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New Super Challenge Discussion thread2014

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Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4576 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 665 of 766
13 December 2014 at 2:16pm | IP Logged 
I've been really enjoying all the slang posts :)

I had a look at the stats page this morning and noticed that the person who we were discussing before posted a total 91505
minutes of English 'films' on 11 December, bringing them up to a total of 1117. I know they are not trying to say that they
watched them all on 11 December, but I am amazed if they have all been watched since the Super Challenge began in May, on
top of all the Japanese watching and reading.

I did a back of a fag packet
calculation which came up with the result that you would have had to spent 13 hours per day for every single day of the
Super Challenge so far to achieve those stats (assuming a reading speed of 1 page per minute, which I think is generous). So
it's not physically impossible, but I am feeling increasingly sceptical!
5 persons have voted this message useful



Mohave
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Mohave1
Joined 4000 days ago

291 posts - 444 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 666 of 766
15 December 2014 at 1:30am | IP Logged 
I love this challenge, and I appreciate all the great words that everyone is sharing! Here's some new-to-me
fun French words/phrases that I learned this month in my Super Challenge reading - all from Bonjour
Tristesse
by Françoise Sagan.   While the book was written in 1954, I believe these to still be current, but
please feel free to comment if necessary.

Une Garce: bitch
Example: La garce, murmurait-il, la garce! Quelle garce!
Translation: The bitch! He murmured, The bitch! What a bitch!

Un Salaud: Bastard

Une Salope: slut

Loupé: missed; failed
Example: Loupé! dis-je avec entrain. Bien loupé!
Translation: "Flunked!" I said cheerfully. "Completely Bunked."

Un galopin: a ragamuffin; a brat
Tu ne t'imagines pas qu'un galopin me prendrait une femme si je n'y consentais pas...
Translation: You don't think I'd let a boy like that snatch a woman from mc unless I didn't care

un barbon: Grey beard old fogey
e.g. Il faut que j'aille me rendre compte auprès de cette fille que je ne suis pas un barbon.
Rough Translation: I must prove to myself, with her help, that I'm not an old fogey."

Oh la vache! Oh my Gosh!

Un goujat: a cad; se conduire comme un goujat: to act like a pig or a jerk
Example: Il m'a dit qu'il regrettait infiniment ce qui s'était passé; qu'il s'était conduit comme un goujat.
Translation: He told me he was very sorry for what had happened, that he had behaved like a cad.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4902 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 667 of 766
17 December 2014 at 10:04am | IP Logged 
kanewai wrote:

Jeffers wrote:
To the youth of this world, swag is short for "swagger" and is pretty much a synonym for cool.   

Kids these days ...


The perfect illustration of "swag":



3 persons have voted this message useful



kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4882 days ago

1386 posts - 3054 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 668 of 766
17 December 2014 at 8:29pm | IP Logged 
Mohave wrote:
Oh la vache! Oh my Gosh!


Bonjour, Tristesse suddenly looks a lot more interesting to me!

"La vache" reminds me of one of my favorite phrases in Spanish. I had a friend from
Rio who had lots of lovers. And I mean lots. I don't know how he did it; they
would just materialize out of the ether whenever he was a bit lonely. I figured it
was a Brazilian thing.

Well. He was actually hurt when he learned that his lovers had their own lovers. None
of our circle had any pity for him, and one friend (Argentine) started teasing him by
reminding him that las vacas se pasean (the cows are wandering) whenever he was
in town.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Emme
Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 5340 days ago

980 posts - 1594 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English, German
Studies: Russian, Swedish, French

 
 Message 669 of 766
18 December 2014 at 3:49pm | IP Logged 
In the beginning, before the Advanced / Half / Super / Duper / Mega categories came to be, Cristina came up with a very elegant idea for a Challenge: 100 books, 100 movies, 20 months. The concept was brilliant in its simplicity, but in practice the challenge proved too demanding and the requirements were tweaked along the way, mainly by changing the reading part from “books” to “book units”.

Back in the spring of 2012, I judged the challenge impossible for me to accomplish (the problem was compounded by doubling the requirements for those B2 or above) and so I didn’t even sign up. But over the next couple of years the original idea stuck with me and somehow it still represents an ideal goal to aim for.

This year I signed up for the new Super Challenge and I read a lot. Even though my reading has almost ground to a halt in the past few weeks (more on my log), at the end of November I managed to finish the Double Super Challenge by logging my 10,000th page read and my 180,000th minute watched.

Still, we are only 8 months in and the Challenge will continue for 12 more months, so now I must decide whether to consider the English challenge concluded and dedicate all my efforts to German, which is not going too well, or whether I should set myself even higher goals and keep going until December 2015.

And here the original idea comes back into play: up to now I’ve logged 40 books which means that if I can keep up with this breakneck pace, mathematically it is not completely out of the question reading the fabled original 100 books over the course of 20 months.

