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fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4707 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese
| Message 393 of 439 03 March 2014 at 4:05pm | IP Logged |
@Emme Thanks a lot! =D That's great to hear actually, because it makes me even more willing to continue!
@Expugnator Well, I don't really remember accurately about last year, but I'm 100% sure that this year it will be incredibly full in June/July, because of the World Cup!
Yeah, actually by that time the people online are usually 90% Asian and the rest South Americans, like Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, etc.
@nandemonai I agree! Thanks a lot =D
@vonPeterhof I see, it's quite the same here actually. Wow, thanks a lot for the tips! I'll certainly look into it!
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So guys, it's carnival in Brazil! And although 99% of my friends are at the beach, I have to work -.-
At least I could go to a bar on Saturday with some friends from CouchSurfing that stayed in town, and it was quite an international group. A Brazilian couple, an Ukrainian girl, a French guy with his Brazilian girlfriend and me. We all speak French, Portuguese (except for the Ukrainian girl) and Russian (except for the French guy and his girlfriend), so we did a big mix of languages throughout the evening, speaking mostly Portuguese and French, but putting in some Russian sometimes. It was great! =)
Japanese - Genki
I've finished the last chapter about the informal/"short" form of verbs, adjectives and nouns, and did one more chapter, now about the same thing but in the past.
I found very interesting that Japanese works similarly to English in the past negative.
In the past affirmative, you just follow the regular rule to add -た/だ or -ました to the end of the verb, but in the past negative there's a distinction between "past simple" and "present perfect" (kinda), so you use the regular -た/だ/-ました for the "past simple", but you must use まだ + .... + verb in the "-te" form + いません, which would literally translate as "yet .... am not doing" (if I'm not mistaken). Anyway, things are moving =)
SharedTalk
I've had a looooot of voice chats lately on SharedTalk. Most of the conversations were in English, but I also managed to speak a loooooot of French! Even with a Chinese girl whose English and French were very good! What surprised me the most was that she has been learning French by herself and only for about 1 year! I found that amazing!
Also, I met a French girl who spoke also Italian, Spanish, Arabic and some Portuguese. We spoke in a crazy mix of Latin languages and when we stopped talking I really needed an aspirin =P
Anyway, as I said before, it's a very nice tool! If you guys know any other sites like this, let me know! I know Verbling used to be like this, but they've changed the whole website and I can't find that feature anymore.... it's a shame.
German?
I really don't want to start another language now, since I've just started with Japanese and it's all going well so far, but German has been in my wishlist for a while, there are aaaaaalways a lot of Germans at the CouchSurfing meeting and recently a polyglot friend started studying it and another one suggested that we should start learning it together, in order to share experiences, be more motivated, chat and things like that. I asked him to give me some months, at least, and he agreed to wait, but now I'm in doubt about what to do. Maybe I should just tell him to start learning by himself, since I already know some Dutch, and then catch up with him later?
Skype
About the same as SharedTalk, but besides speaking French and Russian with some friends, I also spoke some Dutch (and Portuguese) with Jan van der Aa. This means that last week I spoke literally all my languages!! Yay! \o/ I wish I could keep doing this even after my wife returned, but you guys probably know that it's not that easy when your loved one is around.
Edited by fabriciocarraro on 03 March 2014 at 7:09pm
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4836 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian
| Message 394 of 439 03 March 2014 at 5:44pm | IP Logged |
fabriciocarraro wrote:
Japanese - Genki
I've finished last chapter about the informal/"short" form of verbs, adjectives and nouns, and did one more chapter, now about the same thing but in the past.
I found very interesting that Japanese works similarly to English in the past negative.
