Yah, but Russian surely is more popular then Slovene. Even Serbian, Croatian, Czech and Slovak for that matter are more popular then Slovene. I believe that’s our “duality” thingy which tear people apart from learning Slovene and the fact that Slovene really is the “sharpest” (understand taughest in speach) of Slavic languages. Those "R"s sharp "V"s and what’s more to it is quite hard to pronounce (say), especially for (only) English speaking people. …
But I still hope one day Slovene will be on here to learn too.
Oh, and @aran since you said you can show me some tricks about how much Slovene you don’t remember (in one another topic)… come on, you surely remember at least “Dober dan.” (the greeting we use during the whole day). Don’t you?
Oh, I didn’t know that) But it makes sense - the USSR used to have lots of important discoveries in the scientific field and it was probably important for scientists to be able to read the language.
the question would look more like “govorish po-anglijski?” and is actually very useful for English-speakers to survive here:)
I always thought that southern and western slavic languages might be a bit more popular than the eastern ones such as Russian, just because you share the writing system. And our cyrillic writing makes people cry.
I’ve just found some examples of Slovene on youtube, it sounds lovely:) I’m afraid I’ve never heard it before. There aren’t many Slovene people here. @mikeellwood
Thank you! There’s even a textbook on Welsh grammar in Russian, but the examples there are mostly taken from books, not from everyday speech.
Hmmm … now we really got off topic. Would it be (maybe) better @wondersheep or someone of his position moves some of those last posts to Other languages category? It’s less populated, I know so let’s populate it. And besieds, I’ve noticed that if you mark category as “Watching” you’ll get all updates even if you come on Welsh forum so there’s no fear you’d miss anything. (I did this with “Spanish” and “News” category so I know for sure it’s like this.
Just a suggestion though.
In the mean time:
We’ve learnt cyrillic when learning Serbo-croatian but as much as I could establish, it’s not totally the same as Russian one. And it’s not such a “cry” anyway … Brailles script is more cry for that matter though (and I know it aswell as I had to learn it when I was a kid due to my bad sight).
Thank you for this compliment. Well, even Google Translate is clumsy with translations from or into Slovene and many sites don’t include it into their translations. You can get “Slovenčina” (what is Slovak language) but no “Slovenščina” (what is Slovene) …
And the interest for learning Russian is increasing in our country and there are even some primary schools which offer learning courses through the whole school year as extra subject to learn from which students/pupils even get marks which are included into final certificate.
I agree completely about changing the thread, I was actually starting to feel a bit awkward for going so much off-topic on just my second day on the forum! So if someone who is in the position to do it would kindly move our posts I think it would be better:) In the meanwhile I took the liberty to create a thread for us in the Other languages section and posted my answer there Slavic languages
As it happens, we’re about to start testing our new course creation tool with a bunch of different languages - so doing some testing with Russian would be fantastic. I’m away this week at the Eisteddfod, and then we have another 3 weeks left of school holidays (when I keep work to an absolute minimum) but from the beginning of September this is going to be our main focus…
Tatjana - ooh, I do! I do remember ‘dober dan’! What’s thank-you? I might remember that too…
As for going off-topic - unless the original topic is something of particular importance, I think discussions that go off-topic are one of the great joys of the forum
Well, you can count on me anytime - it would be a great pleasure to help with such a course! I’m really enjoying the SSI approach myself and would certainly recommend people learning Russian to use it, if it were available.
In about four weeks, you’ll be asking why no-one on here warned you…
But as a bonus - by the time we have the makings of a Russian course, because of the way the tool works, we’ll be pretty close to having a Welsh course available through the medium of Russian, which will be enormous fun…
“Hvala.” or “Hvala vam.” (formal or to more people) “Hvala ti.” (informal) “Hvala vama.” (if there are to persons you need to thank to).
Doesn’t that “ti” sound familiar to you?
Oh, yes, I know this joy the most maybe … when conversation takes you beyond the limits and you come from “why you learn welsh” topic to “what did you eat oday” and back to original and toward another unimaginal subject of different kind. I was just worried though we might “wander into too deep forrests of no return” - hehe
Yup, SSi makes wonders. I was stubborn nerd at the time I came here and look what those people made out of me … Joyful and chearful “old lady” prepared to learn the way the language should be learnt. SSi WAY!
Oh, I enjoy a challenge:) Otherwise I wouldn’t probably even attempted at trying to learn a Celtic language - they’re considered terribly difficult.
This is wonderful, I’m sure I’ve seen people on Russian forums asking for a Welsh course in Russian. And I’m trying to talk someone into learning it with me:smile:
I’m actually reading your topic right now, with your progress reports, and find it very motivating.
O boy! I’m blushing. Surely @aran’s posts and those of other members who posted in “my” topic are those motivating ones, not mine. - hehe
Siriously enough, thank you. I’m honoured if at least someone finds something motivating and inspiring in those posts of mine. However I can confidently say I feel much better with all lately happenings in my life what concerns being on here and learn Cymraeg too. There are people on here and on @clecs who made me happy and that includes Clecs themselves.
