Polski II

Dzień dobry!

I hope everyone is doing well. I can't brag too much, because I have experience in other languages, but I just want to say that I think Polish isnot only an awesome language, but it's really easy.

Disclaimer: I say it's easy because I'm studying other languages from that area in Europe also, like Croatian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian. That being said, there are a ton of similarities. It's almost like how if you understand Haitian Creole, then you can probably understand French as well.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I've mentioned this in prior entries, but certain words open up whole new world when it comes to languages. Today I learned how to say:

Pan/Pani mówi: You speak
Mówię: I speak
I: Another form of "and"
Gdzie jest: Where is
To tutaj: It's here
To tam: It's there

Pretty simple words, right? Yup, but think about how many times you use simple words in a conversation . You definitely use more simple ones than complex. This isn't to say that I can carry on an intelligent conversation just yet, but it definitely makes me look a lot less stupid by adding these words to my repertoire.

Polish can get a bad rap because of how complex it sounds and how many letters can be in one word, but when you really sit down and work on it, it truly isn't that bad at all.

As far as resources that I used, I used GT to make sure I was spelling words correctly, and also I took full advantage of my MultiLing Keyboard on my S3. It has dictionaries for all of the languages I've installed, which as you know, is everyone they offered, lol. But it helps a ton. I never had to crack my Polish to English/English to Polish dictionary once.

This keyboard also makes it easy to tweet in a language such as Polish that has markings over many letters. Instead of having to guess, I'm able to visualize the spelling of the word that I've written down in my notebook, so that way, I automatically know how to spell it, and then just find the selection with the proper symbols. So yes, there is memorization involved, but in all honesty, you're learning a language. You don't have a choice but to memorize things.

Polish, I love you.

Subscribe, comment, advise, help me out.

Do widzenia,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira

What I Need. Desperately.

I need practice partners so badly, it's ridiculous. So I'm calling you out. Yes, you. If you speak a foreign language, I want to practice with you. I don't care what the language is, how much I know (or don't know), I need people to help keep me sharp.

If you can help me out, leave a comment, and we can go from there. I think email might be the best avenue since I'm busy a lot. Skype is also an option.

I would appreciate it beyond words.

Until next time,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: mistercapoeira

Tagalog II

Magandang tanghalian! Kumusta? Mabuti?

Let me tell y'all. Tagalog might be turning into my second favorite language. Seriously. I did a Pimsleur lesson, and everything was just so smooth and easy to learn, it's ridiculous.

The part about Tagalog that made today so easy was simply the fact that some parts of the language sound like Spanish. For instance, asking someone how they are in Tagalog is "kumusta" whereas in Spanish, it's "como estas". See the correlation?

I think the main reason I say that this might be my second favorite language is the fact that Pimsleur works. I've heard Filipino people speaking in Tagalog on YouTube, and I've heard the accent. When I was studying today, I HAD THAT ACCENT. I sounded just like the speakers who were guiding me, and it was fantastic.

There were parts that got me tongue-tied, such as learning how to correctly say, "Ang galing mong mag Tagalog." There are a ton of g, k, ng, and mg sounds that can be in VERY close proximity to each other. This isn't something we see too often in English, so it will take some work to get it down, but I promise you that it's worth it.

I love, love, love this language, and how easy Pimsleur made it to learn. I might do another lesson sooner rather than later!

As always, resources, advice, tips, and constructive criticism are more than welcome.

Until next time,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira

Tiếng Việt 2

I bet y'all thought I was gone on another, huh? NOPE. Haha, I'm here today to talk to you about one hell of an interesting language, and that is Vietnamese.

This is my second go round with it; mainly because the first time was honestly dreadful. I kept screwing up, and I couldn't remember anything. Of course I came into this thinking it would be more of the same, but much to my surprise, it wasn't! I actually learned quite a bit.

I'm not going to tell you exactly what I learned, mainly because I wanted to give any potential learners of Vietnamese a heads up. The language is not easy by any means, and for me that's because of three things: the tones, the writing, and that lots can change based on who you're talking to.

Addressing people changes based on gender, age, and relation to you, such as uncle or aunt, etc., and knowing each title is very important. Oneof my Vietnamese friends said they accidentally used the wrong title and got a glare from hell in return.

The writing.. omg.. Look, the writing uses normal romanized letters, but there are symbols on just about every word, and you need to know the exact symbol to use, or else you could be writing a word you didn't mean to say. Luckily my phone has a Vietnamese keyboard, so I don't need to really try all that hard since I've practiced writing what I've learned by hand.

Lastly are the tones. I study Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese, and these are definitely the hardest. It may be because the speakers are talking incredibly quickly, or the tones have more of a contrast between highs and lows... I'm not sure. It's just "different".

