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What Expug is doing in 2015 (TAC n more) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5161 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 193 of 364 12 June 2015 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
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@Serpent I like those etimology gems though I'm not obsessed with them, will keep an eye for more ;) We have 'rapaz' in Portuguese but it is said to come from Latin and having to do with stealing actually.
Today I started earlier and at home (because I'm going to stay longer at work again and in order to prevent working overtime). I usually prefer to arrive at my usual time and register those additional hours, because that's what it's about anyway, but today there was the option of staying home the whole morning so I though that would actually mean some rest. I started with 'Eesti Keel Ma Armastan...' and I must say I went through it pretty quickly but still learned a lot. In the morning I also had time to add some more laris to my lit.ge account where I can buy one more book from Paulo Coelho and the one from Haruki Murakami I mentioned previously. I really like it when bookstores mail wisely-targeted ads on books I'm really interested at. Another two bookstores also do that, while Amazon only does spamming. The smaller the bookstore the more they seem to care about actually making me read further interesting stuff instead of just pushing sales. Finished the French Super Challenge!!! Just add 10 more minutes and completed the films part, the books part was already at 7591 pages. This is the one that brough my listening skills up to a C1-ish, being a little pessimistic. It made the language sound natural and spontaneous to my ears, to the extent that eavesdropping on it while abroad was almost like eavesdropping on my native language. I still have a lot to become more comfortable with the language, like, understanding instantly at a 90% level instead of having to 'tune in' during a few episodes, but these listening skills I gradually acquired have surely been the biggest proof that it is possible to learn a foreign language on one's own. I'm still mentally aligned with my previous schedule that put 1 hour for Estonian. So, even though I'm supposed to finish tasks 45 minutes earlier now, I still tend to slow down and reach the usual time. That's still better than being 1 hour late as it used to happen the weeks before. It's been an intense intensive watching of German video. I'm learning so many important verbs. It takes me almost twice the time to watch a twenty-minute episode of Futurama, so I'll be watching only one a day in order not to take time from other activities. I'm already watching the films intensively, so that means 30-min of intensive German, that's more than enough for a start. The bad side is that it will take me more or less 50 workdays to watch the missing 25 hours for my half challenge, that was not what I was expecting. But with those remaining 20 minutes I can work on other activities I was expecting to do only after being comfortable with the SC numbers. A learner of multiple languages is always facing trade-offs, as can be seen. Oh, I forgot! There is also the weekend with Netflix! 我今天很累！我得加班！还有，明天是巴西的 情人节（我们的情人节不是二月十四日，是六 月十二日），应该给老婆买礼物。我不确定是 什么东西最好买，需要去商场看一看。 我今天是坐自行车去上班。至少我会快到家！ I'm very tired today. I have to work overtime. Besides, tomorrow is the Brazilian "Valentine's Day" (Our "Valentine's Day" is not on February 14th, but on June 12th), I should buy a gift to my wife. I'm not sure what to buy, I need to go to the mall and take a look. I came to work by bicycle today. At least I will arrive home fast! I was willing to writing Norwegian, too, I even started a fable (yes, I'm repeating the same mistake I made with Georgian), but it turned out the work was done and delivered to me much earlier and so I could go home. I had already spent the hour before shopping as I wrote above - in Chinese as well - so I couldn't make much out of those almost two additional hours I had for studies today, but at least I'm on the mood for writing again. And this is my 3000th post =D 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5257 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 194 of 364 12 June 2015 at 2:01am | IP Logged |
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Parabéns, Expug! Chegar às 3.000 postagens e à conclusão do "super-desafio" em francês é, realmente, mara! Edited by iguanamon on 15 June 2015 at 7:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6592 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 195 of 364 12 June 2015 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
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Yeah I looked up the etymology of rapaz immediately. It always seemed similar to ragazzo to me.
Congrats!!!!!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4731 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 196 of 364 12 June 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged |
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Parabens, Expug! I have no idea why I thought I would check out your Chinese text on
italki, but I just realized that I took a class from you a while ago. Thanks again! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5788 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi | Message 197 of 364 12 June 2015 at 10:21pm | IP Logged |
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Congrats!
Here is a site you can listen to some Russian audiobooks: http://martand.ru 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5161 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 198 of 364 12 June 2015 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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Obrigado, amigos!
