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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 |  | |
| 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 193 of 415 23 April 2014 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you, Penelope! As always, posting here and encouraging. So, you really decided not to be reborn anymore. Beware it, you only know you love your former self when you let her go!
============ Life still isn't back on track. Today I couldn't make it to the gym thanks to an influenza vaccine yesterday - my arm still hurts a bit. Therefore I'm getting tired much more easily. I finally started season 2 of Tutu/大耳朵图图. Different theme - Season 1's was better. The intro is better now though, and so is the technical quality of the cartoon. Unfortunately, LETV was slow again today. I bet this has to do with being evening in China. I found a site which actually mirrors letv but can't remember it (no, it was not Youku). Most important news of the day: I had a text conversation in Chinese! It lasted quite a while and went on smoothly, thanks to Google Talk. I could write long sentences - previously I'd have no idea how to form them. I could also translate the missing words in my partner's sentences. All in all, it was a good, encouraging experience. I had technical issues with today's TED Talk. At first I suspected it had been blocked, but it was only network issues. I can't update the app at this device anymore, so, one day I'll have to bring the new one. It's risky, but I bought it to use it. It crashed in the middle and I had to read the transcript in Georgian then play the video on YT without subtitles. I've been thinking...I really should read both works of Fähnrich, that is, Kurze Grammatik, which I'm reading now, and Die georgischen Sprache, which is about the same length but seems to have a slightly different structure. Since I'm reading it extensively, I should take the time to read it during weekend breaks, the way I did with my previous Georgian grammars. I think part of the Georgian grammar is finally sticking - I do have an idea on how the language works. It's morphology that is my weakest part, but this can also be taken care of through passive learning. Anyway, I need to do this for the sake of not thinking "Oh, I should have studied more, I have lots of gaps in grammar". I want to make sure I went through all books I could. Another milestone for the day: I finished my first book in Chinese Breeze. It's easy, it's from Chinese Breeze, but it's quite encouraging to finally have done so. I need to start reading seriously in Chinese now. Anyway, this book is supposed to be in a 'textbook slot', so I have to decide what to do next. Maybe I don't need another textbook in Chinese, even an intermediate one, given that I study from Chineseclass101. Well, I've had such a busy day, being interrupted all the time, with this headache and absence from the gym...I won't worry so much about that right now. If I can figure out what to do, I'll start from tomorrow. If I don't have an idea so far, I'll pick one of the novels my teammates suggested and start reading them slowly with Pera Pera. I'd need my new device for using the built-in dictionary if I want to read it at the tablet, so maybe that's another reason I should start using it. Funny how Russian is the most "relaxing" language now, the one that is giving me the least headaches when compared to Georgian and Chinese. Apart from the lower charge, I'm also going through a breakthrough as I start to get familiarized with the declension system, while in the case of Georgian and Chinese it always seems like I'm still laying out the foundations for the day I will have reached a better understanding. I had the feeling yesterday that I was still taking it too slow with Chinese. I could take longer dialogues, that is, as long as they are translated with pinyin and such. The Elementary portion of Chineseclass is only 3 lessons left, so I'll wait before increasing the load. On the other hand, Travel in Chinese is still too boring. I've been having rather specific, boring vocabulary on landscapes.It's also about to come to an end, too. I'm watching Les beaux gosses, no subtitles. Having troubled understanding it. Will see how it comes along the next day. All in all, I want to have more fun. I wish I could get rid of the not so fun activities and replace them with better activities. For this, I need to reach a consolidated intermediate level, it'sthe best I can do. It used to be worse when I had all of those languages at an early A2 level. I hope it will only get better. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5339 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 194 of 415 24 April 2014 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
And I’m sure it will soon! After all, you’ve already made such great progress on so many linguistic fronts and with your talent for consistent, methodical and structured work how could you not improve fairly quickly? 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 195 of 415 24 April 2014 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, another day has come and things are getting back on track. My luggage has been found and I could also go to the gym this morning. It's nice to be back! Language-wise, I'm still concerned about progress in my most troublesome languages Chinese, Georgian, and Russian. On the other hand, I lost an important document at home and have to work hard on trying to find it this evening. I was already busy this morning with that and got to work later than I could have, but I am going to use this extra time on warming up for the Chinese Super Challenge. Yday I watched half an hour of Chinese videos and also read a bit from Benny's book.
