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Total Annihilation - Volte | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 49 of 72 15 July 2007 at 5:18pm | IP Logged |
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Another lazy day.
I spent just under an hour finishing "A Brüsinpiàn gariva ul suu", and proofread a page in Italian for Project Gutenberg. I also did a fair amount of audiobook searching, albeit with fairly poor results; I managed to understand more Turkish than I expected, but it was still little enough to be of fairly minimal use. ~1 hour, 20 minutes of Polish. I tried listening to the Polish while looking primarily at the Polish, with glances over to the English occasionally for meaning. This was somewhat helpful. It helped me pick up some common words that I didn't acquire the first time through. As in Dutch, the sound and spelling of Polish initially seemed an odd match to me, but at this point, I've mainly overcome that. This method was much more difficult and distracting than the one I used yesterday, and my comprehension was lower. Overall, I'd say it was useful, but not pleasant, unlike yesterday's method: I find reading English while listening to the target language, and only doing minimal analysis to be extremely pleasant. Yesterday's work involved looking almost purely at the English, as the texts didn't line up well due to a software problem which I managed to resolve earlier today; my short experiments with German previously also involved looking almost purely at the English. Trying too hard to match things up consciously ends up being too many things at once and destroys the pleasure, concentration, and general 'flow', and the desired matchings start happening naturally within a few hours anyhow, or at least, this has been my experience with both Polish and German. I start to see the value of a text where the languages are interleaved, rather than in corresponding side-by-side paragraphs. [Edit: I'd consider my Polish comprehension stronger than my Persian comprehension already, although I think I would be even less capable of producing it, and lack many of the words necessary for basic small talk. I'd consider it behind my Japanese and Dutch. For the time put in so far - ~5.5 hours - this seems pretty good]. Edited by Volte on 15 July 2007 at 5:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 50 of 72 16 July 2007 at 10:44pm | IP Logged |
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I read 'Cenni Storici su "La Svizzera" "Il Ticino" Appunti di Civica". It's a reasonable summary of the Swiss and Ticinene political system, including divisions of power, branches of government, and names of current elected officials, but it's clearly a reference work and rather dry.
I also read almost all of "The Master and Margarita" - in English, to prepare for listen-reading it (I've read about 90% of it). I'm quite enjoying it; I think it probably qualifies as the first 'Literature' (as opposed to random fiction novels) that I've read since high school. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 51 of 72 17 July 2007 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
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Due to an attempt at tweaking my sleep schedule that went rather badly, I spent most of yesterday asleep, and most of the rest too blurry-minded for mental work. Early in the day, I finished the English of "The Master and Margarita", and I did some things like searching for audiobooks, but nothing that really qualifies in my mind as language study.
On the good side, my brain is back in working order now. I'm still trying to gather enough Polish audio and parallel texts to give Polish a serious push. As I have a meeting today and am still putting stuff together, the amount of work I can do will be limited, but I'm planning to devote Thursday-Sunday, inclusive, to having a lot of fun reading literature and seeing how much Polish I can learn. I should also do a lot of work on my job today, given that I plan to take Thursday and Friday off (hooray for flexible academic schedules). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 52 of 72 18 July 2007 at 8:27pm | IP Logged |
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I did about 1h:20 of M&M, and about half an hour of Tolkien.
I'm starting to occasionally understand isolated phrases/sentences, and more often than that, be able to pick out words. It feels like my Polish is rapidly approaching the level of my Japanese and Dutch, though it's still behind both - not bad for under 7.5 hours, and spread across 3 days, at that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 53 of 72 19 July 2007 at 5:39pm | IP Logged |
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3 hours of M&M. I'm picking out quite a few words consistently, and starting to get a feel for the case endings.
I also spent an hour reading about Polish grammar. I skimmed "A concise Polish grammar", and a few wikipedia articles. My usual pattern for intensive learning, especially of languages, has been holding - I become extremely sleepy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 54 of 72 20 July 2007 at 8:38pm | IP Logged |
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2:45 of Polish. I seem to be having trouble doing more than that.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 55 of 72 21 July 2007 at 11:03pm | IP Logged |
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2 hours reading (Polish) Grammar in a Nutshell. It was much more enjoyable than the other grammar I read, as I found it more comprehensible, and it answered quite a few questions I'd been having that the other one did not.
Just over an hour of M&M; I got through Chapter 13, which thwarted me the previous day, and started Chapter 14. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 56 of 72 23 July 2007 at 5:04am | IP Logged |
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A day of rest. No studies. Used a little Italian, and heard some French/German words whilst at brunch with some other students, including a French and German one, but that was pretty much all.
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