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The 1-year challenge: Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| KiwiKiwi Tetraglot Groupie Belgium Joined 5638 days ago 50 posts - 50 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Russian | Message 9 of 244 21 July 2009 at 11:25am | IP Logged | |||||
And that is what i mean :) I live in Germany for some time, which is not my homecountry. And here the people are also so 'nett'... They make you compliments a lot, just to give positive motivation. But they can overdo it. In the beginning they complimented me a lot, but i knew i could do way better. Then they complimented my friends from other countries too, although it was so crystalclear that some really did not speak German well! I think it is nice to be complimented, take it as motivation! But also look for real critical persons who can tell you how to speak better. But this is my opinion. Everyone has a different one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5851 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 10 of 244 22 July 2009 at 9:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the encouragement, guys! I'm optimistic about this, mostly because I choose to be - whether that's realistic or not though, I guess time will tell, but either way I will be happy just to learn Italian well no matter how long it takes... I'm enjoying the journey too though, so it's not just about the destination - even if the destination is a pretty sweet one, the journey is too.
Rhian, I know what you mean. Who knows, 'after' Italian I might not be able to decide on another language I'd like to learn to fluency (although Estonian is a delight, and one I've been curious about for a LONG time) so I might be back to my old philandering ways in no time... We'll see. But Italian first! I don't know what's up with my brain recently but it would seem I'm taking extra long to recover from the whole jetlag thing - just got back from California less than 2 weeks ago, and since I have a sleep disorder anyways I guess my case is a little messier than usual because my brain is still mostly uncooperative. And I think I might be coming down with something. So yesterday I just listened to some music including some new stuff, and read some articles online, focusing on getting the gist rather than looking up everything (cause I was tired. See below), and then later I listened to an interview on youtube that I found a few months ago - back then I didn't understand much at all, but now it seemed to just come naturally! I remember really wanting to understand it, cause I'm interested in the content, so I was a bit frustrated when I wasn't able to but I figured I could just leave it for later and have a look to see how much of it I could grasp after studying some more. There were a few words here and there that I missed, so I looked up some of those - it was great to just understand organic Italian at natural speed without even really trying (including the grammar used), and rather pleasant that the things I needed to look up were the exception for once :-) Win! I feel like I've skipped over a lot of words in the early stages of my learning, things that I figured out more or less from context and just moved on, because when I read articles these days there are still a lot of things I don't understand, so I don't usually look up everything, but I'm starting to feel like I should go back over the things I took from context earlier to make sure I have the lexical meaning firmly ingrained in my mind rather than some vague idea about what the word means (although I would say that having both the lexical meaning AND the intuitive sense for the word is the ideal combination and something to aim for), and that perhaps I need to start looking up everything right about now. In some cases it won't be much, but I feel like nowadays there are a lot of cases where I understand well enough to just skip right past the words I don't fully know, but I'll never learn them that way. So from now on, I'll try to look up most things if not everything (gtranslate should come in handy for this), I probably won't be able to recall everything I look up from any given article if there are a lot of words (as there sometimes are), but I figure throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, and I know that I'm more of a repetition-based learner than a crammer anyway, so if I look up x word from an article 10 times after reading it in different ones then it's bound to eventually just stick. Besides, it'll be good for me to see the same word in lots of different contexts, then each one will add to my understanding of the word until I'll eventually find myself reading it without even the slightest wonder about what it means... Hopefully. I should start having a look at my grammar books soon, there are some things that have come up recently that I'd like to read about, but it won't be this week - lots of other tasks piling up that won't take care of themselves... Liz Edited by Lizzern on 22 July 2009 at 9:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Belardur Octoglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5553 days ago 148 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2, Spanish, Dutch, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Lowland Scots Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Italian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean | Message 11 of 244 22 July 2009 at 9:44am | IP Logged | |||||
Haha, maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not talking about compliments, I was talking about "Sie sind 'n Amerikaner??" moments. It actually usually only comes out because I mix schwäbisch and bairisch expressions, and someone clues in that I've learned it as a second language from that. On topic: Lizzern, keep with it through the busy times, I know you are doing great, you optimist, you :P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5851 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 244 22 July 2009 at 9:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, yep I'm not stopping :-) Not a day without something of use.
