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TAC 2011 - Team Ohana – Le Cinéma Rex | ||
Tags: Dabbling | France | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Immersion | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 25 of 198 04 February 2011 at 8:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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@ Kisfröccs: Merci beaucoup pour les corrections. À vrai dire, je ne suis pas sûre d’être contente que je ne fasse que des petites fautes. Celles-ci sont toujours les plus difficiles à se débarrasser. ;-)
@ Vos : Thank you for your recommendation. I looked up The Secret History on Wikipedia and the plot sounds very interesting. I’m currently reading five books already but I’ll put it on my list for when I’ve finished them. I think it’s great that you’re warming up to French! The same thing is happening to me with Spanish because I read so many logs of people who are studying or already speak it. I used to be completely indifferent to the language but the more I see of it, the more it intrigues me. ---------------------------------------------------- Yesterday I spent about half an hour telling the Venetian masks hanging on my wall all about my childhood holidays in France, how long I’ve been studying French, why I study French, my family’s tradition to have a French first name and my undying love for French bread, all in surprisingly fluent French. I still speak quite slowly of course but much of my hesitation is gone and I think my accent has improved as well. I’m pretty pleased with this, considering that I haven’t actually made any effort to improve my speaking skills yet. I also had a minor breakthrough in Arabic last night. I was reviewing my Anki deck and for some reason everything had clicked in my mind and I got all of the words right. So now I think I’m finally ready to move on to the second chapter in my book. (You’ve probably noticed by now that I wasn’t kidding when I said this was going to be a slow process.) EDIT: I just read the little Certificato di Garanzia on one of the aforementioned Venetian masks and I noticed a rather amusing translation. The original text is: Benvenuti nel nostro mondo, dove il rispetto delle tradizioni e lo sviluppo della creatività, vi offrono un prodotto originale e unico, che vi potrà emozionare. and it is translated as: “Welcomes in our world, where the respect of the traditions and the development of the creativity, offer you an original product, that will move up.” :) Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 2:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 26 of 198 06 February 2011 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Week 5: January 31 / February 6
French Week 5 (22): 17 h. 10 min. 2011: 91 h. Februarathon Goals February = 21% Goal 1: CelC = 13,5% (Very bad) Goal 2: FiA = 25% (Right on schedule) My courses at university have all started and it’s good to be back among my fellow language lovers again. I even discovered another independent language learner in the form of a Greek exchange student whom I showed around the city on her first day in Amsterdam. We had a wonderful conversation about language learning; She said she studied Japanese and I didn’t say “Oh, you like anime?”. Then I said I studied Arabic and she didn’t say “Oh, you’re joining Al-Qaeda?”. It was awesome. I’m also very excited about some of my new classes this semester, particularly the ones about Victorian literature, women writers of the 20th century, sociolinguistics and Eurocentrism. I’m also taking an introductory course into American studies but that one doesn’t start until the second half of the semester. I’ve made a solemn promise to myself that when I get home from class in the afternoon I am not allowed to do any language-studying until I’ve finished whatever I need to do for school for the next day. Ever since September my languages have become my main device of procrastination but it ends here! (It should be noted that I’ve already found ways to justify breaking this rule several times this week.) English For some reason I’ve been having problems with involuntary code-switching between English and Dutch this week. It’s not uncommon for me to have some slight interference problems but they usually happen when I’m reading in one language and being addressed in another or when I can’t remember the word I want to say in the correct language. However, this week I found myself switching from Dutch to English in the middle of a sentence, spending fifteen minutes reading a book that I was convinced was written in Dutch while it was actually in English and one time I opened my mouth to speak Dutch, decided at the last minute to speak English instead and what came out was….neither really. Very embarrassing. I think the reason for this confusion is that I haven’t had any classes for almost two months so it’s taking me a while to get back into the quick way my friends and I are used to switching around between languages in and around class. Another annoying thing that causes some confusion is the fact that about half of my professors have British accents which means I constantly have to resist the urge to adept my pronunciation to theirs. When I first arrived at university I decided to keep my British accent to myself and only speak American English in class and with my friends to avoid being seen as weird and also because I think my American accent is a bit more developed, though it’s far from perfect. I’ve been able to keep it up pretty well but as I said, it makes some of my classes kind of hard because I have to consciously keep my accent from slipping. It’s also annoying to notice that I am apparently the only one with this problem. Most of my classmates have (Dutch-)American accents, some have British accents and there are a handful with Irish, Scottish, etc, (there’s actually one girl who speaks an interesting mixture of New-Zealand and Australian) but no matter what they speak, they all seem pretty set on it. Miscellaneous This week I finally started looking for a new job, which I’ve been telling myself to do ever since I quit my last job about half a year ago. I thought it was going to be a tedious progress but the opposite turned out to be true; I don’t think I’ve ever landed a job so quickly. I sent out some applications on Thursday, got an invitation for an interview on Friday and got hired on Saturday. You may be wondering what this has to do with French. Well, the reason I finally decided to make an effort to find a job is that while browsing through my university’s website a couple of days ago, I found a link to a French summer programme and now I’m completely obsessed with the idea of going to France this summer. It’s something I had never even contemplated before, which is kind of strange since I live only a couple of hours away from France by train. That being so, it’s still going to be a costly endeavour, hence the new job. So anyway, summer programmes! Last night I found a Dutch website with information on 32 programmes all over France and to my great shame I spend the entire evening researching while I should have been studying French! Anyway, based on considerations of price, location, price, prettiness of the name and price, I’ve narrowed the choice down to Tours, Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Chambéry, and Montpellier. I must admit that I have my heart set on Tours because it’s in the Loire Valley, which is my favourite part of France, and it’s said to be the place where the “purest” French is spoken so that makes it a very good place to work on my accent. I’m still undecided though (at least that’s what I’m telling myself) because I think I need to do a little bit more research before I make a decision. Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 2:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 27 of 198 06 February 2011 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
This made me laugh because I do exactly the same thing! If I don't like the name of the place then I will be reluctant to go there, as seen in my college searches where I have flat-out refused to even read about a certain school because I don't like the name. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 28 of 198 08 February 2011 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe it's a synaesthete-thing but I think that's perfectly natural! I did the same thing when I was deciding what university to go to. I had never even set foot in the UvA when I applied there. With these summer programmes, I instantly scratched Gap off my list because I refuse to have such an ugly name on my CV for the rest of my life. Edited by ReneeMona on 08 February 2011 at 3:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 29 of 198 08 February 2011 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I should have know that sitting next to the Greek girl in grammar class was a bad idea. After successfully warding off several attacks of wanderlust (or, as I prefer to call it, explore-lust) I finally succumbed to temptation today. I wouldn't have under different circumstances, but spending an entire semester sitting next to a native speaker of one of my favourite languages who also happens to be well-informed about the phonetics and history of the language without taking the opportunity to pick her brain? Impossible.
