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What Expug is doing in 2015 (TAC n more) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 313 of 364 16 October 2015 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Accomplished Language Textbook: Linguaphone Russian (1990)
It was worth waiting and working on Linguaphone Russian now that I have a better understanding of the language. I could be able to focus on conversational structures and details, instead of cramming vocabulary, which I'd have to do if I had studied it on an earlier level. I did only the dialogues and skipped the explanations, because I've been through other beginner textbooks before and it's pointless to read loads of grammar explanations if I'm going to have to get used to the rules through extensive use anyway (which, btw, I'm doing at a satisfactory rhythm). Now I'm going for Ilya Frank's method. They are simple stories, fully translated, with audio and I am still on a challenge. I'm going to count 4 pages as 1, given the translations and repetition (it's A4 format anyway). It's still boring to read Georgian. I have to think of another strategy. Today is an even hotter day, which doesn't favor concentration, especially after lunch. The Chinese series is not that interesting but I'm happy about how much I understand. As for the Russian Interny, I'm enjoying it and also learning a lot, starting to anticipate some transcripts. No wonder, these are the languages I'm practicing the most so it reflects in the output. This good sequence put my mood back in good, but my sight is still tired because I had trouble with my contacts this morning and had to wait till I came from home before washing them. Today I finally text-chatted in Georgian for a while again. Didn't get corrections but at least was forced to write long sentences and didn't hinder conversation. Finish Kuxnya season 3; While waiting for either one of two miracles (1. finding subtitles for season 4 - so far I found hardcoded Bulgarian subtitles; 2 - actually being able to understand Georgian with subtitles), I'm going to watch Kuxnya v Parizhe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 314 of 364 19 October 2015 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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The weeekend wasn't much productive with just 10 pages of Georgian and the newest episode of Side om side, but something inspiring happened. I started watching episode 61 from season 4 of Kuxnya again to see how much I can understand and noticed I was understanding what was going on, thanks to the visual clues. It turns out the film happens between the third and the fourth seasons, so my decision of watching the film first was appropriate after all. So I am probably going to watch the film this week and next week we'll see if I am ready for dubbed Georgian without subtitles.
On the other hand I made an act of self-indulgence and bought seasons 5, 6 and 7 of Futurama from Amazon.de . Now i'm afraid there will be a charge of tax. The price in dollars is not expensive but it seems Amazon non-book stuff is charged by default. What's worse is that I asked for the parcel to be delievered at my in-law's and they live far from here, so if I have to take the parcel at a post office near them, that will mean one morning of work lost. Let's hope for the best. I started using Ilya's Frank Russian text (finally, Serpent). I like it. It seems fair to count 4 pages as 1 because the pages are A4 anyway. I'm trying to pay attention to the audio because I want to keep it as intensive reading the way I was doing with Linguaphone. One anecdote that involves the forum: I had the tough mission to translate the expression "fotógrafo lambe-lambe" into English. I googled and found "pavement photographer" as a UK variant. Unassured, I tried first into Spanish which is retratista minutero. When I googled for it I found it as an excerpt of the novel El tiempo entre costuras, which is being read by the Club de lectura en el foro español. So I got the English edition which stuck with "street photographer" which is far from picturing what the profession conveils but is fair enough. Finished the fourth season of Futurama in German. Over one month for the new DVDs to arrive, so until then I have 20 extra minutes each day. I might start searching for a German series again, maybe I'm lucky this time, but no pressure really. My problem with German is not the lack of series with subtitles in the language, because I watch even native German series. Accomplished Language TextbooK: Assimil Perfectionnement Italien 
As Italian was my 4th Romance language, I wasn't willing to spend much time on details and so I took some shortcuts. That's why I did all the Assimils I had in a rush plus Duolingo and some books more focused on conversation (before I went to Italy in May). After I came back from Italy and realized I could already speak some Italian, I move right into Perfectionnement Italien. The book is quite consistent. SOme parts of literature excerpts scare a bit but overall the book is neither easy enough to be boring for the speaker of other Romance languages nor too difficult to present a too steep learning curve. I'm afraid those with a non-Romance background will find it more difficult in terms of vocabulary, though. All in all, I like this intermediate Assimil better than the German ones, although the French one still looks like it was better thought of. Now I'm going for native materials. When I notice I've read a couple of pages I will then go for Routledge's Modern Italian Grammar: a Practical Guide. I've praised this series often enough but it won't help me much at this stage when I don't have enough input to make my own conclusions (which means I probably worked on it too soon it with German as my German is still far from conversational, but with Chinese it