Berlitz Self Teacher Russian Pdf

[Katrine Freggiaro]

I am a 44 year old Australian currently residing in Los Angeles, California. I was a teacher of Mandarin Chinese for about 12 years, and a Chinese teacher trainer in Australia. I still do a little tutoring, but I currently find myself with the luxury of a lot of time I could devote to language learning. I understand Shanghainese (Wu family of languages) and I speak it, though I normally revert to Mandarin in longer conversations.

I took classes in Classical Chinese when I was at university, and I am enrolled in an online course now which is enjoyably challenging. I am happy just maintaining and slowly improving my classical Chinese, and I would be willing to spend relatively more time learning other languages.

In high school in Australia, I learned a little French, Latin, Italian, and then I moved school and took up German. My efforts at the time and since revealed that I enjoy learning language. I have a good ear and I can mimic the pronunciation of languages quite well.

Living in Los Angeles, the most practical language other than English is obviously Spanish. I note that in your YouTube video of Jan 16 2009, you suggest a sequence for tackling Spanish, French, Italian, and then German. I think the logic of spacing Spanish and Italian makes a lot of sense. I think what little German I have retained is probably more than the few phrases of French I can recall. I wonder if a better order for me might not be: Spanish -> German -> Italian -> French.

What a beautiful and exemplary letter you have written! You have provided me with exactly all the information and background I need to feel really comfortable making suggestions to you. I would really encourage anyone else who wants to seek my advice to emulate your formulation. And how simply nice it is to know that there are people like you out there, so alive and curious to the wonderful world of linguistic flora and fauna. Congratulations on all that you have achieved so far in your exploration of the languages of the world, and thank you for trusting me to provide suggestions as to how you might continue to grow in polyliteracy.

As you wrote that you consistently have between 2 and 3 hours a day for language work, and some days more, I am taking the liberty of planning a program for a round 3 hours a day, figuring that the days when you have more than that will balance out the days when you have less. Let me say also that 3 hours a day is in the territory of the long-term temporal investment that is required to develop and maintain a repertoire such as the one you outline. With 2 hours a day one might devise a way of juggling four or so languages at higher levels, but the simple fact is that if you want to do more than that, you really do need to devote 3 hours or more per day, so thank you also for allowing me to highlight this aspect of your letter.

Given your circumstances, your foundation, and your priorities, I would suggest that the largest planet permanently orbiting your sun be Russian. As I am sure your know and can appreciate, developing the ability to read Russian literature is a serious long-term commitment that requires many years of consistent effort.

Also given your background, priorities, and current opportunities for use in Los Angeles, Spanish should have as large an orbit as Russian, but while Russian might be a fixed planet, perhaps Spanish can be more of a comet that is currently passing through, one that will convert in turn and with time into German, French, and Italian. German might eventually spin off into its own orbit around the other three, which could do something like the Chinese family does above. I would hold off on bringing Portuguese into the fold, or Latin back in from your school days, until these three are fairly firm, for that will then be a much easier task.

Likewise, I would hold off on Polish until you are reading Russian literature. Cantonese, certainly, and even Korean and Japanese due to common etymology, might ultimately fit under your Sino umbrella.

Due to lack of other resources, your Australian aboriginal language would best be done in-country, as you already note. I am guessing from your name that your interest in Gidhlig is a heritage one? Well, though there are resources for it, that might also be best learned in Scotland. Arabic and Sanskrit are on the fringes of your purview, but these both require so much time and effort to get anywhere with them that if you ever plan on getting very far with them, then the sooner you begin, the better. Therefore, you might want to treat these like shooting stars and on those rare days when you find that you have unexpected free time, have them come flying through in some fashion to see if the time is right for them to spark your interest now and require a restructuring of the whole program.

