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Gary’s 2015 TACtivation: FR, IT | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4217 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 129 of 187 18 May 2015 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Si può dire in tutti quei modi che hai elencato. Probabilmente "la mattina" e "di mattina"
sono più moderne, ma non mi suonerebbe strano se qualcuno mi dicesse "il mattino" o "di mattino". Complimenti per il testo, l'unica piccola imperfezione che ho potuto rilevare è "Non abbiamo l'intenzione di..." che dovrebbe essere "non abbiamo intenzione di...". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 130 of 187 18 May 2015 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! I'm feeling a bit better after the long weekend, hopefully it'll last, I still need to take it easy. That's a brilliant idea to format the translations differently so it's easier to read, I've now edited the post and italicised them. Your side note reminds me of a friend whose only Italian knowledge is "perché no" ("why not"). She went to see an opera a wee while ago, and was so happy when she heard one of the singers sing "perché no".
Replying in English because I've made about all the Italian effort that I think I can manage for today... Thanks! I wasn't sure if I should say something different to refer to that morning in particular as opposed to something I habitually do in the morning. So is it correct to say both "la mattina vado a lavorare" (nel senso di tutte le mattine, ogni mattina) and "la mattina sono andato dal dottore" (la mattina di un giorno particolare) if it's obvious from the context? I always mix up the article with "intenzione"! In French it's "avoir l'intention" and Italian it's "avere intenzione", but I seem to confuse the two more often than not... Edited by garyb on 18 May 2015 at 5:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4217 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 131 of 187 18 May 2015 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes they are both correct. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5478 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 132 of 187 20 May 2015 at 5:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi garyb,
..on bilingual entries... Smart idea. I never seem to stick to it myself (I made the declaration also) a while back now but very quickly stopped. I think I found it too time consuming and felt i'd prefer to use that time to actively study the language. Anyway not meaning to put you off as we all have different motivating factors- I actually want to encourage you with it, as I think if you stick to it, it will become easier and more efficient and in the end only beneficial :) Hope your going well with your studies and other things :) PM 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 133 of 187 20 May 2015 at 11:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! I've also tried to get into the habit a few times, as I'm sure you've seen, but I end up getting lazy. It's definitely more time-consuming than just writing in English, but it's a good challenge as it makes me remember and discover ways to express myself which should also be useful in conversation. And since my main goal for the year is working on output and activating my skills, I think it's an appropriate use of my time. I'm going to try to write one Italian entry per week, as my usual start-of-week update. I'll try to do some French ones too, but probably not as frequently, just when I feel like it or I've already done an Italian one and want to write more and have the time. iTalki challenge I am considering the iTalki June challenge. Usually I've avoided these sorts of challenges because they tend to be during busy times, but I don't have a whole lot planned for June. It's still a very big commitment though, 12 lessons is about 3 per week, but I think it could be a great boost for my speaking or at least an experiment to see how useful tutoring is for me. Then again, considering I haven't managed a single lesson since January and haven't completed a single Output Challenge assignment yet, I'm not sure how realistic a few lessons per week is. Of course that's been due to a mix of other commitments, health, and unexpected events. At the moment I'm starting to feel better and I don't have many plans, but I'll see how things go over the next week or so. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 134 of 187 21 May 2015 at 11:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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Books!
I've not posted about what I've been reading for a while. And I want to do some more writing practice. Laurent Gounelle - L'homme qui voulait être heureux Il s'agit d'un livre de développement personnel qui se veut un roman, ou peut-être le contraire. À vrai dire, j'ai trouvé l'intrigue peu intéressant et le message philosophique peu originale. J'ai apprécié le concept de l'auteur, celle d'illustrer ses idées par une histoire d'un homme quelconque qui cherche le bonheur et qui découvre ces idées grâce à un guérisseur, mais finalement c'était plutôt simpliste, voire banal ; à mon avis il aurait pu mieux réaliser ce concept. Pourtant c'était d'une lecture agréable, facile, et assez rapide. It's a self-help book that wants to be a novel, or maybe the opposite. To tell the truth, I found the plot a bit uninteresting and the philosophical message a bit unoriginal. I appreciated the author's concept, of illustrating his ideas with a story of an ordinary man who is looking for happiness and discovers these ideas thanks to a healer, but in the end it was rather simplistic, banal even; in my opinion he could have realised this concept better. However it was a pleasant, easy, and quite quick read. Dacia Mariani - Voci Un libro molto interessante, un giallo che parla della violenza contro le donne. Una donna misteriosa è uccisa violentemente, evidentemente da qualcuno che già la conosce; la protagonista, la sua vicina, è una presentatrice alla radio che fa appunto un servizio sui crimini insoluti contro le donne. Indaga sulla vicenda, intervistando le persone coinvolte : i parenti, gli amanti, gli sospetti. Quando si parla oggigiorno della violenza contro le donne, spesso ci si tiene a un'unica teoria e se ne parla come se fosse la verità assoluta; questo libro, però, esplora diversi motivi eventuali, tenendo conto di fattori naturali, sociali e culturali. A very interesting book, a detective story that talks about violence against women. A mysterious woman is violently killed, evidently by somebody who