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BAnna’s TAC 2014 Spaß-Lobo-IndRussian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 169 of 236 01 April 2014 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
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March 31
End of March Summary-2 wk vacation meant lots of Spanish, little German, almost no Russian, and very little formal study of any kind -WATCH/LISTEN Total 16 hours (DE 6 hr ES 8 hr RU 2 hr) DE: Pre-Spain: finished the audiobook of Reiches Erbe, and heard a number of podcasts and watched documentaries on various topics (Ukraine, Mandela, infertility, the Alhambra). Post-Spain: started audiobook Von allem Anfang an by Christoph Hein (somewhat autobiographical story about a young man in 1950s East Germany). RU: finished Bros. Karamazov video series pre-Spain SP: I watched a few more episodes of Filosofía Aquí y Ahora (into the 3rd season now), documentary on bullfighting and listened to Pablo Neruda's Nobel Prize Acceptance speech, then watched news programs on TV/listened to audioguides in Spain. -READ total 1756 pages (DE-753,ES-1003) DE: read more of Die Mitte der Welt by Andreas Steinhöfel (pretty good coming of age novel) before putting it aside pre-trip and resuming after, finished Flucht ins fremde Paradies (dull graded reader) and Johannisnacht by Uwe Timm (pretty good comic novel about a journalist from Munich researching potatoes in post-Wende Berlin). I often don't really get German humor, but found this funny. SP: Noche de alacranes by Alfredo Gómez Cerdá (so-so young adult love story about post-Civil War Spain), La sombra del viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (thriller with a side of melodrama, set in Barcelona, but rather disappointing), first half of Ensayo sobre la ceguera by Portuguese writer José Saramago (enjoyed this in English a few years ago, novel about mass blindness as metaphor for political life under dictatorship), some short stories and excerpts from non-fiction writings by Julio Cortázar (Argentina), essays by José Pablo Feinmann (Argentina, host of Filosofía Aquí y Ahora), poetry by Pablo Neruda (Chilean) -STUDY (grammar, vocab, other instructional stuff) RU (more verb conjugation, telling time and numbers) Russian World I lessons 32-44, Pimsleur I: 8-10, Russian for Everybody Lesson 5 SP- modal expressions in "Adv. Span Grammar", vocabulary (esp. Peninsular Spanish) DE-vocabulary study only 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6053 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 170 of 236 01 April 2014 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
Ácer, bétula and urtiga in Portuguese. Even closer. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 171 of 236 04 April 2014 at 2:59am | IP Logged | ||
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@Luso: You are leading me into temptation :) I definitely need to make the time to learn Portuguese at some point. That will be next after Russian gels for me more. I will evaluate at the end of this calendar year and see if I'm ready to take on the study of another language. One of my current music obsessions is Amália singing in Portuguese and the other one is the new Jonas Kaufmann recording of Schubert's Winterreise (German). Gorgeous, melancholy music.
ES: Music-related RANT ahead. Listened to Radio Nacional Español podcast about Adolfo Suárez. Why, why, why do they play absurd dramatic music in a documentary??? A little music can be appropriate if it fits the topic (such as playing the campaign election song) but intense violins, Jaws/Star Wars like stuff running in the background when someone is being interviewed is SO annoying, distracting and pointless. End of Rant. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 172 of 236 06 April 2014 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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05 April
This past week has been spent mostly reviewing Russian and recovering from jet lag. My mind's grasp of the Second Conjugation and much vocabulary did not survive my vacation... I have therefore decided to focus much more on Russian for a while. My German and Spanish need improvement, but I can get by ok at my current level. Russian is a different story and I need to immerse myself in the language. I'm reading a terrific memoir in English with a smattering of Russian words, Gary Shteyngart's Little Failure, and my German skype partner (who is studying Russian) recommended the fantastic Russian language Sherlock Holmes series to me (English subtitles). Spanish language= испанский язык (espansky yazyk) German language= немецкий язык (“German” means “man who can’t speak" but most other languages incorporate the country's name, like above) Verbs знать (to know) and изучать (to study a subject) require the use of adjective-noun expressions of languages. Я знаю английский язык. I know the English language. Мы изучаем русский язык. We study the Russian language. Verbs говорить (to speak), учиться (to learn, II conj), понимать (to understand) are used with adverbial expressions of languages. Мы говорим по-английски. We speak in English. Мы учимся и понимаем по-русски. We learn and understand in Russian. Edited by BAnna on 06 April 2014 at 2:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 173 of 236 13 April 2014 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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12 April
