has tough quizzes.
On the GENERAL e-learning front: I've figured out that my method NEEDS to be writing and speaking: Multiple Choice is my downfall, because I'm pretty logical and instead of really thinking about the word, I almost always do a process of elimination... so I do great on the quiz, but the word remains unlearned.
I'm off with the family for a weeklong vacation, and will be doing some more Svenska there. I'm hoping that by the end of the week, I'll be comfortable enough with the basics to make my first call to the Swedes for a chat!
But don't expect much posting in the next 10 days... I'm not sure if the interweb is at the resort! (And even if it is, I won't be on it much!)
Friday, August 17, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Swede Update
Ok - going back two posts, I was curious as to whether BYKI could teach a whole language. The answer on this is simple: NO. While it does teach a few phrases, on the whole it's a word-based flashcard system, and you get no Grammar. So I needed something more. I got on super-sale the Teach-Yourself Swedish book and CDs. These are from England, and have dozens of languages, and other subjects as well.
See, even though Swedish is relatively easy, you still need to know the rules, and you still need to hear sentences spoken. And THIS is an area where Swedish is tricky: SK and ST can sound like predicted before an A, O, Å, or U, but sound like "SH" in front of E, I, ü, ö, ä, or y. Final "G"s and "T"s are usually dropped. Thus, you read "Det är" for "it is" (or "there is" in a non-locative sense), but you say "dayr"
This is why people say written and spoken Swedish are so different. And they ARE, but once you internalize the rules, it's not so bad... I think.
Another thing I'm realizing as I make my way through more languages: It's VERY important to be able to parse sentences and understand the concepts of direct (accusative) and indirect (dative) objects, possessives (genitive), verb tenses (the perfects and imperfects), conditionals, and subjunctives. Russian is particularly punishing to those who want to think that cases are something that happen to other people, but knowing how it works also helps with German, and the formation of pronouns and adjective endings in many other languages. So as I've been speaking and writing these days, I've been doing more sentence parsing... in English...
It's strange that even while taking Russian, I had never internalized these concepts and tried to see how my everyday language was parsed. I think this is a skill I can perhaps work on for myself, and try to give to my kids....
See, even though Swedish is relatively easy, you still need to know the rules, and you still need to hear sentences spoken. And THIS is an area where Swedish is tricky: SK and ST can sound like predicted before an A, O, Å, or U, but sound like "SH" in front of E, I, ü, ö, ä, or y. Final "G"s and "T"s are usually dropped. Thus, you read "Det är" for "it is" (or "there is" in a non-locative sense), but you say "dayr"
This is why people say written and spoken Swedish are so different. And they ARE, but once you internalize the rules, it's not so bad... I think.
Another thing I'm realizing as I make my way through more languages: It's VERY important to be able to parse sentences and understand the concepts of direct (accusative) and indirect (dative) objects, possessives (genitive), verb tenses (the perfects and imperfects), conditionals, and subjunctives. Russian is particularly punishing to those who want to think that cases are something that happen to other people, but knowing how it works also helps with German, and the formation of pronouns and adjective endings in many other languages. So as I've been speaking and writing these days, I've been doing more sentence parsing... in English...
It's strange that even while taking Russian, I had never internalized these concepts and tried to see how my everyday language was parsed. I think this is a skill I can perhaps work on for myself, and try to give to my kids....
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
I'm in love again.
Swedish: Sounds great, and easy as 3.14159... well maybe not SO easy, but here's what there is to love:
- No verb conjugations to speak of: Verbs are the same for you, me, he, she, they...
- Few verb tenses - most are formed with helper verbs (have, will).
- No noun cases other than genetive (possessive)
- Two noun genders
- Only 3 "different" letters: å (ohah) ä (eh) and ö (er)
With this in mind, you can pretty much take a guess on how to structure a sentence based on basic vocabulary and not get caught by verb conjugation or noun case pitfalls like in most other languages.
The keys are that it's slightly tonal (you need to work on the up-down inflections), and there are a lot of swallowed consonants (god morgon for good morning sounds like Goh mo-RONE. Where's the D? where's the G?)
