Return to Lithuanian

Well, it's been three months, figure it's time for an update.  Just joking.  :)  I've been studying my Lithuanian, which I mentioned adding to my language list a couple of posts down.  I'm going over the basics, and would like to start trying to read newspaper articles and other texts right away.  

Lithuanian is supposed to be a pretty difficult language, and even though it's not in the same family, I wonder if it's considered harder, easier, or about the same as Polish.   They're both Indo-European, but Lithuanian is Baltic while Polish is Slavic.  These things really mean nothing to me in the long run.  I just take the language as it comes.

So anyway, Lithuanian is the "Language du Jour" and I've got two items to work with: Teach Yourself Lithuanian + the book you see in the pic below.  Look how thick it is and it's only a beginners.

 Pringle with my study materials.

Drive-By Update

I figured after nearly a month, it was about time I posted to this thing, even though I don't really have anything exciting in the world of language learning to report.

I've been studying my Romanian for the last few days, as well as a little Serbian and Portuguese. I also tried to translate some Polish music this morning using this website.

An Ear for Languages

Since I thought Polish was Icelandic (of all things), I decided I should hone-up on my listening skills - an area I slack on in all of my languages. I brought along all my Polish books to my sister's and have worked out a plan for the dialogues:

~Listen 5x w/out looking at the transcript (to get a feel for what the speakers are saying).

~Listen and repeat 5x while this time looking at the words (to visually match sounds to letters).

~Listen and repeat 5x again w/out looking at the words.

I also like to do the reverse. Instead of waiting for the speaker, then mimicking them, I'll speak first and see if they match me.

Say It in Polish

I'm still very much a beginner at Polish, although I do know and recognize some things. One of the hardest things about Polish is the pronunciation. I actually don't think it's all that difficult, but there are some groups of letters that take practice. Polish abounds with "sh" "ch" "zh" sounds, which are fine on their own, but it's not uncommon for these sounds to be combined, making some words a bit of a challenge. There are also two nasal vowels: ą (this one I have down pretty well) and ę (this one I need to work on more). I also keep wanting to pronounce y like "ee," but I think it's supposed to be more like "ih."