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TAC 2012, Freutsch Quest-finished

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Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
Joined 5339 days ago

1232 posts - 1740 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 41 of 51
02 July 2012 at 2:32pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:

Super challenge update:
21 episodes of Stargate in original = 10,5 films in English.



Are you a Stargate fan? I've been watching it in Spanish, French and German so far for my Super Challenges. I could watch it in Chinese and understand half of it because I know the series so well. LOL
1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4953 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 42 of 51
10 July 2012 at 12:32am | IP Logged 
Yes, I love the series. And I am watching Atlantis again (8 episodes = 4 films for the
Advanced Super Challenge)!

I am reading another French book (Simenon this time, I put my Vargas somewhere... it will
reemerge I hope).

I am continuing my Spanish quite well, my goals are well realistic. I have come back to
memrise as well, and my vocabulary is nicely growing. I just need some more exercises
because the grammar gets slightly tougher (and it will get "worse" :-) )
1 person has voted this message useful



Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
Joined 5339 days ago

1232 posts - 1740 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 43 of 51
10 July 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged 
I'm slightly fanatic. :-) I actually ordered the whole SG1 series off of Amazon France, and they have French and English audio for the whole series, and many seasons in German and Italian, too. So I get three of my four primary target languages, and I can watch them with subs in Spanish, too.

I haven't gotten the Atlantis set yet. I'm thinking I have enough to watch for a little while.

I keep hearing people talk about memrise. I'm going to have to check that out!
2 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4953 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 44 of 51
27 July 2012 at 1:05pm | IP Logged 
Oh, I plan to buy a few tv series in French (and preferably other languages)too, seems
like True Blood will be my first choice, because I'm currently watching SG1 in English
online. Why are there so few dvds with three or more languages? :-(

I've been postponing this post, because there is A LOT to write.

Super Challenges:
English:34 episodes or SG-1, which makes 17 movies! I'll need to count it all together
soon, to see how far I am.

I am still reading two French books and hopefully, I'll finish them soon.

I borrowed a well looking Spanish book. And I found out there is a marvellous "balcony"
in the Cervantes library. It is on the third floor, in the beautiful centre of the city
but it is more in the court, so you cannot hear so much of the noise. And with this
summer weather, it is perfect! The more that ou hear its of Spanish around you.

Other than challenges:

I am progressing with my Spanish slower, than I had expected but I am progressing. My
goal-be able to read a book at the end of month, is still realistic.

French. Again, no idea why, I get a sudden urge to come back to it since I've been more
intensively another language. I hope I will get to the two weeks immersion in August.
And yesterday, I spoke it! I found someone to speak with and we met and spoke for about
an hour. It was great, but I was at times feeling like an idiot. Will need to work on
that (both my spoken French and feeling like that).

I went through the city and I met several books for great prices (like nearly half the
original price). So I got the beautiful and modern French dictionary I've wanted for
years, German dictionary by the same publisher, a Norwegian course (yes, I am crazy)
and a novel in English which I had previously started reading in Czech (long time ago)
but couldn't finish (broken ebook reader).

So, I had a look at Norwegian. I love the false friends (like gift meaning married. And
stol meaning chair while Czech stůl (same pronunciation) means table etc.), they're
fun. I love the look of the language. And I begin to really like the sound, even though
I originaly prefered the sound of Swedish. Not sure how much time to devote to it, or
if any. I am now continuing with my Spanish, and there is my German 6WC before me.

I have been quite active at Memrise. I am creating my own (Czech based) decks for
Spanish and for French (I couldn't watch the nearly empty French for Czech speakers
course list). I am learning several courses and I'm having a great time. But it will
take time before I get to the first 1000 on leaderboard again.


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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4953 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 45 of 51
27 August 2012 at 5:07pm | IP Logged 
My "report" from the two weeks of a language course in Berlin. Briefly: this was the
best part of my holidays.

Berlin is a beautiful city. Some parts are so similar to Prague but it doesn't mean
there would be little to explore, quite the opposite. I have visited far less museums
and similar things than I had intended but I spent a lot of time walking out there,
enjoying the atmosphere and admiring the city and it's history. And they have so
beautiful parks!

I have met many interesting people among the students, most of which I have spoken with
in French. I may have actually used more French than had I gone to Nice :-D (to meet
more Germans, I will need to go to France obviously). It was awesome. I enjoyed it a
lot. Good company, fun, and it was pleasant to see I am still fluent in French, even
after a break in speaking. I had quite no trouble even with complicated topics (like
recent French politics and its european consequences :-D ). Funny thing: the only other
Czechs I met had been living in France for years and we didn't know of each other that
we spoke Czech until we were introduced with our typical Czech names. I know I have an
accent but it is not a strong one. By one of the Czechs, it may come from some part of
the Switzerland, by one of the forum members (I posted a sample of my French in the
advice subforum) it is Arabic :-D. But I can try to get rid of it during next
months/years and I may succeed. And this all proved that I had been right all the years
people had been telling me "why are you learning French, it is useless."

