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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | Catalan | Ancient Greek | Turkish | Polyglot | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5398 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 289 of 331 08 August 2014 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
Where-ish, and when exactly? I live about half an hour from the lake, in Michigan. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 290 of 331 12 August 2014 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I'll mostly be in Ann Arbor, but we'll all be in the Holland / Douglas area Friday and
Saturday, August 22 & 23. It'd be fun to grab a coffee if we can! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 291 of 331 04 September 2014 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Pentaglot roulette
I keep saying that I can't balance five languages, but every time I try to drop one I feel sad and so give it one last chance, and think maybe this one isn't so bad I should drop another. Which I don't do. And so I still have five. I'm not making any amount of progress in any, and in some ways I feel like I'm falling behind (though I think that might be an illusion). Français - Still going strong in the Super Challenge. And I still have dozens of books on my bucket list, so I'm not going to run out of material anytime soon. I'm currently reading Marguerite Yourcenar's L'oeuvre au noir and Albert Camus's La peste. I didn't mean to start in on two, but I left one behind on a plane and so started the other. L'oeuvre is great - the lead is an alchemist during the Renaissance, and he travels Europe seeking knowledge. Meanwhile, his mother has sold all her possessions and joined the peasants who have stormed Münster in order to establish a city of god on earth. This is the point where I lost the book ... though I know from history classes that the City of God, like all utopias, becomes a nightmarish place. This is a challenging read. I need a dictionary, and I often need to read a passage many times to tease out the meaning. Meanwhile, in La peste tens of thousands of rats have come into the streets of Oran to die. Soon, the good citizens of the city also start to come down with fever. After a few days of denial the authorities finally confront the unthinkable reality: they are facing the plague - and the city is sealed off from the outside world. Shades of ebola. This meanwhile, although also an adult novel, is a much easier read - I don't use a dictionary, and rarely have to re-read a passage. It's much more automatic. Italiano - I'm getting impatient, and want to start reading 'real' novels. But the kindle Italian dictionary is a pain in the ass, and so I need to read with an outside dictionary at hand. This slows me down a lot. Türkçe I'm back up to lesson 35 on Assimil. This is where I stumbled the previous time, when I was trying to do five lessons a week. It's much easier to do Turkish at a slower pace, without the self-induced pressure to finish each course. I almost dropped Turkish, but then read ahead, and it looks like most of the grammar is introduced by lesson 42, and after that it's mostly consolidation. So I'll stick it out for a bit more. ελληνικά It's getting ugly outside the walls of Troy: Achilles (to Agamemnon): ἀλλὰ σοὶ ὦ μέγ᾽ ἀναιδὲς ἅμ᾽ ἑσπόμεθ᾽ ὄφρα σὺ χαίρῃς, τιμὴν ἀρνύμενοι Μενελάῳ σοί τε κυνῶπα But you, shameless one, we followed you, so that you might rejoice, to win glory for Menelaus, and for yourself, dog-face. I almost dropped Greek, because holy shit is it hard. And I was reaching a point where I was mimicking the Greek without actually understanding it. I was moving backwards. But I really would love to be able to read the epics freely (and not word by painful word) so I switched tactics a bit, and now transcribe each section before moving on. It seems to help. العربية I finished Michel Thomas Egyptian, and thought the whole series was excellent. I then tried to switch over to Pimsleur Eastern Arabic II ... and bombed. I could hear the tenses, but they spoke so fast, and used words that were different from the Egyptian, that I was lost most of the time. I also almost dropped Arabic. I figured, I won't be traveling to the middle east anytime soon, and there's not a lot of Arabic literature that appeals to me. But then I did a bit out of the Madinah series, and figured I'd give it a shot. It's free, and there are videos of the lessons on YouTube. It uses a more formal than I wanted, and might be much more Quran-focused than I am interested in, but ... well, it's free. Español nada 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 292 of 331 06 September 2014 at 3:35am | IP Logged | ||
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2014 Goals
