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Gary’s TAC 2014: Spanish, Italian, French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 113 of 138 11 September 2014 at 11:03am | IP Logged |
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I went to French meetup, it went well. I'm now fairly confident in agreeing with the common wisdom that in order to maintain a language at a decent level, regular exposure and a bit of practice every so often is enough. My French obviously wasn't any better yesterday than when I stopped learning, but it wasn't much worse either, and I think the French films and TV I watched in the previous few days helped a lot in reactivating it and getting me to think in the language again. The event was a nice reminder of what it's like to be able to speak a language with a reasonable degree of fluency, and a reminder that if I keep up the work then my Italian will get that stage too.
Now that I'm past the "break-up period", I'm happy to add a bit more French input into my schedule again. I use the term "schedule" very lightly as I don't exactly plan these things, I tend to just do what I feel like based on a vague set of priorities... Also I've been feeling more social again recently so I'll probably start going to language exchange events again at least sometimes, where I should get to practise French semi-regularly as well as other languages. My problem in the past was that I got a bit too obsessive about going to them every single week, even going when I was tired and would have done better to just stay at home, so I ended up getting burnt out and sick of the whole thing and stopping entirely for months. Balance is a good thing. So overall, I'm happy to say that I don't expect to lose my level any time soon! I'm still of the same opinion that French isn't very useful as far as languages go, but still, knowing any language to a high level is something great that I'd rather not lose. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 114 of 138 15 September 2014 at 11:51am | IP Logged |
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Quick one...
Italian Still reading Il segreto del bosco vecchio. It's very highly rated but to be honest it's not my thing. However it's short and I've read about two thirds so far so I might as well finish it before making a long-overdue move back to more modern writing. On that subject, I finally got around to making Anki cards out of all my highlights from Ammaniti and Volo. It'll take me a good few months to get through all these! Italian grammar drills arrived the other day. It's a thicker book than I had expected, and it starts right from the basics. I suppose from the title I had expected a lean exercise book rather than a full-on grammar book with exercises. It's not a bad thing though: revising the basics never does any harm and I've already picked up a few things on irregular plurals that I had been unsure about and often got wrong. Watched more Montalbano. I'm getting more used to the Sicilian way of speaking, although you get the odd older character who speaks in almost incomprehensible dialect. Also more Romanzo Criminale, which again is mostly understandable although the Romanesco gets a bit heavy at times. Spanish I've seen 6 episodes of Aquí no hay quien viva now. I'm getting into it more and it's becoming slightly easier, although some words and expressions still go straight over my head. It's getting far too long since I had any sort of proper conversation in Italian or Spanish. I've not even had time for self-talk for a few weeks. I'm busy with music stuff this week but once that's over I'm very keen to get practising again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 115 of 138 22 September 2014 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
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Even quicker one for this week. I was on tour with my band for a few days so any sort of study ground to a halt, and this week looks like it will mostly be spent working and recovering. But a few French people I know from Meetup came to see us play, which was a pleasant surprise, and on another night I had a brief chat with two French girls. Maybe it's not such a useless language after all ;). I felt rusty to say the least, but I was a bit tired and stressed... I'd probably save a lot of words in my writing if I pointed out the times I'm not tired and stressed rather than the times I am.