already knows her; the main character, her neighbour, is a radio presenter who just happens to be doing a report on unsolved crimes against women. She investigates the story, interviewing the people involved: relatives, lovers, suspects. These days when people talk about violence against women, they often stick to one single theory and speak about it as if it were absolute truth; this book, however, explores various reasons, taking into account natural, social, and cultural factors. Ho iniziato a leggere Non ti muovere di Margaret Mazzantini, una storia già abbastanza triste dopo qualche pagina. C'è anche un film, che sarò curioso di vedere quando avrò terminato il libro. I've started reading Don't move by Margaret Mazzantini, a story that's already quite sad after a few pages. There's also a film that I'll be curious to see once I've finished the book. Je viens de commander "How to do accents" de Edda Sharpe et Jan Haydn Rowles, un livre dont on a parlé lors d'une autre discussion. Dans quelques messages précédents j'ai constaté que les acteurs savent toujours bien imiter les accents : lorsque j'ai vu une pièce de théâtre italienne j'ai été impressionné par les accents des acteurs non italiens, et j'ai mentionné l'anglaise de la semaine dernière qui parlait italien avec un bon accent. Le livre vise les acteurs anglophones qui souhaitent imiter de divers accents anglais, mais il semble reconnu que la capacité à imiter un autre accent de sa langue maternelle égale plus ou moins celle à imiter les accents d'autres langues. Peut-être que ça m'aidera ! Sinon, ce serait beau aussi de pouvoir prendre d'autres accents anglais... I've just ordered "How to do accents" by Edda Sharpe and Jan Haydn Rowles, a book that was mentioned in another discussion. In a few previous messages I noted that actors are always good at imitating accents: when I saw an Italian play I was impressed by the non-Italian actors' accents, and I mentioned the Englishwoman last week who spoke Italian with a good accent. The book is aimed at Anglophone actors who wish to imitate various English accents, but it seems accepted that the ability to imitate another accent of one's native language is more or less the same as that to imitate accents of other languages. Maybe that will help me! Anyway, it would also be nice to be able to put on other English accents... Edited by garyb on 21 May 2015 at 11:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 135 of 187 25 May 2015 at 11:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I got some feedback on my Italian recording of a few paragraphs from a news article. Most of it was just concerning individual sounds/words rather than prosody as a whole.
- Incorrect syllable stress on a few words: circuito at the start, civile, and a few others. Simple mistakes, easy to fix now that I'm aware of them. - At times my Rs aren't strong enough. I know this already but it's a good reminder to work on them more. I can pronounce them well in isolation, but in sentences they often get lost, so I suppose it's a matter of habit (isn't it always?). - Ts not clear enough: need to make sure I'm pronouncing them dentally. - Os generally need to be more open (and I'm also aware that I sometimes don't round my Os and Us properly). And my own thoughts: - A few of my As also aren't open enough and almost sound like Os (I've been told I also do this in French sometimes). - My intonation is a mess, like I said before. While I realise that's mostly due to me being terrible at accents, I wonder if it's also from hearing so many different regional accents that I don't have a consistent model to follow. Maybe it's time to pick a particular accent/speaker to imitate. I wonder whether the accents book I've ordered will say anything interesting regarding this. - As well as the syllable stress mistakes, there are a few words where the stress just isn't strong enough and there's a French-style effect of all syllables having similar stress. - I'm not happy with the general "sound" of it: it's not fluid and my voice isn't very strong. In places it seems over-enunciated, and in others, not enunciated enough. Maybe because I had barely slept the day I did it, maybe lack of practice as it was the first time in a while I had read something aloud, maybe I'm not using my diaphragm enough or simply not speaking loudly and clearly, maybe I'm just trying to make excuses. Overall I think I simply wasn't relaxed, and it shows. Anyway that's given me a few particular things to work on, and some other things should just improve with practice, like general smoothness and fluidity. I'll try to do another recording or two over the next couple of weeks. Of course this all counts towards the Output Challenge! And I'll use better equipment next time - no excuse for using my laptop's built-in mic when I practically have a recording studio in the flat. I'm not blaming my tools of course; on the contrary, a better quality recording should make my faults even more obvious. For experiment's sake and regarding my point about relaxation, I might try recording the same paragraph twice, once very relaxed, not caring, just letting it flow, then once paying lots of attention and trying to get it right. The results could be interesting, fluency versus accuracy: in conversation maybe it's better to speak more "naturally" even if it means making more mistakes? Or would that just reinforce bad habits? At any rate I think it's an argument for doing deliberate pronunciation practice in addition to conversation practice. For things like the Rs, there are some nice tongue-twisters ("scioglilingue") that might be good practice. The recording if you're feeling masochistic (warning, it might auto-play). Still need to decide which is more of a priority at the moment, pronunciation or conversation, as that'll help decide whether to take part in the iTalki challenge. Other news: Duolingo claims that I am "37% fluent in Italian". Part of me thinks "What nonsense, how did the calculate that arbitrary number, how are they defining fluency, and how can that site even measure it?". But another part thinks "Well actually, if somebody asked me to rate my Italian fluency as a percentage, I would probably give a very similar number - they must be onto something!". Edited by garyb on 25 May 2015 at 11:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 136 of 187 27 May 2015 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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È ora di fare il mio compito di questa settimana, di scrivere in Italiano. Vorrei anche scrivere un messaggio francese, lo farò domani o dopodomani.