lived to its purpose. I wonder what it could do for my French even though I'd still be better off with Grammaire progressive niveau perfectionnement). Anyway, I think for Italian (and for French) one can go directly into writing practice in order to improve, because one can already act conversational and it is the native feel that lacks, and this fine-tuning happens optimally with input, at least for me (same goes for English, for example). So Italian is the Kazakh expresses possessions and poses questions about existence just like other Turkic languages. No big deal, really. Started watching Кухня в Париже/სამზარეულო პარიზში. The dubbing is not the same as the series, which is confusing in the beginning (also because the voice-over is slight,y more delayed). The good news is that now I know how to open Bulgarian subtitles and convert them to Unicode with the help of the Universal Cyrillic Decoder that allows you to test and point out which combo of encodings worked instead of blindly trying one by one. Today only 10 minutes, but I hope to watch it at least for 20 minutes a day so I can finish it soon. Edited by Expugnator on 19 October 2015 at 10:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 315 of 364 20 October 2015 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday I finally realized that the Duolingo German tree actually got updated after I studied it and so there are several chapters with missing lessons or even with the whole chapter left undone. I'm probably going to finish the Norwegian tree tomorrow, and so I will be spending a few days on the German one. I won't start the Russian one right away, because even though I started the Norwegian one when it graduated from beta, there were still a lot of inconsistencies (I had two or three of my suggestions accepted as correct later, and I didn't bother reporting all of my suggestions).
Entre les murs is a real course of colloquial French, French culture, how to talk about yourself. I'd recommend it as one of the first movies for those into subs2srs. I started browsing through German Duolingo. There are over 70 chapters waiting for completion. I'm afraid they are requesting me to redo some lessons I haven't "watered", which isn't my goal. I can't complain, I was looking forward to activating my German after all. I got a reply to my Estonian post at Unilang, the one I made a few days ago. Maybe there's a chance to revive an already rich subforum. One list of French movies I found at a FB group:
Among those I've watched 1), 2) and am halfway through 8). I don't like biographies. It seems I figured out why I'm a bit fed up about studying Georgian and German. Besides being a little tired anyway, it turns out the resources I'm using for these languages are the same for months: reading an American trilogy in Georgian (currently halfway through the second book), watching the series Shua Qalaqshi and, in German, L-Ring Herr aller Dinge. And I do these one after the other. While in other languages I not only switch resources more often but also work on each resource in different parts of the day: I read in Chinese and Russian in the morning and I watch series in them later in the afternoon. Just for a change, today's Georgian reading was both easier and more productive. It helps that there were more dialogues about daily situations, which usually catch up my interest a little more intensively. The dubbing for the film "Kuxnya v Parizhe" is terrible. I'm glad I could translate the Bulgarian subtitles, or else I'd be mostly lost. I'm afraid I'm not learning much German from it. I started reading "L'alchemista". There's no workaround to say that, Italian is simply transparent. Much more than French when I started it, and I guess more than Spanish at this point. I know, it's a book written originally in my native language, but even so I find it easy. I plan to finish it in about too months, reading quite a few pages each day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 316 of 364 21 October 2015 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Started watching "In der Mitte eines Lebens". It's a plain TV film. I didn't get the German subtitles, so I had to go through the process of decoding and translating Russian subtitles. Fortunately it's not that bad to translate short dialogue lines. The audio for this film is of higher volume than usual, pretty clear, though it would still be better with German subtitles as well.
Finished the Norwegian Duolingo tree! What a relief. Despite some mistakes and the extreme nitpicking on when we translate into English (this for that, a/the/lack of article, plural, pastxpresent - those shouldn't be regarded as errors, just warned as typos - it's not English I'm studying, after all), I must say this course is incredible comprehensive. Much more than Italian or German. I'm not sure it has more chapters, but each chapter has many lessons, and what is more important, each lesson has more lines, averaging above 15 per lesson, I'd say. That means the Norwegian course will represent above-average work. Now I have to finish the German one, which got updated. The French soundtrack of Kuxnya in Paris is simply great. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 317 of 364 22 October 2015 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm finished re-studying the dialogues part from "Georgian Language and Culture: a Continuing Course". Now I'm going to review grammar. The first sections are basic but it quickly escalates into stuff that does need reviewing now that I have had more input and so I can relate to what is being explained. The bad news is that I'll be missing 2 pages a day for the Super Challenge, but I either think I can catch up on bedtime reading or that it won't make a difference anyway as there is more than enough time for me to reach the 2500 pages (currently at 2368).