Just updated the first thread with my opera idea... I remember listening to Nessun Dorma a few months ago (in my pre-Italian era, as it were) and thinking "that just sounds SO cool"... Hmm. I've been thinking about getting a hold of some more classical type music for a while, just never got round to it - what with uni and other work and all that, there's always something else I could/should be doing - but maybe this is as good an excuse as any. It'll benefit my Italian, and my music collection, at the same time - happiness! If anyone knows of a pretty (yes - PRETTY) version of La Divina Commedia I'd be grateful if you would post about it here... It would preferably need to have the Doré illustrations, but I could live without them, since the English version I have is gorgeous and fully illustrated. I won't be taking notes in it so it wouldn't have to be on pencil-friendly paper. I guess I'll get one from Internet Bookshop Italia, they seem to have absolutely everything you could possibly want or need, but it's hard to know which version to buy, as with every other book it seems like I'm dependent on reading heaps of Amazon reviews before deciding on anything. Edited by Lizzern on 22 July 2009 at 9:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5851 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 13 of 244 22 July 2009 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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...And we're back! OK, not quite, but at least I pulled my Assimil book out from under a pile of junk for the first time since I got back from holiday. (OK maybe not the FIRST, I've done about 10 active phase lessons since I got back. But still!) I had big plans for how much I was going to do on the plane but I got way less done than I thought I would - but found out I sat next to an Italian for almost 11 hours... Somebody who was seated elsewhere came over and spoke Spanish to him (but said "niente" instead of "nada", which sounded truly odd in the middle of an otherwise Spanish sentence) so I figured he was from a Spanish-speaking country too, then found out just before we got off the plane that he was Italian. Oh well. Wasn't the kind of person you'd just chat up randomly anyway (though it wouldn't matter if he had been, I don't talk to random people on planes unless they talk to me first), but it was cool. Oh, and I eavesdropped on some Italian tourists on their way to Norway on the plane home from Frankfurt, which was kinda fun - there were so many of them! And I understood them more or less, the problem was mostly that I couldn't hear them well because of all the noise. In general it's like I'm surrounded by Italy-related things these days, it keeps coming up in the most random ways you can imagine, at work and otherwise... It's fun. And I'd forgotten how truly beautiful most Italian last names are. Can I have one too? :-)
Anyway. Did the 7 last lessons of my second round of the passive phase of Assimil today. Some stuff on formal writing and whatnot - boring, boring, boring - but at least that's out of the way, for now - and since it's not necessarily the sort of thing that everyone knows how to do even in their own language, it doesn't bother me all that much if I don't immediately learn it perfectly in Italian. Now I'll need to finish the active phase, I know I'm behind but that's ok, I planned it that way because I figured I'd rather get through the passive phase faster, and I stand by that decision. The lessons are all on my ipod of course, so I can listen to them whenever I want - which I did actually do on the plane. I'm typing up the active phase lessons as I do them, not just to practice writing but also so that I can send them to myself in gmail and have a handy little reference for myself should I ever want to use it when I don't have my book with me. That will make more sense once I actually have an iphone, but I'm typing the lessons anyway, it's good practice! Also had a look at some articles today, but meh, nothing really grabbed me. I did find some new and interesting words though, so it's all good. Now if my brain would switch back on, that'd be great thanks... Hope I snap out of this soon. Listened to some music, I'll probably just stop writing that I did that, cause it'll just get repetitive and I do so most days anyway. I have to say, though, that it really helps hammer some things home, it might just be bits and pieces here and there, but it seems the things I learn from music truly stick without me even trying. I guess that's how it goes when we repeat something without it seeming like actual work. Sneaky. The last lesson of Assimil mentioned the advanced course - no fair! It's not available from English, sometimes I so wish I spoke French - and my mum's New French With Ease just arrived today, so I might consider doing the course after she's done with it, just so I can get access to the awesome from-French courses... Like Estonian, which may or may not be up next, hard to tell now that there's a Hebrew With Ease coming! But I shouldn't be thinking that far ahead - although I do have a list of about 11 languages besides Italian that I'd