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Expug’s All at On(c)e Log - TAC14 | ||
Tags: Papiamento | Estonian | Georgian | Native Materials | Norwegian | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Mandarin | Russian | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4246 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 377 of 415 01 December 2014 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Really exciting news!! I'll be eager to hear how your trip goes when the time comes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 378 of 415 02 December 2014 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll surely let you guys know! Looking forward to it.
Today was the second lesson of Estnisch Lehrbuch: just two pages of explanations, and I managed the German quite well. Then a lot of dialogues and practice in Estonian. I'm finding this book to be quite helpful! Georgian-Russian today's lesson was a walk in the park. Lessons seem to be getting shorter, and consisting largely of declension and conjugation charts. The explanations don't seem too difficulty because I already know what is being explained, but even then I'm learning some important grammatical words in Russian. I wouldn't be able to follow a textbook in Russian on a language I know nothing about, but at least here I'm reviewing Georgian while learning Russian. The lesson ended with a text on the Georgian theater, and a good thing happened for the best: I didn't manage to scan/ocr the Russian text finely, and so I had to read the Georgian first and translate the missing words. It turned out that I understood a large portion of the Georgian text (more so than from the Russian text) and it all turned into a good and motivating practice for both languages. Chinese reading - one of the best days so far. I'm visiting known characters more often, sometimes only the proper nouns consist of unknown characters. And I'm also attached to the story of Digital Fortress, to the extent that today I was sad about having to take a break. Besides, I noticed the book might be complete and matching in Chinese, since I'm in page 16 out of 370 in Portuguese and Page 9 out of 86 in Chinese. The Watch Tower magazine has audio in Georgian and Estonian. It will remain a long time my only option for doing L-R in those languages :| I will try to search for the least proselyting articles. Just went through a Georgian article, actually. It was very helpful. It starts discussing how people view manual labor. The audio matchs the text perfectly and the reading is slow but far from unnatural. German was going fine, if only I wasn't doing it at the busiest moment of the afternoon. I did half the reading with full attention, and half the listening. That is, halfway through each of them I lost focus thanks to external demands. IT was a bit worsed with Russian, as I ended up reading Divergent in the silent moments of Bednaya Nastya. Even so, I see today as having a positive outcome. The extra time I had in the morning allowed me to do everything in a more focused way, not worrying about the clock so much. It turned out I finished 30 min later than expected and now I will see what to do next: I may start a new series in English, Revolution, or continue with Le Trône de Fer. Bear in mind I already did my intensive Georgian reading and it came out quite well! Lesson learned: JW's texts with audio and translations are easier to understand than news in Georgian with no translation. Paying attention to what one is doing makes all the difference in the world. It is one of these simple assertives one keeps forgetting to put into practice. I have to keep reminding myself of trying my best to 'immerse' into each language while I'm studying it. The results are quite diverse, and I get closer to the throughput of other learners at this forum. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 379 of 415 02 December 2014 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Note to self: started watching the series Revolution with merged English-Norwegian subtitles. Having fun AND counting to the SC!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 380 of 415 03 December 2014 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Estnisch lehrbuch - again a short lesson with clear explanations and a lot of dialogues. And I'm reading the German just fine. I should just remind myself that the nominative plural is formed from the genitive singular, not from the nominative singular.
