Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Turkish

 I am starting with the basics, again, but it doesn't matter. I have forgotten practically everything.

I'm planning on getting my Turkish to level A2 this year, so next week I'm going to focus on the following:

1) Learn the personal pronouns

2) Turkish has 6 cases

https://www.colanguage.com/turkish-personal-pronouns

3) How to say "yes, no, OK" in Turkish

4) forming plurals

5) numbers (cardinals and ordinals)

6) Some Turkish prepositions
https://fluentinturkish.com/grammar/turkish-prepositions
https://ling-app.com/tr/turkish-prepositions/
https://www.lingohut.com/en/v776983/turkish-lessons-common-prepositions
https://mylanguages.org/turkish_prepositions.php
https://polymath.org/turkish_prepositions.php

7) To be (which doesn't exist in Turkish)

https://www.colanguage.com/verb-be-turkish-conjugation

There's "olmak" which means "to become" - it's used in "olmak ya da olmamak" - to be or not to be
But other than that, there's this grammatical form

8) Turkish past tenses

9) Colors in Turkish

10) telling the time

11) One 1000 common words list :-D


Turkish has become a popular language among language learners, so it has quite a lot of resources on the internet.

https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/tr/en/Learn-Turkish
https://www.lingohut.com/en/l98/learn-turkish
https://www.mondly.com/how-to-speak-turkish
https://elon.io/learn-turkish/lessons
https://www.digitaldialects.com/Turkish.htm
https://turkishwithemre.com/
https://turkish.yasar.edu.tr/?l=en
https://www.turkishtextbook.com/
https://www.turkishclass.com/
https://www.livelingua.com/courses/Turkish
https://www.loecsen.com/en/learn-turkish#/en/Essentials
https://www.busuu.com/en/course/learn-turkish-online
https://www.lingq.com/en/learn-turkish-online/
https://turkishbasics.com/
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-turkish.html
https://mylanguages.org/learn_turkish.php
https://www.50languages.com/turkish-for-free
https://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-en-tr
https://www.lingo-play.com/en/turkish-lessons-online/
https://app.memrise.com/community/courses/english/?q=turkish
https://readlang.com/tr/library
https://www.learnalanguage.com/learn-turkish/


Monday, January 1, 2024

52 in 52, 2024 edition :-)

This time around, the 52 languages are the ones I want to learn better. There are not many new languages here.

Right now the languages are:

Albanian*

Basque*

Breton*

Bulgarian

Chaldean Aramaic

Cherokee*

Chinese**

Czech*

Danish***

Dutch**

Esperanto

Estonian***

French*****

Georgian

German*****

Greek*

Hawaiian

Hebrew*

Hungarian***

Icelandic

Igbo*

Irish Gaelic*

Italian****

Japanese**

Klingon

Korean**

Latin*

Latvian

Lithuanian

Maltese

Navajo*

Norwegian***

Occitan

Persian (Farsi)

Polish*

Portuguese****

Romanian****

Russian****

Sami***

Scottish Gaelic*

Sign Language**

Silbo Gomero

Sindarin

Spanish****

Swahili*

Turkish**

Vulcan

Walloon

Welsh*

Xhosa

Yiddish


The "workout"

1) Learn the personal pronouns

2) in all cases

3) How to say"yes, no, OK"

4) forming plurals

5) numbers(cardinals and ordinals)

6) Basic, most common prepositions/cases

7) To be

8) past tenses

9) Colors

10) telling the time

11) One 1000 common words list:-D


Wednesday, December 27, 2023

100 Goals you can have as a language learner

 

Originally posted by Lovely Blue Panda

A follower of mine asked me what are some realistic goals when you’re learning languages but before giving you 100 examples, I want to mention that you can have daily, weekly, monthly or/and yearly goals. If you get easily distracted and need motivation, set goals for each category; however, if you can focus and be motivated for a longer period of time, you might not need daily or/and weekly goals.

Also, the numbers/minutes/hours are an example, you can change them according to your time, resources, motivation, etc.

