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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 113 of 344 29 November 2012 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today's Assimil Il nuovo russo senza sforzo's lesson confused me.
First they say that отдыхать is imperfective and отдохнуть is perfective. Then they bring the sentence Где вы отдыхали? (imperfective) and translate it in Italian as "Dove vi siete riposato?". I assume that "siete riposato" is perfective, and if I wanted to say something imperfective, I'd use the imperfect tense, either "voi riposavate" or "stavate riposando". So, this is really confusing! EDIT: Later on the same exercise 2, they bring on another sentence with the perfective Russian verb: Бы хорошо отдохнули ? So, the problem is that both sentences get translated with passato passato remoto, regardless of aspect. As a Portuguese speaker, I could accept both sentences with past perfect indeed, but since the sentence is meant to be asked in contrast, it would make more sense to use imperfect or either imperfect continuous for the russian imperfect. Edited by Expugnator on 29 November 2012 at 7:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marishka Newbie United States Joined 5246 days ago 25 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Dutch | Message 114 of 344 30 November 2012 at 8:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Dutch With Ease Update
Several time-consuming projects demanded my attention this past week, which meant I spent less time on Assimil. Although I completed lessons 22-28, I didn't do the drills or take dictation, nor did I do the other things recommended by the author of Dutch With Ease, such as going back over previous sets of expressions and past drills, or memorizing all of the neuter nouns encountered so far. I only spent about 20 minutes on each lesson, and had the feeling that the new information was going in one ear and out the other. The end result was that when I did the fill-in-the-blank exercises, I couldn't remember most of the new vocabulary. Uh-oh. I considered doing lessons 22-28 again, complete with drills and dictation, but then I'd be behind a whole week. Besides, until the end of the holiday season, there will likely be more days when I only have time to read, listen and repeat the dialogs. I'm just going to trust that all the new vocabulary and sentence structures from the past week will be repeated. Hopefully, it will "stick" the second time around. Speaking of vocabulary being repeated, way back in lesson 2, the heading for that lesson was Bij de ontvanger, with the English translation given as "At the tax office (receiver)". I remember thinking that there was no need to remember the word ontvanger. Of course, telling yourself not to remember something is like someone telling you not to think of pink elephants, so I couldn't forget that word! Even so, I still thought it was a word that was unlikely to come up in a conversation. But when I got to lesson 25, I came across a verb that changed my mind about the apparent "uselessness" of ontvanger . Some sentences from that lesson: Kan de secretaresse mij niet ontvangen? Can the secretary receive me? Ze is altijd bij de directeur als hij bezoekers ontvangt. She's always with the director when he receives visitors. And again in lesson 26: Hij is meestal uit zijn humeur als hij talrijke bezoekers moet ontvangen. He's usually in a bad mood if he has to receive a large number of visitors. This grammar note linked to the word bezoekers doesn't list ontvangen/ontvanger, but it clearly works the same way: "A designation for someone doing something can usually be formed by adding -er to the verb root. Bezoeken, bezoeker: visitor. Roken, roker:smoker. Verkopen, verkoper: saleman. : Lezen, lezer: reader. Spreken, spreker speaker. The plural is formed by adding -s. Rokers: smokers." I checked my dictionary for other meanings of ontvangen and ontvanger, and found a couple more related words: ontvangen - receive, collect, draw, welcome ontvanger - receiver, recipient ontvangst - receipt, collection, reception ontvangstbewijs - receipt So now that I've learned more about ontvanger and related words, it doesn't seem nearly as useless as I first believed back in lesson 2. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 115 of 344 30 November 2012 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I must say i'm getting a little sick of Assimil. When you have loads of methods available, it is a bit annoying to stick to one single book for 100 days. I felt this with Norwegian and I feel the same is repeating with Russian. Sometimes I think I had better take a halt at half the book, then do other beginners' books then resume it when I'm getting closer to an intermediate level.