One more great lesson from the Georgian-Russian textbook. Nice dialogues about going to the theater, the cinema and the concert. I learned important and natural expressions for both Georgian and Russian. The grammar explanations on preverbs was also useful as it contrasted Georgian and Russian as well. It turned out I am anticipating the Chinese reading of Digital Fortress because I'm so excited about it! I'm doing it before watching videos in Norwegian (series Hjem) and in French (currently the film 'La Bûche'). Today it went fine as well. i'm starting to get the hang of longer periods and I'm not getting lost at longer paragraphs. It helps that 'Digital Fortress' is less 'absurd' than The Time Traveller's Wife. I even Managed to find the audiobook in Chinese! I has to listen to it all through the point where I had stopped, but at least it allowmed me to read 18 pages again and increase my count. The speed sometimes is too fast, sometimes there are pauses that take long enough for me to go through the text first, and I think i'm going to take my time and take the most out of this resource even if that means slowing down my reading. I may read one paragraph then play it, one at once. Finished Clarice Lispector's novel Aqua Viva auf Deutsch. Taking a break from translations and going for non-fiction at the same time. I wonder if I can take it, given that I'm already reading non-fiction in French, on Economics, and using the Estonian textbook in German and the Georgian textbook in Russian. Anyway, since I'm reading 10 pages a day in German, I think whichever book I start might end soon. I'm also done with the first 100 'easy' tests Portuguese-Russian from Goethe-Verlag. I'm not doing the hard ones now, I'm going for German instead. I've already worked on all the Norwegian ones before doing any German. So I will do both parts for German, and for my weaker languages I will just do 1 level with 100 tests at a time. Today turned out to be busier than expected. I just finished reading from Divergent, but no other series' activity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 381 of 415 05 December 2014 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Didn't have time to write yesterday. Was busy, went out to solve some issues with tickets I bought to Buenos Aires and weren't refunded (the flight was canceled). Still unsolved. At least I used the time on the bus and at the waiting room to read a lot. I started reading my new book in German and it turns out the original is in French, not German. Even better. And now I'm counting more towards French for the SC. I'm close to reaching the 5000 pages. The book is called "Les nouveaux maîtres du monde/Die neuen Herrscher der Welt", by Jean Ziegler. yesterday I only missed the Russian part of the SC (reading from Divergent and watching Bednaya Nastya), so it turned out my reading was very productive.
Today, otoh, has started without my daily Happy Journey Across China and Papiamento video sessions, to which I'm very regretful. I gave a Portuguese lesson for italki from 8 to 9 am, and it was already time to leave. I could have woken up earlier but I was tired from yesterday. Maybe I can do it in the evening. I read 1 paragraph in German non-stop, understanding all words, from Estnisch Lehrbuch. Yesterday I also understood quite a bit from "Die neuen Herrscher...". I believe my German is reaching a critical mass. Maybe there are good news ahead. Btw, the dialogues from lesson 5 in Estonian are also quite easy now, and they are not short, which means my vocabulary in Estonian is increasing consistenly. Still enjoying Digital Fortress, though today there were too long paragraphs were I got lost. I discarded audio, because it is too fast and makes me lose focus. I better concentrate on what is working for me, which is reading with Pera-Pera while checking for translations. One interesting fact: I always note down manually on a datebook the pages I'm currently reading for each of my books. both the TL file's page and the SL page. I usually stop at the first paragrah at a given page for the TL, but it does not always match, obviously, with the SL. So, in order to note where I stopped at the other file, I draw a vertical rectangle and I paint the sector of the page I stopped at. For example, yesterday I had stopped at the last three paragraphs of the text, so I drew the rectangle and painted a smaller horizontal rectangle at the final third of the vertical rectangle. Simple but effcient. Today I did everything including Russian. I could pay more attention to Deutsch Direkt, which doesn't mean I'm understanding everything (there are no subtitles). I also learned a bit from the Goethe-Verlag tests for German. I only regret still watching Bednaja Nastya as I start reading from Divergent and vice-versa, need to work on this. Today I lost more time with external things than with lengthy resources like the Georgian-Russian textbook, so there's still room for optimizing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 382 of 415 09 December 2014 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Took the day off on Monday, it was a municipal holiday. My only activities were watching one chapter from Happy Journey Across China (to make up for Friday) and the first episode from the Norwegian series 'Adventslekene' which daegga recommended.
