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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5685 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 25 of 344 02 November 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegisch ohne Mühe
My Norwegian studies got off to an unexpected start, which was entirely my own fault: I was so determined not to let myself get over-enthusiastic and start early that I didn't even glance at my material in advance, so yesterday when I tried to listen to Lesson 1, I made the unpleasant discovery that the audio quality is so bad it is completely unlistenable. However, I refuse to let myself be thrown off by this. I did the first two lessons today from the book alone, paying extra attention to the pronunciation guide, and then spent an extra ten minutes just now listening to a speech in Norwegian while reading the transcript, so I can get some idea of how the language is supposed to sound. I'm not sure if I'll successfully be able to continue the entire course like this… missing the audio is rather a setback, and of course it means that I won't be getting the full "Assimil experience"… but then again, it's par for the course for me, since I've been doing the Assimils for Dutch and Chinese mostly without audio as well. In any case, I enjoy the little I've experienced of the language so far, and am very enthusiastic about continuing the project, despite the intensity of my language-learning schedule (currently trying to make time for five languages daily – French, Catalan, Dutch, Chinese, and now Norwegian – on top of my university studies and two jobs). I'm going to try to check in here once a week, when I come to every review lesson. Good luck to all my fellow experimenters! ETA: The audio situation has been taken care of. Hurrah! Now I can stick obsessively to the "official" Assimil method, which will be more appropriate for the experiment. Edited by Jinx on 03 November 2012 at 1:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5758 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 26 of 344 02 November 2012 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Le Vietnamien sans peine - lesson 1-2
The course is, like their Chinese course, a slow starter. As I lack self discipline, I tend to cram as much as I can when I'm motivated, and then dawdle about until I get another surge or motivation some weeks later. Which is the reason I never went past lesson 13 of Assimil Le Coréen, and never even started the Vietnamese course. Obviously the biggest challenge for me will be to study continuously, especially when I have to study in the evening after work + school starting next week. So I limited my study time for Vietnamese to 30 minutes a day, even if I feel like I could - and want to - do much more. And I'm trying to reach a relaxed mindset, contemplating more than analyzing. I already have the impression that makes the new language seem more familiar to me, less like a foreign object that I need to conquer and master. But maybe that's only placebo, who knows. Also, it's nice to read the annotations and not have to think about what they mean because I simply understand them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 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 27 of 344 02 November 2012 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegisch ohne Mühe
+informally, Lo Spagnolo Senza Sforzo
I struggled at first to use the files I had. several programs, several reboots and finally here it is. I initially found the CD-Rom messy but now I like it. Apart from the fact that it complains that you're not doing the active wave - although according to the proper instruction I'm not supposed to be doing it yet!!! Also annoying how it runs fullscreen and you can't switch to another window (in my case, to look up a German word online haha... fail :S) That's also the first time I didn't find the basic lessons too slow. IDK if they are natural enough despite being slow or if it's just that I'm not very used to Norwegian yet. I did 3 lessons in one go and started the 4th one, but I'll be listening to them some more. I've also randomly found a cool lesson in Assimil Spanish (#72) and listened to it quite a few times, sometimes while comparing the Spanish text with Italian and sometimes just focusing on the Spanish. Edited by Serpent on 02 November 2012 at 11:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ayrrom Senior Member United States Joined 4555 days ago 9 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 28 of 344 02 November 2012 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Japanese With Ease Volume 1
First glance: Going to be slow going. Long introduction about the Japanese language. I think it was intended to motivate and introduce the basics of pronunciation and the writing system. Very long-winded when you are anxious to get started. I rushed through it the first time, then found myself going back after trying to tackle lesson 1. There are 2 Appendices, one with Kana [Hiragana & Katakana] in 2 tables. The second Appendix is an index of all words use in book with pronunciation and translation. Instructions for how to actually use the book are sparse - despite the long-winded introduction! "Until lesson 49, you will listen and read aloud, do your exercises, and have fun trying to learn some Kana and Chinese characters." Is says you can learn to write some Kana for "fun" but it is not mandatory. Lesson 1: layout seems to be typical Assimil with left side in Japanese and right with English translation. Lesson has 7 simple phases with mixture of kanji and Kana with the romanization below. Already I find myself ignoring the kanji and Kana which I know defeats the purpose - so I have to make myself go back over it. Audio lessons start with first very slow pronunciation of lesson followed by reading at fairly normal speed. Apparently they only do this for first 6 lessons. Pronunciation is not hard for speakers of English. My Assimil method: 1) listen to audio without book several times. 2) listen to audio while reading English translation several times. 3) Listen to audio while reading romanization. 4) Listen to audio while looking at Kanji & Kana many, many times. 5) Do exercises. Other: Listen to audio over and over again in car to and from work. Also, I think I will have no choice but to use Anki to help learn the Kana, then later the Kanji. The writing system is going to be the biggest hurdle. First lesson took over an hour to feel pretty comfortable - without really memorizing the Kana or Kanji well. They did manage to cover 23 Kana & about 9 Kanji in the first lesson. This may end up being brutal, but I will march on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 29 of 344 02 November 2012 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Le Breton sans peine
