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TAC 2009 - DaraghM | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6160 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 97 of 177 14 April 2009 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Summary April '09
Italian As I've moved my log to monthly summaries, I thought it easiest to start with the language I've just dabbled in. Prior to my logs, I've put my toe into the Italian stream, but never got heavily into the language. As I was heading to Florence (Firenze) for the Easter break, I decided to give it a quick revival. I didn't do any study while at home, as I didn't want to confuse it with my Spanish. Once I was on the plane, my study began. I used a combination of a Lonely Planet phrase book, and a short Italian grammar. This was supplemented on my stay with a very useful parallel text magazine in the hotel, and the gloriously tacky Italian television. The magazine was a commercial publication called Firenze, and had a number of articles in Italian and English side by side. If they added an audio version, this would be an incredible learning tool. Italian television was easy enough to follow, as it's very close to the Spanish language. If the cognate wasn't in Spanish, it was most probably similar to a French word. E.g. ma-but(Fr.mais), to speak-parlare(Fr.parler) a little-un po'(Fr.un peu). However, I noticed Italian has a couple of fickle friends with Spanish. The Italian tenere (to hold, take) I misunderstood as Spanish tener(to have), and similarly pronto means soon in Spanish, but ready in Italian. I discovered most of these errors while discussing the earthquake (terramotto) with an Italian. The word terramotto been the same between the two languages. While my exursion into Italian was very interesting, I've decided to limit my study to that trip. The language is too close to Spanish for an intermediate learner like myself, and I'll only feel comfortable returning to it once my Spanish is fluent. I did notice a huge number of Spanish people visit Firenze for the Easter weekend. While I had hacked together most of my Italian, with lots of 'Vorrei's (I'd like) during my stay, a conversation with a Spanish person felt like a totally different level in that language. I could think what I wanted to say in Spanish through Spanish, but I needed to think in English to get the Italian out. Italian Summary Total Active Study: 2 hours Passive Study: 3 hours Italian Total: 5 hours 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5706 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 98 of 177 20 April 2009 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree. Being "foreigner" to Italian and Spanish it would be too difficult to learn those two languages at the same
time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5856 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 99 of 177 20 April 2009 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
EN: It's tricky to study Spanish and Italian simultanously as foreign languages, because it's easy to get language interferences then. When I studied Romance languages at university I studied Italian and Spanisch parallely on the same language level. As far as I knew other students, I was the only one with this language combination. What helped me was that I learn languages as seperate entities and that my brain memorizes them seperately. So I could manage such a difficult language combination, but I know that many others can't. Generally I would recommend this language combination (with both languages being on the same level) only in ecceptional cases. Fasulye-Babylonia Edited by Fasulye on 20 April 2009 at 8:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6160 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 100 of 177 21 April 2009 at 11:04am | IP Logged | ||
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EP: Gracias por sus respuestas. Me he dado de cuenta de los dos lenguas son muy similar, y por eso, no los estudiaré juntos. Me interesaba que la ortagrafía en Italiano, aunque diferente de Español, resultó en la misma sílaba. E.g. Que(Ep)-Che(It). Estoy tecleando muy rapido y hay muchas faltas en ese texto.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6160 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 101 of 177 21 April 2009 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Summary April '09
Hungarian I can now give my Hungarian summary early in the month, as I've paused my study in Hungarian, and maybe Russian too. This is primarily due the amount of Spanish coursework on my plate. A large body of the Spanish coursework is essays, and I found it very hard to switch to Hungarian while pondering about the creative aspects of the Spanish essays. There was never any issue of mixing up the languages, but code swiching between them became difficult. The Hungarian study consisted of the FSI course and Carol Rounds grammar book, which is a well worn copy now. I really enjoy doing the FSI course, and it was a hard decision to put it on hold. The epiphany moment came to me when I returned from Italy. I should return to Hungarian in June, and will probably pause the Spanish at that point. Hungarian Summary Total Active Study: 30 minutes Passive Study: 6 hours Hungarian Total: 6.5 hours Edited by DaraghM on 21 April 2009 at 11:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6160 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 102 of 177 01 May 2009 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Summary April '09