Daily goals

  1. Read 1 article in your target language.
  2. Learn 10 words.
  3. Learn 1 poem in your target language.
  4. Learn a song in your target language.
  5. Watch a movie.
  6. Read 1 page from a book in your target language.
  7. Sing 1 song in your target language.
  8. Talk with a native for 10 minutes.
  9. Learn 2 idioms.
  10. Translate 1 song.
  11. Translate 1 poem.
  12. Write 1 short text about anything.
  13. Watch 1 episode from your favorite show dubbed/subbed.
  14. Get 50 points on Duolingo.
  15. Make a vocab list.
  16. Learn 1 new grammatical concept.
  17. Think in your target language for 10 minutes
  18. Read to a podcast for 15 minutes.
  19. Learn 1 tongue twister.
  20. Spend 15 minutes on WordBrewery.
  21. Play on Babadum for 15 minutes.
  22. Use Clozemaster for 15 minutes.
  23. Listen to an audiobook for 10 minutes.
  24. Revise your notes for 20 minutes.
  25. Learn 1 vocab list.

Weekly

  1. Read 10 articles in your target language.
  2. Read 2 books for children.
  3. Learn 5 poems.
  4. Learn 3 songs.
  5. Watch 3 movies.
  6. Learn 10 grammatical concepts.
  7. Talk for 2 hours in your target language.
  8. Learn 5 vocab lists.
  9. Learn 100 new words.
  10. Finish 8 lessons on Duolingo. (I mean the entire bullet/dot/set of mini-lessons)
  11. Watch 10 episodes from your favorite show in your target language subbed/dubbed.
  12. Learn 30 idioms.
  13. Write 3 A4 pages about anything.
  14. Translate 5 songs.
  15. Learn 3 vocab lists.
  16. Revise with the help of some tests online for 2 hours.
  17. Change your phone settings to be in your target language.
  18. Make a summary of the books you’ve read.
  19. Read 10 pages from a complex book in your target language. 
  20. Make 5 vocab lists.
  21. Write a motivational text of 10 lines for you in your target language about why you enjoy learning languages.
  22. Think for 2 hours in your target language.
  23. Translate 3 pages from a book in your native language.
  24. Translate 3 pages from a book in your target language.
  25. Discover 10 new songs in your target language.

Monthly

  1. Learn 350 new words.
  2. Read 1 advanced book in your target language.
  3. Finish a grammar book.
  4. Finish 10 stories for kids.
  5. Learn 80 idioms.
  6. Learn 20 vocab lists.
  7. Finish 35 lessons on Duolingo. (the bullets/dots/set of mini-lessons)
  8. Make 20 vocab lists.
  9. Watch 10 movies in your target language subbed/dubbed.
  10. Translate 10 songs.
  11. Learn 10 poems.
  12. Learn 5 songs.
  13. Talk to natives for 10 hours. 
  14. Write summaries for every chapter/article you’ve read.
  15. Watch 15 YouTube videos in your target language.
  16. Make a story of 5 minutes while looking at a random picture on Google.
  17. Understand a song (that you don’t know) without checking the lyrics too often.
  18. Read 20 articles.
  19. Make a dish while reading the recipe in your target language
  20. Revise for 20 hours.
  21. Keep a journal with your daily progress and at the end of the month, read how many things you achieved.
  22. Read to a podcast for 24 hours.
  23. Think in your target language for 24 hours.
  24. Play babadum/clozemaster for 10 hours.

Yearly

  1. Be mistaken for a native.
  2. Know 50 poems.
  3. Be able to sing most Disney songs in your target language.
  4. Watch movies without subs.
  5. Learn 10.000 words.
  6. Read 10 advanced books.
  7. Finish Duolingo/whatever course you use.
  8. Be able to think in your target language effortlessly.
  9. Master irregular verbs.
  10. Have at least 5 native friends that talk to you in your target language.
  11. Be proud you didn’t give up.
  12. Study a bit daily.
  13. Finish 3 grammar books/workbooks/books for advanced learners.
  14. Have a decent accent.
  15. Be able to read without translating anything.
  16. Watch more movies in your target language than your native one/English.
  17. Have favorite YouTubers that are native to your target language.
  18. Keep a diary and read how your year has been.
  19. Be able to talk about advanced stuff.
  20. Have very detailed descriptions.
  21. Know the most popular songs in your target language.
  22. Read mostly in your target language.
  23. Know several new recipes that are cooked only in the country where your target language is spoken.
  24. Being able to say that you’re bilingual/multilingual/a polyglot.
  25. Learn your next language through the one that you mastered already.