Please click the link to refer to my reasons for learning Breton. Note: the post is in French, so you'll have to be able to understand that to read it (I am learning Breton through French, and most resources are in French, some are in English though - but I am not using those). I will post a more thorough update concerning the course itself later this weekend or beginning of next week. If I post here, it'll be in English, but I will frequently just link to my other log, and then it may occur that the post is in French, or hopefully at the end written in Breton itself. Edited by tarvos on 02 November 2012 at 11:55pm 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 344 03 November 2012 at 8:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Course : Le norvégien sans peine
End of week 2 – lessons 1-13 Even if I hadn't opened a Norwegian book in 14 years, I still find the pronunciation very easy (anyway I love how musical the Norwegian language sounds) : it is true you never quite forget a language, even for lack of practice ;) I had the opportunity to start earlier than planned (and also couldn't resist the appeal of the assimil course!), so I have completed today the 13th lesson at the pace of one lesson a day. Every is going smoothly so far, except that I find that the amount of vocabulary you are expected to remember has grown tremendously in the last two lessons (12 and 13), I was wise to start early because it seems I'll be bound to slow down my pace at some point. From a grammatical point of view, nothing surprising especially if you are familiar with English and German e.g. Norwegian has the same distinction as German between position verbs (sitte / ligge in Norwegian– sitzen / liegen in German) and motion verbs ( sette / legge in N – setzen / legen in G). Norwegian also has verbs similar to the English phrasal verbs (rydde opp) and I fear they might be hard to remember. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 31 of 344 03 November 2012 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Le Breton sans peine
I have completed the second lesson of the course entirely (I use lesson-based wordlists to help me remember the words as an aid instead of putting them into Anki - the repetition round is done the next day BEFORE tackling the new material to reinforce the old words and be able to combine them with the new one). Pronunciation and Orthography So far, I have been seeing a few things: the orthography of Breton (given it's the KLT one they're using, I guess, and not the Vannetais dialect) is very regular and most words are written phonetically, with a few exceptions - final consonants are usually devoiced unless there's a liaison with a vowel afterwards, and the letter v at the end of a word is not pronounced v but "o", hence "hiziv" sounds like hizyo as the i iotates and turns into the French (and English) y sound. Luckily, there are no really tough phonemes. Breton has more vowel sounds than the 5 cardinal ones, though: a/e/i/o/u exist, and are usually (with the exception of e and o) what they are in French. E is usually é, but is in some cases è (but that's more usually written ae). O is normally an o, but can be pronounced almost as "oo" if the vowel is stressed. In that case it sounds a bit like Swedish long o. French ou is the same in Breton. G is always the g of garcon (never the g of dommage). R used to be a trilled r (and some people use it) but there is nothing wrong with using a Parisian r if that is what you prefer. The course tends to use that r. I like rolled r's, but probably this is a Frenchism. There is an opposition in the orthography between soft and hard l (a wet "l") which you could probably render a bit like in Russian. C'h (a digraph) can be either the sound "ch" as in Scottish loch, or its voiced counterpart as in Dutch "gaan". They are hard to distinguish for most people however. Breton also has nasal vowels and notes nasality by adding an ñ after the vowel. Thus emañ is pronounced with the ending of "en". You can nasalise all vowels - however, a nasal i and u are uncommon and more usually just pronounced i and u like in French. Some Grammatical Notes Breton knows the concept of articles, however, articles do not in any way determine gender. The shape of the article is uniquely dependent on the letter of the noun (!) that follows (adjectives go after the noun). Thus you have ar mor (the sea), but an ti (the house). Breton also distinguishes between definite and indefinite articles - however, there is no equivalent of French "des" and you can simply suffice by putting the noun in the plural if you want to render an indefinite plural. Third - there are two ways to conjugate the verb for to be (though I have only seen one) and a phrasing using a verb particle and the verb "to do" conjugated plus the infinitive seems to be a common phrasing. (i.e. Komz a rit brezhoneg? is literally speak do you Breton?) Yes and no do not exist. You respond to a question by making the verb of the question in the affirmative mood, so to the above question the natural response would be: "Komz a ran brezhoneg." (I do be speaking Breton). Person and number of the verb is indicated through conjugation. Personal pronouns are only used for emphasis. 3 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 32 of 344 04 November 2012 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Il nuovo russo senza sforzo, Italian edition of Le Nouveau Russe sans peine
I've just finished the 4th lesson of Il nuovo russo senza sforzo. I must admit that the first impact with the language has been rather brutal, as I don't remember the last time I've started a new language from scratch and without an introductory period of laid-back dabbling to pick up at least some basics. And Russian being neither a Romance nor a Germanic language, there's almost no tranparency with any of the languages I already know. The biggest problem for me right now is that I'm still learning the cyrillic alphabet and I need to master it in order to copy the lessons. I know from experience that I memorize vocabulary and structures much better if I write them down. Just listening and repeating isn't particularly efficient for me.
For Expugnator and those who'd like to practice cyrillic handwriting, take a look at this site. Half-way down the page there are links to pdf files with detailed sheets for writing practice (unfortunately there are no explanations). I'm not sure this is what you're looking for, but hopefully you'll find it useful. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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