Well, actually I find motivating all of them, but also just the fact that someone’s writing a honest account of her battle with perfectionism is very helpful! It’s my big problem, so I find your postings very familiar and reassuring at the same time (because I know you’re still here and that you’re learning and happy with it)
Oh, and clecs seems like a great place, I hope I’ll be able to join one day, just when I’m able to put together something more eloquent than “dw i’n mynd i siopa achos dw i’n moyn prynu bwyd”
Don’t wait until then. I admit I can’t understand half of things written there, probably because they’re written and not spoken, but Google Translate is fair good helping tool so I’m just pushing on.
My strategy of Clecs-ing: I try to read a “clec” then I try to (quickly) establish what I understood out from written,. Then I copy the “clec” and put it into the Google Translate to establish if I really understood it correctly. Most of the time I matched at least the context of it. When replying I write the reply into Google Translate Welsh to English way what means I write it in Welsh and see the translation of it. If I want to use the word I don’t know I either check into dictionarry or go for translation with Google Translate but I NEVER copy/paste this new word into my sentence but rather manually type it into it so I can memorize it in time. The same goes with the whole sentences. Even if it doesn’t go Welsh-English way but rather oposite way I first check if there can something I already know be used and when sentence is ready to write it down I type it manually into the clecs box so I create a possibility of remembering it in a time. You can of course save your favourite translations into Google Translate if you have Google acount and use them later but even that way I’d type them manually to ensure I would be able to type/write things in Welsh without that one day.
Might seam complicated and takes a bit of time but it’s rewarding at the end. So, join us before you think you’re really ready. You know this “when I’ll be ready” is also part of our (yours and mine) common problem of being perfectionist. Let’s get rid of this silly problem! SSi way praises mistakes so should FINALLY we, too!
(Gee, who would tell, my inspiration goes high today.)
Dych chi’n iawn:) You’ve convinced me to join, even just to read the things that people write, without writing so much at first. After all, we learners should get all the exposure to the language that we can, especially if we don’t live in the country where the language is spoken!
By the way, you have a very interesting way of using google translate. I must admit I’ve always tried to ban it in my classroom, because some students just use it in the lazy way - translating everything and copypasting it into their written assignments (which results in very clumsy and funny sentences sometimes). But the way you use it seems much more helpful, more like using a real dictionary.
When one among your students will learn a lesson of Google Translate copy/pasting the hardest way ever, resulting into even loosing some friends forever (if even online ones) then they’d retreat from copy/pasting forever. Actually I didn’t do anything wrong but just had written on twitter something about policy and stuff in my native language - Slovene - the hardest way one could ever do. However publishing that I only realized that someone of my foreign online friends might be interested in what I’ve written and would want to translate the tweet with Google Translate. Actually one of them did so and it was to late to retreat the tweet as he already got rid of me, blocking me all the way because he was insulted due to Google Translate false translation. The text was not personally aimed to anyone but when you translated it with Google Translate it appeared as if I want to insult the whole universe not just people on the Earth because google understands word to word translation many too often and doesn’t take context of the word structure into considderation. For that matter when I aim to publish something like that again on social media I always translate things into English by myself so that there could not possibly be missunderstandings. This way I’m always afraid I tend to write the wrong structure in Cymraeg too so Google translate is only my helping hand in understanding things and ordering words into right way possiblly using the words and structures I already have learnt. If something looks suspicious to me I’d go and search more resources to asure I am writing what I want to tell to the people the right way.
And, to all who say Google Translate is clumsy for Cymraeg translations, yes it might be, I’m the last to judge that, but I know for sure for the Slovene language it’s not just worse but horrible. So, if you have any doubt what I’ve written somewhere in Slovene, better ask me then translate things with Google Translate. Well, “prosim”, “hvala”, “dober dan” and such tiny thingys you’ll surely get right translated, no fear for that though.
I have reason to communicate with someone from Thailand on a fairly frequent basis. While her English is better than my Thai (SSIThai anyone?) it isn’t that good. When she uses Google Translate it is even more incomprehensible and a 30 second voice mail via FB is much better.
Oh, I’m sorry you’ve had such an unpleasant situation because of google translate. I’ll warn my students. I’ve only had some funny situations myself: I have mostly Russian-speaking friends on facebook, so all my news and the things I post, like quotes from books or news I found interesting, are all in Russian of course. But I have a British friend, who, as he doesn’t know Russian, has to read the automatic translations of my postings. He sometimes sends these translations to me, and they always look very funny and clumsy, just because the system can’t take into consideration the context and sometimes chooses the wrong meaning of the word (if it has multiple meanings). Translators have lots of jokes about automatic translations! But I don’t consider google translate a universal evil, of course:smile: It can be very useful, especially if you don’t want to carry around some heavy dictionaries.
I’m blushing. Surely