Time to do my task for this week, to write in Italian. I'd also like to write a French post, I'll do it tomorrow or the day after. Nell'ultima settimana ho guardato un film (La stanza del figlio), un paio di episodi di Tutti pazzi per amore, e qualche video chitarristico su YouTube ("chitarristico" è una parola che non è nel dizionario ma che sento spesso per indicare qualcosa che ha a che fare con la chitarra, è una forma attributiva: "techniche chitarristiche" ecc.). Continuo a leggere Non ti muovere; è uno di questi libri la cui narrazione salta continuamente tra periodi diversi ed è quindi un po' difficile da seguire! Last week I watched a film (The son's room), a couple of episodes of Tutti pazzi per amore, and some guitar videos on YouTube ("chitarristico" is a word that's not in the dictionary but that I hear often for things to do with guitar, it's an attributive form: "guitar techniques" etc.). I'm still reading Don't move; it's one of those books whose narration continually jumps between different periods and so it's a bit difficult to follow! Oltre al libro degli accenti, ho scoperto un libro che si chiama "Freeing the natural voice" (in Italiano viene chiamato "La voce naturale", ma credo che lo leggerò in inglese!) che ho intenzione di leggere. Anche questo è previsto soprattutto per gli attori, ma io vorrei leggerlo per alcuni motivi: per l'arte di parlare in generale e il parlare in pubblico (sono una persona che spesso non parla fortemente e chiaramente), perché prima o poi voglio imparare a cantare e questo sarebbe una base, e perché quando parlo per qualche ora (e soprattutto in francese...) mi viene mal di gola, un segno che non uso bene la mia voce. Ma forse mi aiuterà anche con le lingue. Dicono che parlare Italiano è come cantare, e ho già parlato dell'importanza dell'usare bene la diaframma: qualcosa che, a quanto mi pare, agli Italiani viene molto naturale! As well as the accents book, I've discovered a book called "Freeing the natural voice" (in Italian it's called "The natural voice", but I think I'll read it in English!) that I intend to read. This one too is mostly aimed at actors, but I'd like to read it for a few reasons: for the art of speaking in general and public speaking (I'm a person who often doesn't speak loudly and clearly), because sooner or later I want to learn to sing and this would be a base, and because when I speak for a few hours (and especially in French...) I get a sore throat, a sign that I'm not using my voice well. But maybe it will also help with languages. They say that speaking Italian is like singing, and I've also mentioned the importance of using the diaphragm well: something which, it seems to me, comes very naturally to the Italians! Di recente ho parlato Italiano al telefono un paio di volte, una cosa a cui non sono abituato. Fa un po' paura; in casa va bene ma mi vergognerei un po' a farlo in pubblico o in ufficio. Non so perché; non mi faccio più problemi a parlare faccia a faccia. La scorsa settimana sono andato in un ristorante con alcuni colleghi e ho parlato con un amico Italiano che lavora lì, e non hanno battuto palpebra. Ho ricevuto qualche messaggio parlato su WhatsApp dalla parte di amici Italiani, ma ho preferito rispondere nello scritto, non mi piace l'idea di registrare un messaggio che potrebbero ascoltare più e più volte. Forse tutto questo è solo questione di timidezza e di abitudine: se fossi più abituato a parlare al telefono lo farei senza riflettere, anche in pubblico. I've spoken Italian on the phone a couple of times recently, something that I'm not used to. It's a bit scary; at home it's fine but I'd be embarrassed to do it in public or in the office. I'm not sure why; I no longer get bothered about speaking face to face. Last week I went to a restaurant with some colleagues and I spoke with an Italian friend who works there, and they didn't bat an eyelid. I've received a few voice messages on WhatsApp from Italian friends, but I've preferred to reply in writing, I don't like the idea of recording a message that they could listen to over and over. Maybe all this is just a matter of shyness and of habit. If I were more used to speaking on the phone I'd do it without thinking, even in public. Edited by garyb on 27 May 2015 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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