In the past affirmative, you just follow the regular rule to add -た/だ or -ました to the end of the verb, but in the past negative there's a distinction between "past simple" and "present perfect" (kinda), so you use the regular -た/だ/-ました for the "past simple", but you must use まだ + .... + verb in the "-te" form + いません, which would literally translate as "yet .... am not doing" (if I'm not mistaken). Anyway, things are moving =) |
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Wow, you've overtaken me in Genki! You're really making good progress. I have been learning Japanese for a year now, but I'm only on unit 8. Somehow, I needed a lot of time to let everything sink in. Congrats and 頑張ってね!
1 person has voted this message useful
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 395 of 439 06 March 2014 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
fabricio, I was thinking of the pos Cup period, the last two weeks of July.
As for Sharedtalk, I should not forget it. I have to organize my mornings for trying it
out!
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| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4707 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese
| Message 396 of 439 07 March 2014 at 4:14pm | IP Logged |
@Josquin Wow! I'm surprised to hear that! Haha But yeah, me too. After I do one chapter, I constantly review it (and the previous ones) on the subway while going to work.
@Expugnator Ah ok! I think the same applies, for the gringos who stay here to travel after the WC =P
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Japanese - Youtube
So, I recorded another video in Japanese for the Add1Challenge! I know it's a silly one, but I wanted to do something different this time, so prepare your stomach 'cause it's time for COOKING! In Japanese! (With the worst cook in human history, but that's just a detail) =P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HlDJSdBp5c
Japanese - Italki
Another amazing lesson with my new awesome teacher!
We're going really really fast through the first chapters of みんなのにほんご, just to review a few things and get some new vocab. I didn't like it very much on the last lesson because everything was very very basic (1st and 2nd chapters and bla bla), but it was actually really nice this time!
I told her that I wanted to learn conversational Japanese, not the formal one so much, and then she started making small notes about every new thing that we saw on the book, like teaching me that こち、そち and あち are the informal forms of こちら、そちら and あちら. Also, we practically dropped the -ます/-です for good.
We spoke maybe 80% of the lesson in Japanese, only changing to English for some explanations and vocab that I didn't know. At one point of the lesson, she said "You know, using only textbooks is boring, let's just chat in Japanese for a while!", and it went amazing!!! With a lot of Google Translate, of course, since my vocab is far from enough, but we could maintain a nice conversation about my best friend and things that we did/do together. After this lesson, I already scheduled 5 more with her hahaha =)
SharedTalk
Not much action on SharedTalk recently. Most of the people online by the time I got home were from China, Taiwan and South America, which don't interest me now, linguistically speaking.
Skype
As for Skype, it was great! I had sessions in Dutch, French and a nice multilingual one with a Brazilian friend who's also a polyglot (he speaks 11 languages) in Italian, Russian and French.
Russian - Shock Therapy
After noticing that I'm starting to forget my Russian, I decided that I'll try to have a "shock therapy" about it. This week I read at least 4 short stories and a long one from my book Русский Язык by Овсиенко. Also, I'm translating one of my favorite texts ever from Portuguese to Russian. It's actually a text originally in English by Carl Sagan. I'll be posting it here soon.
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| nandemonai Diglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4165 days ago 101 posts - 116 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 397 of 439 08 March 2014 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
Awesome video man, you've been making a lot of progress. Did you script the video or just looked up
some words and improvised? To get to that level has taken me a few years to be honest haha.
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| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4707 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese
| Message 398 of 439 12 March 2014 at 8:39pm | IP Logged |
@nandemonai Thanks! =) Hahaha I had to look up some words, like "garlic" or "to add", "olive oil", but the rest was improvisation. But except for the part where I'm actually cooking everything, there were some bloopers =P
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Benny's book has finally been released, so I'll be reading it for the next days. I'm pretty excited about the content, especially the parts where he interviewed other polyglots like Luca and Richard.
Japanese - Italki
Another Japanese lesson this week.