@osoymar, when I read some of your most recent posts they did. sound out as if I knew you from outside the forum. @Anya, thanks, will check it asap! ==== The day started with the site of the Confucius Institute completely offline. I haven't been lucky with those online series lately. While having trouble with loading the DVD from Karl & Co (the time marking is totally wrong), I at least noticed an increase in comprehension, especially when I only listen. From now on, I'm just going to place the film at a random time closer to where I remember I was watching and watch 10 minutes from then on. So after a busy week I had a busy Friday as well. Nothing else on languages after finishing today's Futurama episode. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5161 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 199 of 364 16 June 2015 at 12:39am | IP Logged |
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It was a productive weekend for the German super challenge at Netflix, with almost 4 hours again! I'm at ver
56 hours now. I am still trying to figure no the best combo. I am watching them extensively, so sometimes I lose entire dialogues I don't really understand. I started Suits which isn't ban easy series anyway, but it's also a matter of getting used to. I had watched one episode of 'Defiance' which I'm also going to keep watching, but I was more in the quest for something with shorter episodes. So I watched Dreamwork's Short Stories one day and on the other I found Pastewka: finally a German series with humour and short episodes. Though I was a bit tired, as I almost felt asleep by the half of the second episode. I also read 8 pages from Russian, but I need to finish this book because I have other stuff to read from the same author (it's a Brazilian book that got a Russian edition, I keep mentioning it here). Most important, this weekend we booked plane tickets for another trip to my hometown! Now three of them are assured (the first one I'm going alone during vacations so I'll go by bus). Understanding written Russian is my second greatest language dream, after understanding spoken French. I dream with the day I'll be able to pick a random Russian text and get the hang of it. It's still troublesome and some words do stick, but other still don't. I know that I'm not doing anything 'wrong', I just have to keep doing what I'm doing (and maybe add L-R to the pack - you guys know where to find Douglas Adams' books as Russian audiobooks?). My life is going to be so much better when - not if - I finally reach this goal. When my Russian reading is like the way my Norwegian is now, I will feel quite well. And Norwegian started totally opaque to me, no matter what people claim that it's supposedly easy. So, I think it can be done. The mornings have been unusually busy lately. As a result, even though I'm working on Estonian quickly, I'm still at the same point of my schedule before going to have lunch. I did have some minutes left and could have started with French, but I started writing here instead, before I forget to log my weekend. Things are finally getting better with Chinese reading. I had a chapter with more dialogues and action which I could read faster than usual - it is taking me 15 minutes for reading those 3 pages in Chinese with parallel text and hovering the mouse over all characters, that's about half the time I spend on 10 pages of Norwegian L-R with the occasional pause for understanding tougher passages. On the long run, indo-european languages and even non-IE languages but with an alphabet and international words tend all to surpass my progress in Mandarin. I believe I'm far more conversational in Chinese than in Russian or Estonian and maybe paired with Georgian, but when it comes to reading resources for native speakers Chinese is still far behind and I wouldn't follow a story without Pera-pera. I should try to read more a day in Chinese, but I really don't have time now. I'm trying to get the hang of how to take record of the time in Karl & CO's videos. Today's one worked as planned. Besides, I'm understanding more and more from the spoken Norwegian, and that's the most important thing. I still need to get more comprehensible input again. I browsed NRK's catalogue and there are some old series I would like to watch whenever I have time during the weekends and feel a bit German-sick. Today at 'Mandarin Modern Chinese Grammar' I came across the sentence 请你重发一次 for 'please resend'. I had never seen 重 used in this context, only 再. This series teaches one so much. I'm totally clueless about Turkmen's verbal system. Lots of infixes that convey aspectual rather than temporal meanings. Now I'm getting lost in the dialogues, because the verbal forms aren't translated and sometimes I don't even find the corresponding roots/dictionary forms. I start to remember the early days with Georgian which I don't long for. I'm about to finish the Peace Corps Manual, though, and maybe the other books from Peace Corps will be more clear or at least will have translation. I took a nice, short Assimil Italian lesson. I have no trouble understanding the Italian, to the extent of being able to transcribe it. I do it nearly real-time. So, when the exercises part come, I just listen to the Italian while checking the French for confirming the translation. Since I also read fast in French, today I could even start guessing the Italian audio while reading the French, that is, in a second-wave way. I worked overtime and so managed to work on my Norwegian fable. Now it seems it would s going somewhere. Hope to finish tomorrow. That was that for today. A lot of posts to read from the weekend, and a lot of work, too. (EDIT: Left text behind when pasting. Again.) Edited by Expugnator on 16 June 2015 at 2:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5161 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 200 of 364 16 June 2015 at 11:55pm | IP Logged |
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Finished the first volume of 'Eesti Keel ma armastan'. The second volume is just a sequel in number of lessons, not an 'intermediate' volume, so I'm going for it right after. I finally managed to do more before lunch, as I L-read from 'citybooks in Georgian earlier and so could anticipate some French reading as well.
