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The 1-year challenge: Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 201 of 244 24 November 2009 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Looks like today is the day for another evaluation - I've been studying for 7 months. That's well past the halfway point - the one that would actually mean something if I were still doing the 1-year thing (I might need a new title soon). Maybe if I'd studied more and wasn't prioritising other things I might actually try for my own standard of advanced/native-level fluency by late April, but oh well, I'm interested but not that interested. Yes, I went there... Don't get me wrong, I love Italian. I really do. But other things are more important to me and take priority any day.
Anyway. The most obvious issue these days: There is still a LOT of vocabulary I don't know. Seriously. My word count is at over 4200 words now, and if you take out the things that are counted more than once (forms of the same verb, singular and plural, and so on) and names I guess that might take it down to anywhere between 3500 and 4000. Still a nice number. But what I don't understand is how people learn, say, 2500 words, and manage to understand your average newspaper article or follow your average TV show or read your average book. The main problem for me at this stage is that there are still major vocabulary gaps everywhere, not to mention idioms I've never seen before, so it's hard for me to imagine how someone at my level of vocabulary can read anything comfortably and discuss any subject without running into something they don't understand. I've seen some claims to that effect, so I guess some people have magical deduction skills I don't, but my word count is not that inflated and vocabulary is still a problem, no doubt about it. I guess I might be comfortable with most things when I reach the 10k mark or something along those lines, but I still have a long way to do. So that's the main issue right now, input-wise. One of these days I'll write a bit more about how I feel about production, but I guess at this stage I'm siding with Khatzumoto of AJATT, who once said "stop talking before you hurt yourself". More on why later. I watched a video by Moses McCormick today, about studying languages to native fluency - that was quite a dose of optimism. There are enough naysayers in the world so it's good that there are people like him around who are so matter-of-factly about the whole thing being possible. So that got me thinking about my own goals (again) and I definitely want to go for native-level fluency in Italian before taking on another language as my primary one. How will I know when I get there? I'm not really sure. But there are some points that stand out to me that seem important (this post is partly for posterity, btw, so mostly for my own sake). This is just my own opinion and my own standard and you're welcome to disagree, but we all have our own goals and interests and approaches with our languages and this is mine. I wrote in another thread, "In a perfect world you could distinguish between cultural fluency and linguistic fluency, but they're too closely connected to really separate them in any meaningful way. I guess for me the definition of fluency would involve being able to do everything I can do in my native language, as comfortably as in my native language, with about the same level of general knowledge as an adult with a decent general education. But there will always be gaps, so maybe natives and non-native speakers will always be separate species, who knows..." That's my definition of the kind of fluency I want, and it's quite a high goal, I know. But frankly, after dabbling in a bunch of languages that are now, for all intents and purposes, dead, I don't particularly see the point of going for anything less. If I've been studying a language and find I'm still restricted in some way, or can't understand this or that, that's a problem that needs solving, not one that needs to be tolerated and worked around, because to me flaws are meant to be corrected, no matter what they are. Outside of language learning too. So if I reach a stage where I can do most things ok, but still lack the skills to function well in a certain area, that area needs work. Later in the same thread, I wrote, "I wouldn't meet the 'any topic' standard in my native language either. (Intermediate, yay!) Nor do I particularly care too. But I definitely want to be able to discuss my own chosen career field in as much detail in Italian as I can in Norwegian, in fact I'll only really be able to call myself fluent when I'm at that stage of understanding and comfort. It only makes sense to tailor our new languages to the needs we have and the way we function in our native language. (I mean that in terms of picking up specialised vocabulary, not as in using L1 as a template for L2 learning or translating idioms or thinking in L1 while speaking L2. That would be an altogether bad thing.) It's not like we're creating a new persona that knows everything. I care as much about the things that interest me in Italian as I do in Norwegian, and my disinterest in other topics also follows me, whatever language I happen to be expressing myself in. So if I ever end up in a conversation in English or Italian or whatever other language and I find I don't know the specialised vocabulary in