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irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6056 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 49 of 73 13 November 2008 at 6:31am | IP Logged |
Unit 47 turned out to be very difficult for me. The most difficult since Unit 15 and the damn clitics.
It seems that what someone said about the difficulty ramping up around this time was true. The difficultly is in part from the Past subjunctive, because I seem to have a weak spot in Past I irregular verbs. Also from the fact that the drills are obviously intended to be substantially harder, include more grammar, words, etc. I also think they decreased the response time (although this could be my imagination).
Further, there is a new female narrator who I can NOT UNDERSTAND. Seriously, how I am supposed to do this without sometimes looking at the text? The audio is horrible, and being exsacerbated by the long sentences.
Well, I guess I am going to have to grudge it out, even though I really want to move forward and finish FSI.
NYC_Trini_Span
Me alegro de que me dieras tu comentario; gracias :) Es difícil siguir aprender el español sin unas personas que se da la motivación, y las situaciónes con que se peude tener una conversacion. Quizás es por eso que he avanzado (para mi en todo caso). No creo que yo lo pudiera haber hecho de otra manera.
te deseo todos los éxitos :)
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6056 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 50 of 73 15 November 2008 at 3:01am | IP Logged |
Started Unit 48 today.
Finally the CONDITIONAL!! I have been waiting for this! I feel embarrassed now because for about 2 monthes I have been saying "diceria" and "haceria" and not "diria" and "haria". I think next time I learn a language I will just look up the grammar instead of waiting and sounding like a fool.
IT is decently hard, but not as hard as the last lesson. Sound quality continues to be horrible and muffled beyond belief.
Edited by irrationale on 15 November 2008 at 3:04am
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6056 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 51 of 73 17 November 2008 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
Finished with 48, starting Unit 49 (Level 8).
The conditional is great to know...it is amazing how much I was circumlocuting, slowing down my fluency, by not knowing how to use the conditional.
I am curious how the future is used in Spanish, since I don't hear it being used a lot. I wonder what it corresponds to in English. Maybe the very FAR future? Hehe..I will find out I suppose.
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6056 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 52 of 73 20 November 2008 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
"Finished" Unit 49. I say "finished" because I am not wasting my time anymore with FSI readings. I have had it with the vocab.
I understand the need to read, and I will read. But I do NOT trust FSI's vocab set anymore, as far as usefulness. FSI is blatantly neglecting very common words, and instead teaching me very stuffy educated ones. I had a native read the piece, and he laughed! I am now learning vocab through Wikipedia's 10000 most common Spanish word list, (based on captions). I am on 1700's, I don't know about every 30th or so word. I have already discovered that FSI doesn't have the wisdom to teach me words such as "finger", "leg", "deep", "ice"...etc. Definitely a lesson I will learn for my next language, Mandarin. I am memorizing 20 to 30 words a day now, up a little from before. I really want to hit around 6000 words soon...I'm not sure how far I am from this, I will find out.
Also, I bought "Speaking Spanish like a Native", and am I learning 1 or 2 phrases everyday. This will complete my fluency, because I need to bring over all my English phrases into Spanish to avoid circumlocution. Of course I must be careful with them, so I am asking my native friends. Still looking for a good way to say "damn it!". :)
I am happy with the Future tense, although still a little confused when to use it. I asked a native this question, or to give me an example, and she said when "planning" or in "largo tiempo", as opposed to the paraphrasic future. Insteresting. Actually, I like the Spanish future better than English because it is more specific in the FAR future. Of course, most of the tenses in Spanish seem more specific anyway.
Onward to 50.
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6056 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 53 of 73 21 November 2008 at 5:39am | IP Logged |
I realized today, while talking with a native, that I have NOT internalized the present perfect conditional, and the past subjective, perfect condition " If they would had _____ I would have _______". These constructions take up huge amounts of my brainpower to say correctly, especially when other elements are involved. It is basically because I am changing the verb to past I, making it subjunctive, then adding a condition "haber" to the second part, and making it perfect constrution, THEN adding the relator. This takes time for my mind to manipulate, and I must do this automatically. It was embarrasing and I had to pause to think for at least 4 seconds.
I am batting the idea around in my mind to finish Unit 50, and then take it very slow and sure to the finish, as well as possibly reviewing Units 47, 48. I have learned the conditional, and the If ___ would ___ conditional statements that I really wanted to learn, and I need to really internalize those.
I am diverting most of my brainpower to Mandarin these days, besides. There are just these few complicated elements in Spanish that I have left to internalize.
Still memorizing 20 to 30 words a day from the 10,000 most common word vocab list. I suppose this will continue indefinitely.
Edited by irrationale on 21 November 2008 at 5:48am
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5871 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 54 of 73 21 November 2008 at 6:27am | IP Logged |
Where did you get (or, if it is the case, how did you compile) the 10,000 most common words list?
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6056 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese
| Message 55 of 73 21 November 2008 at 8:50am | IP Logged |
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists
Look for the Spanish list. I think this is a good list compiled from closed captions, it includes conjugated verbs, so you can see which forms are used more often. A little more references to crime, mystery, killing, etc, but its from TV so what do you expect, hehe. Still it is a good judge of conversation, as opposed to literature.
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