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Gary’s TAC 2012 - The Romantics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hendrek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4880 days ago 152 posts - 210 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Persian | Message 33 of 167 27 January 2012 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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"and the indefinite relative pronouns are still a bit unclear (are ciò che, quel che, quello che, and che cosa really completely interchangeable equivalents to our "what"?)"
Yes and no. Our "what" has different meanings... In general, if you can re-phrase the English sentence substituting "that which" for "what" then you would use ciò che or quello che, etc. If you cannot substitute "that which" for the "what" in the sentence, then "cosa" or "che cosa" or even just "che" is used. E.g.: "Have you heard what I said to you?" can also be written "Have you heard that which I said to you?" and therefore is: "Hai sentito QUELLO CHE ti ho detto?" But: "What do you mean (to say)?" cannot be written "that which do you mean (to say)?" and is thus only: "CHE COSA voui dire?" or just "COSA vuoi dire?" Hopefully that helps to clarify it. There may exist exceptions that I'm not yet aware of... but this has been pretty accurate for me so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 34 of 167 27 January 2012 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks. I thought quite the same (ciò che / quello che / quel che for the relative pronoun, (che) cosa for the interrogative) but then I've seen examples like "non so cosa vuoi dire" and this thread on about.com. I guess "I don't know that which you mean" doesn't really work in English... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 35 of 167 02 February 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Haven't updated in over a week, that's not like me, but not a lot to report really. My work's been getting more intense, I'm preparing for a concert where both my bands are playing, and the social life is as busy as ever. But I did go to a French party last Friday which was excellent - lots of opportunity to converse. It occurred to me that I still make quite a few relatively basic mistakes when I speak but like everything it improves with practice. Then the usual Tuesday meetup, there were a few French people there and I chatted a bit, but I was quite tired and not in the most sociable mood so I just accepted that it was an off-night. I did say a few words in Italian too but there wasn't much opportunity for a proper conversation. I'm still managing the daily Assimil Italian study, although perhaps to the detriment of other things like music practice which is going to have to take much more priority in the next couple of weeks. And last night there was a French meetup going on but I was more in the mood for just relaxing and having a pint with some friends so I did that instead. I just keep trying to see things from the bigger perspective, where even if I don't make much progress in a given week or two, I'm still doing a lot over the months.
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 36 of 167 06 February 2012 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Français
I've been a bit out of practice for the last week, between missing the meetup and generally not having any time for French, which isn't good. The next couple of weeks are going to be even busier than usual, although as usual I should have plenty "catching up" time at the weekend. As well as keeping up the daily writing I'm going to try and get a bit of shadowing or self-talk in every day, even if it's literally only a minute or two. I had a Skype chat yesterday which was OK but could've been better - seems that at this stage of trying to break through to fluency, the daily efforts really count and if I miss them then I get very out of practice very quickly. Italiano In the last few days I had a couple of short conversations and I recorded a video where I talked for five minutes. The conversations were basic and slow, and the video had plenty hesitation and mistakes, but both were far better than my last attempts a week or two before. I was impressed by my ability to talk about how my previous evening went and explain to my hungry friend that the kebab shop was no longer open, even if slowly and inelegantly. As I was just saying in another thread, this stage of the learning process may be frustrating due to lack of ability and confidence, but it's also exciting as I see noticeable progress in a relatively short time. As I said, music is my main priority at the moment, so I'll be surprised if I don't fall behind in my languages in the next two weeks, but as long as I keep up some sort of small daily effort it should be fine. Recently my Italian study has been very consistent but my French has been more a case of a lot some days and none other days. Also I've not been feeling as confident and talkative as I was two weeks ago, but I'm quite sure that's just down to stress and tiredness. Edited by garyb on 06 February 2012 at 12:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 167 08 February 2012 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had a brief trip to the Language Café last night after a long day at work; I was tired but it was on my way home anyway so no excuses. My French was varying between awful and almost perfect even within the space of a few minutes, as seems to have been usual recently, and I had a few conversations in Italian. Between learning more and my practice with writing and speaking I'm feeling a bit more confident and comfortable about speaking Italian to others. The conversations were basic, my pronunciation was off but still perfectly understandable, I made stupid mistakes (I meant to say I had slept five hours but I said days... I wish!), but it was good to use the language and the Italians thought I was doing well considering I've only been learning for two months. My listening comprehension in noisy environments is quite low though so it was sometimes hard to understand responses and hear what they were saying to each other. All in all I'm certainly liking this relatively fast progress and should enjoy it while it lasts before I hit the epic plateau known as intermediate level.