Current progress is very gradual, though I am consistently doing something in each language every day. My plan is to keep going and not get discouraged at the slow pace. Wise words to keep in mind from someone's log (can't remember whose): the language learning process is a marathon, not a sprint. I've been recently spending about 50% of my study time on Russian so am finally back to where I was before going on vacation (just started verbs of motion). With Spanish and German, my focus is currently on slow improvement via native materials supplemented with occasional formal grammar study. Am very much enjoying the German book "Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert" von Saša Stanišic. (English title: How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, set during the Bosnian war.) Excerpt from the opening in English: " On the morning of the day when he was to die in the evening, Grandpa Slavko made me a magic wand from a stick and said: there's magic in that hat and wand. If you wear the hat and wave the wand you'll be the most powerful magician in the non-aligned states. You'll be able to revolutionise all sorts of things, just as long as they're in line with Tito's ideas and the Statutes of the Communist League of Yugoslavia. I doubted the magic, but I never doubted my grandpa. The most valuable gift of all is invention, imagination is your greatest wealth. Remember that, Aleksandar, said Grandpa very gravely as he put the hat on my head, you remember that and imagine the world better than it is. He handed me the magic wand, and I doubted nothing any more." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 174 of 236 26 April 2014 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Ack! I haven't updated this log in a while. The forum going down brought me down as well. And in trying to catch up on reading logs and general posts about anything and everything, I keep getting error messages and slow performance. And yet, and yet I still do love HTLAL... I'm not ready to jump ship, but exploring options is good, and there's nothing wrong with participating on multiple forums (time permitting). I freely admit I've been "playing the field" a bit and have tried out some of the other language forums that I actually learned about here, so here are my impressions so far... of course my preference would be that HTLAL would be around forever and just get better :) Take the following with a grain of salt. I am blissfully ignorant of most of the past history of these forums, so I won't comment on any of that.
-The "Fluent in 3 months" one is fast, no major errors, but a little glitchy and flashy. A lot of the "missions" seem unrealistic to me (sort of like becoming fluent in 3 months sounds a bit daft to me). But they emailed me a really great list of resources in Russian. Yes! -Unilang is very well organized by language of interest, there's a place for TAC stuff, and it runs well. I haven't yet had time to really read that many posts there yet. It's nice that there aren't constant errors. It doesn't feel like as close a knit community as HTLAL, but it could be I haven't spent enough time there. -polydog.org runs great and is super-easy to use, but very new, so there aren't that many people on there yet. It seems totally uncensored, if that's important to anyone (I really don't care, I don't think my posts are controversial). I've sort of moved my random log over there for the time being, but will continue to do a monthly summary here. -Lingq: I use Lingq off and on to read web-based stuff, but their forum is not well organized along the lines of how my brain works, but it could be good for others. I think they've been having some technical problems lately too, but they are working on them. Other than that, I'm still busily studying, and have decided to eat crow and join the SuperChallenge after all. I was fed up with all the nit-picking about the rules, but then I realized I don't have to read any of that or care about it, and if Solfrid Cristina can merrily put up with it, why should I get bent out of shape about it. The challenge really boosted my German last time, so here I go again, this time trying to do all three languages. Yikes! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 175 of 236 30 April 2014 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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End of April summary
