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TAC 2012 – Jinx – Freutsch & Catalan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5686 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 9 of 36 18 January 2012 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Alexander! I'm really looking forward to hearing about your time in Barcelona.
18 January 2012 Right now I'm listening to a podcast called "La música de les esferes: un podcast de música clàssica lliure". It's in Catalan, but I can't really count it as study time because the majority of the audio is recordings of great classical music (as the name suggests). Does anyone have any recommendations for a good Catalan podcast with clear speakers and (ideally) an exact transcript? I've found several good CT podcasts, but none with a transcript yet. Today I had an eight-hour business meeting in German, with shots of French and Spanish from my co-workers who are from those countries. It was exhausting but great – I love my job, my bosses, and my co-workers. Plus, we were at my bosses' house, and they have the most adorable rescued greyhound, Aitana. She and I instantly fell in love, and I had to spend most of the meeting scratching her ears while trying to simultaneously focus on work, because if I stopped she would tickle me with her cold nose until I started again. At lunchtime we took a break from working to all eat and chat together, and I had a pleasant realization: I've finally reached the point where I feel able to say anything at all in German that I might want to say in English – my conversational abilities aren't at all restrained by my lack of linguistic knowledge. This still doesn't mean I've become a chatterbox in German, though! In English, I don't talk unless I have something worthwhile to say, and I've finally reached that point in German too (i.e. leaving behind the constant-blathering-just-to-practice-speaking stage). It feels great to have reached this point. I also had fun talking with two of my co-workers, one French and one Spanish, in the train on the way home. Time to do Catalan homework and then study some Croatian before bed! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5949 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 10 of 36 18 January 2012 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
As jealous as I am of your success in language learning and studying/working abroad, I am even more jealous of what you describe in this quote. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6196 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 11 of 36 24 January 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hola Jinx,
Enhorabona! That meeting sounds wonderful, language-wise. It's great that you feel so comfortable in your languages. As far as Catalan, I don't know any podcasts with transcripts, but when I started learning Catalan I really liked the Catalunya Ràdio podcasts. There's a whole bunch of them if you just search "Catalunya Radio" on iTunes. Good luck with your impressive language learning! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4974 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 12 of 36 25 January 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Catalunya Radio.... You know you´ve done enough Catalan when you start singing the theme tune throughout your day... però està bé!
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| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5686 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 13 of 36 30 January 2012 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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30 January 2012
Good recommendation, anamsc and Alexander86 – I'm listening to Catalunya Radio right now as I write, and I can tell I'm going to be bookmarking this site. The radio programs are very lively. :) Recently I've been settling into a bit of a routine with my two "exotics", Catalan and Croatian. I'm up to Unit 4 of Colloquial Catalan, going through it in tandem with my coursework. My professor is from Lleida, which means he's wonderfully easy to understand (he actually pronounces stuff the way it looks on the page), but it also means that Barcelona accents still leave me reeling. Luckily most of the audio from Colloquial is in the Barcelona accent, so it's helping me get accustomed to hearing something different from what's written on the page. My final exam for that class is in ten days. As for Croatian, I'm primarily alternating between working through Teach Yourself and listening non-stop to my collection of Croatian music (which I'm obsessed with). I'm really looking forward to getting back to the amazing Alexander BSC textbook when the semester's over – I felt like I was learning so much so fast from it – but in the meantime, David Norris and his slightly blander but quite respectable efforts in TY will have to do for me. No French to speak of in the past week-ish, but quite a bit more German. I spent the afternoon and evening at a friend's house yesterday, being introduced to the series "Game of Thrones" (in English, un/fortunately) and chatting with my two companions in between episodes. Then we cooked dinner together while enthusiastically talking about language and translation all evening, alternating with complaints about one of our crazy professors. So all in all I got a solid three hours of speaking practice in German, including on topics that actually interest me to discuss. It's amazing how quickly any insecurity about speaking melts away when we're talking about something awesome like linguistics. :) Oh, and of course there's still that website I have to keep translating… sigh. Guess I'll go do that for a few hours now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4974 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 14 of 36 30 January 2012 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck with the exam and I'm glad you liked Catalunya Radio, lively really does sum it up!