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 38 of 167 13 February 2012 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had a crazy week last week, and got a bit ill at the end of it. Interesting weekend though...
Français On Saturday I went to watch a play in French, "La dame de chez Maxim", a comedy set in 19th century France. It was about 3 hours long, entertaining at times but stupid at times, and fairly challenging. I didn't have too much difficulty following most of the time; however, since I was tired, I hadn't eaten yet, I was still not feeling completely healthy, and the plot was largely failing to engage me, paying the required amount of attention to understand everything was rather difficult. Overall it was a good experience and a good reminder that there are still some gaps in my listening comprehension so that's something I should do a little more work on. Might be time to start getting back into the TV and films, at least during weekends when I have the time. Along these lines, I watched some Bref as per usual, but this time I tried to transcribe an episode - forcing me to pay attention to the bits I hadn't quite picked up before. Sadly, it seems that a few of the earliest episodes have been removed from the Canal+ site - for example I can no longer see any sign of "J'ai dragué cette fille". If they delete my favourites ("J'ai trainé sur Internet", "J'étais coincé dans un ascenseur", "Je joue de la guitare", "J'ai fait les courses avec mon frère") I might actually cry. There's still more than enough to keep me busy and entertained of course, but sad all the same. I didn't manage to get a Skype chat in, but I recorded a few videos and did some shadowing. As I might have said before, I'm becoming quite conscious of the fact that some of my French time is being lost to Italian, and I really need to make the most of it if I want to stay on track with my goal to reach a decent level of fluency by June. On the speaking side of things I think one of the best things I could do now is to speak a bit more slowly and think a bit more before I speak, to reduce mistakes and improve pronunciation. Speed is a byproduct of accuracy as the heavy metal guitarists' saying goes. Of course I've written all this here before; I think my ideas are good but I'm not very good at actually applying them. Italiano The bad news: I'm behind on Assimil. The good news: I'm behind on Assimil because I spent several hours hanging around, talking, and eating pizza with an Italian family, some of whom spoke very little English. It was a good experience which highlighted both the progress that I've made and the progress that I still need to make in terms of both understanding and speaking, and of course gave me some good experience of both. I wasn't exactly talking lots but I was able to answer some questions, explain some things about current events, and make a couple of jokes. Being in an environment where everyone was speaking Italian and there wasn't much background noise definitely helped it come more easily. Also, since I was applying what I said about thinking before speaking and speaking slowly (of course it's hard to do much else as a beginner!) I didn't have trouble being understood and didn't make too many mistakes. Three meetups coming up this week, all of which I'm going to miss - musical needs must. The problem with meetups is that they take up all or most of my evening and don't leave me with time for much else, but I still think the benefits outweigh the costs and they deserve to take priority over other things if possible. Edited by garyb on 13 February 2012 at 12:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5607 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 39 of 167 13 February 2012 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for talking about "Bref" I just checked it out and it had me really laughing :) I
think my fav so far was the visit to the psychologist, that was unexpected hahaha! Good luck with your studies I will keep an eye out for more French recommendations from you, hehe. Your Italian sounds like it's going great too! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| blackdahlia Pro Member United States Joined 4727 days ago 64 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French Personal Language Map | Message 40 of 167 15 February 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love Bref! having said that, I really cant understand most of it, but i can figure out what is happening by the actions (altho sometimes I am utterly lost). He speaks soo fast! but I have been entertained.
Just a head's up. I looked on Amazon France and they will be releasing episodes 1-40 on DVD. I might buy it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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