And now it's over...

The language fever is over for now. I haven't been studying one minute of any language the last week or so... well, I read one hour of a book in French.
I got my Maltese books and will start reading them tomorrow, through LWT, but that's it.

I'll probably come to this mood or phase again in about a year, next September or October sounds probable, but for now...

Nah.

Week 8: Maltese

I received the first book of the three in the series Il-Fiddien... unfortunately it's not the first in the series, but #2, it's just the first to arrive. The rest should arrive this week.

Nevertheless, the timing couldn't be better, because this is week 8 of the 52, and I had planned on studying Maltese today. And I got stuck... 5 hours. :-D

But - it's also week 5 of 6 weeks' challenge. I will be going to Finland in the end of this week, so I don't think there will be much languages studied. I plan on taking a book in French with me, and clock the reading time... but... Uh. What ever. It's just a friendly competition for everyone's own behalf. I'm nevertheless at top 3, and would like to stay there :-D

So more about Maltese later. Now I'll go and study a couple of hours French.

Some support for watching Aşk-ı Memnu

Who are these people?

To me the Turkish names are difficult. I can't remember them and I can't even remember which is male and which is female. I know who Adnan is, and that's about it.

I just noticed there's a Turkish description under the video at YouTube :-D That helps. :-)

burada - here
Teşekkür ederim - Thank you
teşekkürler - thanks
anne - mother
also, they call Adnan Bey all the time...
Aşk is love in Aşk-ı Memnu - forbidden love
Pardon - excuse me

"In Turkey, many Turkish use this statement and hug each other; more secular and non-religious people say "Selam" as an equivalent to "Hello" or "Hi". This use has extended to the Internet with the abbreviated "slm" being commonly used amongst Turks on social networking websites."

The thing is that I don't understand much of Turkish, but I understand quite a lot about the series... And it's making Turkish interesting to me :-)

-------------------------

Now is the half-point of 6 weeks challenge, and I'm feeling like I'm desperately trying to swim, but there's no water... or something. It feels like I don't make any progress, I know nothing, all the hours I've been putting in studying have been wasted etc. etc. I haven't done even half of the things I should have done... and then I took the language level test, and received this:

I know it's not correct, but when I took the test 3-4 weeks ago, I got A1 :-D
I guessed practically every question wrong. I mean... how can one guess every question on a multiple choice questionnaire wrong? There must be SOMETHING one guesses right, n'est-ce pas?
I'm still not sure, it's not like with the English test, but - there it is, purple on white. C2. 
Je ne sais pas qu'est-il qui a crée cette site, mais il pense je ne suis pas un idiot complet :-) And it feels quite nice :-)
What it is saying is that my sense for French is not bad, not bad at all... I chose the option that FELT best. Not the one I KNEW to be right, but the one that FELT best...

Learn Finnish I

Tervetuloa!

You can also say:

Hei!

Moi!

Kaksi opiskelijaa tapaavat toisensa yliopistolla

Petri: Hei! Minun nimeni on Petri. Mikä sinun nimesi on?
Anna: Hei, Petri. Minä olen Anna.
Petri: Anteeksi, mitä? Hanna?
Anna: Ei, kun Anna. A-N-N-A
Petri: Ai, Anna! Hauska tutustua.

Anna: Hauska tutustua.

Kaksi päivää myöhemmin he tapaavat yliopiston kahvilassa.

Petri: Huomenta, Anna, mites menee?
Anna: Hyvin, entäs itselläsi?
Petri: Hyvin, kiitos. Anna, tässä on ystäväni Jussi; Jussi, tässä on Anna.
Jussi: Hei, hauska tavata.
Anna: Hauska tavata.
Jussi: Kuinka vanha olet?
Anna: Minä olen kaksikymmentäkolme vuotta, entäs sinä?
Jussi: Minä olen myös kahdenkymmenenkolmen, Petri on kaksikymmentäneljä.

Näkemiin! 

Hyvästi!

Hei-hei!

Heippa!

Moikka!

Week 7: Hebrew

Now, here's a language I think I'm going to study a lot more than Syriac.

The question is, why? Am I so pro-Israel? No.

1) I have always been interested in witchcraft, magic, occult things, and somewhere in the history the Europeans decided Hebrew looks decidedly mystical, very interesting, must be really magical too, and then they found out about Kabbalah, and then they started talking about all these books and writings about magic in Hebrew. (or that was what I thought... in reality, most of these "Hebrew" scriptures were written in French or some other such language, because the idiots didn't really know Hebrew, and all these "Hebrew scriptures" they are referring to exist only in their imagination. So there so. Nevertheless, as I was growing up in Finland back at the 70's and 80's, we didn't have the access to translated books the way we have today. So - I thought I NEEDED to learn Hebrew to be able to ever read these books.)

2) Hebrew was part of the classical high-school education when all the "latin school" students were supposed to be priests... If all those guys knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew, so would I.

3) My husband is Jewish. I want to learn Hebrew and Yiddisch for him. :-)

--------------

There's about 5 million of native Hebrew (Ivrit) speakers, and about the same amount speak Hebrew as their second language. It is one of the official languages of Israel.