Had a good day reading Georgian. I understood almost everything and could pay attention to the missing words. I wonder if this can be partially explained with the fact I rea Georgian before Norwegian, so I was probably less tired and with a sharper interpretation. I switched my Hello Talk target language back to Chinese after having left it on Georgian for a few days (spoiler: no Georgian contacted me). Right after I did it, I got contacted by several Chinese. It seems right after I switch into a language I may be displayed high in the users search ranking. So maybe that's a way to trick the system? I am having long conversations where I write long periods in Mandarin. The good thing of being observing Daylight Saving Time is that I have more time during the day for language exchanges. Looks like I will soon be able to understand the Russian series just with the Russian transcript, no translation. Well, that's a first step. It's going better than German, I believe. Reading Italian is becoming easier each day. About 5 words looked up per each A4-page. Plus I'm becoming familiar with literary past forms in no time, instead of waiting for a course to teach me that towards the end. The French actor who played "The Lord" in Hero Corp just showed up in "Kukhnya v Parizhe", he plays a food reviewer. I can't stop surprising myself how I unexpectedly watch films/series and recognize actors from my studies on other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 318 of 364 23 October 2015 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm finding the sentences from the Estonian-Russian extensive phrasebook pretty useful. Like I said before, it is a very comprehensive one so you get several variations of the same theme. That is useful both for mnemonics and for enriching one's own expressiveness. I'm starting to figure out some sentences myself, without having to copy-paste them at Google (I skip the Russian overall for learning, I only use it for translation when ambiguity arises).
I started rereading Georgian grammar from the Continuing Course. I read 10 pages today, but I'm afraid it might be too much when I get down to actually challenging themes. I need more intensive reading in German, the same way I realized I needed it in Georgian. I need to figure out syntax rules on my own and thus meaning, instead of relying on translation all the time. I should probably start with articles on innovation, technology, disruption etc, that are the news I read more often. Though I suspect my non-fiction is better than my fiction reading anyway. Finished the film "Kuxnya v Parizhe", sooner than expected. Towards the end I was getting used to the voices in Georgian again. Next week I will try to keep watching the series, this time with no transcript. Challenge accepted. Time for another daily output challenge, this time writing in Georgian: როდის არის ძველი ნივთები უფრო კარგი ვიდრე ახალი ნივთები? მე მგონი, ახალი ნივთები ზოგჯერ უფრო კარგია ვიდრე ძველი ნივთებზე. ეს ხდება ხოლმე როდესაც ძველი ნივთები არ არის კეთდება რომ ხანგრძლისთვის. მაგალითად, ახალი კომიუტერები მუდმივად უკეთესია. მანქანბიც. მაგრამ რაჩ შეეხება კულტურალური ნითვები, არ მგონი, ახალი უკეთესია, ან ფირიქით, ანტიკური ოქროა. მოდი ვიფიქოთ, მაგალითად, მუსიკაზე. ადამიანები ყოველთის ამბობენ, რომ სამოცდაათიანი ან ოთხმოციანი წლების მუსიკა საუკეთესოა. ხალხი ვერ აცნობიერებენ იმას, რომ როცა სიებს იზამენ სამოცდაათიანი ან ოთხმოციანი სიმღერებისგან მხოლოდ საუკეთესო სიმღერებენ ირჩევენ. ამიტომ ყოველი თანამედროვე სიმღერები უნდა შევადაროთ საუკეთესო სამოცდაათიანი ან ოთხმოციანი ან ოთხმოცდაათიანი სიმღერებისთან. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 319 of 364 26 October 2015 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Warning: Long post ahead. Mode = +rant
The Georgian text I posted last Friday got way more corrections than usual, including entire rephrasings. I wonder if this is due to my attempt to express more complex, subordinate clauses or to having added an English translation which somehow allowed the person to correct more freely and expressing my thought in a more authentic way or to my overall deterioration or all the factors combined. A lot happened at the weekend. On Saturday I went to a a German barbecue, organized by the local Stammtisch. It took me a while to start talking to people, but I met some Germans (and I already knew most), Austrians, a guy from Barcelona and a Lithuanian who looks quite like the cook 'Senya' from the Russians series Kuxnya. People have fun when he is around, joking that "karalius' in Lithuanian means king, and so they call him 'karalius', jokingly. The organizer's mom is here in Brazil now and so she helped with the barbecue. I talked to her quite a bit. Her German was the easiest to understand so far. This event was a confidence boost for my German. I realized I can communicate (more easily now, probably after reactivating it from Duolingo) and that I can follow conversations when people speak standard, normal speed, normal volume. On the other hand that reinforced my idea that speaking a language at a conversational level is a different beast than actually understanding that language in situations not so context-oriented and with much more dense vocabulary. Here's what happened: I tried to watch one episode of Kuxnya without subtitles and failed completely. I then