luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 17 of 164 22 April 2014 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
I was very moved by your post... and the slideshow.
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 18 of 164 22 April 2014 at 1:20am | IP Logged |
Your sister did a good job on the video to celebrate your brother's life. I am so sorry for your loss, Jeffers. Cancer took two of my dear friends here on the island last year. They were both under 50, non-smokers and not overweight. One ran marathons and taught yoga. It just makes no sense and that's hard. May you find peace and strength.
Edited by iguanamon on 22 April 2014 at 1:21am
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Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4083 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German
| Message 19 of 164 22 April 2014 at 6:30am | IP Logged |
Jeffers wrote:
And if anyone is curious, here's a slideshow my sister made for the memorial service.
My brother-in-law actually got legal permission to include the song Sweet Home Alabama
(one of his favourites):
Karl Lehman memorial
slideshow
(Don't worry, I won't be offended or bothered if nobody watches it. I do realize you
don't know Karl from Cain). |
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Unfortunately it seems that the permission does not extend to Germany, as youtube is
giving me a not available in your country due to music :-\
My sympathies.
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hanasea Diglot Newbie Korea, South agidark.tistory.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4190 days ago 15 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Korean*, EnglishC1 Studies: Japanese
| Message 20 of 164 22 April 2014 at 7:12am | IP Logged |
I am so sorry to hear your loss. It is really hard, to lose your loved one. I can't find English expressions to
show my feelings enough but I wanted to say something.
Recently my sister married, I don't see her a lot. I used to see her everyday, we were roommates for solid two
years. I should see her more.
I am following your log, it is very helpful.
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napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5017 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 21 of 164 22 April 2014 at 10:26am | IP Logged |
Several years ago, I lost my great-uncle to cancer. I miss him still.
I want you to know I am sorry for your loss. My thoughts are with you and I wish you peace.
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Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5642 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French
| Message 22 of 164 22 April 2014 at 10:39am | IP Logged |
I'm sorry for your loss and I wish you strength.
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Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 23 of 164 23 April 2014 at 12:02am | IP Logged |
Thank you for all of your kind thoughts. It's nice to know that we have a supportive community here. That has been one of the things which has kept me studying languages regularly since joining HTLAL.
So I think it's about time I gave an update of what I've been up to in language study over February, March and April (so far). These few months I haven't done any languages except French.
During the month of January I kept a detailed log on a spreadsheet of every minute, every page, of every product I was using. Keeping that up to date was too much of a pain, so I gave it up. From now on, I will just give a summary of what I did, without the fine details of hours spent, etc.
Watching
During the 6 week challenge, I discovered Engrenages on Netflix. I only intended to watch a bit of it, maybe the first series. Instead, I ended up watching all 4 series in about 3 weeks. It was actually a great experience, and I was sorry to come to the end of it. I'll probably watch the whole thing again during the Super Challenge.
Textbooks/courses
For the "Learning Based Challenge" I set myself the goal of completing 20 passive lessons of Assimil New French With Ease. So far I have completed lessons 92-105, and I hope to finish the book (passive wave) by the end of the month. One thing I have been doing differently is how I review/preview the audio. I used to listen to a CD at a time while driving, walking or biking. Now I usually put my next lesson's track on repeat and listen to it 5 or more times in a row. By the time I open the book to start a lesson, I have a pretty good idea of what the text is about. More importantly, I'm coming to the text with questions about what I heard, which is an important element of deeper learning.
Now that the weather is turning nice, I've had a few hour long walks, during which I've used FSI French unit 7. I've listened to the first 6 (of 11) tapes of unit 7 in the last week.
Reading
I've mostly been saving my reading for the upcoming Super Challenge. However, Petit Nicolas is now my "go-to" book for light reading. Earlier in the year I read Les bêtises du Petit Nicolas, and now I'm about 60% of the way through Les vacances du Petit Nicolas. I'm not actually at the 95% vocabulary knowledge that is supposedly needed for "reading for pleasure", but the stories are amusing enough and clear enough for me to understand and keep reading. If I had to guess, I probably know about 85% of the vocabulary, but my Kindle has the Collins French popup dictionary. So maybe with electronic devices we can revise the necessary percentage.
I also read Astérix le Gaulois sometime in the past couple months.
Music
I have continued to delve into Jean-Louis Aubert's catalogue. My kids know his latest album, Roc' éclair, well enough to have favourite songs. My son likes "Les lépidoptères" because it mentions "tortues géantes", and he's obsessed with turtles. Meanwhile the song "Le Jour Se Lève Encore" (from his Téléphone days) has given me some comfort in difficult times (even if I don't understand all the words yet).
Vocabulary
Up until April I continued to learn about 10 new cards per day with Anki. My second goal for the Learning Based Challenge was to learn 300 words during April. So far I've learnt 250 words this month, so I'm well on the way to meet that goal.
My Anki set is based on the Routledge Frequency Dictionary. One of my goals for the year is to get my known words up to 2500 from that book. I started the year up to about 1200, and now I'm up to about 1800, so I'm already nearly halfway there.
And I think that's about it!
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PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5477 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1
| Message 24 of 164 23 April 2014 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
Hey Jeffers,
It's nice to see you back here and really quite sad about your brother. I don't know what
exactly to say about that but it musn't be easy, and my heartfelt thoughts go out to you
and your family.
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