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Stupid Brain, Accept More Knowledge!
Mar. 30th, 2010 06:58 pmI haven't tried to seriously learn a language in a while... the last language studies I did was in conversational Japanese, and that wasn't too bad since I had a working knowledge of some of the sounds and had a small vocabulary to start with (it helps when you like music and programs from that county). And I was doing it more for my own amusement...
Before that I had 4 years of German in high school and that was easy because 1) I was younger, 2) I had class everyday, and 3) there are so many cognates, it was practically like speaking English ;p In middle school I was also exposed to Latin and French on a MUCH smaller scale (not really enough for them to be useful).
I'm TRYING to learn some Turkish before I go to Turkey. Toygar doesn't expect me to learn a lot, and he has told me many times that he does not want me to push myself to be even close to fluent. But he's worried about translating for me for an entire month-- and I don't blame him there. That will get very annoying for him and it will be hard for him too. He asked nicely if I'd try to learn a little so I can follow some conversations without him translating every word.
I do have experience following conversations in languages that I don't understand and I've been told that I am quite good at picking up on hand signals and body language. I've even made some people believe that I actually DID know the language when I had no idea what they were really saying, I was just following gestures. The problem is Turkish is not sticking for me... and some things are confusing. The language sounds nothing like anything I have ever studied and so far I have not seen many words that are even close to their English counterparts. Kedi (cat) and Araba (car) are probably the closest I've had to any words that were "easy."
I'm using Rosetta Stone, which has an interesting approach to language teaching. It immerses you in the language and forces you to work out what the words mean based on pictures and association (i.e. there is no English "translation" to speak of, it's supposed to mimic how you learn as a child). So far, I've learned a few nouns, some verbs (which aren't sticking as well as the nouns) and now it's introducing me to colors and adjectives such as "old" and "new." Each day, I think I walk away with MAYBE 30% of what it was TRYING to get me to remember... Though I can't help feeling that if this were German I'd be kicking way more ass ;p
In the next 2 months, I don't know how much I will retain. It's like my brain doesn't want to cooperate 9_9
Before that I had 4 years of German in high school and that was easy because 1) I was younger, 2) I had class everyday, and 3) there are so many cognates, it was practically like speaking English ;p In middle school I was also exposed to Latin and French on a MUCH smaller scale (not really enough for them to be useful).
I'm TRYING to learn some Turkish before I go to Turkey. Toygar doesn't expect me to learn a lot, and he has told me many times that he does not want me to push myself to be even close to fluent. But he's worried about translating for me for an entire month-- and I don't blame him there. That will get very annoying for him and it will be hard for him too. He asked nicely if I'd try to learn a little so I can follow some conversations without him translating every word.
I do have experience following conversations in languages that I don't understand and I've been told that I am quite good at picking up on hand signals and body language. I've even made some people believe that I actually DID know the language when I had no idea what they were really saying, I was just following gestures. The problem is Turkish is not sticking for me... and some things are confusing. The language sounds nothing like anything I have ever studied and so far I have not seen many words that are even close to their English counterparts. Kedi (cat) and Araba (car) are probably the closest I've had to any words that were "easy."
I'm using Rosetta Stone, which has an interesting approach to language teaching. It immerses you in the language and forces you to work out what the words mean based on pictures and association (i.e. there is no English "translation" to speak of, it's supposed to mimic how you learn as a child). So far, I've learned a few nouns, some verbs (which aren't sticking as well as the nouns) and now it's introducing me to colors and adjectives such as "old" and "new." Each day, I think I walk away with MAYBE 30% of what it was TRYING to get me to remember... Though I can't help feeling that if this were German I'd be kicking way more ass ;p
In the next 2 months, I don't know how much I will retain. It's like my brain doesn't want to cooperate 9_9
