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Gary’s TAC 2014: Spanish, Italian, French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 81 of 138 23 June 2014 at 11:42am | IP Logged |
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I had what should have been an amazing weekend for language practice but ruined by tiredness since I didn't sleep well for a few days last week. Spent Friday night with a group of Italians; on Saturday I ended up at a crazy Spanish outdoor party celebrating the Solstice and after that I had a good chat with an Italian friend; and on Sunday I again spent a couple of hours chatting with the same friend. But all of these times I just didn't have the mental energy to make the most of it and I was quieter and less relaxed than usual: I suppose the negative feelings about being tired and not being able to take advantage can create a sort of vicious circle. And when I did speak it mostly felt like a huge effort and didn't at all come naturally.
On Friday I also bumped into a French guy I know and chatted for a couple of minutes, but I was struggling. I was tired and I had been speaking Italian for the last hour so I was still thinking in that. I remember I mispronounced "contre" with the O and N as separate sounds like in Italian (contro) instead of with the French nasal vowel, and when he left I had a strange moment of having no idea what to say because I couldn't find the French equivalent of "ci vediamo": my brain was trying to translate directly and "on se voit" on its own doesn't really work as a salutation. Obviously all I needed was "à bientôt" or "salut" or "bonne soirée" or one of the many other options that French offers, but that sort of lateral thinking was beyond my capabilities in that moment. Tiredness doesn't just ruin your ability in one language, but also your ability to switch between them. I had a similar experience with Spanish at the party. I just felt mentally blocked and didn't even know how to start with responding to questions, and just made excuses, "hace mucho tiempo que non hablo español, he olvidado mucho, y estoy cansado"... And with Spanish people being as nice as they are, they were completely understanding. There were also a few Italians there but I just spoke English with them, knowing that I'd make a brutta figura otherwise which wouldn't have helped me get past the whole initial stage of convincing them that I'm not joking and I really do actually speak their language. On the plus side I'm getting better at identifying accents. I knew a guy was Sardinian practically as soon as he opened his mouth. I never thought I'd say this, but recently I feel like I've almost been practising too much and I've not had enough time for study. It's like with music: playing with the band and jamming with other musicians are important and they're the reason you're doing the whole thing in the first place, but time spent alone or with a teacher focusing on technique and theory also has its place. The main problem really is the fatigue though. Hopefully I'll sleep a bit more this week. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 82 of 138 24 June 2014 at 4:34am | IP Logged |
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You could obviously do with more siesta time ;-)
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 83 of 138 26 June 2014 at 10:59am | IP Logged |
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Siestas are a great idea; if I didn't have an office job I'd probably actually have them, at least some days. I've read that biphasic sleep is more natural than one block of eight hours, and maybe it's how the Spanish manage to party until the early hours! They're common in Greece as well, at least in the summer when it's too hot to do much in the afternoon. Anyway I'm planning to take it easy and try to catch up on sleep for the next week or two if I can. I was at yet another Italian party last night and I was having a lot of difficulty getting the words out.
Anyway I'm completely done with Assimil Spanish now! Now I just need to decide how to fill in my morning-before-work language learning slot. Maybe it's finally time to start Grammatica avanzata della lingua Italiana. My grammar could probably do with a bit of cleaning up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 84 of 138 30 June 2014 at 11:23am | IP Logged |
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I've been good and I had a relaxed weekend, didn't go out much, although that does mean less Italian practice. I did spend an afternoon and early evening with some friends, mostly Spanish. One was a friend's brother who was just visiting from Spain and, while he knew some English, he was much more comfortable in Spanish.
I've noticed time and time again that most Spanish speakers, upon finding out that you have even some basic knowledge of their language, will just assume that you're competent (even if you're clearly struggling!) and go full-speed. It's the exact opposite of the attitude of many French and Italians who, as I've already written about extensively on here, often won't take you seriously even when you do have a good level. It's great! Although very challenging: sometimes I think it would be nice if they'd slow down a bit for the learner, but I can't complain. To put it into perspective, the beginner stage is extremely short compared to the intermediate and advanced ones, so I'll take struggling to follow at the start over struggling to find practice opportunities afterwards! Films/books: Watched Il sorpasso; had been meaning to watch that one for a while. I need to check out some more commedia all'italiana now that I actually understand it. I'm halfway through Il giorno in più and I'm enjoying it; it's not the sort of thing I'd read in English and I can see why a lot of Italians dislike Volo and find him boring, and yes the plot is a little on the ridiculous side, but at the same time it does make me think a lot about life and relationships and it's useful to read about these topics in Italian. I saw the first episode of Desaparecida, one of the Spanish series recommended by Stelle. It's not available on Drama Fever here, but it works just fine on the RTVE website's on-demand section, which looks like it could be an amazing resource! No subtitles though. I understand most of it and I can follow the story, but I'm definitely missing some details. Certainly a level up from Destinos! I should probably watch some more stuff with subtitles/transcripts, it's my tried and tested method for bridging the gap. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 85 of 138 07 July 2014 at 12:05pm | IP Logged |
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I realised that my last post in here was my 1000th on the forum... Sounds like an impressive number but I'm not convinced it's a good thing: all the time reading and writing these posts could probably be better used actually learning languages. But then I've learnt a lot from here (I'd never have known about Assimil otherwise, for example!), it's good for motivation, and I find that writing on here can help me gather my thoughts and sometimes let off a bit of steam!
