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Bookworm’s adventures-TAC15

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rdearman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin

 
 Message 137 of 217
28 May 2015 at 2:21pm | IP Logged 
Interesting that you liked the English entry. Apparently the commentators in Australia called it a "cry for help" from England. Which I thought was pretty funny actually. I really liked the Italian guys, they were very good. I also was impressed by Norway. I thought their song was very good. Far too many ballads though.
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 138 of 217
28 May 2015 at 3:34pm | IP Logged 
Patrick, are you new to Eurovision? there are almost always crappy songs with many points that make you wonder "who would ever vote for that?" :D
And don't underestimate the immigrants. For example I know a Ukrainian Russian-speaking guy living in Germany who shares the general Western view of the current situation. Yet his father hasn't learned much German (or Ukrainian, or English) so he watches Russian TV and is very pro-Russian.
Also, I think many Russians in Europe might not have cared much about Eurovision previously but got defensive now that people are booing and boycotting Russia no matter what.

Edited by Serpent on 28 May 2015 at 3:39pm

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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
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1546 posts - 3200 votes 
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 Message 139 of 217
28 May 2015 at 4:10pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Patrick, are you new to Eurovision? there are almost always crappy songs with many points that make you wonder "who would ever vote for that?" :D
And don't underestimate the immigrants. For example I know a Ukrainian Russian-speaking guy living in Germany who shares the general Western view of the current situation. Yet his father hasn't learned much German (or Ukrainian, or English) so he watches Russian TV and is very pro-Russian.
Also, I think many Russians in Europe might not have cared much about Eurovision previously but got defensive now that people are booing and boycotting Russia no matter what.


No not new. Eurovision has really a cult following in Australia and I've been watching it for at least 20 years!

To be honest, I am usually not too surprised by the winners of the contest. Although I wasn't in love with the Swedish entry, I wasn't surprised either that it did well. It's not that I really think people would vote politically against Russia, I just found it really hard to believe that people would vote the song No. 1. Even the Netherlands where the Russian immigrant population is not high voted it No. 1.

I guess I am probably a little biased as I read an really interesting article about firms in the Philippines where you can buy relatively cheaply 10000 positive reviews that seemingly originate from US, UK etc which companies are regularly using now to create false positive reviews on social media sites. Check out IMDB to get a sense of this. It wouldn't surprise me if someone used the same sort of hack or perhaps something even simpler to affect the tele-vote. Afterall at least two juries were disqualified this year for vote manipulation.

But perhaps I am just wrong, and I just didn't get the song. :)
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Cavesa
Triglot
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Czech Republic
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 Message 140 of 217
28 May 2015 at 4:12pm | IP Logged 
Yeah, Serpent, the article a wikia is like that, i am getting worse at reading and thinking around 2 a.m sometimes. (my peak of cognitive ability tends to be between 12am and 2am usually) :-)

Well, I don't like the shows like Eurovision as it is a waste of time especially for the reasons mentioned. But listening to all the songs on youtube was a nice thing (and skipping the second half of some songs was a relief the tv won't allow you). And I had warned any reader that I was writing just about my impressions that may be totally different from everyone elses.

I loved the UK song just like many people from continental Europe from what it looked like in the youtube comments. There were as well comments that BBC chose the song exactly because electroswing is very popular on the continent these days. Really, many young people love it, listen even to the traditional swing as well thanks to electroswing, learn to dance swing, organise swing dance parties both indoors and in parks during the summer, electroswing gets to normal parties as well. The genre just happens not to be that known and popular in the UK and Australia, which is not a surprising combination since the Anglophone countries are quite always a bit different from the continental Europe.

The Italians were good, I am just not that much of a fan of the genre, especially as I think these guys bring nothing new after "classics" of this style of Italian music, like Il Divo. But I am glad they sang in Italian.