With your background, you should have no difficulty concentrating on reading a Mandarin novel for 1 hour straight. If you want to read Russian novels someday, then you should also spend 1 hour there, but maybe still in 15 minute chunks if you are currently A2. Your remaining hour should go the Berlitz project, perhaps initially all to Spanish so that you can start using it while you are in Los Angeles, but then, as you become familiar with the storyline and get your spoken practice in the city, integrating in more and more of the other three European languages, also divided into small blocks of time.

It has been a while since I received your letter, so I imagine you must have already received the old Berlitz briefcase. If you are having difficulty listening to or digitizing the cassettes, I have already done so, and would be happy to share those mp3 files with you. Since writing to you about this, someone who is in the language-learning support group has begun to use all four of these courses to maximize the use of the storyline and I am eager to keep myself and others appraised of his progress in this.

Thank you for confirming the value of 15-minute time blocks in actual practice, spread out through the day. This also is something that I would like as many people as possible to confirm rather than just taking my word for it!

Would you like my advice for developing a systematic, long-term plan for learning languages and accessing literatures? This website provides a place where you can describe your background, current activities, and goals in sufficient detail for me to provide you with meaningful advice, and where our exchange can remain as a lasting resource for others with similar scholarly aspirations.

I can still hear the voice of my great-grandmother calling me. Eighty years of life in America wasn't enough to free the hold of the Hungarian language on her tongue. Her r's rolled at length in accordance with her mood, and her i's sounded like e's. Actually, she and her daughter had a language all of their own - neither English nor Hungarian, but a mixture of both - and although it was intelligible to me, it still raised my curiosity.

Katalin Kovacs Szgeto was her name, and she lived to be 92 years old. She wore a white wig, asked only for the "vings" when we ate chicken, and her hearing aid rang all night when I tried to sleep in the adjacent twin bed. In that "foreign" language, she also talked in her sleep, and it sounded like the prayers she said in the evening at bedside.

This was all some time ago in Poway, Calif., yet despite our difficulties communicating, she sparked the curiosity that burned inside me until I finally made my way to Hungary, after a college degree and a taste of the 9-to-5 American job experience.

Flying into a wintery Budapest airport, the city from my little oval window greeted my nervous anticipation with a cold hand. Patches of old city snow - frozen and thawed over again to a rough black crust - lined the streets.

A young friend of mine picked me up in his Dacia, and we drove to my final destination, the city of Kecskemet. Located south of Budapest in the center of Hungary, between the Danube and Tisza rivers, this farming region is known as the Hungarian Great Plain. It's as flat as Nevada. The tallest hill visible from Kecskemet is a man-made dirt dome - called the Benko Dome after the communist leader who had it constructed. I hear the dome is collapsing from the center due to an unstable foundation.

I soon learned that the teaching job I thought I had secured from America no longer existed. Hungary's financial troubles had found me before I had found a flat. It was not until I had to search for work (and finally found a job at an English-language school) that I regarded my great-grandmother's voyage to the United States with admiration and empathetic pride. She was 16, penniless, and alone when her ship pulled into New York Harbor just before World War I.

The private school where I work consists of two small apartments on the third floor of a long block of flats - a communist speciality. At first, the idea of a school located in two flats rather than in an independent structure seemed odd to me. But I soon found private businesses at other peculiar sites. The ground floors of many such communist-constructed buildings were private garages, but entrepreneurs have converted their garages to "nonstop" (24-hour) variety stores, indoor-outdoor cafes, or little clothing boutiques.

So many times I have been asked this question in earnest. And every time I answer it, or attempt to answer it, what comes forth from my mouth is more refined and clear, as if with time decisions made in the past crystallize into transparent reasons. Since my arrival in Hungary, I have learned a lot about myself - my needs, excesses, and desires, as a young product of American society.

It was my contact with my great-grandmother - and now my memories of her - that partially explains why I came to Hungary. I felt the existence of a living connection between family and ancestry - like the unseen roots of a tree that give life to what we admire as reality. So, in part, I came to Hungary to experience my past.

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