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Gary’s TAC 2014: Spanish, Italian, French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 138 16 January 2014 at 11:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! Finding people to speak with regularly has indeed been the hardest part of learning French for me, and as anyone who's seen my previous logs will know, I've considered giving up on the language a few times because of it and it's done bad things for my general impression of French people. So I'm hoping this exchange keeps going well. The guy seems to be planning on staying here for another few months at least; I have met a few friendly and helpful French speakers in the past but they've invariably only been here for a very short period. Between that and finally making progress with improving my accent, my other eternal weak link, I'm feeling a bit more positive about French again. I went to French meetup last night, where the attendance was unusually high as was the proportion of French people. I suppose that's because it was the first one of the year. So it was great, although I was tired so I wasn't at my most talkative and towards the end I was starting to struggle. Unfortunately I'm back into the normal life routine of tiredness and little free time. My resolution for this year was to learn to relax more and sleep better, since I spent most of the last few months of last year feeling awful and operating nowhere near peak capacity. I was managing quite well until this week. Eventually I'd like to get to a point where I can consistently fall asleep soon after going to bed. At the moment it often takes me an hour or two to fall asleep, so I have to either go to bed early to factor in that time and effectively lose a couple of good hours from my day, or go to bed at normal time and not sleep enough. I could do a hell of a lot if I had another couple of hours per day and a good rest, maybe even enough to keep up with my crazy goals of studying three languages at once. I mean, even during these bad few months I still made some decent progress. But it's definitely not going to be easy to reach that point. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 138 17 January 2014 at 11:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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I made a discovery yesterday: Destinos has subtitles! The first time I watched it I saw the "CC" icon on the video player, which brings up an option for "English". I thought that English subtitles weren't much use so I ignored it. But yesterday I tried it out of curiosity and it turns out that they're actually Spanish subtitles, and they match the dialogue exactly!
To be honest they don't really help me with understanding, as currently my reading and listening levels are about the same and the speech is clear enough so if I don't understand something spoken I probably won't understand it written either. But I've found TL video with TL subtitles very useful in the past, and there apparently is research that if you listen and read at the same time you remember more effectively than you do from doing either individually, so I might as well use them. EDIT: And another recent discovery: Mindcheats, an Italian self-improvement blog. Lots of good expressions and vocabulary on there. I've also started listening to a bit of Spanish radio (RTVE Radio 1) in the background; my theory on background listening is that it's not amazingly useful but it's better than nothing, and at my stage it can probably help reinforce common language. Most of it's very clearly spoken and quite easy to understand, especially the news. Between my existing passive knowledge and news radio always being far easier than pretty much any other sort of listening comprehension, I can hardly claim that being able to understand it is any sort of milestone, but I do think that the basics I've learnt so far have made it a lot more transparent and I can understand most of it as opposed to just picking out a few key parts and mentally filling in the rest. Edited by garyb on 17 January 2014 at 4:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 138 20 January 2014 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Lots of speaking practice and general socialising this weekend! A bit too much, in fact: I woke up with a nasty sore throat this morning. I'm hoping it'll be better by this evening for the Language Café but we'll see.
On Friday night I met a Mexican-American girl. When I found out her background I of course mentioned that I've started learning Spanish. She said some stuff to me but I didn't understand very well: all I caught was "quiero preguntarte...", and that was after asking her to repeat! But it was in a noisy bar, we were both somewhat drunk, I'm used to the Spanish accent and not the Mexican one, and she was going at light-speed. I saw that the second half of the Destinos episodes are set in Mexico, so hopefully that will get me used to the accent! I understand Raquél fine but she speaks deliberately slowly and clearly. University has started again now, which means the weekly language-exchange event there is back. Since my plans for Saturday didn't work out, I was free and I headed along. It was great: I spoke with an Italian couple and another Italian, a Spanish girl, a Belgian, and a few fairly advanced French learners. There was a Spanish girl who spoke excellent French, very fluent and with a great accent, yet she still confused "à" and "en" sometimes. That makes me feel a bit better for mixing them up when I speak Spanish, like I wrote a few posts ago! My French was on good form and I felt that even my accent was decent: I'm getting better at making and intonating the syllable groups correctly. On the subject of speaking Spanish, it went a lot better than the last few times. Much less Italian interference and much better comprehension, although I was still quite limited by my lack of active knowledge. I'd love to say that I've made a big leap in progress, but I think it was mainly due to the absence of the two usual culprits: the environment was quiet and I wasn't too tired. On Sunday I had an English/Italian Skype chat. I was speaking quite fluently but I was aware that my accent was all over the place. I definitely seem to have picked up a strange accent so it's hard work to change it. But as I keep saying, awareness is the first step! And I've definitely improved at the individual sounds and at always pronouncing vowels fully. Pronunciation: Rs I keep discovering new and interesting ways in which I mess up pronunciation. The French R never gave me any difficulties, since we have a guttural sound in Scottish English, but I've been noticing that mine is a bit too strong compared to many French people's so I'm trying to tone it down a little. The Italian one is the opposite: it was very difficult for me to learn (some parts of Scotland have a rolled R, but not where I'm from!) and it seems that I still don't get it right. The Skype partner from yesterday mentioned it so that made me think about it a bit more. Usually, one of three things happens: 1. I pronounce it well. This happens particularly when there are open vowels nearby, like in tra or the first R in parlare (the second one is normally a flap rather than a trill). 