The ballads are a plague :-D. There are basically two kinds of logic when choosing the song. One, adopted by the Czech Republic as well, is to send a song that fits exactly into the EV style. The other is to show something different, such as UK, Belgium or Finland. Unfortunately, the first approach seems to be the correct one for the competition and Sweden was, in my opinion, a proof.

About my German: Not much time and lots of vocabulary being fogotten repeatedly. There is quite no key to telling why or which vocabulary. Some of the basic words, some of the less important ones, some short, some long. I should get back to Anki it seems.
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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
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1546 posts - 3200 votes 
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 Message 141 of 217
28 May 2015 at 4:23pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:

The ballads are a plague :-D. There are basically two kinds of logic when choosing the song. One, adopted by the Czech Republic as well, is to send a song that fits exactly into the EV style. The other is to show something different, such as UK, Belgium or Finland. Unfortunately, the first approach seems to be the correct one for the competition and Sweden was, in my opinion, a proof.


But I think that can go the other way too. The UK often has tried EV style and failed amazingly. And you know songs like these do win too: Lordi in 2006. What I tend to see are lots of copy acts from the previous year's entry that then don't stand out and don't inspire. You need to be a bit different to win, but also reasonably good.

Cavesa wrote:

About my German: Not much time and lots of vocabulary being fogotten repeatedly. There is quite no key to telling why or which vocabulary. Some of the basic words, some of the less important ones, some short, some long. I should get back to Anki it seems.


What about getting back into TV series? I am about to start watching season 3-5 of Game of Thrones.


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daegga
Tetraglot
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Austria
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 Message 142 of 217
28 May 2015 at 4:27pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:

I loved the UK song just like many people from continental Europe from what it looked like in the youtube comments. There were as well comments that BBC chose the song exactly because electroswing is very popular on the continent these days. Really, many young people love it, listen even to the traditional swing as well thanks to electroswing, learn to dance swing, organise swing dance parties both indoors and in parks during the summer, electroswing gets to normal parties as well. The genre just happens not to be that known and popular in the UK and Australia, which is not a surprising combination since the Anglophone countries are quite always a bit different from the continental Europe.


But who is actually voting for Eurovision songs? Probably the same bunch of hardcore ESC fans who do so every year. And maybe some kiddies.

I love Swing, love to dance it, but this electroswing stuff is just a pest (everything named "electro" usually is). Still, it was one of the best entries of the ESC (not that hard).
Oh well, for years I've complained that there is no one to dance it with here in the South, and now I'm complaining that people are dancing to the wrong music. I must be getting old :)

Edited by daegga on 28 May 2015 at 4:40pm

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Cavesa
Triglot
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Czech Republic
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 Message 143 of 217
28 May 2015 at 5:02pm | IP Logged 
Well, I have no clue who is voting. By the logic: "other countries vote", the choice of electroswing was awesome. But most people don't vote and most people, at least in some countries and we are not the only one, consider the Eurovision to be just a stupid joke. The traditional fans obviously vote for the ESC mainstream and comment on youtube things like "bad UK, why don't you send in a ballad with meaningful lyrics like others?". Heh, most of the ballads are so cliché, boring and faaaar from meaningful. And the most funny are agressive comments to commentors from other countries like "at least we qualify". UK pays a lot of money to autimatically qualify. They'd be in the final competition even if they sent in princ Charles singing "soft kitty, warm kitty" in the shower.

Patrick, I've been interested in the Eurovision only for a few years, I have no clue about 2006, even though I know Lorde of course. I might get to spending some time looking at previous winners in the weeks to come, thanks for the idea.

About German tv series. I tried an episode and chose to keep studying the vocab and grammar first to have easier time with it. But it might help to just dive in. And I hope to be ready for my first book by the summer, that could be the turning point.
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Via Diva
Diglot
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Russian Federation
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 Message 144 of 217
28 May 2015 at 6:08pm | IP Logged 
I recommend not putting off the moment when you try the first book. Pick something you know, even a
translation would do (I'm personally fond of reading Jane Austen auf Deutsch). The grammar isn't all that
scary, vocabulary might be a problem though.


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