There's very little out on the web to help with Swedish - even Rosetta Stone only has one level of Swedish. Pimsleur only offers a 10-lesson short course. Right now I'm using Before you Know It flash cards (and as above, since the grammar rules are pretty simple, it's working ok for me!), and for a grammar overview, I found a fabulous site: www.ielanguages.com. She's a linguist and has scads of overview info on a dozen languages...
And that's my mini update. Vi ses snart. Hej då!
- No verb conjugations to speak of: Verbs are the same for you, me, he, she, they...
- Few verb tenses - most are formed with helper verbs (have, will).
- No noun cases other than genetive (possessive)
- Two noun genders
- Only 3 "different" letters: å (ohah) ä (eh) and ö (er)
With this in mind, you can pretty much take a guess on how to structure a sentence based on basic vocabulary and not get caught by verb conjugation or noun case pitfalls like in most other languages.
The keys are that it's slightly tonal (you need to work on the up-down inflections), and there are a lot of swallowed consonants (god morgon for good morning sounds like Goh mo-RONE. Where's the D? where's the G?)
There's very little out on the web to help with Swedish - even Rosetta Stone only has one level of Swedish. Pimsleur only offers a 10-lesson short course. Right now I'm using Before you Know It flash cards (and as above, since the grammar rules are pretty simple, it's working ok for me!), and for a grammar overview, I found a fabulous site: www.ielanguages.com. She's a linguist and has scads of overview info on a dozen languages...
And that's my mini update. Vi ses snart. Hej då!
Sunday, August 5, 2007
BYKI
My buddy Rich sent me a link for "Before you Know It" flash card software by Transparent Language a few months back, but somehow I only recently visited. Their base software and a few hundred words in any language is FREE, so it costs nothing to try it out. I started with a little Russian, added in Japanese, Chinese, and German, just to see how the flash card thing could help reinforce my existing languages... And I'm finding that just reading and typing (yes typing) the words really does help glue them into the brain...
But it's one thing to reinforce existing language: The true test will be Swedish. I got the full blown version (with over 1000 words and 200 phrases) for just a few dollars more, and will be using it as my only gateway to Swedish, hopefully bringing Bella and Pamela along: One of Bella's classmates is Swedish, and we sometimes hang out with older sister and mom too, so having some language could be really fun!
One challenge is that to truly "own" a word, you need to type it from memory. In German, not so tough (nicht zu schwer). In Russian, that means typing in Cyrillic, which is harder. I haven't tried the quizzes in Japanese or Chinese to see how they do it, but I do note that Japanese uses full Kanji in their flash cards, not Kana simplified, so that should be a good challenge.
Anyway, for free I can't see any reason NOT to download the software at www.byki.com It works pretty slickly, and for reinforcement of existing language it's a no-brainer. I'm just curious to see how it works as a primary language tool!!! Watch this space as I try it out.
But it's one thing to reinforce existing language: The true test will be Swedish. I got the full blown version (with over 1000 words and 200 phrases) for just a few dollars more, and will be using it as my only gateway to Swedish, hopefully bringing Bella and Pamela along: One of Bella's classmates is Swedish, and we sometimes hang out with older sister and mom too, so having some language could be really fun!
One challenge is that to truly "own" a word, you need to type it from memory. In German, not so tough (nicht zu schwer). In Russian, that means typing in Cyrillic, which is harder. I haven't tried the quizzes in Japanese or Chinese to see how they do it, but I do note that Japanese uses full Kanji in their flash cards, not Kana simplified, so that should be a good challenge.
Anyway, for free I can't see any reason NOT to download the software at www.byki.com It works pretty slickly, and for reinforcement of existing language it's a no-brainer. I'm just curious to see how it works as a primary language tool!!! Watch this space as I try it out.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Still comfy
Since my posting, I've done 12 lessons of Russian - 2 a day which is not recommended for a new language, but do-able for a "remembering" language. Here's what I'm noticing:
1) While I am remembering some things, I cannot say there's been a cascade of unlocked memories of the language: When a word is introduced, I can say "oh yes I remember that", but integrated into the lesson, it's just as hard to remember as the words that are NEW to me (and yes, there are quite a few: College Russian and Conversational Russian are two different beasts I think). So I'm unlocking one word at a time... we'll see how this goes.