Ivrit was re-created, revived, using the historical Hebrew, Hebrew pidgins and creoles (especially Yiddish), and the living Semitic languages (and some Turkish and Latin) as base in the end of 19th century.

There isn't really a word order; one can omit the verb from the sentence, and other stuff like that, which makes it nice. They say the conjugation of verbs is the most difficult thing in Hebrew.

So - I learned the Aleph-Beit through this song. Even though I hate the preppy style and explanatory stuff in between is... er... stupid? what ever. Nevertheless, I learned the Aleph-Beit.
(I also like this Aleph Beis song, even though... well... Yeah, it's for kids and it's also somewhat stupid, but it does the work. I also hate the "one of a kind". I don't think it means what he thinks it does...)

Then I suggest you take a piece of paper and write, like you did when you learned to write your mothertongue. A row after row alephs, bets, gimels, dalets and so on.
Then you should write the names of the letters in Hebrew.
Then you should find words that start with each letter and write those, line after line...
And then you should start copying sentences.
If you do this every day, write your two pages, you will know the letters, you will be reading fluently, and the biggest obstacle is gone.
It should take only a couple of hours to learn the aleph-beit, and then two pages of practice will keep them in your head.

And I know there is a handwriting form of these letters, but I think that differs so very much of the printed form, I would try to emulate the printed form to my best ability, perhaps take a couple of pointers from the handwriting, like the difference of waw and nun, to learn the printed form properly, and then learn the handwriting (cursive) later - just like we did.

Here's a video I like about how to write the Hebrew letters nicely, calligraphy style. (It also shows the Arabic letters, so you might learn them too at the same time :-D)

Here's how to write "cursive" Hebrew 

Here's about the numbers, and here something about using numbers with words. (It has some importance when learning the numbers, because "teens" are "one ten, two tens, three tens..." and ten is feminine... so achat'esreh, shteim'esreh, shlosh'esreh, arba'esreh, chamesh'esreh, shesh'esreh, shva'esreh, shmone'esreh, tsha'esreh.
20+ is twenty and ... esrim v' and the number in feminine
30, 40, 50 etc. are number+im (threes, fours, fives?)
And hundred... well, there's a book called "May-Ah Teach You 100 Hebrew Words?!". 100 is mea.

Useful Hebrew phrases

Of course I couldn't...

52 languages, 52 weeks...
Week six is over, and I haven't studied much Syriac at all. I can't find any motivation.
I have been practicing my Hebrew letters though. Ha.

I am also getting more and more interested in the Scandinavian languages. As far as I know I have the access to the Norwegian guy for three more months and that's it... so, I kind of think it would be better if I can use him now. :-D
So I have been learning how to count in Norwegian and Danish today.

Okay... Norwegian. Sounds pretty easy, huh?
But what... what are they doing with N? "enjnn"? R? Ärjr? My husband says that I shouldn't bother about such matters, the correct pronunciation comes with time, so I think I'll believe him.
Danish alphabet... I can say F, L, M, N, S, X and Æ :-D My Danish husband says my pronunciation is good for a foreigner :-D It's very good of him :-)


6 weeks challenge:
So... I was talking with a guy, and said that I am giving French only about 60%, not 100%. I have been wasting this day too, listening to funny videos at YouTube, listening to French songs, learning Danish and Norwegian, and 1 P.M. I decided to stop wasting my time and put in some serious language learning... now it's 5 P.M. Guess if I have studied French? No.

Subject pronouns in textbooks: written vs spoken French

In Finland we use the passive (which I have learned "on" is in French) in spoken language more often as "we" than the grammatically correct "we".

I have always thought of "on" as the Swedish "man" - "one" (a man, a person)...


but it seems the French do use it more like the Finnish passive...

But to change the language teaching to reflect the changes in spoken language... no. It might be important to mention, so that it doesn't come as a shock, but I believe it is not good to try to put ALL the information in the head at once, from the very beginning,

I believe it would be confusing to try to understand this in stead of the "obsolete" je, tu, il, on, nous, vous, ils -list. Especially because I assume the different forms of these pronouns (je-me-mon-moi-mienne) still follow the written, classical, or what you wish to call it, form. It might be easier to learn them using "nous" as "we" and not "on".

I'm sure people will very quickly adjust their spoken language to what is being spoken around them, and will understand the different uses of person pronouns as they are being used.

French passive voice

Uh. My weekend, and I'm wasting it looking at stupid videos on YouTube.

I don't know about this girl... I would like to know what has happened to her... and I hope she would have said in her profile that this is her make-believe personality or something like that. It could have been great. I think I'd liked her if she had just been a little bit nicer. But I have been wasting hours I could have used studying languages... I can't even put this as Japanese studies, because she speaks so badly :-D

Well, well... what ever :-D

 pater noster in Aramaic written in Hebrew letters

I haven't studied much Syriac, but I have studied Maltese and Ivrit. :-D I don't think I want to learn Syriac... Perhaps Arabic one day.