watched the same episode in Russian with Bulgarian subs. Not only I could understand more from the Russian (partly because my Russian studies are more consistent as I have been watching stuff with subtitles for months, partly because it's just the Russian, not the Russian and the Georgian voice over competing), but the Bulgarian subtitles helped a lot. They are striking similar to the Russian. That still wasn't enough, though - those subs are hardcoded and I don't know how to extract them, and I'd have to keep pausing and looking words up. Besides, the streaming crashes all the time. So I decided I'd pick another series, dubbed from English. I tried cartoons, first Dragon Hunters (which turns out to be Chasseurs de dragons, French) and later George of the Jungle. I didn't find subtitles for either of those series - only for their respective 3D movies. Now I'm terribly frustrated that I won't have audio comprehensible input for Georgian anymore. Besides, I won't have access to my favorite series. I'm really looking forward to understanding series without subtitles but that's frustrating because I don't know when it's likely to happen. It takes much longer than being able to do small talk at a barbecue - I realized that the genre of conversations I had in German I could have both understood and spoken in either Chinese or Georgian, but I can't watch series with subtitles in German, Chinese or Georgian. I can't read a novel in those languages either. But those are the skills I'm mostly aiming for, not being able to talk, and I have actually employed more effort into those - my active practice is rather limited. If my goal were to master small talk in order to show off as a webpolyglot, I'd have reached it by now, but I want to enjoy native material in the language and this seems so far away. I've only really reached it for French which is culturally and linguistically similar to my native material. This is desperating when I realize I've spent 4.3 years on Chinese, 3.7 in Georgian, 3.3 in Norwegian, 3 in Russian and roughly 2 in German. It really makes me question what's the point of all this I'm doing. Is B1 really as far as I can get with non-transparent languages? Mode = -rant I've finished reading the new novel by Paulo Coelho, Adultério, in Georgian. Probably the worst novel I've ever read. Now I've started Amélie Nothomb's Barbe Bleue in Georgian/French. It seems not only more interesting but also easier to follow than the previous one. Nothomb's language is pretty direct. Besides, the novel is short - exactly the number of pages I was missing for completing the half challenge. I wonder how much of my drift of attention while watching the Norwegian and Georgian comedies is due to lack of comprehension and how much is due to lack of interest in conversation that i can get the topic of but still don't feel particularly atracted. In the case of Georgian, I'm going to stick to lame American movies that are dubbed in Georgian. I found one that is properly dubbed, I can't hear the original voices. It's less more effective than TV series, though, because TV has much more dialogue per minute and it is continuous so you get used to the voices. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5154 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 320 of 364 27 October 2015 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I forgot my diary at home, where I note down where I stopped at each resource. Luckily for most of them there are Adobe and SMPlayer to save the last page/scene seen.
I'm attacking the Georgian issue with the weapons I have: dubbed American movies for which I use the original English subtitle. It's not the material i'd like to be watching but it's the one that will allow me for comprehensible input now. I still can't follow all the lines, and I found another explanation besides my obvious lack of linguistic competencies: it turns out Georgian is a rather wordy language and so what is one simple phrase in the original language becomes a subordinate clause in Georgian. When I started reading translated novels in Georgian, I'd find weird that Georgian used more lines than Portuguese, for example (the original was in English). Then I paid attention to the novels I was reading which were translated from Portuguese as well: same thing. Then I started reading Amélie Nothomb's novel and, through comparing French and Georgian, I realized that Georgian translators tend to use sequential periods for explaining situations that that are only expressed with one sentence in French. It is almost like the Georgian translators are commenting on the writer's speech. I don't know if it's a cultural feat that Georgians ask for more clarity, but Georgian texts are longer than their equivalent, and it seems to be also the case with subtitles. I'm understanding nearly everything from "Clear Midsummer's Night". Even when I can't pay attention to the characters, especially the new ones, I can still associate Mandarin audio and English subtitles in real-time, which means the whole show is representing comprehensible input to me. This is a step I still have to reach for Georgian, for example. This also shows that Chinese subtitling is usually very precise. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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