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Liammcg-TAC’13 Team Romulans & Clan Lugus | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Welsh | Gaelic (Irish) | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 49 of 89 01 June 2013 at 10:35pm | IP Logged |
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Saturday 1/6/13
I'm finding plenty of time to get some study done, with a focus on French. French Thanks to some great recommendations by tastyonions, I've been watching some very interesting/funny videos on YouTube which are really helping my listening skills. Casual spoken French is an area in which I am lacking (having listened mostly to documentaries and the news up until now). Continuing on reading some short stories at the moment using one of my parallel translation books. I've also recommenced using wordlists to learn vocab, the act of writing out the words being more beneficial to me than Anki. Gaelic I've begun going through some of the BBC's LDLING, beginning at letter 423. I've been able to understand most of what's being said while also coming on nice idioms, phrases etc. These have been added to Anki. My immediate plans are to simply continue on going through these letters, they're all the input I feel I need for the moment, while also reading some blogs online. I've also decided to push beginning German back until the middle of the month in order to make up for some lost time with French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 50 of 89 09 June 2013 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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I've spent a long, productive week at home soaking up the sun (really, Ireland comes to
a stand still at the first sight of sun), learning plenty of new tunes, and getting some good quality study in. Ah...Tá an samhradh linn... Gaelic BBC Litir do Luchd Ionnsachaidh continues to provide a) interesting content that I LOVE (eachdraidh, òrain, sgeulachdan mu dheidhinn Chù-Chulainn agus a charaidean) and b) very useful phrases/idioms of the sort that my Gaelic is lacking. They help throw away the crutch of Irish and appreciate the unique character of Scottish Gaelic. Not being the most computer able person, I wonder could anyone tell me is it possible to synchronize these podcasts onto my Ipod? They are in the library but don't transfer over when I connect the mp3 player. I've almost finished my review read of Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks. The past few days I've been focusing among other things on the future and conditional/past habitual tenses. The structured course complements my plunge into native materials nicely. Though I have Teach Yourself Gaelic,I'll put off reviewing it until sometime during the Autumn (very, very long away, keep the summer buzz going!) where it will be more beneficial as a refresher. I'm also speaking a fair bit of Gaelic to myself, and I've noticed an improvement in my production rate. I've also noticed that it takes me a while to speak "pure" Irish after interacting with Gaelic. A bit of a worrying thought at times, but I continue on in the reassurance that my Irish is too strong to be "deleted" by the Scottish input. I've been thinking a fair bit about how best to keep them separate. I've restricted Gaelic to the morning where I'm unlikely to use Irish, and when I study Gaelic I get my mind into a "Scottish mood", picturing the beautiful Hebrides in my minds eye as the hum of Pìob-Mhòr sweeps across the landscape from the high rising mountains to the low lying machair (sentimental eh?). Long story short, Gaelic is good. For the rest of the month, I will be content to simply continue with the BBC podcasts and anki reviews of new vocabulary. French This week I've continued to delve into native materials, watching blogs, documentaries and such on YouTube and reading articles online. Having never "really" focused on native materials in my studies (for shame, for shame) the mountain that is spoken French seems only to rise. For example, upon watching a video on YouTube I attempted to repeat exactly what the blogger said, at the same speed. Needless to say I struggled to get my mouth to produce the sounds at such speed, particularly combinations with the dreaded "R", which I fear I still haven't fully mastered. However, these realisations haven't discouraged me but rather spured me on. I may (If I can get my mic working again) upload a reading to soundcloud and post it here tomorrow for some feedback on my articulation, so stay tuned! I've rekindled a love for French which has been lacking at times over the past few months. It always seems that in my case, listening to a language is much more pleasurable than reading/writing it, and so this refocus on the aural aspects of French have given me the fire I need in my belly. I'm not however implying that I'll solely focus on listening from now on, far from it! I've also began restudying grammar systematically as I feel that there is still sum tidying up to be done after having learned in such a poor manner in school. I've used my BBC French Grammar as a brief overview for topics before going to http://french.about.com/ (a great site) and doing some of the exercises there. I'm tempted to begin FSI in order to drill some grammar points, I wonder how beneficial it is? Certainly it wouldn't do any harm. I've also been continuing on with my short stories book which I am between two minds about. Really I think a novel would be more beneficial to me and so I'll probably go ahead and order Harry Potter shortly. In the meantime, I've made wordlists of new vocab arising in the short stories and continue to review. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4426 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin | Message 51 of 89 10 June 2013 at 12:25am | IP Logged |
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I'm glad your love for French is back! I'm not sure what accent you're going for, but there are a lot of quebecois tv
shows on the website tou.tv . They could be good for listening practice. Some are documentaries, although it seems like you've had enough of that, so you could check out some of the series as well. (I've only watched part of the first episode of 30 vies so i don't really know what it's about, however i did notice that there is lots of quebecois slang you could learn!). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 52 of 89 10 June 2013 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
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Good to see that you're enjoying your Gaelic journey, even if there might be some interference with your Irish. I'm dabbling a little bit in Irish right now and I'm surprised how different and at the same time similar both languages are. Now, I'm not sure whether I want to continue with Gaelic or with Irish. They're both tempting! ;)
Looking forward to your French recording! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 53 of 89 10 June 2013 at 10:39pm | IP Logged |
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@Emily
Thanks for the encouragement, Emily! I'm learning standard Parisian French, though I love the Belgian accent as spoken by Félix on YouTube. I also love Quebecois, especially the slang as you mentioned, but unfortunately I appear to be outside the region for watching shows on that site. No harm, I'm sure I'll be able to find some somewhere else on the net. @Josquin Either is a good choice of course, so I won't try to swing you over to Irish just yet;) I cannot find my mic anywhere, but my brother is returning home tomorrow so I'll use his to make a recording. Stay tuned, I would really appreciate the feedback. Perhaps I'll make a 'wee' recording ann a' Ghàidhlig cuideachd, chì sinn :) Edited by liammcg on 10 June 2013 at 11:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 54 of 89 11 June 2013 at 6:09pm | IP Logged |
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I managed to find a mic! Here's two recordings of me reading short passages from
wikipedia and a Gaelic book. https://soundcloud.com/liamo13 Let me know if you can access them and what you think! I've spotted a few areas for improvement already, but lets see will you pick them out too! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 55 of 89 16 June 2013 at 1:09pm | IP Logged |
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I think your French accent is really good already. The only problem is that your sentences are too choppy. A Frenchman wouldn't seperate the words from each other the way you do it. But I'm sure that will take care of itself with a little bit of practice. I only noticed one mistake: you say "autur" instead of "autour", but you will probably already have noticed that.
I'm curious as to which dialect of Gaelic you're learning. Your pronunciation seems quite different from the dialect of South Uist, which I am studying. Or is that your Irish interfering? Well, frankly speaking I didn't understand a word (except Màiri), but I guess that's rather due to my newbie level in Gaelic than to your pronunciation. :) Good job! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 56 of 89 16 June 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
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Your French sounds quite good in my opinion (no opinion on the Gaelic because I do not
speak it). Sometimes the nasal vowels sound a bit... off, but it's still very understandable :) And you pronounce the French r very well. Edited by tarvos on 16 June 2013 at 1:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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