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5686 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 15 of 36 03 February 2012 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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3 February 2012
CA: Avui matí he tingut el meu primer examen de català. Jo no estava molt bé preparat però crec que va ser més aviat fàcil, i el meu professor m'ha dit que vaig rebre una bona nota. Sóc molt feliç, però la meva vida no ha encara arribat a ser relaxant! Tinc encara quatre examens, al dimarts, dimecres, dijous, i divendres. Els de dimarts i dijous seran molt difícil – he d'aprendre una gran quantit d'informació de memòria, que no és fàcil per a mi. FR: Hier soir il y avait un groupe d'étude chez moi. Ce n'était pas en fait vraiment un groupe, car il n'y avait que deux personnes : moi et mon amie Julia. Ce n'était pas vraiment pour étudier non plus. Cela avait été l'idée originale, mais à vrai dire c'était une soirée de rires. Je ne comprends pas la raison, mais chaque fois que nous essayons à étudier, Julia et moi, nous finissons par rire beaucoup. Cette fois, c'était le chiffre 26 qui était trop marrant pour nous. Ne me demandez pas pourquoi, je n'ai aucune idée. 26 en catalan est "vint-i-sis", et chaque fois qu'une de nous a dit "vint-i-sis" nous ne pouvons que recommencer à rire comme des folles. Mais en effet nous nous sommes bien préparé pour l'examen ce matin et, comme j'ai écrit ci-dessus en catalan, ce n'était pas très difficile. Demain il y a encore une partie de l'examen, mais elle sera la partie écrite, et pour moi écrire est toujours plus facile que parler, alors ça ne m'inquiète pas beaucoup. DE: Ich freue mich sooo auf die Semesterpause, ich kann es euch kaum erklären. Nur noch eine Woche voll Prüfungen und dann bin ich endlich fertig, mit zwei schönen leeren Monaten vor mir und überhaupt nichts, dass ich machen muss. Na also, das stimmt nicht hundertprozentig – ich habe noch Ärger mit der Ausländerbehörde über meine finanzielle Situation hier in Deutschland und ich werde auch wohl ein paar Freundinnen sehen müssen, aber sonst gibt es wirklich gar nichts. Ich werde die Zeit haben, Briefe zu schreiben, meine Stadt ein bisschen besser kennenzulernen, Lieder zu schreiben (Februar ist übrigens FAWM, deshalb muss ich 14 Lieder vor dem Ende des Monats schreiben – mehr dazu gibt's hier: http://www.fawm.org), und natürlich auch meine Sprachen weiter zu lernen. Meine Freundin Julia ist großer Fan von japanischen Serien und Musik, und sie hat es vor, in der Pause einen Crash-Kurs in Japanisch zu machen. Sie hat mich gefragt, ob ich mitmachen möchte. Ich glaube nicht – ich habe schon ziemlich viel am Hals – aber es ist trotzdem verlockend. Nur €60 für einen ganzen Monat Japanisch, und zwar intensiv – bis zu sechs Stunden pro Tag! Ich meine aber, dass es besser wäre, bei den schwierigeren Sprachen so wie Japanisch eine "langsame aber sichere" Lernmethode zu verwenden, statt als Anfänger/in sofort ein Intensivkurs zu besuchen. Daraus kann man wohl nicht so viel Profit schlagen. I haven't learned enough Croatian to start writing in it here regularly yet. Maybe I'll make that my goal for semester break – by the time the summer semester starts in April, I'd like to be able to patch together some basic journal updates (no matter how mistake-filled) in Croatian. (Summary of the above non-English bits: In Catalan, I wrote that I had my oral exam for Catalan today and got a good grade for it, and that I have a solid week of exams coming up next week. In French I wrote about the absurd "study group" that I had last night with my friend Julia, during which we ended up spending far more time laughing at Catalan numbers than actually studying. And in German, I mused about my plans for semester break – including writing 14 songs for FAWM – and related that Julia was trying to convince me to join her in a one-month intensive Japanese course – not gonna happen, but tempting nevertheless!) Corrections for all languages welcomed, as always! Edited by Jinx on 04 February 2012 at 2:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4708 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 16 of 36 03 February 2012 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find incredible how I can understand Catalan with no problem whatsoever, even though I've never had previous contact with the language. Probably because it's too close to Spanish, but it's nice to acknowledge that fact.
Keep up the good work, Jinx! Edited by fabriciocarraro on 03 February 2012 at 2:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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