Monday, December 18, 2023

Long time no seen, huh?

 Well... here I am again. 

I am living proof of that when it comes to learning languages, your talents, aptitude, intelligence, ability to learn, interest, access to materials, all that isn't worth much. The thing that matters is tenacity. If you give it 15 minutes every day, come shine, come rain, you will learn much better than when I give it 24/7 for 3 weeks and then - nothing. Sure, I can learn 100 words in an hour, and still remember most of them 10 years later, with nothing done to upkeep them during the time, but what does that do? 

I wish I could keep up with just 15 minutes a day, or learn just 20 words a day, but every day. I would be using more languages than I have right now. Sure, I have sentences in a lot of languages, and I can read books in more than five languages, and I do consider myself a polyglot, but... hmmm...

"Polyglot: Considered to be the genius in languages who can communicate in several different languages, however, only less than 1% of Homo sapiens can converse in five different languages flawlessly."

Flawlessly? I don't think anyone can do that. 

Anyway... in a dream world, my goal for 2024 would be

- to become fluent in German and French

- improve my Scandinavians and Fennics (that would be Danish and Norwegian, and Sami, Estonian, and Hungarian)

- improve my Spanish and Italian (maybe also Portuguese. I think I need to finish my Ecclesiastes project.)

- learn Maltese and Polish well enough to be able to read the books (Sqaq L-Infern by Simon Bartolo and Loranne Vella, and Krew elfów by Andrzej Sapkowski)

- learn Russian well enough to be able to read those books

- Improve the languages I have started.

that would be

- Japanese

- Korean

- Chinese

- Dutch

- Arabic

- Turkish

- Sign language

There's also Cherokee and Navajo, the Celtic languages, and Basque on this list, but I think that might be a little too much with all those others... but I can save them as candy for the times I don't want to think about those others :-D

Also Swahili, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

- For some reason, I need to learn Igbo. I don't know why, I don't know where the need comes from, I just woke up one day knowing I needed to learn Igbo. Weird. 



Sunday, December 18, 2022

Hebrew, Farsi, and Juhuri

 “That had better be my Annushka and not some horrible bureaucrat!” Babulya yelled in the language she had brought with her from her homeland, those seaside southern mountains that Anya swore she would see someday. Juhuri—a mix of Hebrew and Persian—could be so soft and musical, but not when Babulya spat it out like she was doing at that moment. “I’m not in the mood for bureaucrats!”

- Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack

Discovering the unexpected connections between Persian and Hebrew


Sunday, November 7, 2021

Don't mind if I do, thank you :-)

11 Obscure but Cool Languages You Should Learn, and How to Do It

Cornish
Catalan
Breton
Xhosa
Belarusian
Tibetan
Basque
Leonese
Maltese
Hawaiian
Occitan

Breton, Xhosa, Basque, Leonese, Maltese, and Occitan are already on my to learn list :-D



Thursday, November 4, 2021

November 2021 6WC

 So, now I'm somewhat in sync with the 6 Weeks' Challenge, as I'm interested in languages and the challenge just started yesterday :-D
I chose Polish, but... hmm... I'm not into Polish right now...

I'd rather continue with my Mara Meimaridi parallel translation... or just read the book in German and get it over and done with :-D It's rather dysfunctional to be reading it a couple of sentences at a time. 

But I found a Hungarian translation! Yay!

So... on to that, then :-D

This time a much shorter passage

Deftere bir büyü yazıyordu. Büyücülerden bazı yerlerde kocakarı, bazı yerlerde cadı ya da nurlular, bazı yerlerde ise yazıtların koruyucuları diye söz ediliyordu. Birbirlerinden farklı şeyler olmalıydılar. Belki de aralarında bir hiyerarşi vardı. Üstünde kilit olan bir kitap açtım. Sarı yaldızla yazılmış bazı isimlerin yanında her biri diğerinden farklı ve güçlü bir ışıkla parlayan güneşler vardı. Hımmmm!... Işığın yanında bir yıldız ve bir ters üçgen var.

