Turkish diary. Week 1

In english.
So I've had a hard week and actually I wasn't in the mood for making a video but I had to keep my promise. What do we have after one week of studying? Just some facts.
1. Unfortunately I didn't study every single day. I studied 4 days out of 7, but some days I also listened to Pimsleur's course which is still almost useless for me, though.
2. I've systematized some of my old knowledge. My knowledge of Turkish consisted only of "dialogue phrases" like "How are you?", "Where is...?", "How much?" and so one. And this things are useless for a monologue, so I had to learn some new words and learn how to conjugate verbs in Present Tense. I'm quite good at "to be" conjugation so far.
3. This is my first agglutinative language and this is freaking me out. But I've already got used to prepositions in the end of the words.
 I'm quite satisfied with my results.

По-русски.
На прошлой неделе я выложила у себя на канале видео на английском, где сообщила, что по пятницам буду выкладывать видео, где я говорю на турецком, чтобы отслеживать свой прогресс в изучении этого языка. Некоторые детали о первой неделе изучения.
1. Я не занималась каждый день на этой неделе, к сожалению. Более того, я сегодня была не в настроении для записи видео, но я таки пересилила себя и сдержала обещание. Так вот, из 7 дней я отзанималась 4, но в другие дни иногда слушала курс Пимслера, который по-прежнему для меня не очень полезный (я говорила об этом в видео на той неделе). Там в основном отрабатывают фразы для диалогов, которые я и так знаю.
2. Я систематизировала кое-какие свои старые знания. Например, раньше я не умела сказать "Мне столько-то лет". Мне, конечно, сто раз задавали такой вопрос, но я всегда просто называла цифру в ответ. В видеомонологе, конечно, нельзя сказать просто "24", пришлось учить новую фразу. Ну и раньше мой турецкий состоял только из диаложных фраз типа "Где?", "Как дела?", "хорошо", "Плохо", "Я плохо понимаю турецкий", а сейчас я уже могу строить какие-то фразы. Но не совсем. На этой неделе я в основном только с глаголом "быть" возилась.
3. Этой мой первый агглютинативный язык и это вынос мозга. Но я уже привыкла, что предлоги преклеиваются к слову в конце.
 Я вполне довольна результатом первой недели.

Back

I'm sorry I disappeared. My Polish experiment failed for many reasons and all my attempts to speak Polish on my trip were quite comic. But I brought some materials with me, so I'm definitely going to study it sooner or later. The thing is I'm completely into my Spanish and Italian studies right now, so I don't even have time for Croatian and Turkish (I was on my way to A1 in both of them). I have set my priorities though. Spanish because I need to tame it finally. I want to pass the DELE exam this year. Preferably B2. Italian because I can already speak slowly, write letters and understand graded readers, I definitely have A1 level and I feel ready to move further. If I stop now, I will just lose what I have. At the moment I'm about to finish my Spanish coursebook and when I have it finished, I'll be able to breathe more freely.
                         

 

And I'm hoping to make a new video in Spanish for my YouTube channel, but I can't promise it since I'm not always in the right condition for that kind of exhibitionism. But stay tuned anyway. 

My travel 2013

 Hey! I have't written anything last few weeks because I was a bit busy with my next trip organization. So I've decided to make a post about my trips in 2013. Why not? It's never too late!

 My travel 2013 (and 2013 in general) began in Istanbul. We met New Year in the underground and then went to eat kebab.
 Welcome to Catcity.

 I went to Budapest in January. I was lucky with the weather, it didn't snow at all. Only a little bit of rain.

And also I went to cute Szentendre. I only visited marzipan museum that time. 

Cute marzipan chairs and table in the cute marzipan museum. 

Then, three weeks later, I went on a short trip to Italy... I visited this beautiful country for the first time in my life. Thank you, Wizz Air for the cheap tickets. I fell in love with Venice. 

I went by train to Milan where I tried couchsurfing for the first time in my life and the tastiest pizza ever. 

 And then I was returning to Kiev via Budapest. I realised this was one of my favorite cities. In the early morning in February I was taking photos of the city coverd with snow. 

So I was in Ukraine untill late September. I only went to Cherkassy for one day in the middle of August. But in September it was my big Baltic trip. 

It began in Vilnius. A cozy city with really tasty food. 

My favourite cathedral in Vilnius: 

I also went to Trakai with my Mexican friends. I wanted to see this beautiful castle on an island:

I was really happy in Lithuania, this is definitely my country.

The next travel point was Tallinn via Riga. 

I wasn't really happy in Tallinn. But my eyes were. The old centre is stunning and so is the modern centre, and also the port. 

I went back to Riga after Tallinn and it was amazing. Actually I was in Riga in 2012, but I didn't see some important things. 

And the Dome wasn't under construction this time: 

I had such I wonderful time there. I met wonderful people. I made new friends. And then I went back to Vilnius. My Croatian friends who were travelling by car took me with them. 

The last few days I continued exploring Vilnius...

And also went to Kaunas.

And the next day I said Good bye to my wonderful Vilnius.

In October we went to Lviv and Chernivtsi to celebrate my birthday (to tell you the truth this was instead of our trip to Italy and Hungary which had been cancelled). 

My trip to Egypt in December was a group trip, but it was rather interesting. I ate tasty food, swam in the Red Sea, fell off a motorbike... Well, that's enough.

My travel 2014 will begin only in May with the trip to Hungary, Austria and Slovakia. 

A hello post

The time has come. I've created a language blog. Finally. I'm not even sure there will be any readers, but I was in desperate need of self expression, so here I am.

 So. My name is Helen. This blog is about languages. In different languages. You will be able to search for posts in particular language by tags. But this post, the first one, is in English because I still consider English an international language. English, not Chinese or Spanish.
 As you can see, English isn't my mother tongue and I make plenty of mistakes. But still, I hope my mistakes aren't such an obtacle to communication and I can be undestood quite well. My native language is Russian. The second one is Ukrainian which I can't call native although I've always had Ukrainian citizenship. I've learnt English since I was 4 or 5 and my big love with Spanish began when I was 14. I can't say I'm absolutely fluent in Spanish, but I can communicate, read modern books, understand Argentinean soap operas. In April 2013 I began learning Italian and I really enjoy studying this languages. At the moment my level is something between A1 and A2.
 Also I'm about to start Turkish, Serbian/Croatian and Polish, because I'd like to dilute the Roman group a little bit.

On this blog I'm going to write about different methods of learning languages and also I'm going to practice the languages I study which for me means writing about my everyday life in a chosen language.
Stay tuned.

xoxo
Helen