love to learn. Actually, I might just list them, for no reason really, and in no particular order: Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Icelandic, Portuguese, Hungarian, Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian. Oh well, I'm still young... There's time :-) Tomorrow I will have been studying Italian for 3 months, or around 3 months - I don't remember the exact date I started (perfectionism fail) but this was my best estimate. I wish I could have a percentage bar or something to measure my progress, but alas... I still feel like I'm in the dark about whether I'm doing awful or doing alright, so I probably won't do much self-evaluation tomorrow, except to say that I'm still optimistic about this, I just hope I can keep it up when uni starts up again and I'll be way busier than I am now. At least I haven't lost motivation yet - the main benefit of doing this the fun way is I don't risk burning out as long as I make sure I'm enjoying myself... Learning Italian is still pretty awesome to me! Liz Edited by Lizzern on 10 August 2009 at 12:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5851 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 14 of 244 22 July 2009 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just listened to the first recording from La Divina Commedia from Librivox, it was about 35 minutes long and there were a ton of things I didn't understand, but it's such an inspiring book that it's kind of a goal for me to be able to understand it fully, even though I know it's way above my level at this point. I should probably start doing that listening-reading thing in addition to just listening. What I did today is great for listening practice and trying to just listen for every sound really helps with understanding the words too (the ones I know anyway), but I also need to make sure I don't spend all my time just doing that, and I think that with a text like this one it would be too time-consuming to just take my dictionary out and go to town... So when I get back home in about a month I'm going to have a go at the technique explained in the thread above, with my English text (which is apparently one of the best ones) as well as the original in Italian and we'll see how that goes. It's an inspiring text though, I feel pretty much the same way about Dante as I do about Shakespeare, though I think I might love Dante even more... Edited by Lizzern on 22 July 2009 at 11:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5851 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 15 of 244 23 July 2009 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Today seems to be the day for tying up loose ends, both at home and at work, so I've been fairly busy. Listened to some music, read some articles, and listened to a recording in Italian that somebody sent me, but other than that... I need my brain back now.
I realized today that I still have somewhat of a tendency to lean on Spanish, for some reason. I thought I'd stopped that. If there's an expression I don't know and I'm put on the spot (still a hypothetical situation) then I might just end up Italianising what I know from Spanish (or Catalan, potentially), so I need to make sure I learn the right thing to say before I embarrass myself... Which reminds me, once again - I need an idioms dictionary! Once my brain's feeling up to it again - I think I probably have a mild flu of some sort, just haven't identified it as such cause I usually get much sicker and much more obviously sick than this - I'm going to try to read articles more carefully rather than what I'm doing now, by basically looking up everything and then translating the article into English, then translating it back without looking at the original text. Just like the active phase of Assimil, just more extensive. I want to make sure I don't get too caught up in this or that little thing though and then end up taking long to do this, I need it to be fast, cause I need to learn to do this without having to go over things in my head first. Had a nice long chat with a fellow italophile (italy-o-phile? is there actually a word for this?) over lunch today, which was nicer than hearing my family compete about who's experienced the worst behaviour from Italians! My colleague recommended the book Extra Virgin, which I'll probably end up buying. Sounded like a fun book, and quite different to The Dark Heart of Italy, which an Italian recently recommended to me! I'll probably buy that too though, since I'm interested in the culture, whether good or bad it's always a good thing to be informed. Apparently some Italians are hugely pessimistic about their own country. And some of them learn Norwegian... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6021 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 244 23 July 2009 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's the swine flu! ;-D
Italian is a very interesting language, one that I might see myself learning once I get Japanese under control. They got brilliant ice cream, if anything. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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