Russian My brilliant plan to switch entirely to Spanish for the remainder of the Cervantes course didn't quite work. I stopped my Russian study on the 15th, and imagined I wouldn't do any more for the remainder of the month, but my little black copy of Penguins New Russian course kept grabbing my attention from the bookshelf, and I caved in on the 28th April. Regarding material, I'd been making slow progress through the Living Language course during the morning sessions, and I still remain on Unit 10. As I was at the end exercises, and can't write cyrillic while munching muesli, I had to relegate the work to the evening. However, Spanish was using up all my available evening study time. I'm not sure how I ended up starting back into the Russian, but it happened after Spanish class, when I felt completely "Spanished" out. I picked up a copy of the Penguin book, and started reading where I'd left off at unit 3. Over the next couple of days, after I'd done as much Spanish as I could in an evening, I completed units 3 to 5 of this course. The course has covered similar material to the Living language course, but is much better in it's treatment of grammar. Though I've covered all the cases at a very basic level in Living Language, I don't feel I know them like I should. The Penguin course simplifies the rules, and actually covers more ground in a more concise way. E.g. Some exceptions in the prepositional case, that don't end in -e or -и в саду - In the garden (Nominative - сад) в Крыму - In the Crimea (Nominative - Крым) Russian Summary Total Active Study: 4 hours 20 minutes Passive Study: 2 hours 40 minutes Russian Total: 7 hours 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6160 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 103 of 177 01 May 2009 at 11:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Summary April '09
Spanish As mentioned in the previous entries, I've put my Spanish from simmer to boil with mixed results. In order to increase my Spanish study, I decided to use a number of extra resources, in addition to the material I was already using. The new materials are as follows, SpanishPod: The folks at SpanishPod have created a very useful Spanish learning resource. I downloaded the Intermediate and Upper Intermediate Podcasts, and listened to a number over the month. SpanishPod teaches the Mexican variant of Spanish, and the English speaking presenter is American. This is an ideal resource for American Spanish students. The production quality is good, and it's obvious a lot of thought has gone into the product. As a student of Peninsular Spanish, this has limited it's usefulness for me. The heavy use of platicar-to chat was the first obvious sign. I also find I need to check some of their 'palabras claves' to make sure they're universal. E.g. Un aventón - a lift (specific only to Mexican Spanish) As it is just a podcast it doesn't cover as much grammar as a normal course, but it does use a combination of Spanish and English to explain the concepts. Notes in Spanish: I was really looking forward to using Notes in Spanish as it is geared towards Peninsular Spanish, but was a bit disappointed with the results. The course also features two speakers and it's entirely in Spanish. The woman, Marina, is from Madrid and speaks very clear Spanish, while Ben is an Englishman who came to Spain in 1998. Unfortunately, it seems it's Ben who does the majority of the speaking. While his Spanish is good, his accent is far from perfect, and he makes the occasional mistake which Marina corrects. The recording quality of the course is nowhere near SpanishPod, and the dialogues are loosely scripted. I'd love if this course was better, and maybe it's the worksheets that bring it up. I haven't purchased them, and not sure I will now. Puntoycoma: This isn't an online product, but samples are available at the Puntoycoma site. I purchased a copy of the magazine which was very cheap at €7, and includes 75 minutes of professionally recorded audio. In summary, this magazine is brilliant value. Most of the articles are on the accompanying CD, and it's obvious they've used professional voice actors. The copy I have used speakers from Spain, Mexico and Bolivia. Each article is assigned a difficulty level from B1-B2 to C1-C2, corresponding to the European Framework on languages. The articles are factual and cover social, cultural and even scientific material. The articles on the Dutch artist Escher and astronomy were particularly good. Other study: The rest of my study comprised the Spanish classes, and their long winded essays, as well as Platiquemos and a return to Assimil. I've also been reading El País, and the B&B Grammar book. It had been a while since I'd used Assimil Spanish with Ease, but I've restarted it again during breakfast. I haven't been doing any passive wave lessons, but progressing through the course on the active wave. However, I did notice a very serious mistake in a grammar explanation. The book says seguir plus an infinitive expresses continuation of action. This is wrong, and I think they meant to say seguir plus the gerund expresses continuation of action. Regarding Platiquemos, I've noticed it too has some serious mistakes scattered throughout. I checked the original FSI course and the mistakes aren't there. I think some of the problem can be attributed to the FSI course occasionally using phonetic descriptions of Spanish. Spanish Summary Total Active Study: 22 hours Passive Study: 32 hours Spanish Total: 54 hours Edited by DaraghM on 08 May 2009 at 4:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6160 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 104 of 177 04 June 2009 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Summary May '09
When I started my log this year, I hoped nothing major would occur to disrupt my learning plans. After reading about the loss of Spanky's father, I realised some big things can, and do occur. After my own father was diagnosed with cancer in March, I realised I couldn't take anything for granted. His situation got progressively worse, and he passed away last week. This was a bit of a shock, as he wasn't that old, and was expected to last a good bit longer. He was only 63. This life changing event led me to question a lot about everything, where I was going and what I was doing. It also clarified some things. I've come to realise that language learning is very important to me, and not something I ever want to cease. However, it did impact my current system of tracking time, as I was studying sporadically going to, staying in and returning from the hospital. While I managed to note the majority of my earlier study, I couldn't focus on the duration of the later sessions. As soon as I abandoned the detailed logging, I felt more free, and found myself doing more study not less. I may return to the system later in the year, but for now, this month will be the last with totals. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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