rlnv Senior Member United States Joined 3954 days ago 126 posts - 233 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 161 of 232 09 March 2014 at 11:35pm | IP Logged |
Thank you Arekkusu for pointing that out. I was able to find a helpful page about French Pronominal Voice and Pronominal Verbs, with the information you provided. Up until this point in my study, I don't recall having been made aware of "se" as a reflective pronoun. I have a better understanding of the usage now.
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PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5479 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1
| Message 162 of 232 10 March 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
Hey all,
Just a general hello here and some thoughts. Sometimes when I read other members comments anywhere
on this forum on any range of topics I almost feel a sense of being overwhelmed at how huge the task is of
learning just a single language is. To think that I would like to attain a high level in 3 or 4 languages! (who am
I kidding!!). Some people on here have gained an awful lot of knowledge on language learning, techniques,
etc, and learned a great deal of languages. When I first began language learning I had no idea what a
pronoun was (i have come a long way). However I still frequently come across posts/members in general that
makes me stop and think- wow this person is smart, this person knows a hell of a lot, damn I've got no idea
what the hell this means! I guess I'm trying to say i'm almost intimidated by the intelligence/accomplishments
of others at times- not because I'm envious, as I'm genuinely happy for other people if they are happy with
their achievements and so on. Yet, personally, I can almost be shocked by some of the information in the
posts because I have a low level of comprehension. I'm humbled by it all.... and realise I'm certainly not as
smart as I would like to lead myself to believe. I constantly remind myself of that in a humbling manner. Not to
bring myself down, but to never let my ego get carried away with itself. There are always people out there
that are more knowledgeable or accomplished. This forum is full of ppl from all walks of life and it's great to
get their input, or read of their thoughts, take some of it on board and attempt to improve my strategies,
because let's face it, intellect has little to do with success in language learning....
... Other times I read comments and realise that i'm well ahead of others (not from a competitive perspective,
but from a perspective of general comparison in language level).
So if intellect is no guarantee, well perseverance is certainly one of the key elements to success (i'm not
guaranteed here). As an extreme example if one has an IQ of 170 but never studies, how will they learn? If
one has an IQ of 70 but studies everyday who is more likely to be able to communicate in the language they
desire to learn? Rest assured I say, that if I keep moving forward I'll be ok :)
... so i'm moving fwd albeit a lot slower than I'd like... for a nbr of reasons but I'm just declaring (once again)
for the purpose of acknowledging in 'public' that i'm still trying to fight my demons of procrastination and shall
continue to do so..... And to share the love a little, I hope you are all moving along well on your learning paths
too. Don't stress if you're not where you'd hope to be, just keep learning, and reflect on your
methods/strategies to improve your techniques, or at least keep you interested!
bla bla bla
PM
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luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 163 of 232 10 March 2014 at 8:27pm | IP Logged |
I discovered http://cram.com/ which has free flashcards for Le Petit Prince, Petit
Nicholas, and The Stranger all in French. For me, the upside here is not having to make any commitment
whatsoever to Anki or an SRS and it has some vocabulary that others have found useful for getting these
books under their belt. Since these are 3 books in my 2014 goals, it's perfect.
Of course, since they have over 74 million flashcards, they probably have something ready to go for almost
any Ankiphobe in the forum. Another nice thing about the site, is that if your book is a common target, there
may be multiple sets of flashcards for the same book. For instance, I found a set of 3 sided cards for Albert
Camus' The Stranger, as well as a traditional English/French set. This makes for more SRS-like study, but
also with an additional wrinkle of variety.
There is the usual bit of caution for typos, etc. In a Petit Nicholas deck, the English had an occasional typo.
In the Stranger, one of the decks had the wrong gender for patron. I still think the decks are useful if one
takes them with a grain of salt.
Edited by luke on 10 March 2014 at 8:59pm
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Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 164 of 232 12 March 2014 at 12:15pm | IP Logged |
That website looks really good, Luke. I tried one of the Petit Nicolas decks, and then
played it in game mode (some sort of crystal crush clone) which was pretty fun and
actually worked well for learning. Games is one thing which gives quizlet and cram.com
the edge over Anki. If it is possible to import cards, I'm seriously thinking about
switching. Or at least importing my cards so that I could practice them in game mode
as
well as using Anki.
