Ritalinguistics

I seriously need to spend more time on the bajillion languages I'm learning instead of flitting around, reading about languages I'm not.  Is bajillion an actual number?  See how much time I waste?  I'm such a procrastinator, it's not even funny.

Anyway, I've spent the evening reading up on the Turkic languages of the -stans.  You know: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.  I would've included Tajikistan, but Tajik is an Indo-European language, related to Persian.  In Afghanistan, Tajik is known as Dari - or so I've been told.  Oh, and can't forget Azerbaijan, where they speak Azerbaijani (aka Azeri), which from what I understand, is highly similar to Turkish, if not nearly identical.

Romanian Reflections

I found this from 2005.  That was me asking to have a little bit of Romanian I had written corrected.  I haven't gotten my Romanian out in quite a while, but seeing stuff like that is motivating.  Although at the same time, it reminds me that over the course of eight years, I've made little progress in that language.

Lithuanian Listen

I had this in my links but last time I clicked, it led to nowhere, so deleted it.  It's the audio that goes with Beginner's Lithuanian (formerly Introduction to Modern Lithuanian.)  You can tell it's a little dated and the audio isn't always that great, but glad I re-found it.  The same recordings can also be found here once you scroll down.

Teach Yourself Slovene

I had ordered a used copy of Teach Yourself Slovene off Amazon a while back.  I'm not planning on going beyond what this book teaches, so should be interesting to see how far I get.  You could call this a side project.  :)
  
Slovenia used to be part of Yugoslavia, but the language is considered different enough not to be grouped with Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.  I'm still not clear on whether Bosnian is considered a separate language.  I do have a Bosnian dictionary, but it could probably just as easily have been labeled a Serbian or Croatian dictionary.

Of course like most language books, pronunciation is gone over first.  This part feels rushed.  For instance, they don't tell you how the letter C should sound.  I've been pronouncing it like "ts" just because that's how it's typically pronounced in other Slavic languages, but maybe Slovenian is different?  I don't have the recordings, so will have to look online to fill in the details.

Flipping through the book I could recognize some words, so having at least a limited knowledge of Serbian will be helpful to an extent.  One thing I've heard about that makes Slovenian stand out is the dual number thing.  They mention this in the introduction, like a heads up.  It sounds easy enough on the surface: one = singular; two = dual; three or more = plural.  I guess the hard part is just a matter of remembering to use dual when you instinctively want to use plural for two things or people, and of course learning an extra set of case endings.
  

This book didn't get very good reviews on Amazon, but there really aren't many resources for learning Slovenian, so it's better than nothing, at least to get started.  I did notice a typo right away in Unit 01. The dialogue has Izvoil! while the vocab list has Izvoli!  Anyway, it means "Here you are!" when being handed something.  

The book itself seems pretty thin.  Only 184 pages in all, and that includes the introduction, exercise key, appendix and word list.  I could be surprised to find it's actually packed with a lot more than it looks.  To confuse myself even further, maybe I'll tackle this together with my Teach Yourself Serbian and two copies of Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat.

Serbian and Croatian in One

I just ordered the FSI Serbo-Croatian course on Etsy (the books only.)  It seemed like a rare find that I couldn't pass up.  They were published in 1965 & 1968.  Funny how Volume 1 is so worn compared to Volume 2.  Maybe the previous owner was really gung-ho, then gradually lost interest, barely touching the second volume.  I'm always curious to know the history of these old language books I have: Who owned it?  Why did they choose that language?  Did they make much progress?, etc.  Anyway, this course is available online as well, but I prefer having the actual texts, though the recordings will be helpful.

This and That

Long time, no write.  I'm not very good at this "updating my blog" thing, but I'm still learning languages - that's something I'll never stop doing.  I've bought a ton of used (and a couple new) language books from Amazon, as well as a few from Etsy.  I love old language books, even if it's a language I'm not learning.  I recently ordered an old Teach Yourself Russian, as well as a Bulgarian-English dictionary from Etsy.  Can't wait to get them.  They're probably overpriced, as many things on Etsy are, but I just think they look cool and am glad I snatched them up before someone else did.  ;)  

As for what I've been up to in the world of language learning...over the last couple days, I've been focusing on my Bulgarian.  A long time ago, I made individual blogs for each of my languages, but haven't posted anything to them.  I'd like to change that and start using them, so I'm going to try to add something short and sweet to my Bulgarian blog (keli-na-balgarski.blogspot.com), because as they say, Опитът прави майсторa.

In the meantime, here are the books mentioned above that I ordered.  Love the color of the Russian one, and can't wait to make use of the Bulgarian dictionary.  Who knows, maybe I'll give Russian a try afterall, though I definitely don't need to add a 10th language, and seeing as Bulgarian is supposed to be easier for English speakers, I'll most likely stick with that as my Cyrillic language of choice (along with Serbian.)

I'll put up some more pictures of the books I've purchased over the months in upcoming posts. The oldest is a Dutch-German dictionary from the late 1800's, but most are from the 1940's on.