any language, that's ok. Nobody can be articulate and well-educated about everything, so we will inevitably have gaps in our native language too." Right now I'm considering the possibility of moving to Italy or Switzerland after university, so the career thing is definitely a point to consider. My field is full of specialised vocabulary, much of which is Latin-based, so though I get some things for free that is still a huge task. I guess at this stage, the point is that I want to be as fluent in advanced discussion to have the framework to discuss the field skillfully once I know the vocabulary. I don't expect to relearn everything in Italian but if I do decide to go for a career in an Italian-speaking country, I will have to spend some time making sure I'm stable on the vocabulary that's relevant to what I end up specialising in - I'd need to know more than the average person does of course, but for now I do expect to pick up the general things most people know from my normal study. Maybe I should just get an Italian textbook or something, but uni textbooks are at times ridiculously expensive, especially if they're in a language other than English (at least that's how it is here) so it probably won't happen, as there are better ways to use that money. I guess I could just read up on things online every now and then. Another thing that just occurred to me out of nowhere the other day was that it's important to me that I get to the stage of understanding where natives allow me to play with their language, without it being seen as a mistake or particularly non-native. You know, there are things natives can say where it will be understood that it's a play on words, but if a non-native speaker says it it can be interpreted as an honest mistake and lack of understanding. Or worse, a bad attempt at making a joke. So I need to get good enough for people to trust me to handle the language well. This might be important to me for no other reason than because this sort of thing is a pretty big deal in Norwegian, being linguistically clever and a good story-teller are highly valued qualities here, so I want to get to that point in Italian. I might never get the ninja skills some people I know have, but that's ok - I'd settle for the level I'm at in Norwegian. (Though how weird would it be if you were funnier in another language than in your native language?) Anyway, the point still stands that I need to be allowed to mess around without things getting awkward. Khatzumoto also talks about getting to a level that's better than native - it would be cool to eventually get to that level, but I'm not sure what it means. Well, I sort of do. I guess I'll find out when I'm at native level - what separates your average native from your average eloquent native? It's actually kinda inspiring that I'll eventually be able to explore that concept - highly motivating to me, and keeps me from getting sidetracked with other languages. If I never get to a really advanced level and stay at intermediate, even if highly functional, I'll never know what it's like to use the language fully, knowing the neat little tricks some natives are so good at using. It's very cool to listen to people do it who are good at it, so hopefully I'll get there too eventually, in some way. I also want people to go full speed, talking to me like they would to anybody else. Some nationalities will do this anyway and never slow down, I'm not sure Italian speakers are like that (the ones I've spoken to were really nice about the whole thing) but the colour of my skin is more than enough for people to understand that I'm not a native Italian speaker, and I don't want that to slow people down. If I need them to slow down while I'm still learning then yeah, but once I'm at fluency level I want people to realise within a few seconds that they can speak to me at exactly the same level they would speak to a native speaker. It'll be hard to be mistaken for a native with my complexion, but maybe I can at least pass for Swiss. As for when I'll change my status to basic fluency, or advanced fluency, I don't really know. Some people use the word fluent to basically mean they're talking and it flows more or less, but I can't find it in me to relate to that definition in any meaningful way. I lose track of how I would define myself, but what matters is how I feel about understanding things, and eventually producing the language, and everything's on track. I'm quite confident in my methods now and I know that this is what I'd do if I decide to take up another language after Italian (which I'm not sure I will at this stage, I may forgo further language learning after I'm done with Italian). Of course I'm open to re-evaluating and trying new methods if they look useful and fun, but I've seen so far that simply doing what I've been doing gets me where I want to go. I just need to keep going, things will continue to improve, and I'll reach my goals eventually. And that's pretty cool in itself. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 26 November 2009 at 1:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 202 of 244 24 November 2009 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the tips on idiom dictionaries. I think I'm going to use that as an excuse (shipping expenses) to also order "Remembering the Hanzi" since I'm itching after those clever Chinese characters more and more each day.