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| 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 116 of 344 01 December 2012 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Again, taken from my log
Le breton sans peine - jusqu'à la 28ème leçon Les topiques traitées cette semaine par l'Assimil sont les mutations (mais pas au fond), le nom, surtout les noms collectifs, les pronoms, un peu de conjugaisons des verbes, et les négations/affirmations. En fait, le seule fait que j'ai appris quant aux mutations, c'est que le mot "plac'h" (fille) se comporte comme un nom masculin en breton! Il ne se mute PAS après une article, donc, c'est ar plac'h. Ce phénomène sera également valide si on prend le diminutif: ar plac'hig. (-ig/ik est un suffix qui indique la diminution d'un mot). On peut utiliser -ig pour tous les noma, sans modifier le gendre. Donc breur = frère, mais breurig = frérot. Ces formes diminutives sont quoique plus courants en breton et il faut les reconnaître et utiliser; mais pour moi, ça présente aucun problème car les diminutifs sont également courant en néerlandais (et les russes l'aiment aussi!). Notez aussi qu'on peut utiliser des diminutifs pour un adjectif! Koantik = mignonette, littéralement (Koant = mignon). Pour des adjectifs, la terminaison est -ik (variant orthographique de -ig, car la g est dévoisée au fin des mots en breton). Le collectif est une groupe des noms qu'on trouve au pluriel, mais auquel on ajoute un suffixe -enn pour former le singulier (qui est toujours du féminin!) Ces noms collectifs sont surtout utilisés pour des choses végétales, ainsi que pour quelques animaux de petite taille (et aussi pour des crêpes, qui sont partout en Bretagne). En plus nous avons appris une partie de la conjugaison du verbe "kaout" (=avoir = une forme du verbe être). Puis la troisième personne au pluriel du verbe "bezañ" (location) et du verbe "ober", qui se terminent en -nt. (emaint, reont). Veuillez ne pas oublier que cette conjugaison indique que le sujet n'est exprimé nulle part! Il existe des pronoms personnelles en breton, mais ils sont guère utilisés - ils sont souvent là quand on a besoin de l'emphase. Cf. français "Moi, je travaille pas pendant la semaine" (Me n'a labour ket e-pad ar sizhun), pour indiquer une opposition à quelqu'un qui travaille pendant la semaine. Et finalement, on utilise "Ya", suivi du verbe, pour affirmer une phrase positive; Eo pour l’équivalent du français "si", suivi du verbe; Nann pour répondre Non aux phrases négatives. Dans l'autre cas, on utilise juste le verbe à la négative: "Glav a ra hiziv?" "Ne ra ket". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeronz Diglot Newbie New Zealand Joined 4856 days ago 37 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian | Message 117 of 344 02 December 2012 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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El Nuevo Francés sin Esfuerzo
Passive wave: Lessons 50-52 Active wave: Lessons 1-3 Week 8 This has not been a productive week for French. Have started at a new department at work in cardiology and it is crazily busy, getting home at 7ish each day, not to mention that i had to do two night shifts and one day till 10pm this week...deep breath... Anyway have finally made it to the active phase. I have only been using this edition of assimil for quite a while now and haven't done any FSI pronunciation again. I have noticed a huge difference in my active production of language now with the active lessons. It really helps. Quite a brilliant technique this assimil. Things are continuing to come together for sure. The passive lessons seem to be getting easier again as well. I have 10 more days until the monthly French language meetup in my city which I am looking forward to, although I´m not excepting to be able to properly converse but it should prove to be an interesting experience. I am still not confusing my Spanish and french which is highly reassuring. It definitely has something to do with how different it sounds and the fact that I´m learning it through Spanish. I´m also using the Spanish-french wordreference website as my dictionary when I need it (rarely as almost 100% of my french interaction is with assimil) I came across one of prof arguelles's videos concerning the three language learning styles (Analytical, learn by doing, observational) I think I am definitely in the observational group as my major learning style, and learn by doing as my minor learning style. I don't learn well at all with the traditional classroom/grammar book method of learning the rules first and then doing exercises for one rule. Assimil definitely suits my style. I have been thinking about what to do after assimil and I note that he recommends for the observational learners to go over a grammar book and then finish up with FSI afterwards. I may do the Using French book first though. We'll see, I'm getting ahead of myself I think. But unfortunately there aren't many French speakers in my country to practice with. Edited by jeronz on 02 December 2012 at 11:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5691 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 118 of 344 03 December 2012 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegisch ohne Mühe
