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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 |  | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 217 of 331 02 January 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
How far have you gotten with it? It gets really weird in spots, and sometimes it seems to lose the whole original storyline. I've watched all five seasons, and I think overall it's a good show. The end of season five sucks, though. Just to warn you! :D
Oh, yep. I deleted it. I had forgotten that you already mentioned a few pages back that you tried the Assimil course, and I thought you might already have it. (And I felt a little stupid for forgetting what you wrote before, especially since your blog is one of the few I read all the time. LOL) Plus, when I looked, none of the Assimil Turc books were in stock. When they're out of stock, it takes *forever* to get your order. Once it took three months for something I ordered. Now, if you're not in a hurry, that's okay (I suppose), but I really don't like recommending a place when I know how bad their service is for that kind of thing. Edited by Kerrie on 02 January 2014 at 11:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 218 of 331 04 January 2014 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Three pounds of pure, lean, language muscle, mate! This year I get the feeling we'll be lifting even more books, and making all kind o' gains. ;) Edited by Teango on 04 January 2014 at 12:33am 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 220 of 331 09 January 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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TAC 2014 - All the new logs are a bit overwhelming! I counted 66 logs between the four teams I'm following ... though I think only half have posted anything. I'm reading as people post, though I haven't been commenting as much.
Second Set It's Thursday, but I've already met most of my goals for this three-week set. I feel like I've earned a free weekend. Before I used to aim high ... my main goal was "do as much as you can." That's not really sustainable. What I'm trying to do now is to set a schedule that's a little hard, but with a pace that is achievable. My goals are: Pimsleur - one level per 21 days. I do this during my commute. Assimil - six lessons per week FSI - varies. I can work on FSI at the coffee shop after work and before the gym. Reading - 50 pages / week (less than the Super Challenge pace, at least for now) And because I love excel: 
Français I'm really enjoying Real Humans. I don't usually like dubbed films - I get thrown by the disconnect between what I hear and what I see. I don't seem to have that problem with French dubbed over Swedish. (The clip is in Swedish with English subtitles; I wish I could find this version in the US.) I finished Voyage au but de la nuit. There was a scene in Dans la maison where Kristin Scott Thomas knocks out her intellectual husband with a copy of that book. I can seriously relate. It's a powerful novel, but the narrator evolves from being an innocent victim to an ugly misanthrope. Here's a sample from the English translation: People cling to their rotten memories, to all their misfortunes, and you can't pry them loose. These things keep them busy. They avenge themselves for the injustice of the present by smearing the future inside them with this shit. They're cowards deep down, and just. That's their nature. Céline later became a collaborationist, and it's easy to see the early roots of fascism in his writing. I need a does of beauty after wallowing in the mud, so I'm heading back to Proust. I started A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs two days ago, and it's nice to slow down and immerse myself again in his sensual world. Türkçe I finished the first fifteen chapters of the FSI course. It's really well done, and moves at a nice, steady pace. Assimil, meanwhile, has been challenging. I like it, but it takes me much longer to work through a lesson, even passively, than other Assimil courses have. Italiano Pimsleur got a little bit better after lesson 15, and started feeling like a real course after lesson 20. I finished this morning, so I have a couple days break from Italian before I start the enxt round. ελληνικά - flipped through the Iliad. Español - nada Third Set This Sunday I rotate again. I'll start Pimsleur IV for French (should be easy), FSI FAST for Italian (should be easy), and continue with Assimil for Turkish. This won't be a particularly challenging set. _______________________________________________________ I was inspired by an earlier post by Prof Arguelles to start tracking my studying over time. I saw that people were posting their sheets in another thread, but I can't find that thread now. Here's my yearly log - it's more colorful and visual, but contains less data than the professor's. The dotted sections are where I used mostly native materials. 