I’m just contemplating the idea of having a go at the original Challenge but for now I’m not committing to anything specific. Before I can make a decision I have a question for Cristina or anyone else who has good memory: are these the official rules that were in force when the first Super Challenge started and before all the subsequent changes?

Solfrid Cristin wrote:
[…]
So the rules would be the following:
- Every film counts as long as they have at least voice or subtitles in the TL
- If it lasts less than 45 minutes (a show/series) it counts as half a film. If it lasts for more than three hours it counts as two films.
- If you want to use podcasts or audiobooks, 1 hour and a half is the equivalence of 1 film.
- Every book counts. If it is less than a 100 pages, it counts as half a book. If it is more than 500 pages it counts as two books. 100-499 = 1, 500-749 =2 books, 750-999 = 3, etc.
- You can do fiction or any other material – a documentary on whales, or a book about gardening works just as well as a novel.
- You can see the same films/read the same books again and again
[…]


The post quoted is dated 22 April 2012, so just a few days before the Challenge began.

1 person has voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4526 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 670 of 766
18 December 2014 at 4:03pm | IP Logged 
Emme wrote:

I’m just contemplating the idea of having a go at the original Challenge but for now I’m not committing to anything specific. Before I can make a decision I have a question for Cristina or anyone else who has good memory: are these the official rules that were in force when the first Super Challenge started and before all the subsequent changes?


The post quoted is dated 22 April 2012, so just a few days before the Challenge began.


These were rules that were floated, but I am pretty sure by the time the challenge started we had agreed that 10000 pages was the goal, not 100 books. But my memory could be faulty - I started the actual challenge about a month late.

Personally I think pages better than books, since you can compare across people a lot easier. I've for instance read about twice as many pages as you over the last two years, but about the same number of books 45 vs 40.

My own personal challenge at the moment is 25000 pages and 1000 movies, which I hope to finish sometime next year.
1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5327 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 671 of 766
18 December 2014 at 4:19pm | IP Logged 
Emme wrote:
In the beginning, before the Advanced / Half / Super / Duper / Mega
categories came to be, Cristina came up with a very elegant idea for a Challenge: 100
books, 100 movies, 20 months. The concept was brilliant in its simplicity, but in
practice the challenge proved too demanding and the requirements were tweaked along
the way, mainly by changing the reading part from “books” to “book units”.

Back in the spring of 2012, I judged the challenge impossible for me to accomplish
(the problem was compounded by doubling the requirements for those B2 or above) and so
I didn’t even sign up. But over the next couple of years the original idea stuck with
me and somehow it still represents an ideal goal to aim for.

This year I signed up for the new Super Challenge and I read a lot. Even though my
reading has almost ground to a halt in the past few weeks (more on my to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20125&PN =0&TPN=40">log), at
the end of November I managed to finish the Double Super Challenge by logging my
10,000th page read and my 180,000th minute watched.

Still, we are only 8 months in and the Challenge will continue for 12 more months, so
now I must decide whether to consider the English challenge concluded and dedicate all
my efforts to German, which is not going too well, or whether I should set myself even
higher goals and keep going until December 2015.

And here the original idea comes back into play: up to now I’ve logged 40 books which
means that if I can keep up with this breakneck pace, mathematically it is not
completely out of the question reading the fabled original 100 books over the course
of 20 months.

I’m just contemplating the idea of having a go at the original Challenge but for now
I’m not committing to anything specific. Before I can make a decision I have a
question for Cristina or anyone else who has good memory:
are these the official
rules
that were in force when the first Super Challenge started and before all the
subsequent changes?

Solfrid Cristin wrote:
[…]
So the rules would be the following:
- Every film counts as long as they have at least voice or subtitles in the TL
- If it lasts less than 45 minutes (a show/series) it counts as half a film. If it
lasts for more than three hours it counts as two films.
- If you want to use podcasts or audiobooks, 1 hour and a half is the equivalence of 1
film.
- Every book counts. If it is less than a 100 pages, it counts as half a book. If it
is more than 500 pages it counts as two books. 100-499 = 1, 500-749 =2 books, 750-999
= 3, etc.
- You can do fiction or any other material – a documentary on whales, or a book about
gardening works just as well as a novel.
- You can see the same films/read the same books again and again
[…]


The post quoted is dated 22 April 2012, so just a few days before the Challenge began.


Yes. These were the original rules.
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6590 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 672 of 766
18 December 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
These were rules that were floated, but I am pretty sure by the time the challenge started we had agreed that 10000 pages was the goal, not 100 books.
It was changed in the first week or so. As far as I remember, Cristina was reading twilight and realized that all her effort would count as only one book because it's 450 (or even more) pages, not 500. Others had also realized what madness it was, and I think everyone was delighted to get a more clear and comparable goal :)

The bot originally assumed that an average book is 250 pages, so that two books were 500.


1 person has voted this message useful



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