Still on Happy Journey Across China, I have to say it's hard to pick new words on the go, as the subtitles are fast too. Still, I believe I'm improving my listening comprehension while also reinforcing some written words I may have seen before. They've added more episodes, so maybe I'd do 2 on a day once in a while so I keep working towards the end. Today was calmer, I was more focused and I finished earlier, so I got to watch Revolution again after 1 week. I'm using Norwegian subs, but they are delayed to the English ones and to the audio. Sometimes I work on them almost as SRS. I get the English and try to guess what the Norwegian is - and I often get it all right! I need to schedule some readings so that I don't lose any ideas or suggestions. I'm really going for the blockbusters for the hardest (and hardest-to-find-material) languages such as Georgian, Chinese, Russian and Estonian. I'm reading Divergent in Russian, Dan Brown's books in Chinese. I'd like to read books from Michael Crichton (thanks s_allard for reminding me) and The Chronicles of Narnia. Whatever I haven't watched yet I'd like to read first, so that rules out The Hunger Games and The Game of Thrones. Georgian has a selection of Candace Bushnell and E. L. James, so...maybe I'll keep going with the classics like Jules Verne. I'm reading from Jean Ziegler's book in German at a ratio of about 85% understanding of words. For the 15% I resort to the French original on the side. It turns out I'm skimming through long selections of the French text as I need it less and less often. If things keep going this way, I may reach Germany in April with a basic fluency status. I won't even feel discouraged by some German friends who refuse to chat because my writing still looks clumsy - mostly overdoing the word order changes and misusing case endings. Another friend who is Brazilian and learned Russian and German said that Russian turns out to be way easier regardless the linguistical aspects because he'd always find Russians willing to have longer conversations while Germans wouldn't go beyond greetings and small talk about the family and the weather while talking in German. I just hope things get better for my practical skills until my trip, as I'm already enjoying reading a lot. As for listening, I'm watching Deutsch Direkt which is a learning documentary, and I believe when I get back to fiction with doubtle subtitles things will get more interesting and I will see an improvement compared to my last film (Lola Rennt). Now for the activity I'm enjoying the most at the day: reading in Chinese! Today was even more productive and I'm starting to have more blocks of known characters than gaps. The story does help, that's why I wrote above that I'm concerned about finding stuff that is both interesting and easy for my weaker languages. Like I wrote on Friday I won't do the audiobook for now because I won't benefit much from it. The intonation is rather robotic - yeah I know, so were the Norwegian ones, but Chinese is a tonal language so it's important to learn the phrasal intonation that lies above the tones and the reading speed is fast. It's not an abandoned project: I will save it for shorter selections of another material or for the times when I start having a better overall comprehension of the spoken language. So far it seems my reading skills are better than the listening ones to a larger extent. That means I need more focused training to recognize in speech words I already know, sometimes even actively. It helps that I got good grammar training with some adverbial expressions and conjunctions and I know where to expect the most important information in the Chinese phrase, and I really noticed some improvement but, as I said, I'm still not comfortable about picking up the listening skills by working with Chinese audio and English-only subtitles, for instance. We'll see...I'm confident about it. Which reminds me I need to do audiobook reading for Norwegian. I wonder if audio in L2 and text in L1 counts as reading for the SC or only as film? In fact, audio and text in both would be better but I have too few Norwegian novels and the remaining ones are expensive. As a matter of fact, there are lots of films with Norwegian audio and hardcoded English subtitles but I think I need to get used to longer periods and that is better done through audiobooks, I believe. Maybe Hodejegerne is an option for when I finish my next book, I may even have a Brazilian Portuguese translation. It's about doing experiments now, since lots have happened since I did my last L-R or Norwegian video-Norwegian subtitles, so I don't know how well is my ability to associate audio and text on-the-go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5001 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 383 of 415 09 December 2014 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I must admit getting lost in your progress. It is all exciting but it is an avalanche of
news and language combinations! But I surely understood how much fun you're having, which is the most important thing. I am actually quite looking forward to your end-2014 post to sum it all up so that I can orient myself again ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 384 of 415 10 December 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Cavesa, sorry if this log seems confusing at times =D I don't usually get asked about specific points I write about, so it's natural that write about several languages in a row, back and forth. I'll be writing an overview soon, thought my impressions change all the time.
Estnisch Lehrbuch - the repetition of the vocabulary is paying off. I'm not translating from the exercises, only from the dialogues, and even so I understand quite a bit. It's important how the sentences are repeated entirely or with minor differences from the first exercise to the latter. For example, today was about the partitive. The first exercise was just about adding the correct partitive form. Then at the final exercise you had to choose between nominative and partitive, but the vocabulary was about the same, so it served as a reinforcement. I anticipated the Georgian series today, because there was a lot to do, and while the system was processing the files I'd watch it. I'm starting to pick up more and more from the dialogues. The site translate.ge now has a spin-off: http://next.translate.ge/ . It is much more contextual: when I look up a Georgian word for its English translations, I get other results for the English translation and thus more examples from the Georgian usage; I bet the opposite also works. Btw, I'm also understanding more from the Georgian reading. Some stats for the Super Challenge: 4671 French pages (goal 5000), 1500 German and 1400 Norwegian (goal 2500 for each). Today I didn't have time for watching extra TV series. I had a lot of interesting articles to read and also the forum. Edited by Expugnator on 10 December 2014 at 9:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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