Showing posts with label Polish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Polish. Show all posts
The end of Polish and new distractions
Hej kochani!
So, it's a week since I should have finished Polish but I'm still doing a bit of studying on and off, as I don't really feel like I've done justice to the lanaguge. Just like with Tamil, I just haven't spent that much time over it on over the course of a month. Also becuase I have an older Colloquial Polish which goes through the grammar in a way that I find really satisfying to study but puts me right back into my comfort zone of studying from books and making notes, rather than speaking. I took my Polish books on a seaside break with no internet and managed to get through a lot of lessons and make a lot of notes, but not really retain them.
This is a lesson I should take on board really, when I try to tear through my text books at speed, it is often at the expense of trying out what I have learned and remembering it. I need to create my own sentences etc and not just consume.
I found it hard to connect with Polish on the whole, but what one great thing was that there is such a great community of Polish bookstagrammers and language instagrammers, so I could do some of my Spanish tricks of picking up slang from social posts and the replies so that I can pretend to be a little more fluent.
So with a guilty conscience, I need to move on to Gujarati. I expect I will come back to Polish before long though.
Even though I have plenty on my plate, I had a few flashes of language inspiration last week, which I am just going to list here so I can sort of put them to bed:
+ Old English... I read something about etymolgy of English words and subsequently ordered Teach Yourself Old English so I can develop my understanding of my own language
+ Classical Greek... I got a copy of Plutarch's Greek lives in a charity shop and reading the introduction about how Plutarch lived in this transition world between Roman and Greek made me want to learn Classical Greek so much. So I ordered TY Classical Greek and a Grammar and Dictionary.
+ I finally found a Tamil Grammar which has actual and romanised scripts. So in love!
+ For Spanish, after nine months of not being bothered, I want to get excellent at Spanish and am on the DELE train again... I need to make a plan to take B2 probably next Autumn...
+I'm becoming more and more interested in Indian history and have ordered a lot of books...
One week into Polish
cześć!
This is the second weekend of the Polish part of my challenge. It isn't going quite as well as Tamil. On one hand I don't have a new alphabet to learn and the pronunciation is touch but totally doable. On the other, I am finding it super hard to keep the consonant-heavy words in my memory and my main resource is a 1983 copy of Colloquial Polish from Skoob books, which doesn't have the same audio as is now on the Colloquial website. I also don't have any connections with Poland or its culture or history yet and I'm struggling to find the cultural hook.
Colloquial Polih ( or at least my very old edition) is heavy on grammar and teaches you all the conjugations of to be right away which I like. My mind was really rebelling against Colloquial Tamil's 'stealth' approach where they introduce new structures in the text and don't tell you, so you never really learn it. It is quite refreshing to see a verb table and have it be clear when Tamil is so ambiguous.
The resources I am using are The Oxford Essential Polish Dictionary and Routledge Polish; An Essential Grammar. I haven't found any books or TV shows yet but I was excited to learn that Chopin was Polish and I am really enjoying Adam Zamoyski's History of Poland (in English, sigh). I have also been trying to watch all Luca Lampariello's videos about learning Polish.
Overall, I really want to get a decent understanding of this under my belt, but I still feel like doing things in Tamil and I'm worried about my Spanish, which is hamstringing me a bit. I haven't had a chat in another language all week (after Anna Spanish confronted me about not knowing colours). I am doing that thing where I drift and think about Portuguese or Italian and just seem to be busy but not make progress. I think I need to find some Polish friends and learn a bit more about the pOlish community in London.
This is the second weekend of the Polish part of my challenge. It isn't going quite as well as Tamil. On one hand I don't have a new alphabet to learn and the pronunciation is touch but totally doable. On the other, I am finding it super hard to keep the consonant-heavy words in my memory and my main resource is a 1983 copy of Colloquial Polish from Skoob books, which doesn't have the same audio as is now on the Colloquial website. I also don't have any connections with Poland or its culture or history yet and I'm struggling to find the cultural hook.