Más abajo, en el libro de cuentas, había escritos unos sortilegios de magia. A las brujas, a veces las llamaba "brujas", otras veces las llamaba "iluminadas" y otras, "guardianas de las escrituras". Deben de ser cosas distintas. Tal vez haya una jerarquía. Abrí el libro de la cerradura. En efecto, cada nombre dorado tenía a su lado un sol distinto que arrojaba una luz cegadora. ¡Hummm...! Al lado de la luz, una espiga y un triángulo al revés.

Πιο κάτω το τεφτεράκι έγραφε μαγικά. Τις μάγισσες άλλον τις ανέφερε "μάισσες", άλλον "φωτισμένες" κι άλλον "φυλακές των γράφων". Άλλο πρέπει να 'ναι το 'να κι άλλο τ' άλλο. 'Ίσως νπάρχει ιεραρχία.'Άνοιξα το βιβλίο με την κλειδαριά.'Όντως το καφέ "χρυσό" όνομα είχε δίπλα έναν αλλιώτικο ήλιο πον έβγαζε άπλετο ψως. Χμ! Δίπλα στο ψως ένα στάρι και ένα ανάποδο τρίγωνο.

Weiter unten im Heft standen Zaubersprüche. Hexen nannte sie einmal "Magierinnen", dann wieder "Illuminatinnen" und anderswo "Hüterinnen der Schriften". Da musste es gewisse Unterschiede geben. Vielleicht eine Art Hierarchie. Dann schlug ich das Buch mit dem Metallschloss auf. Tatsächlich, neben jedem "goldenen" Namen befand sich eine merkwürdige Sonne, von der helle strahlen ausgingen. Daneben waren eine Weizenähre und ein auf dem Kopf stehendes Dreieck gezeichnet.

A kis noteszben tovább lapozva a mágia világa elevenedett meg elöttem. Az iromány a boszorkányokat néhol mágusnak, máshol megvilágosultnak vagy az írás örzöjének nevezte. Lehetséges, hogy mindegyik mást-mást jelent? Talán valamiféle hierarchia volt köztük. Kinyitottam a kulcsos könyvet. Minden aranyszínnel írt név mellé egy különös formájú nap volt rajzolva, amely végtelen fényt árasztott. A fénysugarak mellett búza és egy fordított háromszög állt.

Kiek žemiau sąsiuvinyje buvo prirašyta burtažodžių. Burtininkės vienur vadinamos "raganomis", kitur "apšviestosiomis", o dar kitur "raštų saugotojomis". Tai turėtų būti skirtingi dalykai. Galbūt yra kokia hierarchija. Atsiverčiau knyga su užraktu. Tikrai, prie auksu užrašytų vardų nupieštos kitokios saulės, skleidžiancios akinančia šviesa. Aha! Prie spindulių varpa ir apverstas trikampis.

Further down in the notebook she had written about magic. She called witches sometimes witches, sometimes enlightened, and yet other times the guardians of the scriptures. They must be different things. Maybe it was a question of a hierarchy. Then I opened the book with the lock. Next to each golden name was a brightly shining sun, each different from the other. Hmm... Next to them was an ear of wheat and an upside-down triangle.

Senare i anteckningsboken hade hon skrivit om magi. Häxor kallades ibland för häxor, ibland för de upplysta, och ibland för skriftens väktare. Det måste finnas någon skillnad mellan dem. Kanske handlade det om hierarkin. Jag öppnade boken med metallocket. Näst till varje gyllene namn fanns en strålande sol, var och en olik från de andra. Hmm... Bredvid dem fanns en veteaxe och en upp-och-nervänd triangel.

Hän oli kirjoittanut muistivihkon loppuun noituudesta. Noitia kutsuttiin välillä noidiksi, välillä valaistuiksi, ja välillä kirjoituksen vartijoiksi. Niiden täytyy merkitä eri asioita. Ehkäpä kyseessä oli hierarkia. Avasin kirjan jossa oli metallilukko. Jokaisen kullatun nimen vieressä oli säteilevä aurinko, jokainen omanlaisensa. Hmm... Niiden vieressä oli vehnäntähkä ja ylösalaisin oleva kolmio.



