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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| melkior79 Newbie Japan Joined 4619 days ago 16 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Latin, French | Message 67 of 344 09 November 2012 at 11:33pm | IP Logged |
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New French With Ease Melkior79 checking in! Yesterday I finished two assignments and finally completed a uni course I have been working on for a while. So from today I am free. As planned I will begin my first lesson of Assimil New French with Ease today, that is Nov. 10 2012. I plan to do 30-40 minutes per day, once a day until I have completed the book in passive and active waves.My diary has lesson 113 (the final Assimil) marked for March 27th 2013. I have no experience of studying French and almost no knowledge of the language at all. Truly starting from zero Today is lesson one in passive phase! Other language learning commitments I am also actively studying Japanese and trying to push myself into advanced level. I chose the Assimil challenge because I really want to dedicate most of my language learning time to Japanese. The prospect of learning French just by getting up 30 mins earlier than usual was tempting. This challenge and forum will give me the push.I also study latin about 3 times a week or so but can only say I am dabbling in it at the moment. I have enjoyed reading everyones log of their Assimil studies. I will also log my Assimil experience regularly. We can push each other along as we conduct this experiment! Thanks everyone here for that. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| FireViN Diglot Senior Member Brazil missaoitaliano.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5217 days ago 196 posts - 292 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2 Studies: Italian | Message 68 of 344 10 November 2012 at 8:59pm | IP Logged |
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I know I was supposed to be doing French, but I started with Italian (O novo Italiano sem esforço, 1986) because it was sitting on my shelf for way too long for a language that I (try to) study actively. Anyway, I'm at lesson 9 and enjoying it very much so far, even though I'm finding it a little too easy, since I've been studying Italian on and off for a long time.
I'll probably start with French (O francês sem esforço, 1972) on december 1st (very late, I know), when my exams finish. It's a new language to me, so I guess it won't be as easy as Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4695 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 69 of 344 10 November 2012 at 10:33pm | IP Logged |
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Le Breton sans peine (until unit 9)
Today, after a tiring day at work and the feeling that I could not do much studying at all, my spirit reawakened a little bit and I returned to my studies of Breton. Lesson 8 did not introduce much of anything new, except how to form the possessive (thunk the possessor behind the noun and drop the article, quite simply, so kazh Yuna) (Yuna's cat). Ha (=et) also gains a g before vowels, in keeping with Breton's love of liaisons between words. However, the first real piece of Celtic trickery has now entered the fray. I've already seen that articles change depending on the following word - but in some cases, the article can trigger a change in the following noun (and sometimes also the adjective behind the noun if there is an adjective, but that's a subject for another time). Because, voila, the letter K in Breton has turned out to be a nasty little bugger. This is because K is one of the mutating letters. In this case, there is an anomaly in the mutations because for all other words, only feminine nouns in the singular and masculine plurals (except the ones in -ou) undergo mutation. However, K also mutates behind "ar/ur" for a masculine noun, and this time not to "g" (the normal mutation) but to c'h. So we have kazh Yuna (Yuna's cat) but ar c'hazh kozh (the old cat). This goes for all masculine nouns starting with k in Breton. Of course, the buggers forgot to tell us which nouns are masculine and feminine, but I guess if you mutate them (i.e. poke them with a stick) the truth will out. Unfortunately, that works if someone else has written it down for you (you will be able to recognise it), but it looks like gender in Breton (apart from obvious words that are inherently m/f like brother and sister) has to be learned by heart. For the record, kastell and kilo are masculine in Breton (so ar c'hastell and ur c'hilo). Imperatives (the polite version) are just the 2nd person plural of the verb in the present tense. The ending for those is always -it. So: Komzit. Prenit. Rit. Etc. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4997 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 70 of 344 12 November 2012 at 10:06pm | IP Logged |
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Le suedois sans peine (2-6)
A nice course. Not much Assimil humour so far but it may come in the weeks to follow. I think my pronunciation is quite good (but definitely needs polishing), I remeber quite a lot from previous lessons to the next ones but not sure how much will stick for longer time. Still resisting the urge to open a Swedish grammar and find out all about the present tense and plural forms. Tommorrow, my first revision lesson. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5435 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 71 of 344 13 November 2012 at 12:45am | IP Logged |
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L'Egyptien
The first week of L'Egyptien is a little disappointing. It's devoted to introducing a number of characters and an explanation of the writing system. This is all very nice, and seems essential enough, but it isn't Assimil-ating. It's the same thing you find in too many of the introductory texts that I never got beyond the first chapter in. Thankfully, today's lesson is some short sentences with guidance on understanding them, so after the first week the Assimil Method does in fact kick in. At the start of the project, I made flashcards for new characters as I came to them, but that died after day 4 when I reminded myself that Assimil is supposed to be easy. So we shall soon find out if working through the first week of lessons and doing the writing practice is enough, or if I have to go back and review. I think that by introducing fewer characters in shorter sentences, they would have stuck better to the Assimil Method by showing that even from day 1 you could figure out a short sentence with a little help. I've noticed they aren't so good about this when the written language doesn't use an alphabetic script, which is a shame as I believe it could work while making the Method all the better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5681 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 72 of 344 13 November 2012 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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Norwegisch ohne Mühe
Days 6-7: 7-8 November 2012 Didn't have much to say about the eighth lesson, but the ninth is interesting. It introduces the post-positioned possessive pronoun, which I shall refer to as the P4. The P4, unlike the definite article, is written as a free-standing word, not attached to the noun in question. Which is lucky, because the noun in question already has the definite article pinned onto it. Yes, just like Italian, Norwegian likes to use articles with its possessive pronouns, such as in "la mia famiglia". However! the Norwegian possessive pronoun also has the option of being pre-positioned, in which case no definite articles need apply. Example: "far" means "father"; "faren" means "the father"; and "min" means "my". You can say, therefore, either "min far" or "faren min" and they both mean the same thing. This flexibility sounds promising for poetry and song lyrics! I also developed a new technique of interacting with the lesson and helping myself retain more, while at the same time practicing my listening: before I've ever even looked at the Norwegian text (transcription), I listen to the audio and look at the German text (translation) to help with understanding, and then I try to write down the entire text in Norwegian, after which I finally look at the official transcription and compare it with my own attempt. Day 8: 9 November 2012 Another good day for Norwegian! I felt like I really got two sounds down today: the "e" in "lege" (pronounced as German ä-e), and the "r" in "dere" (pronounced almost with the "stop" in the throat that you'd make if saying "dege"). Days 9-10: 10-11 November 2012 No notes on lesson 11, just rolling along. Day 11: 12 November 2012 Gah, for some reason Norwegian was hard today (lesson 12). I could hardly do any of the exercises without looking. Day 12: 13 November 2012 Upon reaching lesson 13 today, I again couldn't hold back from rushing on and doing lesson 14, the next review lesson, as well. Didn't find either lesson remarkably easy, but not as problematic as yesterday's study session was. Even though I had to work from the French book again today – always a bad idea to work from a more distant language when I don't have to – study today was okay. Although I was distracted through almost the entire lesson by a white guy speaking fluent Japanese next to me. Wow. I did find myself able to read and understand about 80-85% of a simple Swedish blog entry today, however, which was pretty fun. Helped remind me of the unexpected benefits of learning Norwegian! Edited by Jinx on 13 November 2012 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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