While looking back at my morning activities, I realized I had forgot to do Anki. Will do it once I'm done logging here. It sux to be interrupting all the time. No wonder I though Memrise was less of a nuisance today. As for Tutu, the episodes themselves are interesting but I wonder how well they are doing for my Chinese, as I'm having days of lower understanding now that Tutu went to school and is involved in different activities. I'm about to finish current chapters for both Chinese and Russianpod. I'm looking forward to more lessons. Still focusing on just the dialogue and reading the explanations - I don't really manage to pay attention to the conversations in English at the podcasts. I wonder how much I'm missing in terms of content...it's just that these podcasts are still my ideal background activity. It's really easy to just skim through KGGS, which reminds me I should do more than 4 pages a day and wait to slow down when I come to the main explanations on syntax. I did 6 pages yday but not today, because I was falling behind at schedule thanks to a unusually busy morning both at home and here. As for Culture Talk, I'm really starting to get the hang of Georgian - all materials now (CT, TT, Rio Piedra) seem much easier than early this year. If I keep working hard, I may reach in Georgian my current reading level in Norwegian - that is, can get the hang of it without a dictionary, can read it comfortably with a dictionary. I've never been so confident like now. Only that with only 5-10 mins of TED Talk with subtitles I'm not elligible even for a half Super Challenge. Culture Talk will be over soon, so, the fact it brings in another extra 3-5 minutes doesn't really help. I don't know, maybe I should still sign in for a half challenge in Georgian and take my chances. The French novel is interesting as it comes to an end. I believe I may finish the reading part of the French challenge sooner than expected. That won't necessarily leave time for other languages, since I don't plan to downgrade my 20-pages a day which I've been doing much before I heard about the. The Norwegian novel is also ok: my skills are improving and that's the spirit, so I'm an optimist regarding the SC. TED Talk had no technical issues today. Content-wise, it was a speech from Matt Cutts about adding a new habit for 30 days. What caught up my interest was of course 'eriting a novel', as I'm already taking care of the 'learn a language' thing. It was a nice talk, I think @Serpent would find it interesting. Still having trouble with 'Les beaux gosses', though I seem to be improving. That always happens when I resume watching French without subtitles after a few weeks with subtitled movies, but this time it was aggravated by the teenager's slang. I'll get the hang of it eventually. 'Hjem' is over, only the first season, it's all that I have. I have other series but no subtitles and I'm really not in the mood to search for more. I also have films, this time with subtitles, but I'm still so much in a series mood. I can watch series longer than films. Thus, I'm starting 'I kveld med Ylvis'. With English subtitles, that's true, but I expect to become less and less dependent on them (yep, dependent, I'm supposed to write American English after all). New textbook for Chinese! After completing my first novel, I went back to a textbook, but one that will teach me stuff I need to learn instead of only reviewing. I sticked to "Speak Chinese". I like its light, clean layout. I assumed it was OCR'ed but it is not working, that is, I select the text but only get random unicode characters. Anyway. I'll listen to the dialogues and learn how the unknown characters sound and then look them up through my self-transcribed pinyin. That's a nice exercise. Only the sample sentences at the grammar sections will be left ununderstood for the time being. 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 196 of 415 25 April 2014 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Emme, thank you! I still have a lot to learn. Not always sure I'm doing things the
efficient way. Lots of people seem to have better results with lesser efforts. So, today was a busy day. It started with my longest text conversation in Georgian ever! I have this friend who is a very nice person, always willing to help. I made it earlier home back from the gym and so I decided to join Skype. We talked for over 20 minutes. I could understand almost everything he wrote, could translate the missing portions and even made sentences with the pluperfect. I got complimented for my written Georgian, not the motivating compliment natives give, I think it was truly meant. I believe at this rythm I'll be able to visit Georgian next year at a near B2 level. I start to notice that with distant languages you do have a much more difficult start, you don't get the vocabulary discount, but after you're past this phase you start to learn new words in the language in a proper context. On the other hand, I could also realize how better is my Georgian when compared to my Chinese, to the conversation I had in Chinese yesterday, which was still a good one, though. Words start to become spontaneous in Georgian. Maybe I'm still stuck at B2 in Mandarin and moving up to B1 in Georgian. Maybe this is thanks to double subtitles at my TED Talk videos. Double subtitling is the way to go! I watched the course Happy Chinese with double subtitles. My level was much lower back then. I'm sure I'd learn a lot more now from another course with double subtitles. Fellow teammates, any more suggestions on TV series with double subtitles? That leads me to another of today's issues. I'm about to finish Travel in Chinese and I just checked and the other courses all have the problem of only having 1 portion of the full lesson at YT. The audio/video block here is preventing me from watching them directly at CCTV's site. Downloading isn't that simple either, but I should give it another try: when I had trouble with Travel in Chinese it was Travel in Chinese's videos that were down, actually. Another bypass would be to get CCTV's app for iOs, but I"d be completely lost about finding the Chinese learning videos within the app. Anyway, this gave me a headache as of today. I still have time, I have to decide which course to do next among those from CCTV. Anyone is free to suggest another video activity, like an Youtube channel, though. I searched once again and it's not likely I will find another complete series as I found the first season of Happy Chinese, so I'll have to work hard