I started to watch 'Karl & CO' while reading the Chinese grammar but I stopped, after all I was ahead of time, it was pointless to multitask while I could be paying attention to the Norwegian and try to understand more - which I did, including one part the main characters answers the phone and starts speaking German, or some torsk or nysk or whatever they call that. This episode displayed normal time so I was even tempted to watch further till the end (18 minutes), but I decided to pause at 10 minutes because I'd end up being distracted anyway. Un ami à moi, français, a commencé à apprendre le norvégien à travers du cours de Duolingo. Je lui ai demandé comment on trouvait ce cours vis-à-vis les autres cours des autres langues. Il m'a répondu qu'il ne conassait pas d'autres cours mais que, parfois, il y avait des choses stupides à traduire. Alors, j'ai conclui que c'était un cours très pareil aux autres. Speaking of Duolingo, I've noticed that Swedish, Danish and even Turkish have already been graduated from beta. It didn't take that long, so perhaps it's wise to wait for a course to be grduated from beta, since I have so many ones I'd like to start. I won't start Turkish right now, maybe I will wait for either Norwegian or Esperanto to be graduated. Hungarian and Russian are also coming, while Greek will take longer and maybe coincide with my Wanderlust peak. I'm pretty sure these courses are much more invaluable for non-transparent languages than for other Romance languages. In Romance languages I gained speed and learned vocabulary but I could also have learned that vocabulary from other sources, while the further you get the less learner-friendly resources there are. Even some Assimil-less languages will eventually get a Duolingo course, which will probably turn Duolingo into the most convenient faux-debutant resource. I don't advise starting Duolingo from scratch as there will be too much to learn at once. Better save better resources for the most appropriate time, that's what I say. There are usually a lot of good and less good resources in a language to get you to A2, so I'd rather save Duolingo for my transition into B1 passive/A2 active, as was the case with German and Italian. I tried to pay attention to the Georgian series I watch without subtitles. Understood almost nothing. I need desperately to resume watching Kuxnya. I decided to go for L-R in German, not to wait any longer. I only have Eckhart Tolle's book which I have been long willing to read, so that's what's going to be. I picked the Portuguese translation for my L-R. Today was only about the prefaces, so i just read. Tomorrow I might be able to report how my first day came along. The reader is the author himself! I know, I was supposed to stick to fiction and I did see some progress during 'Drei Männer im Schnee'. I will try to find audiobooks of fictional works next. It was a nice Futurama episode today. I'm already seeing the difference from a couple of days ago. I'm looking up less and less words and it's taking me less than 40 minutes to watch 20 minutes intensively. At the last day I found the translations of the Turkmen manual's dialogues into English. Typical! Accomplished Language Texbook: Peace Corps Turkmen Language Manual I have already used a book from this series for Estonian. This time with Turkmen is rather a dabbling. Pity that I forgot (again) that the translation to the dialogues is at the end of the book. So I didn't learn much in terms of syntax because I couldn't compare. I do like this manual, though, and I'd happily use it for other languages with fewer resources I happen to learn in the future. It turns out both manuals available at the Eric site are the same. Can our team leader clarify on this? Anyway, tomorrow I'll yield to Serpent's advice and try to do a GLOSS lesson on Turkmen - that is, if I ever find my way through so many windows and subwindows and links, why not just make it linear? Today's Italian lesson was incredibly short, only 14 'verses'. They introduced some bureaucratic language like the 'ivi' adverb. As for 'il cui', is it the only way to render 'whose' in Italian, even in the spoken language? Ex. le personne il cui reddito è superiore alla media. I resumed working on the Norwegian fable. Almost there, maybe tomorrow. I'm really enjoying writing it, which is the most important. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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