Deftere bir büyü yazıyordu.

deftere - in the notebook - defter - notebook compare to Greek τεφτερι
There's some interesting etymology here... τεφτερι, notebook, ledger comes from Turkish, the Turkish word defter comes from Arabic دَفْتَر‎ (daftar), from Aramaic דהפתּיר‎ (defter), from Ancient Greek διφθέρα (diphthéra), hide, pergament. (Compare also Old Persian 𐎮𐎡𐎱𐎡 (di-i-p-i /dipi/), Akkadian 𒁾 (ṭuppu, “tablet, document, letter”), and Sumerian 𒁾 (dub, “tablet”))
bir - one, a, some
büyü - spell, magic 
yaziyordu - to write in 3.s past progressive - she was writing - infinitive yazmak

Πιο κάτω το τεφτεράκι έγραφε μαγικά. 

Nothing special here, it's all very straightforward

Πιο - more
κάτω - below
το - the
τεφτεράκι - notebook
έγραφε - past imperfect 3.s γράφω - to write, to record
μαγικά - magic, pl.neutral 

Más abajo, en el libro de cuentas, había escritos unos sortilegios de magia. 

abajo - below - más abajo - more below, lower, under
el libro - el libro de cuentas - en el libro de cuentas
había escritos - 3.s pluperfect of escribir
unos - m.pl of un - one -> some
unos sortilegios - un sortilegio - magical spell, witchcraft 

Weiter unten im Heft standen Zaubersprüche.

Weiter - further
unten - below
im Heft - in the notebook
standen - 3.pl preterite of stehen - to stand, to appear
Zaubersprüche - Zauber - magic, spell, Sprüche pl. of Spruche - short saying, like slogan or proverb. Zauberspruch is a spell or incantation.

A kis noteszben tovább lapozva a mágia világa elevenedett meg előttem.

kis - small
noteszben - in the notebook notesz + -ben
tovább - further, farther
lapozva - adv.part of lapoz - to turn the page, to move on
a mágia világa - world of magic - világa is 3.s single-possession possessive of világ
elevenedett meg - past participle of megelevenít - to quicken, to animate, to come to life, to imagine, to visualize
meg- usually expresses completion 
elevenít is to enliven
előttem - előtt in front of - előttem - in front of me

Quite a poetic way of expressing this... "moving further on in the small notebook, the world of magic came to life in front of me". Compare this to the original text. "She had written about magic further on in the notebook". :-D

Kiek žemiau sąsiuvinyje buvo prirašyta burtažodžių. 

Kiek žemiau sąsiuvinyje buvo prirašyta burtažodžių. 

Kiek - how much?
žemiau - lower, comparative form of žẽmas
Kiek žemiau - a little lower, below
sąsiuvinyje - loc. of sąsiuvinis
buvo - 3.pl past of būti; to be, to exist, to become
prirašyta - stative passive participle of prirašytas - rašytas - to write - pri prefix implies including something, adding something, making something bigger or more important, etc.
buvo prirašyta - it was added - stative passive 3.s
burtažodžių - pl. genitive of burtažõdis - spell
žõdis - word
bùrtas - lot, sorcery (sort of rune)

Hän oli kirjoittanut muistivihkon loppuun noituudesta. 

Hän - she, he - Finnish doesn't have different words for pronouns for different genders
oli - was - to be - olla 3.s imperfect
kirjoittanut - part. of kirjoittaa - to write 
oli kirjoittanut - had written
muistivihkon - s.gen - muistivihko + n the notebook's - Finnish doesn't have articles either. You know if it's definite or indefinite by context. 
loppuun - s.ill. loppu - to the end 
noituudesta - s.el noituus - of the witchcraft, from the witchcraft, about the witchcraft
noita - witch - noituus - witchcraft. This is a very Finnic word, in Sami the word is noaidi, and it means more a shaman than a fairybook witch, but that's the word in Finnish for all magic users. There is also velho, which means a wizard (Harry Potter and Gandalf are both velho), and it comes from Slavic languages.