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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 |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 241 of 331 14 February 2014 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
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I have used audible for Pimsleur I, before I discovered them in my local libraries. But I usually use Pimsleur in my car, and I don't have an aux jack. So I have to burn audible file to CD, but in order to prevent file sharing (I guess) the tracks are pretty random. The end of one lesson and the beginning of the next will be in the middle of a track!
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| 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 242 of 331 25 February 2014 at 10:27pm | IP Logged |
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Fourth Set
This has been an insanely busy period at work; I've been making steady progress, but using easier materials, and haven't had the time to pull of those long Sunday afternoons curled up with my books that I love so much. Français - 58 days to Provence! Half-way through Proust. No surprise, this has been slow going. Türkçe - 21 days to Istanbul! I reached Chapter 7 of Teach Yourself, and Lesson 18 of FSI, and hit a wall. Not a bad one, but there has been so much new material that I need to stop, regroup, and work more on what I've already studied. I'll be using Babbel (which I really like), and have picked up Assimil again. Assimil is still challenging, but a little bit easier to understand now that I've done more grammar work. I really hope that I can keep up with Assimil. I enjoy the course, and it's one that I can see working on over the next four or five months. Italiano - 52 days to Florence! I did a lot of work on Italian this set, though I was hoping that I'd finish more! It's such a fun language. My focus will be on Turkish for the next couple weeks, but I'll be using Assimil and DuoLingo each day, so I'll still be moving forward slowly. And ... a good friend just asked if I wanted to travel to Venice and Tuscany with him in 2015. Ma certamente! And that cements it: I'll continue on with Assimil and Living Language after this trip, and plan on doing the Super Challenge in Italian. ελληνικά - I want to try EMK's Dead Language Challenge, although it will be very, very challenging to read 100 pages this summer. Español - poor Spanish. Sorry. Nada. ______________________________________________ Overall this winter has been an intensive time for me with languages. As Spring comes I'll ease up, and just continue with Assimil for Italian and, if possible, Turkish. ______________________________________________  Edited by kanewai on 25 February 2014 at 10:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 243 of 331 25 February 2014 at 11:30pm | IP Logged |
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This might cheer you up:
The All-England Summarize Proust Competition (Thanks to Monty Python, of course). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 244 of 331 25 February 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
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I have similar struggles using Assimil for an agglutinative language, the literal translations are never literal enough, and I often have to consult the simpler sentences in the exercises just to figure out the new vocab.
Your log makes me want to incorporate more movie screenshots and color coding into my log. As well as start reading Proust and learning Ancient Greek. 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 245 of 331 14 March 2014 at 3:51am | IP Logged |
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Love the Summarize Proust competition! I've been practicing at home for when it comes
to my town. I also de-TAC'd my log title. I'll still follow the logs I follow, but this will be the third year where 80% of the people who start on the teams are gone by March. At this point TAC seems like a failed concept to me. On to languages! Français 65% of the way through Proust. The second volume has finally started to get exciting. Or at least, as exciting as Proust gets. There's a great section where "society" is dining in style in a coastal hotel, while outside the poor are observing them through the glass in the same way that tourists watch fish in a giant aquarium. And here's a nice quote where the narrator talks about all the rigid rules we have regarding love and romance: Les démarcation trop étroites que nous traçons autour de l'amour viennent seulement de notre grande ignorance de la vie. my take: The too rigid boundaries that we draw around "love" arise solely from our great ignorance of life. Türkçe - 3 days to İstanbul! I had a week of intense work and almost no language study, but it's been all-Turkish all the time since then. I feel somewhat confident that I'll be able to handle basic conversations. Of course, I've been studying 90 minutes to 2 hours per day, so I'd better have some skills. I re-did the last part of Pimsleur I, which I was worried would be useful but boring. Instead it turned out to be really interesting the second time around; this time I understood the grammar that was being used, and it was nice being able to understand how the phrases work. I've also been studying a lot with Babbel. It's a frustrating program ... some days I wake up to find that I have 189 review cards, and it takes an hour to clear the deck. I haven't found a way to pace it properly. Beyond that I did one more set of Assimil (chapters 28-35) two more chapters of Teach Yourself (through chapter 9) and one more in FSI (through chapter 19). I forget sometimes how rewarding these intensive periods can be. I think that was the original intent of the six-week challenges, though we've all (myself included) wandered away from that by doing multiple languages at once. Bouncing between texts has been incredibly useful. Teach Yourself will get hard, and I'll do a few chapters in FSI. That will get complicated, and I'll rotate back to Teach Yourself, and discover that the chapter that was hard is now easy. I was hoping that Assimil would also finally click, but sadly, it didn't. I made it through one extra week, but there is too big a disconnect between the Turkish and the idiomatic French. I'd have to look up half the Turkish words in the dictionary to figure out how they connected to the loose translations. It wasn't worth the time. And that's a shame, because I won't continue Turkish at this intensity after my trip. In theory Assimil would've been great for slow and steady studying. As it is, I've boxed it up and put it back on the shelf. Italiano - I haven't done much, though I'm planning on having an Italian-intensive period in a few weeks. 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 246 of 331 14 March 2014 at 8:34am | IP Logged |
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I do hope you continue with turkish, even if it's slow and steady. Because you made quite an effort and it's a pity to lose all that.
Any impressions from Istanbul? How was it speaking with natives? 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 247 of 331 14 March 2014 at 11:42am | IP Logged |
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I really like Turkish, and even more I like how it's slowly opening up to me, and how
I'm beginning to see the overall patterns in the language emerging. I'll let you know how it goes as soon as I get back! There's a lot of things that are stopping me from continuing on, though: - three weeks after I get back I head to France and Italy, so I really want to shift my focus to these languages. This trip to Istanbul is more of a spontaneous "holy @$#@ I can't believe how cheap that ticket is we have to go!" And so five of my friends are going. It's not even my 'real' vacation. I'll have almost a six week gap of no Turkish (because I'll be focusing on Italian and French). - That's the main reason I'm bummed about Assimil It is theoretically perfect for slow and steady. - Third, unless I find a job in Turkey there's just not enough to keep me going! Other languages have amazing literature and cinematic traditions to help you through that multi-year middle level. I don't know that Turkish has that ... ... though OMG Turkish Star Wars (Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam) is a classic ... ... so I'll have to stop somewhere. I still might try slow and steady, though Ancient Greek tempts me more as a language worthy of a lifetime commitment!  Edited by kanewai on 14 March 2014 at 11:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 248 of 331 14 March 2014 at 2:34pm | IP Logged |
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If you enjoy Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, you should be aware that the rabit hole of low budget turkish action movies goes pretty deep. Anything directed by Çetin Inanç and starring Cüneyt Arkin is pretty much guaranteed gold. That and lots of great Turkish music are some of the main reasons I want to study Turkish one day (though I want to get to a strong intermediate in Hungarian first).
I don't know as much about Turkish literature, but my general impression is that there's lots of great Turkish media out there for consuming. I don't know if it's enough to be worth dedicating your life to, but I think it might be worth exploring more before giving up on the language. Edited by YnEoS on 14 March 2014 at 3:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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