I can't possibly do all this. Something has to give. Probably Arabic, though I'm still in denial. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Français My reading is strong, though I still stumble on some of the harder novels. Finish five or more novels. At the top of my list are Marguerite Yourcenar. L'oeuvre au noir (current) Albert Camus. La peste. (current) Amélie Nothomb. Stupeur et tremblements Jean Genet. Notre Dame des Fleurs. Ágota Kristof. Le grand cahier. Marguerite Duras. Un barrage contre le Pacifique. Marcel Proust. Le Côté de Guermantes Maurice Druon. Les roi de fer. Continue with Un village français. Continue with France Culture podcasts. Continue to review FSI Lesson XIV. Possible create an Anki deck at some point. 2015: Pimsleur Phase V a try when it's released. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Italiano Complete Pimsleur Phase III. Consider Phase IV at some point. Complete Living Language (finished 'intermediate,' haven't started 'advanced.') Restart Assimil (paused on Lesson 68) Continue watching La piovra and Montalbano Finish Dante's Inferno; start Purgatorio Finish two to three novels. I'm struggling making the leap to original native fiction. At the top of my list: Luigi Pirandello. Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (current) Giuseppe Tomas di Lampedusa, Il gattopardo Umberto Eco. Il nomme de la rosa. Elsa Morante, La storia Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei tartari Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo Italo Calvino, (multiple) These are some hard authors, so I'll probably need to do a lot more actual studying first in order to read them. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Türkçe I've learned Turkish to a conversational level three times now. And forgotten it twice. This time I just want to keep it alive so that I don't have to re-learn it when (not if) I return to Istanbul. Continue working on Assimil. Currently on lesson 36. Maybe: Restart FSI (on lesson 20) or Teach Yourself (lesson 9). ------------------------------------------------------------ ------ ελληνικά Continue with the Iliad, Book 1 using commentary by Pamela Draper and Clyde Pharr. Copy out the verses by hand once I understand them. Currently on Line 170 out of 600. If I manage to finish then start with Books 6 and 12, commentary by Geoffrey Steadman. Sometime in this lifetime: I'll make the switch to Classical Greek. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------ العربية I just don't know. I like Arabic, but it requires more dedication than I can give it right now, and I am years away from being able to maintain Arabic at a passive level. Unlike with the Romance languages or Greek, I'm not that interested in the literature. I really just want to be able to talk with people when I'm on the road ... and the poor Middle East looks like it will be off limits for awhile. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Español I still have Assimil's Perfectionnement Espagnol at home. I haven't touched it. And I don't want to until I get my Italian to a safe place. Maybe by 2015. Edited by kanewai on 06 September 2014 at 3:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 293 of 331 13 September 2014 at 3:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Books update:
I'm closing in on line 200 in The Iliad, and Athena has finally made her appearance! I've been waiting on her - I think she's one of the greatest literary creations from the Heroic and Classical ages. Swift-footed Achilles and dog-faced Agamemnon continue trade insults, and finally Achilles can't take it anymore. "His heart is divided within his shaggy breast" on whether to swallow his anger, or draw his sword and kill the king. He ponders for all of one line and decides to go for the kill. And enter the terrible- eyed goddess. Side rant: Athena got cut from the Brad Pitt movie. There's no excuse for this. It's just rank sexism - they couldn't have a woman who fights better than all the men combined. Seriously: here she is on the Pergamamon Altar, totally chill, killing a Titan with one hand. Lets see any of the boys do that. 
Back to the story: Athena comes up from behind, grabs Achilles by the hair, and lets him know in no uncertain terms to put back his sword. However, because Athena rocks and loves a good fight, she encourages him to continue with the insults. -------------------------------------------- Over in Italy, in Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello) a director is preparing to produce one of Luigi Pirandello's other plays when six strange characters wander in off the street. They were abandoned by their author, who decided they were too crude and not fit for the stage. They believe otherwise. 