This time we completely dropped the textbook and did the whole lesson just speaking in Japansese. Again, it was like 80% in actual Japanese, and the rest in English for explanations or new vocabulary. My Japanese is terrible, is broken, has more holes than a Swiss cheese, but for me it's still unbelievable that I can actually speak it and have a nice conversation for almost 1 hour. Of course, about the simplest things, but still.... if anyone would've told me 2 years ago that now I would be having conversations in Japanese after 2,5 months of study, I would have laughed at the person =P
Japanese - Kanji Senpai (Android app)
What an amazing app! It works like a game, where you're introduced to new vocabulary (in kanji or not) and has to recognize them when written, spoken and also draw them. It's probably not as good as Duolingo or anything like that, but it's helping me a lot to learn some kanji (both to read and write) and new vocabulary. The thing that I liked the most though is that the words are separated by JLPT level. Right now I'm using the N5 "deck".
Russian - Shock Therapy part 2
I finished translating the text that I told about on my last post! I'm thinking about recording it with audio and put some subtitles, that way I can get some corrections for my pronunciation as well. I'll have it corrected before though, of course. I intend to post it here some time around next week.
CouchSurfing meeting
After a week off for the carnival, CouchSurfing was back yesterday, and as always very very nice! Again, it was full with foreigners.
I spent almost the whole evenin speaking in Russian with a Ukrainian girl, a Russian girl and a Brazilian guy. A great complement for my "shock therapy"! Haha Also, when I wasn't speaking Russian, I was speaking Italian with some other friends. Usually I speak more languages, but I really needed to give Russian this attention, and it turned out to be quite good. I'm a little rusty, but after 20 minutes speaking I was already much better.
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| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4707 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese
| Message 399 of 439 19 March 2014 at 3:57pm | IP Logged |
I'm almost finishing Benny's book and, like I said in another thread, although the first 60-70% of the book is highly focused on beginners, there are some very useful stuff there. The chapter about taking your level from mastery to fluency really stands out.
Japanese - 6 Week Challenge
Soooo the 6 Week Challenge challenge is over, and I'm quite satisfied with the results. I ended up as 18th, with 36 hours of Japanese studies. I'm happy that I managed to study even a little everyday. By the way, congratulations to crazypuce and his/her unbelievable 216 hours of Japanese. I take my hat off!
Japanese - Italki
Another Japanese lesson this week.
This time we did half conversation and half with the textbook. As always, it was around 80% in Japanese and the rest in English. I managed to teach her some words that are normal here but that are bad words in Japanese. A very famous example is that here in Brazil, when we're making a toast, we can either say "Saúde!" ("Health!") or "Tin tin" (an onomatopoeia for the sound that the glasses make when we toast), and the syllable "ti" is pronounced as "chi" or "ち".
So, my Brazilian-Japanese friend was in Japan with her friends and family for the New Year and her Japanese wasn't good. At midnight, when everyone was toasting and celebrating, she shouted "Tin tin!" Hahahaha =P
I guess most Japanese learners will understand what happened. For the others, look up "ちんちん" on Google (or don't) =P
Anki
After a "long" time since I finished Assimil French, I'm back to using Anki. I discovered an amazing plugin, that adds a sound for each word that you input. Pretty cool!
I've already created 2 decks, one for Japanese (so far around 460 words) and another for Russian. I got a book with the 10000 most frequently used words in Russian, and scrolled down the first 1000 ones, inputting around 120 words. Some I really didn't know, and others were just words that I mix up a lot or that I don't use that often. I think it can help!
CouchSurfing meeting
Last night wasn't as great as the previous weeks, but it was nice anyway.
I spoke mostly English and Portuguese, some Italian aaaaaaaand....Japanese! \o/\o/
There was a Japanese girl from Fukuoka, with whom I could practice my Japanese a little bit. I could get her Facebook as well, so I hope I can continue practicing with her!
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| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4113 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian
| Message 400 of 439 20 March 2014 at 7:10pm | IP Logged |
Fabricio,
about couchsurfing, how it works? Are you speaking with those persons over the internet
or in real meetings?
Merci
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