2) But one thing that has STUCK: I totally remember how to read Cyrillic: Looking at flashcards, I can read them almost as fast as English. I'm pretty amazed at how that sticks... but then I had to write all of my homework for two years in cursive cyrillic - that's not easy.
On a different note: I'm noticing who around me I can try to talk to: One of the doctors in my department is Japanese... and there's a restaurant nearby with good cheap sushi run by a whole Japanese family who bicker in their native tongue... I am working on refreshing some language to try with them. There are a lot of Russians wandering around the hospital I work at, so I'm thinking about dropping in there... Also, I really should be trying my Spanish with the many latinos I see every day in the hospital... it would be so easy...
But in a way I get terrible performance anxiety with languages: I get tongue tied and shy when confronted with an actual opportunity to use it. Which is RIDICULOUS. I get ready with my intro, and then imagine them coming back at me with something I can't respond to.... It's irrational and I need to work on that. One way I can hopefully help is to work on translations of actual conversational bits I might use: So that I have some key words that describe me and my life fresh in the mind.
I did that prior to my big Spanish dinner months back - I wrote out 3 pages of conversational ideas, and when the time came, I didn't so much try to remember the exact words, but rather I had got used to thinking in different languages.
Finally, I read a good idea for reminding your fluency: Go to La Prensa, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Pravda, etc websites, load an article, print it. Then read the first paragraph with a highlighter, lighting the words you don't know. Stop, look them up, add them to flash cards. Then read the second paragraph, do the same. Keep going through the article, and notice that the highlighting gets less and less - that's learning!!!
Anyway, back to work for me! I have my nightly half hour with Deutche Welle online learning!
1) While I am remembering some things, I cannot say there's been a cascade of unlocked memories of the language: When a word is introduced, I can say "oh yes I remember that", but integrated into the lesson, it's just as hard to remember as the words that are NEW to me (and yes, there are quite a few: College Russian and Conversational Russian are two different beasts I think). So I'm unlocking one word at a time... we'll see how this goes.
2) But one thing that has STUCK: I totally remember how to read Cyrillic: Looking at flashcards, I can read them almost as fast as English. I'm pretty amazed at how that sticks... but then I had to write all of my homework for two years in cursive cyrillic - that's not easy.
On a different note: I'm noticing who around me I can try to talk to: One of the doctors in my department is Japanese... and there's a restaurant nearby with good cheap sushi run by a whole Japanese family who bicker in their native tongue... I am working on refreshing some language to try with them. There are a lot of Russians wandering around the hospital I work at, so I'm thinking about dropping in there... Also, I really should be trying my Spanish with the many latinos I see every day in the hospital... it would be so easy...
But in a way I get terrible performance anxiety with languages: I get tongue tied and shy when confronted with an actual opportunity to use it. Which is RIDICULOUS. I get ready with my intro, and then imagine them coming back at me with something I can't respond to.... It's irrational and I need to work on that. One way I can hopefully help is to work on translations of actual conversational bits I might use: So that I have some key words that describe me and my life fresh in the mind.
I did that prior to my big Spanish dinner months back - I wrote out 3 pages of conversational ideas, and when the time came, I didn't so much try to remember the exact words, but rather I had got used to thinking in different languages.
Finally, I read a good idea for reminding your fluency: Go to La Prensa, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Pravda, etc websites, load an article, print it. Then read the first paragraph with a highlighter, lighting the words you don't know. Stop, look them up, add them to flash cards. Then read the second paragraph, do the same. Keep going through the article, and notice that the highlighting gets less and less - that's learning!!!
Anyway, back to work for me! I have my nightly half hour with Deutche Welle online learning!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Like a comfy pair of shoes
Jimmy's big brain bonanza is officially restarted: After a few weeks of flailing around and crazy house stuff, I'm finally back on the language addict bandwagon. Part of the kick in the pants was reading The Four Hour Workweek, where the author almost casually mentions he is a language addict and has 6 languages in his rotation.