2. I pronounce it very weakly or not at all, and there isn't enough vibration so it ends up like an English approximant R. This tends to happen at the start of words, like rosso, or in pr like in progetto. In this case I think I'm simply going past the R too quickly and not stopping to pronounce it right. 3. The rest of the time - in the middle of words like vorrei or at the end like per; when I make a conscious effort to do the R on its own or at the start of a word like for number 2; or when I do it well like in number 1 but then try to extend and continue the sound: I do a trill but it doesn't sound quite right, it sounds "airy" or "windy" and not very solid, and too slow. In the next few days I'll try to make a recording of me repeating a few words to illustrate what I mean, especially number 3. I did a bit of experimentation last night; I mostly blame that for the sore throat! The fact that I tend to get it right when there's an /a/ around would suggest that tongue position is perhaps the issue: maybe the back of it needs to be nice and low down like it is for that very open vowel, rather than up where it might be obstructing the air flow. Who knows. It's not the most important issue but it's something I'd like to get right, since it's an English-speaker giveaway and it's even more important for Spanish. Edited by garyb on 20 January 2014 at 1:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 138 21 January 2014 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I went out anyway despite the sore throat and other signs of impending illness. I regret it now, but it was a great evening even though the bar was as noisy as usual and I couldn't speak very loudly. Later on it quietened down, although that just meant I stayed longer instead of going home for some much-needed sleep. I spoke a reasonable bit of French and had a few Spanish conversations; the first didn't go well because of the noise and not being warmed up, but the other ones were good: I managed to talk about things like work, studies, music and travel plans, and I understood quite well. It wasn't at all elegant, but considering I've been learning for about a month I'd say I was doing pretty well. I still have to pause and think about verb forms quite often, but I'm getting better at actually remembering or working them out. I also got a bit of Italian in there, and helped some people with English.
Italian-influenced mistakes this time round: changing "a" to "e" for the future and conditional tense. I said "me gustería" instead of "me gustaría" and a couple of others. Italian "are" verbs change in this way (parlare -> parlerò), but the Spanish equivalents don't (hablar -> hablaré). I also sometimes seem to pronounce "trabajar" with a French R, probably because it's similar to "travailler"... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 138 24 January 2014 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've ended up being ill all week, and work has been busy. Any sort of accent/pronunciation work is on hold until I can speak comfortably again, and I've not had the time or energy for much else. A couple of good things though:
I've found a Skype partner who's learning English, speaks both French and Italian, and actually corrects my mistakes. Jackpot. Hopefully this one will actually last. I've also been writing with a few Italians recently. Last night I finally finished reading La coscienza di Zeno, the classic Italian novel that I've been slowly getting through for the last two months. As a book I definitely enjoyed it, and it's not too difficult to read. But from a learning perspective it's not the best as the language is a bit different from modern Italian. A lot of the vocabulary is slightly dated (some examples: destarsi instead of svegliarsi, oggidì instead of oggigiorno) and some of the grammar is a bit different (I saw di in quite a few places where there would be no preposition these days... interestingly, where French would use de, which would suggest that they used to be more similar in this respect: for example in the impersonal form è difficile di sapere... instead of è difficile sapere...). So I've been hesitant to study anything I've read in the book and I've considered it as entertainment more than input. Dunque ora ho voglia di leggere qualcosa di un po' più contemporaneo. Un po' di tempo fa comprai alcuni libri Italiani a basso prezzo (tipo £0.70) per Kindle. Ma dopo averne letto uno, L'estate che non avrei mai immaginato, diciamo che ho capito la ragione per cui era così economico e ormai sono un po' diffidente nei confronti degli altri. Comunque ho sentito parlare molto bene d'un altro Italo, Calvino, di cui Le città invisibili mi sembra interessante. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4627 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 30 of 138 24 January 2014 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My Kindle app is also filled with cheap Italian books, among those L'Estate che non avrei mai immaginato!
LOL! But I haven't read it yet... Perhaps I should be more careful and not buy everything which is in Italian! Allora mi sembra che tu sia bravissimo in Italiano, il tuo esempio mi da cuore quando sono scoraggiata, perché la squadra Forza non é molto attiva in questo momento :( 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 138 24 January 2014 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sono contento di incoraggiarti! Anch'io sono un po' deluso dalla squadra: è iniziata con tanto entusiasmo ma a quanto pare quell'entusiasmo non è durato nemmeno un mese... Ma ormai ho assistito ad alcuni TAC ed a dire il vero è sempre così. D'altra parte però, gennaio è un mese un po' occupato (ritorno a scuola o lavoro) e perfino deprimente (malattie, mancanza di soldi...) e forse le cose si riprenderanno dopo. Vedremo. I wrote about L'Estate che non avrei mai immaginato on my last log. Here is what I wrote, which sums up the good and the bad sides:
Have you read any other of these bargain books? The others I bought were Uno, nessuno e centomila and Odio gli Italiani; they seemed to have decent reviews. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4627 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 32 of 138 24 January 2014 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ho comprato le fiabe dei fratelli Grimm, e anche il nuovo testamento, tutti i due per 0.89 €. Non ho avuto
ancora il tempo di leggerli ma credo che siano valori sicuri! Ho sempre voglia di leggere altri libri che quelli che ho già comprati, é uno di miei diffetti. Grazie per la tua recensione di questo libro, mi va bene comunque! I've also downloaded quite a number of free excerpts : the first chapter of a book is usually enough for you to form an opinion about its contents. Edited by agantik on 24 January 2014 at 9:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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