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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 9 of 138 31 December 2013 at 12:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've heard good things about Madrigal's Magic Key, I might have to check it out. There's probably no such thing as enough verb study for this language!
I agree with your point about meetups. I've had some quite mixed experiences at them, and like you say, not many native speakers of my age go to them. Spanish is a bit of an exception here, always lots of young people at the meetups. I had my first proper Spanish conversation attempts tonight! I was at the Language Café (for those who haven't read my previous logs, it's a meetup in my city in a bar with tables for various languages) and the French table was quite English-dominated and generally unexciting, so I chatted to a few Spanish people. As expected, my main problem was just pure lack of vocabulary, although I guessed quite a lot based on Italian; I don't know how much was correct, but it got me understood! And of course all these verb forms weren't exactly coming easily, and there was a good bit of general Italian interference: short statements and interjections (non lo so, allora, etc.) and some vocabulary (I'm sure I said "imparar" instead of "aprender" at least once, and "sarà" instead of "será"... although interestingly in both these cases the correct Spanish is closer to the French than the Italian: "apprendre" and "sera"!). Another gap was the vosotros forms of verbs which MT doesn't teach; I tried using the Ustedes ones but got confused looks... I'm still not fully convinced of the benefits of early speaking, as it's just a pain when you can't say very much, although it is great for showing you where the biggest holes in your knowledge are. And of course it's an excuse to meet and chat to some people. Otherwise, I started watching Destinos to get my fill of exposure; I know it's not "real" native material, but so far so good. In Italian I've tried watching a bit of I Cesaroni. It seems OK so far, with much more interesting stories than something like Un Posto al Sole, although the attempts at humour seem quite ham-fisted. It's a good difficulty level as some of the speech is quite informal and regional. Edited by garyb on 31 December 2013 at 12:43am 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 10 of 138 02 January 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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Buon anno / feliz año nuevo / bonne année à tous !
I'm back at work now so I'm not exactly going to be able to keep up the momentum I've had for the last couple of weeks. For the moment I'm spending the most time on Italian and trying to keep up at least a bit of daily work on Spanish, with French being somewhat on the back-burner although accent work is still fairly high priority. I celebrated New Year with Italian friends, amongst others, and according to the tradition we ate lentils which supposedly bring good luck; let's hope that they do for my Italian studies! Things are going great at the moment: being able to socialise in the language is wonderful and I think it's an almost essential component to obtaining a good level. Italian's really starting to feel like part of my life now, in a way that French never has, since almost every day I'm using it in a natural context to interact with friends in person or in messages or on the phone. Aside from the few arseholes I came across in Rome (see my previous log), Italians are mostly lovely people. I've started watching I Cesaroni from the start now. Seems that every single episode is available freely and legally on the Mediaset site! Between that, all the everyday colloquial language in it, storylines that are just about interesting enough to keep me watching (hey, we can't ask for miracles here!), and a manageable number of episodes, it seems like a good one. Anyone know of anything similar in French by any chance? Some sort of drama/comedy about families and friends etc. that's not a dull soap opera? I like Engrenages etc. but something a bit more "everyday" would be nice. Spanish: A few more Assimil lessons and Destinos episodes. Destinos is good but there's a bit too much English for my liking. I suppose it's good to help the true beginners follow the story but I have no problem understanding the Spanish narration. I don't remember French in Action having any English beyond the first episode... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| corjine Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4013 days ago 55 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 11 of 138 02 January 2014 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Buona fortuna team leader! Non posso credere che tu imparati tante lingue subito!
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 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5525 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 138 02 January 2014 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Whenever I have a question like this, I dive in over at SensCritique. Of course, for TV, this will mostly give me a big list of high quality dubs of US series, but that's the reality of French television. Top des séries comiques Or just find a similar US series, and look in the right margin for user-created lists of similar series: Seinfeld (and lists containing it) Ironically, one of the better series that I've seen for interpersonal interaction in French is actually the dub of Avatar, le dernier maître de l'air. It's a relationship-driven show, with tons of humor. And the writing is absolutely top-notch by any standard. You get everything from friends teasing each other to the scenes with Zuko and his uncle Iroh. Zuko and Iroh can be just heartbreaking—Zuko's family sucks, Zuko himself is one messed up adolescent, and Iroh is his only anchor. The dub is very good and very idiomatic. On the native front, Les Revenants is far more scary than funny, and there's relatively little dialog per episode. But the dialog that's there is all extremely idiomatic interaction at full speed. (Just with bigger pauses—the characters spend half their time in a state of shock, understandably enough.) There are also a lot of people who like Plus belle la vie, but it's never sucked me in. 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 13 of 138 02 January 2014 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! I've already watched Les Revenants, I enjoyed it and I'm eagerly awaiting the next series. I tried Plus belle la vie but it wasn't really my thing either. I suppose native series would be ideal, for body language and all the rest, but dubs are also an option. I might check out Avatar, I've seen you mention it before.
Subito, no, ci vuole tempo! Ormai studio il francese da quattro anni, più o meno, e l'italiano da due, e sono ancora ben lungo da raggiungere buoni livelli... Insomma, sono impaziente: so bene che sarebbe stato meglio studiare una lingua per più tempo prima di cominciarne un'altra, ma dopo un po', diventa difficile aspettare! Quest'anno sarà una vera sfida, trovare il tempo per tre lingue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 138 02 January 2014 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I look around at Amazon (France) and find shows I like that have French audio tracks. :)
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| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5384 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 15 of 138 02 January 2014 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Off the top of my head Un gars une fille would be good though it is the sort of short form comedy that's
become so popular (like Kaamelott, Camera Cafe, and Bref). There are others but I would have to look them up later. They may not be as good as many American or British series but they're not all as silly as Plus belle la vie. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4628 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 16 of 138 02 January 2014 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You've got the Tv series "Fais pas ci fais pas ça " but I don't know where it´s available. It contrasts two
French families with children and friends, a rather stiff upper lip family and the other one more lenient and it´s quite funny. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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