In April the focus was overwhelmingly on Russian, especially in the last week or so as I ended up deciding to do the Super Challenge after all. And I just decided to do the 6-week challenge for Russian at the same time because I need to keep studying that while I'm focusing on native materials. On to the individual language summaries: DE: Read 314 pages (mostly from "Wie der Soldat das Gramophon repariert", but also finally wrapped up the tail end of "Die Mitte der Welt"). Watched a movie "Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte" (early Fassbinder) and listened to 10 hours of the audiobooks "Von allem Anfang an" (50s East Germany) and "Sommerlügen" (short stories by Bernhard Schlink, author of "The Reader" and Selbs mysteries). I'm saving the last couple of disks of this last one for the Super Challenge. Also skyped, listened to a couple of radio broadcasts and read some online news articles. No grammar study, but looked up a few interesting words. ES: Read 304 pages (mostly "Ensayo sobre la ceguera" by Jose Saramago and started "Corazón tan blanco" by Javier Marías) Watched a bunch of movies: "No eres tú, soy yo" (silly Mexican rom-com) "Y tu mamá también" (Mexican coming of age by Alfonso Cuaron, who did Gravity, Children of Men, one of the Harry Potters ) "¡Átame!" (Spanish film by Almodóvar , starring an extremely young Antonio Banderas) "Blindness" dubbed into Spanish (directed by the Brazilian Fernando Meirelles known for "City of God" with Gael García Bernal as a villain). From the Argentinian government TV website which for some programs has a transcript that runs to a window at the side (so you can ignore OR read the L2 subtitles!), I watched a few more episodes of Filosofía Aquí y Ahora and started a series about César Milstein (Nobel-winning Argentinian biochemist). I listened to some podcasts (from US-based Radio Ambulante and Spain's Radio Nacional España, mostly on news/human interest stuff but also listened to a 30-minute program on soccer...to my husband's surprise and joy!), and I did manage some traditional study: first 9 lessons (gender and articles) in "Gramática de uso del español Level B1-B2", which a few of Team Lobo folks are also doing. I also worked through Anaya's Vocabulario Nivel Medio B1 through Unidad 6. Other: skimmed in English "A History of the Spanish Language" by Penny. This was definitely an academic work (lots of phonology), but also interesting word derivations for a more casual reader. Luckily my library had this and I didn't have to fork over $50 for it. RU: Studied Pimsleur 11-16. The recommendation is that you should do it until you're 80% comfortable, but I do them over until I'm about 96% comfortable. I found "Достаточно" difficult, for just one example. Also did Russian World I lessons 44-61, which I did in conjunction with lessons 5-7 of the text Русский для Всех (Russian for Everybody) and Face to Face lessons 5-7. I do the workbook exercises for both of these, so it gives me practice writing by hand and reading. Some of this was post-vacation review, some new stuff: telling time, numbers, adjectives, verbs of motion, question intonation. In Assimil Russian with Ease, I did the first 6 lessons, but I don't have a solid feel for this yet, though I know lots of people love Assimil. At this point, I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid, but I'm not really ready to give an opinion one way or the other. Watched a bunch of movies, and most were pretty good: Шерлок Холмс (Sherlock Holmes) part of a series, and they're great. Брестская крепость (Brest Fortress) intense WWII, about the famous battle Измена (Betrayal) offbeat love?? story, interesting cinematography Ошибка резиаента (Secret Agent's Blunder) B&W 60s spy thriller, told from Soviet viewpoint, some German in it as well. Исчезнувшая империя (The Vanished Empire) about teens in 70s USSR Свинка Пепа (Pepa the pig) cartoon that I can sorta follow without subs Палата №6 (Ward No.6) based on Chekhov's story of a Dr. at a mental institution who ends up being a patient Русский ковчег (Russian Ark). This last is famous for being done in a single 96-minute shot in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. There's no real plot, instead it's a walkthrough of Russian history in a pseudo-documentary, pseudo-dream style. The costumes were definitely cool. Other: started in English "Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia" by Figes. Just read 50 p or so, but so far it's very interesting, for example, the obsession with Europe and France was so intense in the 19th century, that many aristocrats could barely speak Russian at all, just what they picked up from their serfs. The "Understanding Russians" Coursera class I've enrolled in has been postponed a couple of weeks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 176 of 236 04 May 2014 at 6:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I moved my Russian log over to polydog.org since I'm not on a team here for that. (faster and easier to post) Maybe that means my posts here will finally be shorter...
This week I started the 6WC in Russian and the Super Challenge in Russian, Spanish and German, so I've basically gone insane...or more insane than I was. Since I have a cold, I've been watching lots of movies and rather felt like I was in a very strange time warp (saw a movie set during the Franco dictatorship, a documentary about skaters in East Germany, and a couple of B&W Soviet era spy films where the Soviets are the good guys). 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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