on downloading them from the CCTV site. Enough with this for now, I've already...ok, I figured out all seasons of Happy Chinese are at the Youtube channel. All I have to do now is search by year to find the seasons, for example, second season is 2011. One good thing about double subtitles is that you don't take your doubts home. I'm having trouble with 'Travel in Chinese' because I'm working on the dialogue first, browsing back and forth from translation to Chinese text, while it is much more practical when both are attached to the video. That's what I like about Chineseclass so far: pinyin and translation are all there for me to look up when necessary, and this doesn't mean I'm addicted: I actually look them up less and less. I believe it's up to the learner to decide when to get rid of the crutches, especially when it involves saving up so much time for a better use. I've said it here more than once. Anyway, I might pick another intermediate lesson series: Communicate in Chinese sounds basic at a first glance, but it does focus on communication. It has only 38 lessons. So, I should give it a go and start downloading! Then Sports in Chinese, then Happy Chinese season 2. Bear in mind I'm not neglecting native materials, btw I'm eager to start that Singaporean series with double subtitles. Moving on on the busy day. Did 6 pages at Kurze Grammatik. I'm convinced that it has the best layout and explanations among the Georgian grammars I've studied. It can be regarded as an abridged version of Tschenkéli's book, and it does help with clarity. Culture Talk is also rewarding. Wieso Nicht is quick, now it's more like a podcast I listen to, entirely in German. Russe 90 was also easier now, despite dealing with numbers. I took the time to write down the few numbers suggested. I'm starting to have a vague idea about them. Numbers are something I always find boring - if only they were as simple as in Chinese elsewhere! I want to learn them through use in both Russian and Georgian. Passive input does help about it, as I have a better understanding of numbers in Norwegian. I watched my first video from "I kveld med Ylvis", the talkshow. It would have been better with Norwegian subtitles, but I'll have to learn to understand the audio after reading the English subtitles. Better than no help. I don't really foresee becoming subtitle-free anytime soon - I'm going to need to work hard at the Super Challenge for this. I watched only 14 minutes, btw. I hope I can catch up during the SC. I can always add a film, as I have more films with subtitles. I may even aim for a full Norwegian SC at some point. Speaking of which, I have a few days to make up my mind as for whether I'm doing half SCs for German, Russian and Georgian too. I think this is inevitable. I don't really mind if I can only do the video part for German and the books part for Georgian in the end. I want to log to keep myself motivated and I don't think my goals are that far from the spirit of SC. I work on a couple of languages, and I work on them rather intensively. I just happen to have more time to organize a schedule for the whole day as if I were at uni. So, if 1 hour a day through 350 days is enough to complete a Super Challenge, then I see no reason in not giving it a try provided I can actually spend such time for each of my languages - which I most often can. Whether extensive listening when you're only A2 at a language does help improving comprehension or not, this is something to figure out after the challenge...So far it hasn't been the case with Georgian or Chinese. I've only got noticeable results when I had subtitles to follow and analise the dialogues all along. Something funny happened while reading my Norwegian novel: I came across an expression that looks quite like a calque from one in Portuguese about infidelity: sett horn på/botar chifre em. Here's the extract from the book: Verre var det at Wijjnblahds kone bedro ham helt utilslørt, noe som stred mot selve grunnprinsippet for slike sidesprang. Mend det aller verste var at hun foretrakk å gjøre det med andre politifolk, og siden dette hadde pågått i mange år, var de tikke en eneste avdeling i stockholmspolitiet hvor ikke en eller flere av medarbeiderne hade satt horn på Wiijnbladh. tricours helped me find this link with explanations, althought she said she wasn't familiar with it. I haven't found similar explanations for the expression in Portuguese, so I don't know if they have a similar origin or not, but this one for the Norwegian (German?) expression does seem interesting. I thought I'd never find a similar expression in a foreign language and yet it's something so vivid for us Brazilians to the extent that we seldom use the "non-idiom" verb. Time to take a break from logging and enjoy my prize of the day: TV series in English. Edited by Expugnator on 26 April 2014 at 4:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5339 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 197 of 415 28 April 2014 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
First of all, congratulations on the third trophy under your name: 501 votes! Secondly, I think your steady way of learning is the best way, if only one can be constant. Unfortunately I’m more of a cyclic learner: sometimes I work very hard for a few months and then I do nothing for weeks. The only thing going my way is that deep down I really love languages, so I always come back and pick up from where I’ve left, more or less. But you’ve proven in the years I’ve known you that you can work consistently no matter what outside circumstances are and that, I think, is a great strength. As long as it works for you, I think you shouldn’t worry too much about what other people do and achieve. So keep up the good work! 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 198 of 415 28 April 2014 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you Emme. And thank you Penelope, most of these votes come from you =D I feel happy about this third trophy. I might have one of the slowest vote ratio here, and that's an ongoing problem in life, I keep learning stuff and keeping it to myself, while I should be sharing it. There's that issue of trying to help others and trying hard not to sound arrogant or professoral, but I have to overcome this. I mostly try to given an example on how things work for me and how they make me feel better and with more energy. "As palavras convencem, mas o exemplo arrasta". I am an introvert and a low-energy person and I'm trying to work my way to find a balance.
