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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | Catalan | Ancient Greek | Turkish | Polyglot | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 113 of 331 23 January 2013 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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ελληνικά
(Ancient Greek) Taking time out to do a few chapters in my grammar books really helped; the last week has gone much more smoothly. There's still an overwhelming amount of information - the last revision chapter alone was ten pages of small print. I started the active wave, though I think I'm going to make it a "medium-active" wave. I'll do what I can, and see what sticks. I need to remind myself that I'm not in a race, that I'm not going to be tested, and that unless a portal opens I'm not going to need to speak it. I'm ok with spending a couple years with parallel texts, and Ancient Greek seems to have more of them than most languages. There's also too many new ideas: a future infinitive, an aorist past tense that is neither perfect nor imperfect, a middle voice, and reflexive and non reflexive pronouns. I'm sure this all made sense to Homer, and that it will make sense to me one day also. My current debate is whether to use Greek for the Feb 6-Week Challenge. It would really help to push me through to a more stable level, though it would go against the spirit of the Assimil Experiment. French Les Misérables, T3: Marius - I'm 65% of the way through T3, and none of the events so far made the cut for the musical! I still get nervous when Hugo starts on a tangent. I don't know if it will last for three pages or one hundred. It's still a roller coaster. One day I think, I'm half-way through the whole novel! And the next I think, oh shit, I still have half to go? And then either the plot will pick up, or the writing will become downright poetic. Here are four examples (translations below): on the lower depths of society: Elles sont brutalement voraes, c'est-à-dire féroces, non à la façon du tyran, mais à la façon du tigre. De la souffrance ces larves passent au crime ... Ce qui rampe dans le troisième dessous social, ce n'est plus la réclamation étouffée de l'absolu; c'est la protestation de la matière. L'homee y devienh dragon. Avoir faim, avoir soif, c'est le point de départ; être Satan, c'est le point d'arrivée. on the 'social peril' of darkness: Humanité, c'est identité. Tous les hommes sont la même argile. Nulle difference, ici- bas du moins, dans le prédestination. Même ombre avant, même chair pendant, même cendre après. Mais l'ignorance mêlée à la pâte humaine la noircit. Cette incurable noirceur gagne le dedans de l'homme et y devient le Mal. Marius's thoughts on meeting Eponine and her sister: Tristes créatures ... Âmes écloses hier, fanées aujourd'hui, pareilles à ces fleurs tombées dans la rue que toutes les boues flétrissent en attendant qu'une roue les écrase. Marius gives Eponine 5 francs, and she gives him an earful of argot. I don't think my book's translation really captures how crude it is: Cinque francs! du laisant! un monarque! dans cette piole! c'est chenâtre! Vous êtes un bon mion. Je vous fonce mon palpitant. Bravo les fanandels! deux jours de pivois! et de la viandemouche! et du fricotmar! on pitancera chenument! et de la bonne mouisse! Harry Potter et la coupe de feu - I didn't care for the fourth movie, but the book has been a huge jump forward in turns of style and plotting. I don't feel like I'm reading a young adult book anymore. FSI - It took me a whole week to complete Lesson 19.5. The exercises have longer sentences and much more complicated grammar. I can't do them when driving or watering the lawn ... now I need to sit down and concentrate. Siegfried - Loved it. I'll put a full review in the Super Challenge thread. French Movies - I hate most of them. What happened? Full reviews to come. Spanish I'm taking a cue from the Greek, and also doing a "medium" wave of Spanish. I'm picking up where I left off with Assimil, Lesson 60, but am not worrying about memorizing the text or getting it all perfect. I give it a few run-throughs just to keep the language fresh in my mind. I also started reading the parallel text of Alicia en el País de las Maravillas. It's gonna be slow going! I make it through about a page per day. It reminds me of where I was with Le petit prince a year ago. My original plan was to do Spanish for the 6WC. Now I don't know. Greek is hard enough, and it's hard to think actively. Italian and Arabic Ha ha, psyche! Three is enough. But I can't help myself, and keep looking ahead to next year. If I can get my Spanish to a solid B1 / early B2 by the end of the year, I can maintain with books and add another language ... rough translations: They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not in the fashion of a tyrant, but in the fashion of a tiger. Out of suffering these larvae pass to crime ... for those who crawl in the lower depths, it is not about the constraints of the Absolute; it is about the protestation of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To have hunger, to be thirsty, that is the point of departure; to be Satanic, that is the point of arrival. ... Humanity is identity. All men are of the same clay. There is no difference in our destinies: it is the same shadow behind, the same flesh during, the same ashes after. But ignorance mixed with the human paste darkens it. This incurable darkness conquers a man from the inside, and becomes evil. ... Sad creatures ... Souls that blossomed only yesterday, and faded today, like those flowers which fall into the street and are blackened with mud, waiting for some wheel to crush them. ... (I hate the argot translation in my book - it sounds like a Monty Python sketch - and a lot of the words aren't even in my dictionary. Anyone want to take a stab at translating the fourth quote?) Edited by kanewai on 24 January 2013 at 12:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 114 of 331 24 January 2013 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I got this feeling a lot when I was watching movies (as opposed to TV episodes). I found a lot more Spanish and Italian movies that I really enjoyed than I did French. I decided it would be more pleasant to pick a TV show I like and order the DVD box set. Amazon France has some decent prices on complete box sets, and I've gotten a few of them in the past few months. Of course, it depends a little on what you like to watch, but French movies felt really tedious for me. I have so much respect for you reading through the French classics like you are. I think by the end of the Super Challenge, you will have convinced me to read a lot of stuff that would not normally be on my radar. Heck, you inspired Cristina to finish Madame Bovary. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 115 of 331 24 January 2013 at 12:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There's been a few great discoveries, but I think I'm going to follow your lead and move