Colloquial Polih ( or at least my very old edition) is heavy on grammar and teaches you all the conjugations of to be right away which I like. My mind was really rebelling against Colloquial Tamil's 'stealth' approach where they introduce new structures in the text and don't tell you, so you never really learn it. It is quite refreshing to see a verb table and have it be clear when Tamil is so ambiguous.
The resources I am using are The Oxford Essential Polish Dictionary and Routledge Polish; An Essential Grammar. I haven't found any books or TV shows yet but I was excited to learn that Chopin was Polish and I am really enjoying Adam Zamoyski's History of Poland (in English, sigh). I have also been trying to watch all Luca Lampariello's videos about learning Polish.
Overall, I really want to get a decent understanding of this under my belt, but I still feel like doing things in Tamil and I'm worried about my Spanish, which is hamstringing me a bit. I haven't had a chat in another language all week (after Anna Spanish confronted me about not knowing colours). I am doing that thing where I drift and think about Portuguese or Italian and just seem to be busy but not make progress. I think I need to find some Polish friends and learn a bit more about the pOlish community in London.
Week 3 with Tamil
வணக்கம்! Hello!
This is my third weekend of Tamil and according the random of rules of this project, it should be the penultimate. Next week should see me starting Polish...
So, how is life with Tamil? Well, as per, work has been very busy, so I'm not exactly making the tearing fast progress that you might expect. BUT, I have now had two lessons from Italki with two different teachers from Tamil Nadu in India. The first sent me some really helpful phrase lists with romanised and Tamil script, but then made me read them out over and over for an hour, which wasn't very productive. The second, who I had a lesson with at 8am this morning used a powerpoint with phrases BUT also had be go through the sounds of the key vowels and consonants several times and did fun things that got me thinking, like asking me to come up with questions around the key question words, even though she hadn't taught me any verbs yet! I also managed to remember to record the lesson, which will make a huge difference - pronunciation is tricky. But I've already listened to to the recording once and I can feel myself getting into parrot mode and getting a bit more of a grasp on things, in a way that three weeks with Colloquial Tamil just hasn't done.
I am also now the proud owner of a Tamil - English dictionary from Collins, which was made for English learners and so isn't ideal for me, but I love performative spending on language learning. There aren't many other accessories to buy, unless I splash out on some books and items made for diaspora kids.
In terms of culture, I have been eating a watching some things... last week I ordered kotthu roti, pol roti with coconut sambar and mutton rolls from a local hipster Sri Lankan street food place. It was delicious, and shortly afterwards my copy of Sri Lanka the cook book arrived, so now I can theoretically make some of the tasty things we ate. I am still on a major Indian cook book buying jag, and just got a Meera Sodha one. Although she is Gujarati, she seems to have quite a few Sri Lankan recipes. One (not Sri Lankan) one I tried today was dosa made with besan / chickpea flour, to go with some lime dhal I had made. The Dosa were do badly made - thick like flat Yorkshire Puddings - so I think there future is being cut up for kotthu roti! I need to learn more about food in Tamil Nadu. So far I am relying on a Madhur Jaffrey Flavours of India eprisode on Iplayer and a copy of the accompanying book which I managed to find on Amazon marketplace.
There are plenty of Tamil films on Amazon and Netflix, but as I don't understand them, I have sidestepped them so far in favour of general films on Indian culture - A Suitable Girl, Indian Matchmaker -which I am finding very interesting. I also saw part of Bollywood film Chennai Express, but literally had to turn it off because I found the depictions of people from Southern India pretttty mind blowing. Maybe I should go back and watch it in order to understand things better.
So far, things challenge has me super-interested in Tamil and Indian languages but pretty lukewarm about switching to Polish. Though I am sure I will fall in love with it as soon as I get to use the amazing Vittles Guide to the Polski Sklep.