On to your reading dilemma, I've always been mildly skeptical of those "with these many words you can.." claims, but then skepticism from someone with no experience sure is worth a lot right. But then I don't have the same intuition for quantification that some people apparently have. I heard somewhere a statement to the effect that "reading a text with 20% unknown words is still productive, but 25% is too much". Ehm kay. Do these people literally count them up or is this a shooting from the hip estimate? And what qualifies as "unknown" is not so clear to me, there are words I've seen but still haven't understood. There are others somewhere along the spectrum to understanding. Production has me confused too. I always "thought" it was the aim of language learning to start uttering stuff as soon as possible. Then there is Krashen and friends who claim that you only acquire bad habits doing that, and by letting yourself be immersed you'll just begin speaking in correct sentences, thanks to your lack of misunderstanding of the patterns. In as much as that "is what children do", children have their faulty speech corrected all the time, in the early stages above all. And not just for pronunciation but grammar too. So I'm not really buying that, although I'll allow that it gets your error rate down. But suppose there's no way to go from silence to fault less speech, that means you have to practice one way or another in order to get the correcting feedback, right? So... yeah. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 203 of 244 25 November 2009 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ooh, Hanzi. Go for it. I'll probably never end up going for Mandarin or Japanese even though I'm technically interested, cause I'm not sure I'm inspired enough to go to all the trouble of learning the writing systems. Maybe someday, but I doubt it. Have fun.
Regardless of how people arrive at estimates of how many words you can get away with not knowing while still being able to understand things reasonably well, I still think that every word is important enough that it can potentially throw you off if there are one or more words in a sentence that you don't know. Just look at how significant some words are - like conjunctions (at least I think that's what they're called), which basically change everything about how things relate to each other in a sentence. Passive understanding of every single word is an obvious goal to me, because I don't see how you can comfortably function otherwise - sure, you can deduce the meaning of some words, but I generally prefer to have seen a word before in some way, maybe in a wordlist, to at least have a starting point and a general idea. Somewhere above cluelessness. <snip> Nevermind. On another note I suddenly found myself wordlist-less the other day, I have the next two texts all underlined and ready to go, so hopefully I can get one of them done tomorrow or Friday - feeling awfully unproductive these days, at least language-wise. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 26 November 2009 at 1:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 204 of 244 26 November 2009 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That's a wordy way to say "I'm not sure" :)
I thought of something else though. Why is practicing conversation (with someone who knows the language) good for you? Because even if we say for the sake of argument that it doesn't teach you to get better for all the reasons you stated, what you get is very useful, very personalized, input. More input. To learn from. Situation specific and everything. Which you are very likely to benefit from as a base of useful phrases the next time you have a conversation in said language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 205 of 244 26 November 2009 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That's a wordy way of saying there are issues. Lots of them. But when it comes down to it, I'm comfortable with how I want to go about this, so I'm not really unsure about what to do. And I'm glad I didn't just start writing and talking straight away.
I'm not sure how much you can passively pick up in conversation if you're stumbling through the things you're trying to say - that sort of thing tends to get us very focused on what's going on with us, and possibly less able to listen to what we're hearing. There would be benefits too though, obviously. I just don't feel so inclined at this stage - although if I didn't have to actively seek out opportunities to practice speaking, I'd probably do it. But such is life. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 206 of 244 27 November 2009 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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No new wordlist yet. On some days certain books come jumping out of their slumber on the shelves just to kick you in the shins, and this week has been filled with such days. I might do another list tomorrow. But wait... Tomorrow and Sunday are going to be like that too. More so, even. Yay.