Yes, I spend some time in English as well, especially the last evening in a very mixed
company. Some of the people have been living in Berlin for some time, but in the
language bubble so they don't know much German.

My German: My speaking has improved, I can survive using only German. In a restaurant,
asking or giving directions, in a bookshop, have a small conversation on some basic
topics etc. That is good. I had a bit mixed feelings about the course. Based on the
entry test and interview, I was placed in level A1.2 and we started with the Perfect
tense. I have learnt quite a lot but I had expected the pace to be faster. We had two
teachers. One, who we had later in the day, was awesome. Really interacted with people,
we understood her quite all the time while improving the language, she knew well how to
choose activities and how much time to give for pair tasks. The other, whom we had in
the mornings, was younger. She wasn't bad but she put far much time for conversation
exercises than the beginners could fill. Apart from me, only one or two were trying to
speak all the time and use all we had learnt and find more to use immediately. With the
rest, especially one old student, it was quite bad. And the young teacher had one more
disadvantage. When speaking out of the exercises (giving instructions, explaining
something etc), she used a lot more difficult and faster language than we were learning
so it was really not easy to understand and sometimes my attempts failed.

The class was mixed mostly of Italians and Spanish, with two brasilians and a japanese.
That was quite a good mix. The school was mixed mostly of the french, Spanish, Italians
with some others. There were surprisingly many suisse people. I had believed they all
knew two or three languages but it is not true, they often know only the one which is
used the most in their region (+ English of course).

I liked as well some of the motivations of people there. There were several people
(including an American and an Italian) who are learning German to read the philosophers
in original. Others, some of the Brasilians for exemple, were there for the heritage
language. Yes, some came because of the job.

My German improved in the course a bit. I had quite good pronunciation right from the
beginnings, much better than most of the others, probably due to the listening being so
important part of my self-teaching. I have learnt some bits of the grammar (like the
perfect, a bit of the praeteritum, some modals and similar constructions, a bit of
prepositions but I had already known quite a lot about those and will need far more
practice alone to really master them). I should have put in far more time outside the
class, I didn't study as much as I had wanted. I spent a lot of time outside (learning
in vivo in the shops and around the city), relaxing etc. I would have studied far more
had the course progressed faster.

I have brought home a lot of ressources. About fifteen books (mostly second hand,
really cheap), some dvds, and some resources for my med studies (thanks god, latin is
the same anywhere).

My host family was awesome. We were speaking in German but when it was really needed,
switched to English. But I had surprisingly little trouble understanding most of the
time, they are used to having learners at home :-) And I had such a beautiful and large
room!

The two weeks were awesome. Now I need to continue on my own again. Perhaps, if I can
put aside enough money, I will go again next year but a few levels higher.And I would
like to buy additional lessons by than. The twenty 45mins a week are enough for a
beginner but next time, I'd like the additional 10 in minigroups or individual to
further improve the speaking.
3 persons have voted this message useful



ReQuest
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 4976 days ago

200 posts - 228 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 46 of 51
27 August 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged 
Schön! I really want to go to Berlin, it always appears to have this undergroundy, alternative feeling to it, I dunno.

But good you had a very "liguistical" trip.

1 person has voted this message useful



Jinx
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
reverbnation.co
Joined 5637 days ago

1085 posts - 1879 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, French
Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish

 
 Message 47 of 51
28 August 2012 at 10:29pm | IP Logged 
I love hearing about your language-course trip! It's good that you got to improve both your Freutsch languages. :) Isn't Berlin wonderful? I will be there the day after tomorrow, but only passing through on my way back to Leipzig. I miss living in Berlin, though – it's such a fun city.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4953 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 48 of 51
30 August 2012 at 4:38pm | IP Logged 
Berlin is awesome. Definitely high on my list of favourte cities, perhaps even in the top
three (with Paris and Prague) :-)

So, in the past few days,I watched another few episods of SG1, now I should add about 20
episodes to the Super Challenge. For french, I have seen a film Intouchables. Wonderful
film, really perfect. A quadruplegic rich man employs a poor, not much interested, young
man and it is so fun! And really clever. Other than that, I should get back to reading.
And when I am back from the weekend, I'm returning to intensive German studying.


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