This was a hard read - there was lots of absurd humor, word play, and arguments about illusion, reality, and the stage. And also: incest, prostitution, and death. I struggled, even though I had an English translation to help me. I think I would have enjoyed the humor more if my Italian was more advanced. I'd still like to see it performed, though. -------------------------------------------- In North Africa, the authorities have sealed of the city of Oran, and the inhabitants are left to deal with the plague on their own in La peste. Albert Camus wrote the novel based on his own experiences of being in a quarantined city. Camus doesn't focus on the horror as much as on the men who rise to the occasion in confronting it. I loved this book in college - I read it twice in English. I'm glad to report that it still holds up. Here's a section from the English translation: Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in the suffering that he cannot see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully; always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together-- and that's the only way... -------------------------------------------- Deep underground, I'm only making it through the Inferno at one circle per week. Or mini-circle: the seventh circle has lots of inner circles and spirals, and sub circles, and far fewer monsters. Though next up is the final descent to the core - I think it might get more exciting. Or at least more grotesque. As it is, I left off on a vast burning plane. The gays are sent here (says Wikipedia; I couldn't figure out who they were from the text), and they are forced to keep walking - if they stop they will be immobilized for 100 years, and have no escape from the rains of fire. Cruel. And strange - Dante recognizes a lot of his teachers here, and they talk about how much they love each other, and how Florence is less rich and noble now that the older generation has passed. And now for the final descent. Already a strange monster is flying up from depths to meet them ... 
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5398 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 294 of 331 13 September 2014 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love reading your updates. You always make me want to read the classics. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 295 of 331 22 September 2014 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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and then there were three.
I made a good stab at balancing five languages this summer - I actually held out longer than I expected. However, it was not sustainable at all. I thought that I would be able to gently maintain four languages and focus on improving in one. Instead I would barely maintain four while one threatened to lapse behind. And so I'd spend my energy on trying to bring that language up to speed, just in time to notice that another one was falling behind. And I wasn't really progressing in any of them. Arabic was the first to go. I don't have any travel plans to the area (I like my head where it is), I don't have much use for it in my daily life, and I'm not that interested in classical Arabic. As much as I like the language, I'm still years away from basic fluency. Turkish vs Ancient Greek is the next choice, and it's a hard one. Most of the time I think Ancient Greek is impossible. I think: I can't do this, & I should dedicate my time to something realistic. But then I'll make a slow breakthrough, and I'll decide that I am actually making progress, but that I really do need to dedicate just a little bit more time to my studies. Which means dropping Turkish. This one hurts. At times I feel like I'm on the cusp of a breakthrough. At other times I think I'm still a year away. Assimil's Le Turc is getting really hard. I need to look up 75% of the words in each lesson in a dictionary. It takes me a whole week to do one chapter, and sometimes longer. I think it's an excellent if difficult course; I wish I had the time to do it properly. But I love Turkey, İstanbul is one of my favorite cities in the world, and knowing even basic conversational Turkish has enriched my visits there immensely. And in 2016 I might (real big "might") have a chance to spend a month in the country. I'd love to maintain what I have until then. I really don't have the time to do both, though I gave it a good shot. But in the end, learning Ancient Greek is a lifetime goal, while Turkish is more short term, and it's a language I don't need to learn to a high level. It feels like a break-up. Edited by kanewai on 22 September 2014 at 10:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 296 of 331 25 September 2014 at 1:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I took the vocabulary test for French that is being discussed over at EMK's log. I was hoping to do better:
1000 most frequent words: 26/30 87% 2000 most frequent words: 25/30 83% 3000 most frequent words: 25/30 83% 4000 most frequent words: 23/30 77% 5000 most frequent words: 23/30 77% Objectively, it's not bad - but's not where I want to be, so I have dutifully reloaded some French vocabulary decks into Anki. I reactivated my Homeric Greek decks while I was at it. I tried the first two levels with Italian, too. These were less automatic; I got a fair amount right, but I had to think harder to figure out the correct answer. 1000 most frequent words: 21/30 70% 2000 most frequent words: 20/30 67% This is ok; I figure I'm on course. Edited by kanewai on 25 September 2014 at 1:37am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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