I started by asking her a couple of questions about the pronunciation because I only ever learnt how to pronounce Ancient Greek. I learnt the alphabet in my second year of high school and for a time my friends and I used it intensively to write secret notes to each other during class so I can actually write in it quite fluently. The only problem is that our knowledge of it was kind of shaky and we also adopted it to our own needs. Since it didn’t always have the right letters for letters or sounds in Dutch or English, we either used other letters or imported Latin ones. “There’s no v? That’s alright, we’ll use an f. No w? No problem, we’ll just use a normal w.” So now I have my own version of the alphabet, dubbed Ancient Dreek, which is probably more confusing than useful. This last sentence, for instance, would have been; Σο νow I ‘αφη μy owν φηρσιoν oφ θη αλφαβητ, δυββηδ Ανσιηντ Δρεκ, w’ιτς ις προβαβλy μoρη κονφυσινγ θαν υσηφυλ. Apart from reviewing the entire alphabet, we also discussed how unphonetic Greek orthography is and she taught me the best way to transcribe my name. I very slyly managed to get her to say that I could ask her anything and that she enjoyed explaining tings about her language to me so I’ll be using the fifteen minute break we get between the first and second hour of class as a private lesson. Next up: verb conjugation. :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 30 of 198 09 February 2011 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
I guess you're referring to the Ancient Greek alphabet, because there is definitely a 'v' sound in Modern Greek. I believe 'β' is pronounced as 'b' in Ancient Greek, but in Modern Greek it's 'v'. To write the former sound in Modern Greek you use the somewhat illogical combination 'μπ' (mp). The 'w' sound is a bit trickier (especially the Dutch pronunciation of it), but in loanwords it's usually transcribed as 'ου' (and plus another vowel sometimes). I'd personally transcribe your text like this using Modern Greek pronunciation: Σο νάου Άι χεβ μάι όουν βέρζιον οβ δα άλφαμπετ, νταμπντ Έιντζεντ Ντρηκ, ουίτς ιζ πρόμπαμπλη μωρ κονφγιούζινγκ δαν γιούσφολ. Reading that aloud it sounds like I'm speaking English with a very strong Greek accent, but it's understandable...ish.
Καλή τύχη! Θα ήταν πολύ ωραίο αν αποφάσιζες να μάθεις Eλληνικά! Είναι μια θαυμάσια ευκαιρία, αφού η φίλη σου από την Ελλάδα μπορεί να σε βοηθήσει. Και βεβαίως είναι μία πολύ όμορφη γλώσσα. [Good luck! It would be really nice if you decided to learn Greek! It's a wonderful opportunity, since your friend from Greece can help you. And of course it's a very beautiful language.] 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 31 of 198 13 February 2011 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
My friend is here until the end of the semester in May so I think I'll allow myself to dabble in Greek until then at least. It really seems like too good of an opportunity to pass up. Also, my brother is going to Greece this summer and it'd be really cool if he came back and I spoke better Greek than him. *evil snicker* 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 32 of 198 13 February 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Week 6: February 7 / February 13
Well, I suppose every language student has good weeks and bad weeks. And this was definitely a bad week. I completely underestimated the amount of homework I had to do so I got nearly nothing done during the weekdays and I couldn’t catch up during the weekend because my parents were visiting and they needed to be entertained. French Week 6 (23): 14 h. 55 min. 2011: 105 h. 55 min. Februarathon goals: February = 46% Goal 1: CelC = 58% (Excellent) Goal 2: FiA = 31% (Deplorable) I can’t even remember the last time I didn’t finish my list, so the fact that it happened this week is really bothering me. I’m also getting so sick of reviewing the same words over and over again in Anki because they won’t stick in my head and I tried to watch Home Alone in French and switched if off after about half an hour because I wasn’t understanding much and it was driving me insane. Urgh, frustration all around this week. I’m also hopelessly behind on my French in Action schedule. I should have been at episode 26 by now and I am at 17…. The reason for this, and I’m a little scared to admit it, is that I hate Mireille! I mean, seriously, could she be any more of an annoying, bossy, mean, rude, grumpy, arrogant, stuck-up shrew!?!?! Phew, glad I got that off my chest. I hope I didn’t offend any French in Action-fans. I can’t think of anything else to say that’s not negative so I’ll stop here. Next week I hope to have registered for a summer programme in France (still hedging my bets there) and I’ll have gone to my first ever language festival, which I’m very excited about, so I’ll probably have something a little more cheerful to report. Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 2:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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