I was trying the podcast-only thing for two weeks - Jpod and Cpod only, but you know, without sitting down and working the worksheets too, I find that the 10 minute lessons just go in one ear and out the other: I need two forms. The only Audio-Only that has truly persisted for me is Pimsleur. But both my Chinese and my Japanese are 4 weeks stale on Pimsleur and I'm going to need to do some "on the couch with nothing else around me" work to get back into that groove. So what can I do with my current commute? Refresh a dead language.
As I mentioned before, I have 2 years of college Russian under my belt. But that was almost 20 years ago now, and all I truly have left are about 10 words. So I've started Pimsleur Russian to bring it all back: It's fun because so far 6 lessons in, I'm remembering a LOT, and even better, it's forcing me to work on an accent, which I never did back in College (where for some reason, speaking with an exaggerated accent seemed frowned upon - like "faking" or something?)
I'm also hoping that the rules of Russian filter back into my head and I can relate them to German, which also has many many rules... sort of turbocharge my language rules engine.
But now I'm getting to the point where phonemes are confusing: "Ya" means "I" in Russian, "Yes" in German, "already" in Spanish, and "there are" in French (concatenating "y a" in "il y a").... while "Ni (knee), means "Not" in Russian, "Never" in German, "Nor" in French, "You" in Chinese.... It gets crazy.
So bottom line, look for more updates on a more regular basis now that my work has cleared up and I've stopped flailing around. Thenkyouveddymuch. PS - obviously things are lighter - this is a mid-morning post!!!!
I was trying the podcast-only thing for two weeks - Jpod and Cpod only, but you know, without sitting down and working the worksheets too, I find that the 10 minute lessons just go in one ear and out the other: I need two forms. The only Audio-Only that has truly persisted for me is Pimsleur. But both my Chinese and my Japanese are 4 weeks stale on Pimsleur and I'm going to need to do some "on the couch with nothing else around me" work to get back into that groove. So what can I do with my current commute? Refresh a dead language.
As I mentioned before, I have 2 years of college Russian under my belt. But that was almost 20 years ago now, and all I truly have left are about 10 words. So I've started Pimsleur Russian to bring it all back: It's fun because so far 6 lessons in, I'm remembering a LOT, and even better, it's forcing me to work on an accent, which I never did back in College (where for some reason, speaking with an exaggerated accent seemed frowned upon - like "faking" or something?)
I'm also hoping that the rules of Russian filter back into my head and I can relate them to German, which also has many many rules... sort of turbocharge my language rules engine.
But now I'm getting to the point where phonemes are confusing: "Ya" means "I" in Russian, "Yes" in German, "already" in Spanish, and "there are" in French (concatenating "y a" in "il y a").... while "Ni (knee), means "Not" in Russian, "Never" in German, "Nor" in French, "You" in Chinese.... It gets crazy.
So bottom line, look for more updates on a more regular basis now that my work has cleared up and I've stopped flailing around. Thenkyouveddymuch. PS - obviously things are lighter - this is a mid-morning post!!!!
Saturday, July 7, 2007
In case you're wondering
Just as I had teased Coffee Break Spanish for taking off for a few weeks while a "day job" deadline loomed, I must plead exactly the same for why this blog has gone "dark". This weekend we're finally doing the big upgrade I've been working for the past 7 months to deliver, and while I can't say I've been pulling 60 hour weeks or anything, I have been very short on free "brain cycles" to devote to language.
I expect that this will clear up in the coming weeks as I get back to just one client, and the golive dies down.
By the way - Coffee Break Spanish came back from their break with a huge surprise: A crazy theme song. It's just a riot. Add that to ChinesePod's revelatory theme song to their "news and features" podcast, and I think that the silly has been loosed upon the international language fanclub.
That's it for now. More when my head clears a bit!
I expect that this will clear up in the coming weeks as I get back to just one client, and the golive dies down.
By the way - Coffee Break Spanish came back from their break with a huge surprise: A crazy theme song. It's just a riot. Add that to ChinesePod's revelatory theme song to their "news and features" podcast, and I think that the silly has been loosed upon the international language fanclub.
That's it for now. More when my head clears a bit!
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