My flatmate is moving out, and an Italian friend is replacing him, which might mean some practice opportunities at home. However her English is much better than my Italian! I just realised that it's almost October. Would it be premature to declare my goal to learn Spanish this year a failure? I don't see myself making much more progress in the next few months, since they're the busiest few months of the year and my priorities are music, Italian, and sleeping. But to be fair, I've watched a decent amount of film and TV recently which should have solidified things, so maybe I'll be surprised when I next try to have a conversation. Ya veremos. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 116 of 138 23 September 2014 at 5:46pm | IP Logged |
I came across some vocabulary knowledge tests for several common languages in patrickwilken's log, and I'm having a quiet day, so I did the passive and active ones for Italian and French. Results:
From that I can conclude that... My Italian is slightly better than my French, passively at least, and much the same for active skills? I'm not convinced, although all the Italian reading I've done recently probably explains the passive score. I've read more Italian books than French ones now, although I've read more news and online content in French. And when speaking I feel that my active vocabulary is still a lot higher and a lot easier to reach in French, although it's a bit rusty. Of course the test doesn't measure spoken fluidity, and it gives some time to think. Still, I've said a few times that my Italian is bound to catch up and overtake my French, so maybe that moment is approaching more quickly than I thought. Now I guess I could read that 36-page academic masturbation topic about how many words are needed for speaking. Or not. Or I might try the Spanish tests just for a laugh. Edited by garyb on 23 September 2014 at 5:51pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 117 of 138 26 September 2014 at 11:11am | IP Logged |
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I went to another great French meetup the other day. It seems to be picking up again and there's been a recent influx of native and advanced non-native speakers. Someone I know offered to help me with French speaking in exchange for English writing help, although like most exchanges I'm not optimistic that it will come to anything. And I've been chatting to a few French people recently. All this seems to be a sign that I should get back into French again.
I still have no intention of trying to improve my academic/professional competences or aiming towards C1 or anything like that. But it would be nice to fill in a few gaps in conversational and social usage, so maybe I could take advantage of these new-found opportunities for that. Obviously I gave it up in order to make time for higher priority activities, so I'm not prepared to give more than a few hours per week to it. Should be enough for any conversation that might come up and a bit of input, again focusing on everyday conversational language. For that there are sites like Vie de merde (comments as well as posts), films and series, and BDs. I said a few posts ago that the break-up period is over; to continue the metaphor, there's no reason why French and I shouldn't still be on friendly terms. Italian has gone the opposite way. I've hardly seen or heard from my Italian friends for a month or two, and I've not been able to make any recent meetups. Strange how these things change, and you can't really make plans based on availability of opportunities since that isn't constant. I even feel that, compared to a year ago, Spanish opportunities are far fewer now that I could take advantage of them. I mean, I can still seek them out and find them very easily, but they don't come to me in the way they used to, when I'd often end up drinking and partying with Spanish friends-of-friends. Actually the same thing happened with French in my early days: the more I improved, the less I got to use my skills and the more I had to struggle to find the chances to interact with native speakers that used to just happen. Seems like a strange irony of language learning. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 118 of 138 30 September 2014 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
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I've been to a couple more meetups and practised everything. Having a break from these types of events seems to have done me some good: at the recent ones I've been a lot more chilled out, less anxious about trying to squeeze out every practice opportunity, and not getting bothered when people switch to English.
I think I'm going to start posting here a lot less frequently. Not only do I keep repeating much the same points, but I also think it encourages overly focusing on particular events rather than the bigger picture. Sometimes I speak well, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I have opportunities to speak Language X, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I feel like studying Language Y, sometimes I'd rather study Language Z. Sometimes I'm in a social mood and want to go out and do as much speaking practice as possible, sometimes I feel more introverted and prefer to stay in and watch films and read. We all know about the ups and downs of language learning and of life in general; over-thinking them and trying to read into them often doesn't make things any better. If anything it just gives you a distorted perspective, and I've been guilty of it for both the ups ("I've been speaking well recently, so I'll hopefully reach my goals in a few months!") and the downs ("I've been speaking badly recently, so I need to spend much more time focusing on speaking!"). While I'm sure there's always room to make my learning more efficient and effective, on the whole I think I'm doing everything right really and I'm making decent progress especially considering the limited free time I have for languages and the compromises I make. So I think it's just time to relax and keep it up rather than getting bogged down in the details. I'll still post about any experiences or ideas I have that are particularly noteworthy, and I'd be happy to keep periodically writing about what I've been watching and reading if it interests anybody, but no more posts about how every meetup and conversation went and what it supposedly means for my learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 119 of 138 17 October 2014 at 12:02pm | IP Logged |
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A wee I'm-still-alive plus writing practice update. I'm still tired, still busy, and still focused on music, so I don't have a lot to say about languages. But I can do a few sentences in each. This is probably the direction my log's going to take from now on: updates in the languages I'm studying. I assume most people who read this do so because they're interested in at least one of the languages, so hopefully some of it at least will be understandable!