Things I still want and need to do during Tamil time:
-Chat with the lovely people who are excited I am learning Tamil
-Read my book 'The Biography of Tamil'
-Order from amazing local Sri Lankan restaurant Sambar Express and try idli
-Finish ore of Colloquial Tamil
In other news, I am still taking two classes of Spanish a week and feeling more and more frustrated by my crappy pronunciation and grammar. Earlier, inspired by Tamil class, I started shadowing a Mexican youtube video on fitness. I can't decide if this will help more than doing exercises in my sentence builder book. Who knows. I am just sick of not being able to join the Instagram group chat each week because I'm not used to second person plural conjugations. I joined the 30 day speaking challenge again in August and have only barley managed to do weekends so far, but I am keeping it casual and doing speeches pretty much off the cuff. Which reminds me, I have to do one on weight loss tonight...
This is my third weekend of Tamil and according the random of rules of this project, it should be the penultimate. Next week should see me starting Polish...
So, how is life with Tamil? Well, as per, work has been very busy, so I'm not exactly making the tearing fast progress that you might expect. BUT, I have now had two lessons from Italki with two different teachers from Tamil Nadu in India. The first sent me some really helpful phrase lists with romanised and Tamil script, but then made me read them out over and over for an hour, which wasn't very productive. The second, who I had a lesson with at 8am this morning used a powerpoint with phrases BUT also had be go through the sounds of the key vowels and consonants several times and did fun things that got me thinking, like asking me to come up with questions around the key question words, even though she hadn't taught me any verbs yet! I also managed to remember to record the lesson, which will make a huge difference - pronunciation is tricky. But I've already listened to to the recording once and I can feel myself getting into parrot mode and getting a bit more of a grasp on things, in a way that three weeks with Colloquial Tamil just hasn't done.
I am also now the proud owner of a Tamil - English dictionary from Collins, which was made for English learners and so isn't ideal for me, but I love performative spending on language learning. There aren't many other accessories to buy, unless I splash out on some books and items made for diaspora kids.
In terms of culture, I have been eating a watching some things... last week I ordered kotthu roti, pol roti with coconut sambar and mutton rolls from a local hipster Sri Lankan street food place. It was delicious, and shortly afterwards my copy of Sri Lanka the cook book arrived, so now I can theoretically make some of the tasty things we ate. I am still on a major Indian cook book buying jag, and just got a Meera Sodha one. Although she is Gujarati, she seems to have quite a few Sri Lankan recipes. One (not Sri Lankan) one I tried today was dosa made with besan / chickpea flour, to go with some lime dhal I had made. The Dosa were do badly made - thick like flat Yorkshire Puddings - so I think there future is being cut up for kotthu roti! I need to learn more about food in Tamil Nadu. So far I am relying on a Madhur Jaffrey Flavours of India eprisode on Iplayer and a copy of the accompanying book which I managed to find on Amazon marketplace.
There are plenty of Tamil films on Amazon and Netflix, but as I don't understand them, I have sidestepped them so far in favour of general films on Indian culture - A Suitable Girl, Indian Matchmaker -which I am finding very interesting. I also saw part of Bollywood film Chennai Express, but literally had to turn it off because I found the depictions of people from Southern India pretttty mind blowing. Maybe I should go back and watch it in order to understand things better.
So far, things challenge has me super-interested in Tamil and Indian languages but pretty lukewarm about switching to Polish. Though I am sure I will fall in love with it as soon as I get to use the amazing Vittles Guide to the Polski Sklep.
Things I still want and need to do during Tamil time:
-Chat with the lovely people who are excited I am learning Tamil
-Read my book 'The Biography of Tamil'
-Order from amazing local Sri Lankan restaurant Sambar Express and try idli
-Finish ore of Colloquial Tamil
In other news, I am still taking two classes of Spanish a week and feeling more and more frustrated by my crappy pronunciation and grammar. Earlier, inspired by Tamil class, I started shadowing a Mexican youtube video on fitness. I can't decide if this will help more than doing exercises in my sentence builder book. Who knows. I am just sick of not being able to join the Instagram group chat each week because I'm not used to second person plural conjugations. I joined the 30 day speaking challenge again in August and have only barley managed to do weekends so far, but I am keeping it casual and doing speeches pretty much off the cuff. Which reminds me, I have to do one on weight loss tonight...
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