(I wrote the following big and rather depressed entry last week, but after checking in on the group log thread, I realized that what I'm feeling might just be the four-week-mark depression. It looks like I'm not the only one. This is oddly comforting. Courage to all my fellow sufferers! I'm posting my whiny entry anyway, for documentation purposes. ;) Before copy-pasting I shall just comment that, despite missing several days recently, I finished review lesson 28 yesterday and am therefore exactly one month into learning Norwegian.) Norwegian was difficult today. The speakers are slowly approaching a more natural conversational speed and slurring their words together more. But that's not where the real problem lies: I became fully aware today of how weird it feels to be holding back my natural linguistic enthusiasm for the sake of the Assimil Experiment. Normally I would have thrown myself into the culture by now: trying to read the news, watching online TV, discovering fun music and deciphering the Wikipedia articles on the artists I liked best, listening to any and all audio I could find, and starting several different courses at once to review and solidify the basics of the language by approaching them from a few different angles. But since I haven't allowed myself to do that this time, it's been working a sort of reverse-psychological effect on me, convincing me that I must find the culture and language boring, and that must be the reason why I'm not doing these things. It's very weird – and somewhat upsetting – to catch my brain playing tricks on me like this. I know one thing for sure already, less than a month into the experiment: I won't be starting a language with only Assimil (or with any program in isolation) again. As much as I love Assimil, using it to the exclusion of everything else feels sterile, unmotivating, and unnecessarily confusing. Grammatical concepts which should be a piece of cake are refusing to settle in my understanding, merely because I'm encountering them in such a limited context. Overall, it's just not feeling very fun right now, especially since Norwegian was a language for which I'd always had a soft spot before I started learning it, and now it feels like the mystery is being taken away without being replaced by the wealth of cultural knowledge that usually moves in to take its place. But hey, this might just be today's mood – who knows. In any case, I'm not quitting the experiment, not yet. Learning this fact about my own preferred learning method has been quite eye-opening, and I do have the experiment to thank for that. Edited by Jinx on 03 December 2012 at 12:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5880 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 119 of 344 04 December 2012 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Lessons 15 to 21
Total time required for this group = 2.8 hours. Once more, I'm enjoying a lot of features from Assimil. It seems that they have learned how to increase the amount and kind of words so that you memorize them almost effortlessly. They also know how to increase the speech velocity and don't get you hopeless about your listening skills improvement. Of course, I'm talking about an easy (for me) language, but my experience with Hungarian wasn't much different. I've also already skimmed through the book and the amount of text in the last lessons make me sure that I'll be reading in Catalan quite well by the end of this course. Here is a graph with some relevant data concerning number of words and speech pace. 
However, I will quote Jinx, who said in much better English what I would like to say:
For me, the lack of deep grammatical explanations is also a huge problem. Another big problem is that they decided to use their own, not very nice, phonetical system, which I'm not going to learn. We all learn in different ways, maybe Assimil will be enough for some people and, as already stated, I'm sure that Assimil will be enough to make me learn, at least, to read well in Catalan. That said, I'll continue to use only Assimil until the beginning of the active phase, for the sake of this experiment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 120 of 344 04 December 2012 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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...rioca (I refuse to write the first part of your nick :P), are you using the French-based or the Spanish-based? I have both, and I tried a little with the Spanish one, but I think it relies too much on your previous knowledge of both the Castillian language and the whole cultural background in Spain. Besides, the languages being similar also visually, I find it harder to memorize words that are specifically Catalan. So maybe the French edition would work better because it would provide me with more contrast. That's the same thing I'm worried about regarding Latin, for example. If I study Latin through the Italian version, both languages will look too similar, which is not much the case with French.
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