================================= Weekend 2014 saw the rise of the weekend as a learning period; namely the average weekends when I just stay in town and go to the usual appointments and stay at home between one appointment and the other. I don't go for the schedule on weekends: I do SRS, and extensive reading, especially extensive reading of textbooks I want to finish soon, like the Georgian ones. So, while I was reading 4-6 pages a day from Kurge Grammatik der Georgischen Sprache, this weekend I jumped from page 98 to 152. Only a few weeks to go, then I'll read Georgian Syntax as well as Die Georgische Sprache (the former as part of my German SC). I also gathered some resources for the Norwegian Super Challenge. Unfortunately they lack subtitles, so I'll have to learn to live without them in the end. I still have material from Ylvis for a long time, though. As for the Chinese courses from CNTV, I'm going to stick to what can be found on YT so far. One of the courses required the file to be streamed from the media player. That's so Win95! Saturday also saw a breakthrough. I went for my first italki classes. That is, classes I took, not classes I gave. I took 2 Chinese classes, 1 hour each. The second one was better, first because the teacher would type everything down, and second because I already learned one thing from the first classes: not to ask too basic doubts that will lead the teacher to elaborate on stuff you're already familiar with, like tones :) . Well, how can I put it...I really don't want italki to be a demonetarizing asset. I will try to stick to what I've already earned, no matter if the half-an-hour instant classses, for example, are more expensive than my 1-hour normal class. I should turn instant teaching on, too...I can do it at home on weekends. I thought it would involve an instant chat at italki, but it follows the normal class request procedure with a 10-min pending approval delay. Back on the class: it's nice to have classes now and then, but I don't think I've learned more than what I have learned or taught friends. For example, my German/Portuguese 50/50 exchange was more efficient than my two Chinese classes. In the case of Georgian, I really learn a lot from just chatting with a friend. It's really bad that Brazilian Portuguese is such a cheap asset on the virtual linguistic economy: lots of people have it to offer but the demand is still low. I have to learn to deal with that. Will book classes once in a while: I plan to book one for French to work on accent reduction and stuff. Speaking of French: on Saturday there was also a very nice Rencontre Francophone, one of those that used to take place every Thursday before the organizer started working that day. There was the organizer, a new French guy who just came to town and Brazilians who are fluent speakers. We talked quite a bit. I feel I'm not fluent yet, though. It was a noisier atmosphere than the museum, and I'd have to ask that French guy to repeat his questions once in a while. I'm happy because I had the chance to practice but I know there is still so much to be done if I aim for a C1 level. My main difficulty now is that I don't know what I don't know. For example, I'm watching Lex beaux gosses and it's difficult because of the slang and the speed of the teenagers, but then I may watch another film and understand almost everything. I don't know which skills I need to develop more precisely. Maybe I need to reactivate subtitles for good, on original French audio, and try to work on such material intensively. I felt comfortable about speaking, coming up with words, but I think I'm not used to explaining the meaning of words I don't know and my intonation is still quite unnatural. On Sunday evening, I gave Portuguese classes to someone who has already learned Spanish. I hope I made my point at explaining him active skills don't come by free of charge. Early morning Problem with buffering Tutu. I started at Letv and shifted to Youku, but both were freezing after a couple of seconds. It's not the best time, I know. Brazilian mornings correspond to Chinese evenings, prime-time at the internet. I'll have to live with that. Maybe I'll be luckier with my next cartoon, as I only found 3 seasons of Tutu. Anyway, I did the Memrise watering and new chapters but Anki was done down over here. Doing CCTV courses isn't really an option when there're so many series with double subtitles on YT. Hmm, now that I'm thinking about it: maybe if I'm done with Tutu and there are new cartoons on YT, I can shift the mornings for the TV course and bring the cartoons down to the evenings. I'm really concerned about the audio/video block and getting mobile internet isn't quite an option because it isn't fast enough and represents unnecessary costs, given that I spend the whole day at work. Culture Talk is great so far. I'm becoming used to more and more expressions and dealing with the lessons faster. Even at longer paragraphs I'm not losing track of the Georgian text that much. Actually I'm curious about using it for another language! I find it simpler to use than Gloss, for that