Edited by kanewai on 09 January 2014 at 11:23pm 2 persons have 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 221 of 331 10 January 2014 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Here are two sample lessons from my Turkish textbooks. Both have copious footnotes
attached, but I left out those. I find the FSI approach much easier to use and understand. I like how it builds up each word or phrase piece by piece before placing it in a full sentence. Each dialogue is followed by lots of simple drills on the day's target grammar. I can finish a lesson in two to three 30" study sessions. The Assimil method is difficult for agglutinative languages - as you can see the literal translations are challenging to decipher! I really have to relax and just go with the flow of the conversations; when I try to understand it literally my brain quits on me & refuses to go on. The big advantage to Assimil is that it presents a rounder, more complete approach to the language. I also find that it's useful to study a target language via a second language - I'm less likely to always be 'translating back to English' in my mind. It is also much more entertaining than the drier FSI approach. I don't like the grammar explanations in either course. For this, I'll use my old Teach Yourself book. FSI Unit 6 Dialog: 'Is There a Restaurant?' bu - this bura - this place buralarda - in these places (hereabouts) var - existent (there is) var mı - is there? Buralarda lokanta var mı? Is there [a] restaurant around here? Var, efendim. [Yes] there is, (sir). gitmek - to go git - go! gidiniz - go! sol - left; lefthand Doğru gidiniz. Sol tarafta. Go straight ahead; [it's] on the left. acaba - (I) wonder posta - mail postahane - post office Acaba postahane nerede? I wonder where the post office is? sağa - to [the] right dönmek - to turn, return dön - turn dönünüz - turn! (polite) ilk - first büyük - gig, adult, grown up bina - building Sağa dönünüz, ilk büyük bina. Turn to the right [and it's] the first big building. ____________________________________________________________ __ Assimil Le Turc, Lesson 8 (partial) 5. Bir kahvede beyler sohbet ediyorlar. 6. Acaba geceleri pebcere açık mı yatmalı, kapalı mı? 7. Yandaki masadan bir adam söze karışıyor: 8. Açik pencere her zaman iyidir. 9. Siz her halde doktorsunuz. 10. Hayır, hırsızım. 5. Dans un café des messieurs tiennent une conversation: (Un café-dans messieurs-les conversations font) 6. Voyons, la nuit vaut-il mieux dormir la fenêtre ouverte ou fermée? (Est-ce-que nuits-les fenêtre ouverte mı coucher-il-faut fermée mı?) 7. Un homee qui se trouve à une table voisine intervient: (Côté-dans-qui-[est] table-de un homme parole-à [se]-mêle) 8. La fenêtre ouvert, c'est toujours bien. (Ouverte fenêtre tout temps bon-est) 9. Voue êtes médecin probablement? (Vous toute éventualité-dans docteur-vous-êtes?) 10. Non, je suis cambriouleur. (Non cambrioleur-je suis.) My quick semi-literal translation: 5. In a cafe men are having a conversation. 6. I wonder - at night is it better to have the windows open to sleep, or closed? 7. Next to them at a table a man interrupts the conversation. 8. Open the windows whenever it is nice. 9. You must be a doctor? 10. No, a thief. Edited by kanewai on 10 January 2014 at 9:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 222 of 331 11 January 2014 at 8:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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It seems FSI is a great course for Turkish. I know we've talked about comparing courses before, but would you say FSI or TY (Lewis) is better for a complete beginner? I am aware of the audio thing with TY, but it seems like a solid and comprehensive course I may finish in a relatively short amount of time. FSI on the other hand I like very much, but somehow it takes too long, and it is made for a class, teacher etc.
Since you've had experience with both, after I finish TY do you think my grammar will be at a good level? Dialogue and vocabulary you can always get afterwards, but the grammar for me is essential. I don't want to use more than one courses as a beginner, and I could use the comparison. Edited by renaissancemedi on 11 January 2014 at 8:39am 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 223 of 331 11 January 2014 at 9:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I've actually found that I do better with two or three courses at a time as a beginner.
Each course hits from a different angle, yeah? TY is great, but it's like a full year's course in 12 lessons. I've never actually completed one. I've never actually finished an FSI course either! I hope to finish French soon ... two plus years after starting it. It's not a course I can do straight through. I'll do a couple chapters, and then move on, and come back to it when I'm ready for the next chunk. The problem (though it's not really a 'problem') with both courses is that they really do aim to bring you to a high level ... B2 or C1. That takes 100's to 1000's of hours - that's a lot of time with one book! My general experience is that Assimil + FSI (partial) + a grammar book (partial; TY or Living Language) is enough to get me to a stage where I can start using native materials. I'll come back to FSI and TY as I progress, and when I am ready for the more difficult parts of the language. Of course, if you have a chance at immersion then you wouldn't need as many books. And Turkey isn't that far away for you! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 224 of 331 12 January 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Thanks for the insight, it helps a lot. I like the intensity of these courses, I like it a lot! I want to get to a high level in Turkish (not all my language goals are the same).
Ah, FSI French... I bet FSI gives you a great accent, from all that repetition, and that's reason enough to study from it. In fact, after some TY progress, maybe I should just use FSI for pronunciation reasons (?). My hat off to you for flipping through the Iliad, btw. Not many people can say that you know! In fact, good job handling so many languages. Edited by renaissancemedi on 12 January 2014 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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