Italiano:: Ho visto qualche film ma niente di speciale. Sto leggendo due libri; il primo, Licenza di chissenefrega, è un libro Italiano di auto-aiuto che finora mi piace abbastanza. Ha una prospettiva un po' diversa da quella solita americana. Parla più delle emozioni e dei modi di pensare, meno degli obbiettivi e della produttività. E sono tornato a leggere Niccolò Ammaniti, di preciso Fango: una raccolta di racconti che comprende L'ultimo capodanno del mondo, una novella pazzesca che riassume proprio tutti gli elementi del suo stile e che consiglio a chi vuole provarlo. Ne hanno fatto pure un film che ora ho una gran voglia di vedere. Purtroppo ho parlato veramente poco Italiano negli ultimi mesi. Mancano gli occasioni, rispetto a durante l'estate quando lo parlavo quasi ogni giorno. E anche quando l'occasione c'è, spesso non me la sento, oppure ci provo ma non ce la faccio e faccio solo una figuraccia. Colpa della stanchezza credo. Français: La situation s'est vraiment inversée ! Comme je viens de le dire, récemment j'ai peu d'occasion de parler italien ; par contre j'ai parlé pas mal de français aux Meetup. Mon français étant plus avancé, j'arrive à le parler sans trop y réfléchir même si je suis fatigué, alors que l'italien me demande plus d'énergie mentale. Peut-être que quand je suis fatigué je m'exprime avec moins d'élégance que d'habitude et j'ai toujours recours aux mêmes structures et aux mêmes expressions de base, du coup je parle un français quelque peu simpliste et sans imagination, mais je n'ai pas de gros problèmes à m'exprimer assez couramment. Español Vi unos capítulos de "Aquí no hay quien viva" y también "Tesis", una película de suspense del mismo director de "Abre los ojos". Me gustan las películas así porqué es fácil prestar atención... también me gustan las más complejas, digamos, pero no siempre las apetezco. El fin de semana pasado hubo un festival de cine español pero desgraciadamente no pude ir. Duró poco tiempo y los horarios no me convenían. Hubo una película sobre la vida de los hacia 20.000 españoles que han elegido de vivir aquí en Edimburgo que tengo que ver tarde o temprano... ¡a lo mejor habrá alguien que conozco o por lo menos reconozco! Recién he hablado español un par de veces. A veces consigo expresarme fácilmente pero otras veces no tengo idea de como decir algo. Es un poco todo o nada... Y todavía tengo muchas dificultades con los verbos, sobre todo el pretérito indefinido. Aún no tengo el tiempo para estudiar algo como FSI que me haga practicarlos. Pero si escribo con regularidad, ¡seguramente me ayudará! EDIT: I keep writing "che" instead of "que" in Spanish :( Edited by garyb on 17 October 2014 at 12:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 120 of 138 20 October 2014 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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Durante il week-end passato ho parlato con un'inglese che parla bene l'italiano e abbiamo parlato di quanto la propria fiducia nel parlare una lingua cambi a seconda della persona con cui si parla. Lei ha detto di sentirsi molto più sicura quando parla in Italiano con un Italiano che non parla benissimo l'inglese, e meno sicura quando l'interlocutore lo padroneggia bene. Ed è simile per me. Durante l'estate quando passavo un sacco di tempo con amici Italiani (quando ancora avevo una vita sociale...) di cui la maggior parte non era bravissimi in inglese, era naturale parlare Italiano. Però certi altri amici, per esempio la mia nuova coinquilina e i suoi amici, parlano inglese al livello C1 come minimo e così mi vergogno a parlare Italiano!
Short version: I discussed with someone else how we feel a lot less confident speaking another language with a native speaker when the native speaker knows English very well. If an Italian doesn't know English very well, then speaking Italian with them feels easy and natural, but if their English is great then we don't feel confident and are almost ashamed to speak Italian. Interesting that this seems to be a common experience. I suppose it's just practical, if their English is significantly better than your Italian then speaking Italian would be unnatural and just make things difficult. Edited by garyb on 20 October 2014 at 1:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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