The downside is the same for using any premade deck: mistakes. There is a large set
of
Hindi vocab sets from UMich, but the first one I checked has a typo on the Hindi side.
Instead of पढ़ना it has पदना. They look very similar, but they are different. I would
hate to think I might be learning a mistake.
EDIT: it seems it is possible to import cards into cram.com. You need to get them
onto a google docs spreadsheet first (which shouldn't be too hard). I'll have to try
this sometime.
Edited by Jeffers on 12 March 2014 at 12:18pm
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Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 165 of 232 16 March 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
I've created a sign-up thread for the Learning Based Challenge (a one-month challenge for April).
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=38354&PN=1&TPN=1
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Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4124 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian
| Message 166 of 232 17 March 2014 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
@PeterMollenburg
Hey, how are things in Australia? J'espère que tout va bien.
I agree 100% with you. Sometimes I feel that people here are very smart and that makes
me happy too. Kinda makes me feel lucky for being able to absorve such knowledges for free!
@Jeffers
Excellent idea. Thanks.
Edit: I hate when my text breaks down :(
Edited by Cristianoo on 17 March 2014 at 7:44pm
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PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5479 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1
| Message 167 of 232 18 March 2014 at 6:06am | IP Logged |
Cristianoo wrote:
@PeterMollenburg
Hey, how are things in Australia? J'espère que tout va bien.
I agree 100% with you. Sometimes I feel that people here are very smart and that makes
me happy too. Kinda makes me feel lucky for being able to absorve such knowledges for
free!
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Salut Cristianoo,
Tout va bien ici en Australie, merci. Et toi, comment ça va là-bas au Brésil? Je vais à
un meet-up des francophones ce soir, et demain j'ai mon examen à l'Alliance Française
(niveau B1). Bien que je n'étudie pas beaucoup ces jours-là parce que je suis très
occupé! Cependant j'ai commencé à lire plus que j'utilise les cours (c'est un miracle).
J'ai aussi commencé un nouvel emploi (maintenant j'ai trois!- pour moi c'est trois trop
d'emplois !). Ma femme et moi nous avons eu quelques rendez-vous avec les médecins
(enceinte)., je fais aussi beaucoup de vélo parce que le week-end prochain mon père et
moi nous allons monter en haut d'une montagne (c'est une compétition que nous faisons
une fois par un). Pour ça nous devons être en pleine forme. Alors, très occupé ici!
-----------------------
Translation:
All is going well here in Australia thanks. And you, how's it going over there in
Brazil? I'm going to a meet up for francophones this evening, and tomorrow I have my
exam at the Alliance Française (level B1). Although I'm not studying much these days
because i'm very busy! However I have started reading more than using courses (that's a
miracle). I've also started a new job (now I have three!-for me that's three too many
jobs!). My wife and I have had some meetings with doctors (pregnant), i'm also cycling
a lot because this coming weekend my father and I are going to climb to the top of a
mountain (it's a competition that we do once a year). For that we have to be in good
shape. So you see, very busy!
------------
I know I know I'm the kind that really tells people how I am when they ask how I am ;)
Steve
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Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4124 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian
| Message 168 of 232 18 March 2014 at 10:20pm | IP Logged |
Salut!
> I know I know I'm the kind that really tells people how I am when they ask how I am
;)
Hahaha Oui, c'est vrai. Tu es ouvert comme un brésilien et tu t'occupes beaucoup des
sports. C'est bien pour la santé! J'en fais seulement un: musculation, tous les jours,
sauf dimanche.
Ici tout va bien aussi. Comme toi, je dois faire un examen pour le B1, mais juste au
début d'anée prochaine.
Je ne crois pas que vous avez trois emplois! c'est trop fatigé, non? je n'en ai que un.
Je n'imagine pas avoir trois emplois et aussi étudier des langues chez toi...
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