It definitely is a fun language, and I'm super excited to learn some more.

Comments, advice, tips, resources, and all other goodies are more than welcome.

Until next time,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira

Magyar II

Jó napot kívánok!

Hungarian? I think so.

I'm honestly intrigued by the Magyar language. It's weird as hell, but I'm a sexy, intriguing way, if that makes any sense. I might have gotten into it slightly before in my other Hungarian post, but sentence structure is not going to be something you can expect to be consistent. It's bothersome, but it forces you to know exactly what you're saying, and it forces you to pay attention.

I've never had a conversation with anyone who was Hungarian, but because sentences are so different depending on whether you're speaking on behalf of yourself or on behalf of other people, I'm going to have to focus like crazy.

This lesson taught me how to say csúnya, nem értem, jó napot, de, and és. The trickiest part is just the crazy structure. Take some time and try studying it, and you'll see what I'm talking about. It is definitely  fun, but it's the having to pay such close attention that makes it that way.

Writing it isn't bad at all. A standard English alphabet is used, and some letters have variations such as symbols, which can change the intonation.

I did say it was fun, but my main worry is that I'll be searching forever to find a Hungarian speaker in my city. Sad day.

Comments, feedback, tips, resources, help, and advice are always welcome.

Until next time,

Viszont látásra,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira

Arabic, Can We Be Friends?

Sooooooooo..I hated Arabic. With a passion. I hated how hard it was to remember, I hated the difficulty of the tenses, and I hated how hard it was to write. There is an incredible amount of stuff to know to even be reasonably competent at the language.

Don't get it twisted, though. I might have hated it, but I always respected it.

Anyway, I wrote a while ago about how frustrated I was, and I was even thinking about starting over from scratch because maybe I thought some little key would unlock that would make me wonder why it was so tough.

Luckily last night, that key started to turn.

At my job, I met one of my supervisors, who just so happens to be a Muslim. His name is Munir, and when I met him, I asked him if he could speak Arabic, and of course, he could; not fluently, but he could. Lately, we've been talking about the language more, and he's actually given me some resources, including the Yassarnal Quran. I'm Christian, but I don't mind checking out other religious materials, especially if it'll help me learn a language. I'm def not one of those "there is only one religion" kinds of people, lol. I found a free copy, downloaded it, and emailed it to myself. I checked a few pages already, and it gives another breakdown of all of the characters and symbols, which is fantastic.

But about last night.

I had some inspiration from talking to Munir, because we all know how apprehensive I even was about continuing. So, I decided to plop down at my apartment and force myself to do an Arabic lesson.

The opening conversation (they play one at the beginning of every lesson) had me going like O_o, but once it started asking me questions, I actually was able to recall some words! And what else happened? The new things I learned actually started to make sense!

I'm back, I'm back, I'm back! I'm not scared anymore, and you know, I might just be falling in love with Arabic all over again. If I do, it will be one of the most important achievements of my life.  A) because where I'm from, people don't speak many other languages aside from Spanish, ESPECIALLY not Arabic, and B) because for something so hard, it'd be worth the hardships to accomplish it.

As always, comments, concerns, advice, resources, and tips, are welcome.

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira

P.S. My lovely girlfriend has a new blog up, and you all should follow her!! She is completely awesome, and none of you mfs can have her, but you can read her blog and comment on it. ;)

Her blog: Dearpastself.com

Desculpe!!!!!

Tudo bem, meus amigos..Faz muito tempo.

I'm taking the time out to do two things. The first, is to apologize for my long hiatus between posts. I have been insanely busy. I've recently moved to a new place, got a new job (I'm actually writing this at work), been doing much more Capoeira (workshops and teaching), and just being a grown up. One day turned into a week, and a week turned into the ridiculous amount of time between posts until now. I know I had some consistent readers, and I was in love with creating posts. I still have been studying languages, but in a different sense. I haven't had much time to use the Pimsleur program, so I've been just using Pandora and mainly reading tweets from foreign people. I've also been just talking to people of other nationalities who are natives, so I've still been getting some work in. I wouldn't start to slip on you all like that!

Last night, I broke out the iPod, and wound up doing Hungarian, French, and Japanese! And my lovely girlfriend reminded me of the fact that I had a good thing going with this blog, and she was completely correct.

I decided to make a comeback, and I want to consciously be mindful to not have a lapse like the previous one again. I'll be getting a little more random, maybe not just talking about my Pimsleur lessons; I maybe will just talk about a conversation I have with a foreign/multilingual person.

Number Two: I'm BACK. I want to get as intense about it as I was when I was writing every day, and if I have to make time to write or study, I will. There may be some instances where I don't write for a day (things happen), but I will do my best to not have a reoccurrence of what's been going on.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, advice, or concerns, please let me know.

Until the next post,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira