Lately I haven’t been home much. For the past months, I have traveled to a few places and for me, the fatigue from traveling holds just as amount of energy as the excitement from seeing somewhere “new”. Here is a clip of areas in Helsinki,Finland. I will post more clips as well as part 2 of our Europe trip.
Ziad Fazah has returned with new videos on Youtube. You may remember when he was interviewed on a network series television show in the past. Check out the latest from him below.
English
Chinese
Japanese
Blog Update:
There are so many good languages to learn this year! I haven’t forgot about the blog =] . I’m having fun working on Slavic and Asian languages at the moment and will be posting my experiences this year. Before then, I would like to add some videos of the past about resources and such here on the blog since I was unable to do so previously. More info coming soon.
Fun with Croatian
Been quite a few months since I’ve last glanced at the the beginning units of TYS Croatian. Here is a review of grammatical points and key terms from Units 1. I’ll add 2, 3, 4, in the next post. I started studying Croatian the first week of July 2010 (July 3rd to be exact) after receiving the books I ordered for the language. Currently I am working through a course book.
Teach Yourself Croatian: (Course book)
Unit 1:
Grammar – In Croatian, ja and vi (I and You) are usually omitted and rarely used unless its a direct/personal question being ask. Also, the words: the , a , an have the same meaning and there are no replacements for them. Examples in context below:
§ In a hotel = U hotelu
§ In the hotel = U hotelu
Short form vs Long form – The main difference between these two is simple. Short form is never used as the first word of a sentence/phrase. The Long form is normally used to answer questions or ask questions. Examples in context below:
§ I am new styles = Ja sam new styles
§ I am new styles = Ja jesam new styles
Key terms :
§ I am = Ja sam
§ You speak english well = Dobro govorite engleski
§ I speak a little = Govorim malo
§ I am learning = Učim
§ Who are you = Tko ste ti
§ Do you understand = Razumijete li
§ Not much = Slabo
§ How are you = Kako ste
I stumbled across an important thread (which I’ve been debating with myself for some time now) over at the HTLAL forum a few days ago. I’d gladly appreciate feedback from those who’ve taken the time to read this post. Okay…. we all have some sort of “unused or lost time” within our daily activities. A brief example of my daily activities consist of organizing class assignments, feeding the dog, bit of house chores then off to school around mid afternoon. Between these activities is usually the perfect time for input based listening within the target language that I am studying. I would play random dialogues from the Teach Yourself series or Colloquial while completing whichever task that im working on but here’s the issue…. I find myself doing much more of hearing than listening. What I mean is that I’m usually giving attention towards lets say “organizing assignments for class” and only hearing the spoken language without much focus oppose to listening (which isn’t good IMHO). On the other-hand, one perk of hearing when referring to language study is that your mind eventually becomes use to different sound patterns. Focusing is done by concentration and listening requires lots of concentration so that your brain can effectively process meaning from words and sentences which in turn leads to learning. With that being said, I find that during study hours is when I am listening at best which is why I am able to absorb and learn new aspects of the target language. To sum up the process of listening, see the attached image below. What’s your input on this topic? Do you think there is a difference between passive hearing and active listening?
Process of Listening
The Campus
I have been very busy with summer courses since early June. While being a full time student for the summer semester at my university and also working five days out of the week, I haven’t had much time to update the blog as frequent as I’d like to. Currently I am studying for 2 state exams that are required for my degree. Even though there are only 5 weeks left for summer classes, the work load is still considerably heavy. Without Podcast’s and Pimsleur for audio on the go, keeping up with the current languages I’m studying would be a very difficult task. More updates will be coming very shortly within a few more weeks. Btw, you can now follow me on Twitter as well.
A YouTube friend syzygycc started a great concept for any language enthusiasts and just about anyone who has some type of language experiences. Everyone can participate in this project. This project is about sharing the stories, the methods, and the experiences we language learners have. This is going to be a major book with wealth amounts of information and I encourage anyone who are addicts of foreign languages to join in. IT’S FREE! Just head over to these links posted and be sure to watch syzygycc video on The Polyglot Project for concepts, ideas and more information.
Videos:
As I can remember, I started dabbling with Tagalog (language of the Philippines) during July of last year 2009. Before then, I was actively studying Portuguese and still continue to look over notes that I’ve created during study hours. In the past weeks, I was inspired by a popular movie within south Eastern Europe which I watched 3 times in the target language only (for listening— absorbing the sounds) and have now started learning the basics of this language.
I am glad to say that I’ve resumed my Tagalog studies while passively accepting this new Slavic language. Some of my YouTube friends may have a clue on which language it is although I won’t announce it at the moment.
Credits would have to go to Pimsleur for implanting basic knowledge of Tagalog in my brain from scratch—point zero. I started with that series before going over to Teach Yourself Tagalog. Although I’ve listened to the Pimsleur Tagalog lessons, I am going to restart the series and refresh up on what I’ve learned throughout the 30 Units given for the course. I really wish that Simon & Schuster (publishers of the Pimsleur Approach) continued to produce level’s 2 & 3 for Tagalog and did not stop at LEVEL 1.
For Portuguese, I used the Teach yourself series and was able to achieve my goals. In fact, my communication with native speakers while in Brazil seemed second nature and I didn’t even finish the course book yet. Well, Teach yourself Tagalog is a whole different story!
You see…. Each Teach Yourself book is written by different authors who have personal approaches towards the language that is being introduced & covered within the course book. The Teach Yourself Tagalog book falls short when it comes to translations of the dialogues….. hence, which is a problem. So my approach wasn’t working well as it did for Portuguese and I had to find a solution. What’s the solution you ask? Well, a different method in using the book. The answer?
I’ve been a long time subscriber of Laoshu505000 a friend of mine on YouTube and after discussing this unique method of his with him, I was able to dissect the dialogues of Unit 1-5 for key terms without a problem and have built a collection of example phrases which are useful when speaking for the first time. I am currently using this method along with Luca’s (a friend on YouTube as well) re-translation technique in order to gain a higher level of knowledge in Tagalog in a short amount of time.
Both are going good and I hope to someday find a technique which works best for me. Tagalog pronunciation is not that bad for native speakers of English so after getting use to the pronunciation of the “ng” connectors (first word ending with a vowel), everything else should be easy.
Well that’s all for now, I’ve posted pictures of the two books that I’m using for Tagalog now. A grammar book and a course book.
TEACH YOURSELF TAGALOG - COURSE BOOK
BASIC TAGALOG - GRAMMAR BOOK
Greetings,
Welcome to Spoken Styles, a brand new blog of mine. This is the first time I’ve created a blog and I hope that this experience will be rewarding. The intention and focus of this blog is strictly on foreign language learning experiences….hmm maybe ounces on culture as well xD. I hope to not bore viewers & bloggers who visit and will try my best to keep things interesting. I am a serious language addict sorry. More details over at [about me] section. Keep in touch =)
-NewStylles
Knowledge is Power
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