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WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese
| Message 89 of 116 17 June 2013 at 4:18pm | IP Logged |
Thanks for your tips BAnna! I've been doing just what you said, and took a little break
from actual "studying" and tried to do something more relaxing and fin. I watched some
disney movies in German, Anastasia and Pocahontas, and I've been listening to German
music. I also went to the library and borrowed Astrid Lindgren's Die Brüder Löwenherz
(originally in Swedish) once again. I started reading in it last summer as a desperate
attempt to revive any German knowledge I used to have before I started the German
course at University. At the time, I found the book difficult and had to look up the
simplest words and it took me forever to read. Thus, I didn't finish it in time and had
to return the book. I think it will be a lot easier this time :)
I don't think there are any meetups in my area, but I have been thinking about maybe
getting a penpal to practise writing in a more fun way. The best would be to find
someone learning my language, Swedish, so that it would be of mutual benefit and more
interesting.
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| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese
| Message 90 of 116 09 September 2013 at 9:15pm | IP Logged |
A new semester of German studies have started. From now on I will be studying German on
a more regular basis and I will try to update the log at least once a week.
This semester we will read 8 books of various lengths. We're also studying grammar and
translation as well as writing a thesis - entirely in German! It will be a challenge,
but I think the pace will be slower as we will have less courses to study.
Week 36
German: 4,17 min
I've started reading the first book in our list. We have two weeks to read the book
"Das Parfum" by Patrick Süskind. So far I've read a little over 100 pages and although
it's a bit complicated it's very intriguing. Today I ordered the book Duden 9:
richtiges und gutes deutsch, to use for the grammar homework. The grammar is getting
really complicated! It's no longer about important grammatical structures, but more
about single cases of expressions usages and what is more correct and what is more
colloquial. Sometimes it doesn't seem very important, but I guess we need to learn that
too if we want to have an advanced knowledge of German.
1 person has voted this message useful
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese
| Message 91 of 116 30 July 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged |
Wow, that's a promise I couldn't keep! Updating the log once a week? Didn't do it even
once! I don't know, these past few months, I've lost the motivation to do any more
studying than my course required. Maybe I just really needed a break. Anyway, I thought
it was time to update the log, so that it doesn't disappear entirely :P I won't make
any promises or goals just yet about how often I'm going to update this, as it clearly
isn't a guarantee that I will actually do it :P Here's what I've been doing the past
ten months:
Last fall I did my last semester of German. We studied grammar, translation and read
books on a higher level. The books we read were Das Parfüm by Patrick Süskind, Die
Räuber by Friedrich Schiller, Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer, Faust (first half and the
ending) by Johann Wolfgang von Goete, Leben des Galilei by Bertolt Brecht, Nathan der
Weise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, der Schimmelreiter by Theodor Storm and der Tod in
Venedig by Thomas Mann.
The thesis we needed to write was constantly delayed by either the teacher, others in
my group or my work. I ended up spending the whole spring semester on it and only
finished it one month ago. Now I officially have a bachelor degree in German and
Swedish! This fall I'm planning to study translation to get a Master degree if
everything works out well. Therefor I'm trying to brush up my German before the
semester starts in September. We'll see how this goes ;)
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| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese
| Message 92 of 116 25 August 2014 at 10:57am | IP Logged |
Here's an update for week 34. I haven't spent that many hours on each language, but
I'm just really happy that I am spending some time on them almost every day and that I
got at least a little motivation back for studying.
German 3,92 hours
The first thing I did was to get back in sync with my flashcards on Mnemosyne and I've
finally caught up. I've also been adding more words from the book I'm now reading, Die
Zwerge, by Markus Heitz. I haven't gotten very far into it, but it already seems very
promising! I started using Memrise.com again as well, where I had a lot of plants to
water ;) I've now caught up with both decks I have, 1000 Words of Elementary German,
where I had already learned all the words, and 5000 German Words, where I've learned
450 words.