I managed to take it easy for most of last week, then I slept badly on Saturday which undid it all again. Ah well, I tried. Anyway, some of my recent thoughts on socialising in another language: I did plenty socialising in Italian at the weekend; again it was difficult since I wasn't feeling very energetic, but I still think I was doing well and I wasn't too hesitant about joining in discussions. I'm still far from happy with my level, but to be honest what I'm aiming for is a very big ask: being able to easily express myself and my ideas in social groups. Something which I'm not even very good at in English to be honest. I think I'm sometimes a little too perfectionist and if I don't feel reasonably confident that I can say something relatively correctly then I just don't say it. I reckon it's partly because I'm a bit shy but it's more from the negative experiences that I've had with native speakers not taking me seriously, so I feel like I have to "perform well" to be accepted. Plus a lot of the bad French for example that I hear at meetups makes me cringe and I feel like I don't want to "sound like that". It's a bit ridiculous really since I speak English with lots of non-native speakers and their mistakes generally don't bother me at all. While I don't think my fears are completely unfounded and I realise that as English speakers we have much lower standards, for social purposes I probably could benefit from aiming for fluency over precision. Speaking the language badly might make a negative impression, but coming across as un-confident and shy makes a much worse one... although on the other hand I think people do also cut you a lot of slack when you're speaking a foreign language and if you seem a bit shy they'll appreciate that it's because expressing yourself in another language isn't easy. Overall I probably just need to worry less, both about mistakes and about seeming shy! And coming back to the general theme, tiredness does make things even harder. But I've found that just being honest and saying something like "I'm not talking much because I'm pretty tired" can take off a lot of the pressure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 86 of 138 15 July 2014 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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Italian's mostly going well at the moment, I'm still speaking it quite a lot and as long as I'm not too tired I get by well enough overall, considering the usual ups and downs. I've not had time to work on pronunciation for a few weeks, but there's been no shortage of conversation and input.
I've tried watching a bit more Spanish TV: another couple of episodes of Desaparecida and the start of Fragiles. It's not easy. I can happily eat dinner or send a few texts while watching a French or Italian movie and still follow it, but with Spanish, 100% focus is required and that can be difficult after a long day. Generally I've been quite lazy with Spanish and not doing much active work, as Italian's still my focus. Reading/watching in Italian: - Finished reading Il giorno in più, and watched the film. The book is an enjoyable enough if far-fetched love story, and it's good for learners as it uses fairly simple language and it's full of dialogue and thoughts. The film isn't great: they changed the story a lot and tried to turn it into some sort of American-style "awkward romantic comedy", and the lack of character and plot development takes it from far-fetched to plain ridiculous. A few funny parts though, and practice is practice. - Started reading Che la festa cominci - back to Amminiti. So far it's quite a strange story even by his standards and there's a lot of unusual vocabulary. - Watched some films, mostly modern comedy: La mafia uccide solo d'estate, Una donna per amica, Un fantastico via vai, Sole a catinelle. All quite enjoyable and easy stuff, which is what I've been in the mood for recently. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 87 of 138 21 July 2014 at 11:50am | IP Logged |
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I feel like my Italian's gone up a level in the last few days, it's all coming out a bit more, well, fluently. I'm still far from being Fluent with a capital F, but in the last few days I've felt like I'm a step closer. I'm still aware of some mistakes, difficulty expressing certain things, overusing certain expressions, and often doing much more listening than talking in conversations, but I'm getting there. It's unsurprising considering all the Italian socialising recently and all the films and books I've been getting through.
I watched Il ciclone, an Italian film that has a reasonable bit of Spanish in it. Then I saw my first proper Spanish film since starting to learn it: El día de la bestia, a ridiculous comedy-horror recommended by a friend. It was a great laugh and really useful; I saw it with Spanish subs. I followed the story just fine although I definitely didn't understand 100%. At this stage I'm watching fairly passively and not pausing to look up words unless I really need to. And that film had a few Italian characters so there was some Italian dialogue too. I also started watching Abre los ojos with English subs and again I'm finding it really useful. Hopefully I'll get through a few more films in the coming weeks, and if I get the chance to do some speaking then I will. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 88 of 138 24 July 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged |
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There's a weekly Spanish/English exchange meetup that takes place less than 5 minutes walk from my house, so yesterday I decided it was about time to try it out.
I was fairly impressed: it was a relaxed and fair meetup, which is nice since the Monday "language café" one I used to go to was neither. Good mixture of both languages and a majority of Spanish people. Calling the atmosphere friendly would be a slight exaggeration but it was certainly pleasant. It seemed like you could always get what you want out of it, at least with a minimum of effort and assertiveness: if you want to practise Spanish then you can, and if you're happy to be lazy (or helpful!) and speak English then you also can. I did a bit of both. After a bit of warm-up my Spanish wasn't too bad, I was managing basic conversations about work and travel just fine, and thankfully the Italian mistakes were few and far between: not much more than the odd "di" instead of "de" and the more deliberate strategy of saying the Italian word or a "Spanish-ised" version of it if I didn't know the Spanish one. Lack of active vocabulary and patchy knowledge of the verb conjugations felt like the main things holding me back. In particular my grip of the vosotros forms is weak, which is a big obstacle since in many social situations you're speaking to more than one person! At one point I was speaking to a couple and I practically had to pause and think before every verb. And after an hour or so I was mentally tired and following the Spanish people's conversations became very difficult. All normal things during the beginner stage. The active stuff should just come with time, although I'm wondering if something like FSI might speed it up. I hear great things about FSI Spanish on here, and considering that it took me about two years to consistently get the Italian verb forms correct just from practice, I can't help but think there's a more efficient way. I'd rather sit in the sun and chat with Spanish friends than be stuck in the house doing FSI drills, but if the latter will help me with the former then it's worthwhile, and the Scottish weather is unpredictable enough to allow for both. I'm sure I'll go back. Only drawback is that it's on Wednesday nights, which is already the busiest day of the week here for social/activity stuff. I'm told there's also a Spanish-only meetup on Thursdays which could be useful for me, although the location's not quite as convenient. Edited by garyb on 24 July 2014 at 1:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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