matter. Wieso Nicht on its turn has also become an easy resource. I believe Markt Platz will be a little more difficult, though. Anyway, I feel ready for dealing with German materials as I'm much more comfortable with German than with Georgian and yet I've already been using native Georgian materials for a long time. I did TED's lesson earlier, during most people's lunch break. Wise decision =D No technical problems today. The talk was about a correct way to tie one's shoelaces. At first I thought I hadn't understood it, but later on I tried and got it! Btw, Short videos do great to my Georgian. I can do them almost intensively, like I did this one. A perfect L-R exercises with text matching line by line and audio in L1. Russe 90's lesson was about driving a car. I didn't know the French words yet, only to realize they are mostly cognates to Portuguese, like 'point mort'/ponto morto, 'embrayage'/embreagem, 'volant'/volante, 'frein'/freio. Don't ask me if I still remember the Russian ones ;) A short tally about the Super Challenge rates: 13 minutes a day of audio/video and 14,3 pages a day for the reading video for the half challenges (just double it and you get the full challenge, which I'm doing only for French). I signed in for half challenges for my remaining 5 languages but I expect to do more than that for some of them. I take care of my whole schedule in about 5-6 hours and I have 3 remaining hours that sometimes are quiet and sometimes are not, but which I think allow me to work hard on a few languages, not on just one or two. That's my situation now and I ought to take advantage of it. I'm getting hold of YT stuff because it's the safest one, and when it comes to reading I'll finally go for the classics for Norwegian, otherwise I'll have to spend quite a lot on Norwegian ebooks. The Georgian ones are much cheaper and I may even already have enough of them. I remember at my old Norwegian log when I asked fellow members whether to go for the classics or not and they advised me to stay away from them at the beginning. Now I think it's time. Time to dig in Runeberg for books. There's also that governmental site with out-of-copyright Norwegian books which I don't remember anymore, but no rush, really. 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 199 of 415 29 April 2014 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's been a calm day. I wish we were already at the SC because I have almost 4 hours to go, having finished all my planned activities.
I was going to have trouble with Tutu again this morning. So, I decided I'd leave it buffering while I prepared the snack. It worked, it loaded at least till its half at Youku, and the rest didn't give me much trouble loading. Today's episode was a bit better to understand. When I finished Tutu I still had a lot of plants to water at Memrise, so I decided to play 'Travel in Chinese' while also doing the watering. I wasn't in the mood for chatting anyway. Oh, I remembered to complete my profile so I can do instant italki classes when I have time (probably on weekends). In the morning back home I also did my first lower intermediate lesson from Chineseclass. In essence, it's pretty much the same format as of the Elementary one. I'm still waiting for something more challenging. Today I managed to concentrate more on the podcast and I realized it has important insights on vocabulary. The pdf is not that long, unlike the Russian one, where the pdf is so long that I really have to read it while listening to the audio only on the background. Russe 90's lessons started to have a short text in the end. Today's one was a humorous story about Americans and their passion for getting stuck at the traffic in their cars. Those texts are placed after the exercises but they are also with audio. I really think Méthode 90 is better than all Assimils combined. 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 200 of 415 30 April 2014 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday I had so much free time after I was done with my main schedule tasks that I ended up having video burnout. I watched two American series, two Chinese series, 10 minutes of a German film and really couldn't take more. Now it is going in the same direction, though I hope to head back home earlier, too.
I got a better understanding of Tutu today than the past days. Most of the sentences consisted entirely of known characters, and all that I lacked was prompt comprehension for a better overall understanding. The video ran smoothly at Youku. It's Letv that is crashing now. How things change over time. I kveld med Ylvis - I'm really not a fan of talk-shows, and I'd benefit more form Norwegian subtitles than English subtitles, but the former are harder to find. I really need to get to that level where I can understand things well without subtitles (aka fluency), but it seems far away. Even my French has had more downs than ups lately. Anyway, today I could pay more attention at the Norwegian audio and actually decypher it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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