Cantonese 2,05 hours
The schedule has been similar here. I'm still working on catching up on Mnemosyne and
still have 550 words to relearn after I had forgotten them. I had more than a 1000
words to go through and had to relearn about 800 of them! That really shows how quickly
you forget if you don't keep reviewing what you've learnt! Many words that I used to be
so simple had fallen out of my memory! But they are slowly coming back to me.
I wanted to try out a course on Memrise to have some fun with learning words and I
found one that I really like: Cantonese Vocab 1: First 400 words. It teaches all the
words in three steps: first you learn the romanization and the meaning, then you learn
the character and the meaning and then you learn the character only from the
pronunciation. The last two steps are optional, but I think it's a very good way to
really learn the word and its character. I think I will keep going like this for a
while and then later, if I have time for it, I might go back and redo all the chapters
in Teach Yourself Cantonese, to really understand the words that I'm learning in my
deck on Mnemosyne.
Edited by WingSuet on 25 August 2014 at 10:58am
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| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese
| Message 93 of 116 26 August 2014 at 11:49am | IP Logged |
This might be a big mistake, but I just signed up for the Super Challenge with both
German and Cantonese. I decided to do two half-challenges, that is, 50 books and 50
films in German and 100 films in Cantonese. I figured, even if I don't finish even half
of it, it might make me finish more than I would, had I not taken part in this
challenge, then that would be a success in itself.
I have really felt that I need to start watching movies in German to get some more
input, but I haven't actually taken the time to find something that I want to watch.
Tv-series would be ideal, then I would have much more material than what just one film
would give me. Any suggestions are warmly welcomed! ;) I prefer thrillers, sort of
police/detective series.
For Cantonese, I just wanted to get the interest and motivation back, so I thought the
best way would be to go back to what made me gain interest to begin with: Hong Kong
action movies. I already have a lot that I can re-watch, we'll see if that will be
sufficient or if I need to find some new films to watch. But there are always disney
movies ;)
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| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4615 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish
| Message 94 of 116 26 August 2014 at 5:39pm | IP Logged |
Definitely check out patrickwillen's log for movie reviews.
For crime series, you have lots of choices. ARD and ZDF both stream their shows, and you can search by the theme Krimis. Some examples: Tatort, Polizeiruf 110, Wallander (dubbed), Soko, Die Rosenheim-Cops, etc. etc. Some are more comedic, others more gruesome or with social themes and some are good and some awful (but maybe in that so bad it's good category, ymmv). Tons of options! Sometimes German subtitles are even available to turn on. You probably won't need them, but they can be pretty useful if the setting is somewhere a heavy dialect is used. I remember turning them on for a crime show set in Vienna because one of the characters was almost incomprehensible (in the storyline, it was a running joke that the visiting German colleague couldn't understand what the person was saying, so I didn't feel too bad).
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| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese
| Message 95 of 116 26 August 2014 at 5:47pm | IP Logged |
Thanks for the suggestions BAnna! I will definitely check out his log and also the
suggestions you just gave me! :) Funny that you should mention Wallander, which is
actually a Swedish tv-series :P However, I prefer when they're not dubbed, I don't like
it when an actors voice is replaced with someone else's. With cartoons that's fine, so I
have no problem watching Disney dubbed :)
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| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese
| Message 96 of 116 03 September 2014 at 9:35pm | IP Logged |
Week 35 Update
German 11,17 hours
I've kept about the same schedule as the week before. Have been going through my
flashcards on Mnemosyne every day as well as on Memrise, where I've also been learning
more words. For the Super Challenge I watched two movies this week. I'm starting with
disney movies, which I believe to be easier than actual movies, and which I also really
enjoy. Am also still reading Die Zwerge, which is becoming better and better. It's
really well written and there are no boring parts whatsoever as all the dialogues and
descriptions are very interesting! (Really wanted to write this sentence with a German
word-order, which shows how useful regular input is when learning a language.)
Cantonese 2,98 hours
Only been working with Mnemosyne and Memrise. Still trying to catch up with all the
words I need to relearn on Mnemosyne, but I'm getting there slowly. On Memrise I try to
do one lesson every day with all levels, it depends on how many words that lesson
contains. Will soon be starting with the Super Challenge in Cantonese as well.
1 person has voted this message useful
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