Notes ahead of the weekend
The other day, I mentioned IKindaLikeLanguages.com. One feature of the site is the ability to make your own mini-courses or try out courses that others have put together. I recommend this Japanese course. Curious about how the create-your-own-course feature worked, I put together a very short, very basic intro to some Uzbek structures. You can find it here. Since 1) I'm not a native speaker and 2) I simplified wherever possible, I would not suggest mistaking it for a reference grammar. If any native speakers of Uzbek happen by and notice excessively egregious errors or oversimplifications, please let me know so I can make corrections. And after that, make an advanced course of your own. Please. I could use it!
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There's always lots of language video on You-Tube. AssociateDegree.Org has posted what, in their estimation, are the 100 best. You can see it here.
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Confession: This is Confessions of a Language Addict, so I might as well confess. Between a passing interest in Tajik and events in Iran, I decided it seemed like the right moment to dabble in Farsi. So I've done the first 7 Pimsleur lessons. No plans to become fluent, but it's been interesting, especially to note the overlaps with Turkish and Uzbek vocabulary. On the other hand, it's a bit maddening and saddening to see Iran fade from the headlines, with Michael Jackson and Governor Sanford overshadowing a people's struggle for freedom and some really unpleasant folks getting closer to having nuclear weapons.
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Coming later this weekend:
A review of the iSpeak Italian Beginner's Course
***
There's always lots of language video on You-Tube. AssociateDegree.Org has posted what, in their estimation, are the 100 best. You can see it here.
***
Confession: This is Confessions of a Language Addict, so I might as well confess. Between a passing interest in Tajik and events in Iran, I decided it seemed like the right moment to dabble in Farsi. So I've done the first 7 Pimsleur lessons. No plans to become fluent, but it's been interesting, especially to note the overlaps with Turkish and Uzbek vocabulary. On the other hand, it's a bit maddening and saddening to see Iran fade from the headlines, with Michael Jackson and Governor Sanford overshadowing a people's struggle for freedom and some really unpleasant folks getting closer to having nuclear weapons.
***
Coming later this weekend:
A review of the iSpeak Italian Beginner's Course
4 Comments:
Nice.
I did some of your course (plan to do all of it later). And wow, Uzbek is a really strange language.
Without having heard much about it, I expected it to be close to Russian but now I learned it's a Turkic language.
These words like "choy", "mehmon", etc. look really weird to my eyes.
And I imagine Uzbeks would be the last people ever to expect foreigners to speak their language.
Talking about it, how did you decide to learn it?
Yes, I imagine not a lot of people learn Uzbek for the fun of it! When I was a kid - prior to the end of the Cold War - I was really interested in the "Breadbasket of the Soviet Union." So years later, I wound up going over to registan.net from time to time and got hooked on their occasional Uzbek pop music videos. It's not surprising that a language addict would pick up a book or two in these circumstances, though I can't say exactly why or when Uzbek ceased to be one of the many languages I've dabbled in and became one of my core interests. (We'll see, two years from now, if it remains a core interest, like Italian, or drops out, like Mandarin.)
I have learned to speak and communicate quite well in quite broken German and it has not been an easy thing. I am so fascinated by the ability some people have to absorb and learn new languages especially languages that seem so far from my own. I believe you have a very special talent.
Kenny,
While some skills come easier for some than others, the only real skills you need to learn a language are the dedication to work at it regularly and the patience to wait for results. I remember the first time I went to France. After just two weeks, I was talking up a storm. Of course I'd studied it four years in high school and 2 1/2 in college! Learning bits of language is like planting seeds: You have to wait for them to sprout and the resultant plants to bear fruit. And it's the ones that take the longest - like getting the hang of the subjunctive - that are most impressive when they come to fruition.
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