I certainly haven’t mastered Russian–I don’t even know how to speak it, really. But I can understand a lot, especially written Russian. If I were stranded in Siberia, I would figure out how to communicate in caveman Russian, but it would be very ugly.
I originally was very enthusiastic about learning Irish – over a dozen years ago. But I quickly decided it was impossible. Using Duolingo this year got me far enough past zero that I could start learning for real, and it was no longer impossible. Duolingo doesn’t get you speaking, though, so that takes independent planning and work (the sort of thing that SSiW does for you), which is still a bit of a work in progress for me.
It’s quite impressive anyway - I teach Russian as a foreign language and most of my students are frustrated by the alphabet and the case system and sometimes find it easier to say something in, as you’ve put it, “caveman Russian” than to read.
Thank you for describing your experience with Irish and mentioning Duolinguo, I will certainly look into it and hopefully it’ll help me. I refuse to be defeated by this language:)
If you ever find time (and courage) to have a skype-tutoring hour, I’ll teach you the Russian language-learning drinking game. You can impress your native Russian speaker with it afterwards:)
I definitely will accept that offer if you are still willing to do it in late October. It’s not so much courage I’m lacking but trying organisationally to reach some mile-stones in Hebrew and German first.
Sure:) Good luck with Hebrew and German! Hebrew is such an interesting choice of a language to learn. I find I quite like the sound of Yiddish, and it seems to be easier.
If you find the time one day, it would be very interesting to read about your experience of learning these languages in the Other languages part of the forum. I’ll open a thread about Russian there as soon as the course is ready.
Diolch! Now to figure out how best to proceed, since it’s highly unlikely I can summon the will to keep the same pace for the next month or so (thereby finishing all the material there currently is for SSiW), especially without my brain leaking out my ears…from what I hear, the Course 1/2/3 series was even more “painful” than Level 1.
Yah, Doing Level 1 once again after doing all three courses I can confirm this and so far my statistics of my progress are showing the same. Well, I’m not the most relevant person to 100 % confirm this but am only sharing my experiences.
But since you’re doing amazing so far I believe it shouldn’t be as tough to do as it was for me (me being one of the worst learners (if not the worst one) here though and you being among the best!).
Go with whatever your feeling tells you to do. Maybe you should try what you had in mind to do and then if it turns out differently then you expected reconsidder to do things differently or going other direction with your learning.
Pob lwc whatever you do next. You will do it excellently, I’m 1,000 % about that!
Thanks for the vote of confidence. In case you missed this subtle point, BTW, I said I’d been studying languages for ~30 years–but the languages I said I could actually use now all were learned either natively, or starting after 2010. Things are working ok now, but it should make you wonder what exactly I was up to before…
You at least had some kind of reason (and yes, to be honest I read things a bit quick way) I on the other hand had studied (or better said, learnt, not really studied) my first foreign language (apart from English and Serbo-Croatian which was actually not so foreign language at all) also about 30 years ago - it was German and only that was with real need of using it all the rest was just like that, to know the language I want to know - that was Italian. Cymraeg was started with purpose/need of understanding welsh rugby comentaries but then I found other resources to watch rugby and that need disappeared. Only kind of love to language, vow to Welsh rugby squad and a strong feeling that this beautiful language must be spoken by the most people possible, is driving me on. I might actually never be in position to really use Cymraeg and quite similar was with Italian I’ve learnt so I do not wonder what you were up before because I kind of know how ti works when one is young and eager of knowledge of all kinds (not just liguistic).
You obviously have no particular troubles with learning languages and you love your poliglot skills so much you do many other things like visiting events etc. I on the other hand am forgetful already, encountering learning languages quite difficult task to do (what was never case before) and not having real time (and financial resources) to do things really proper way. So as I said - you’ll do just fine whatever you choose to do.
I agree that level one is a little easier, after doing course one, then level one and going back to course two. But I managed to keep up the momentum I set up doing level one ok…albeit with the pause button, as the courses don’t seem to have as big a gap for you to speak.
+My experiences with Course 1 was that at first I found the gaps too short, but by the end I was finding them too long, so I’d end up repeating the sentence again (or as much as I could fit in).
I felt (at the time) that these extra “reps” were burning it into my brain.
Can’t now remember reliably how I found the gaps in course 2. Not so long I think, but this was subjective. I never measured them.
Going through Course 2 not so long ago I remember them (gaps) being shorter then in Course 1 and still a bit longer then in Course 3. In Course 3 it happens from time to time you actually don’t have proper gap to speak at all but since you don’t know where this will occur, you don’t have proper time to hit pause button before at least tiny part of sentence is already said. The more you go to the end of Course 3 the more instructions are also spoken in Cymraeg - at least in Southern version of it what can be a bit brain melting to not so keen ear (as mine (still) is).
Well, but for the fun of it by all means do that famous Bonus Lesson 6 of Course 1. You’ll have fun with it @geoffreywilliamson, you’ll see.
From memory, I think you’re right about the gaps in course one. By the end I was having no trouble fitting the sentences in. In course two, on the other hand, which I’m nearly finished, the gaps seem to barely be there at all. Sometimes I feel like I open my mouth to speak, and Cat is already speaking over me.