on to tv series that I like, or that I've missed. I never saw Battlestar Galactica, and I think that might be a fun series in French. And I'm with you on Spanish and Italian movies ... I love both. Though maybe if I tried to watch 100 I'd run out of ideas too! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 116 of 331 24 January 2013 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm glad to hear you liked Siegfried, and I'm looking forward to your review. I sort of have a love/hate relationship with French movies. The French are amazingly good at a certain kind of film, but my limit for actually enjoying those is about 2 per year. So I really don't fit in down at the Alliance française on movie night, because essentially the only movies we agree on are Amélie and Intouchables. For some people, French is a gateway to a rich artistic experience they can't get in English, and I think that's a great thing. But French bookstores and libraries in the US focus very heavily on this niche, and so they tend to ignore a lot of great French pop culture. And well, I often just want some reasonably intelligent and amusing pop culture. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 117 of 331 01 February 2013 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My struggle now is, how do I balance three languages? I managed a year ago, but I was
using lots of audio courses that I could do while jogging (well, walking), working in the yard, etc. Now I'm at a stage where everything I have requires me to sit down and focus. My new plan is to devote one hour per day to language, in three 15" chunks with a 5" rest in between each segment. I probably won't try all three in one day; rather it'll be two segments of one language, and one segment of another. I got the fifteen-minute idea from another post on Richard Burton. I think this will help keep me focused. I'm good at day-dreaming, and one session can drift on and on. If I only have fifteen minutes I won't drift. It'll also stop me from burning out, or feeling too overwhelmed. Last night went like this: 15" - Assimil Le Grec, passive lesson 59. Read the dialogues. 5" - Go outside and feed the chickens. 15" - Assimil lesson 59 - listen and repeat, lesson 59. 5" - break 15" - FSI French, start the last tape of lesson 19. I think this approach might be sustainable. ελληνικά (Ancient Greek) On Assimil Lesson 59 passive, 9 active. So far the active wave has been easy. This week might be more of a challenge. I'm copying out the dialogues and exercises, but only really focusing on getting the exercises right. I think a consensus is developing over on the experiment thread that Assimil alone is not enough for the harder languages. I haven't used my Teach Yourself or Pharr in a couple weeks, but I have them standing by in case I get stuck again. French My kindle paperwhite arrived, and I love it. Seriously. It's love. The screen is lit, so it is much easier to read in dim light, or in the mornings. And somehow my French dictionary is now in French. This hasn't been a problem, and being able to use a native language dictionary feels like a huge step forward. Spanish I rented Battlestar Galactica. Netflix said it was in French, but netflix lied. There are, however, Spanish subtitles. I don't really like dubbing, and find that it's kind of fun to have the English on while reading Spanish. It's surprisingly helpful, at least at this stage. I'm also going to start rotating more Spanish language movies in with my French ones. I thought about making a half-challenge out of it, but I'm only barely ahead of the curve with my French. I don't think I can pull off both. I'm eyeing Assimil's Perfectionnement Espanol. Has anyone used it? I know the English-based version got panned, but how about the French? Edited by kanewai on 02 February 2013 at 12:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5020 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 118 of 331 01 February 2013 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I haven't used the French version, but I have gone through a good half of the English one, and honestly, I don't see what all the fuss is about. Some of the translations are a bit.. off but if you already have a good grounding in Spanish (which you do) they really shouldn't present any problems at all.
I would say the course is very Assimil! If you can live with the randomness, there's simply nothing else like it on the market. Definitely not a course you want to miss out on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6166 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 119 of 331 02 February 2013 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
May I ask what French films are you watching? Perhaps you are just looking in the wrong places. Please don't dismiss them so easily :) What kind of film are you looking for war epic, adventure, action, bio-pic ? I'm sure I could help. You could perhaps direct me to some good Spanish films as I often finding them lacking in discretion....
I think while French may have the reputation for Un Auteur type film, the reality is that it is the third biggest film industry in the world. There is a lot of commercial fluff. The French films we see in the anglophone independent cinema are often the most commercial films. Take Intouchables for example which is the second largest grossing film in France ever, it's hardly an auteur film which it seems you may be suggesting (though I'm not sure if that's what you're suggesting). I think the difference is that an auteur film can play alongside blockbuster films here in France at the same cinema. Case in point Alain Resnais's 'Vous n'avez rien encore vu' or Sautet's recent posthumously released film. French film maybe not so black and white ? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 120 of 331 02 February 2013 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You can see what I've watched in all three languages on my Super Challenge page on Twitter I'm sure there are lots of good French films, I just have not taken the time to find them. Once my French is a little better, I think I will enjoy them more. :) I have to say, though, I think it is very beneficial to find something you really like. I'm not a Buffy fan, but there's tons of stuff out there. I'm just concerned with finding something I enjoy watching. :D I have TONS of respect for the way Kanewai is doing the Super Challenge, reading the classics and finding good French cinema. His French is more advanced than mine, and I'm sure that makes a difference. But his style and interests are far different from mine. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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