So this post is going to be a bit random. First off, I suspect that the dialects of Italian (that is, various accents of native Italian, not all those other fun languages - no sarcasm intended by the use of the word 'fun') I've heard most so far probably belong to a certain area more than others. I found a cover version of a song I like the other day and the singer's vowels are SO much more closed than in the original. Especially the A. Of course I had to check where the singers are from (or the cover singer anyway) - the original, Calabria (tip of the stiletto), the cover, way up north (close to the borders of Slovenia type north). I'm very much more used to the type of pronunciation in the original (whether that's typical of the region or not, I don't know) so I wonder if I've taught myself to think of something as standard pronunciation that isn't really - maybe what sounds most normal to me is actually strongly coloured by a certain area of origin. I'm actually fine with that. It'll be interesting to see what I end up sounding like - but my vowels definitely tend to be more open than closed at this point, much like the original version of the song. It'll be interesting to see if I ever get told I sound more like people from one part of the country than another part. Obviously not a problem yet as I obviously don't have a native accent at this stage, but once I do - and eventually I will - I wonder what I'll sound like to natives. I just hadn't really realized how much I've been influenced by some kinds of Italian compared to others, but I guess that's only natural when some of your favourite singers are from the same area - and sisters, even. (Gold star goes to whoever can guess who I mean, without cheating!) Random note on my synesthesia thing (I have grapheme-colour, and some other things), I never realized this until recently but the colours of the individual letters in the word Italian actually matches the Italian flag pretty well. I is white, A is a darkish green colour, T is dark red... L (yellow) and N (brownish) don't really fit, but they don't really stand out much (some letters tend to dominate a word). How oddly appropriate - and I assure you, these letters have the same colours in other words, so there's no connection in how the colours came to be the way they are in the first place. Other country names and such don't match at all, the word Spanish has nothing to do with any of the colours of the flag or other colours I associate with the country or its people. So there's a nice bit of symmetry going on there with Italian. On an unrelated note: Do not mess with the mafia, they will blow up bridges under you. Watched a documentary on the heroin trade with the US (back in the 80s) the other day and that stuff was whack. After the stuff that's been in the news recently, I'm just really glad I live in a place where you don't have violence around you every day. I've also been reading Personalità confusa, it turns out his readers thought he was a she for the first 7 months. By accident, originally. I imagine that must've required some serious maneuvering to avoid grammatical forms that would give anything away. Kinda makes me want to go back and read those first months all over again, just to see how he did it. I hadn't noticed at all, but I knew the blogger was male before I read those months of the blog anyway, so it caught me completely by surprise. Hilarity. If you want to read the post where he reveals how it all happened, it was posted in June 2003 I think, entitled Alessia & Io, or something along those lines. Did not see that coming... Liz Edited by Lizzern on 27 November 2009 at 11:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 207 of 244 27 November 2009 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am feeling the exact same way. I haven't posted in my own log because I'm too ashamed to admit openly to myself that even though I have had the entire week off of school (Thanksgiving break here), I have gotten next to nothing done language-wise or school-wise. Maybe it's just the time of year?
Why ever not? Kanji is VEEEERY fun and interesting (not like that stupid katakana that I still cannot master). It seems really daunting at first, you know, having to memorize 2000 or so (or more, if you're going for Chinese hanzi) little pictographs, their meanings, and pronunciations, but once you get into it, it's exciting! You should try it. I wish I had started learning kanji before I started learning the actual Japanese language so I would have had a base for being literate...
The administrator has something about this somewhere on here. It shows two example texts in English the way the would look to an English language learner if they knew only the 2,000, 5,000, and 10,000 most common words... Or something like that. It was pretty interesting, because even though I knew all of the words around the blotted out words, I had no idea still what the word was. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 208 of 244 28 November 2009 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Oh, one of the basic rules of my life is that I don't get to feel bad about not getting study-related work done on holidays. One of the last things I did before my high school final exams (I had 15 of them over a couple of weeks) was go to Spain on vacation over Easter, didn't study a minute and it was the best thing I could have done with that time, for myself and even for my exams. You sound like you have a lot going on - so please let yourself embrace the chances you have to take a break :-) Honestly, it's fine to just chill every once in a while without feeling like you have things to catch up on. If you get in the habit of constantly trying to fulfill requirements in every spare moment, then when you get to uni you'll need to tone it down fast, cause there's no limit to how much you can expect of yourself. At least there is no upper limit in what I study, and if you wanted to spend every moment of every day cramming, you could, and still have a mountain of things you could never hope to keep track of fully. Taking breaks to do things you enjoy, or just to let yourself relax for a while, is good for you.
About the Hanzi/Kanji/I-really-should-know-the-difference-by-now thing, I only really have a fleeting interest in these languages in the first place, I'm far too easily suckered into grand promises from watching House of Flying Daggers and the like (heck, even Kung Fu Panda), but it never lasts. Maybe someday I'll go to China and come back feeling ridiculously inspired, but right now I'm managing two potentially all-consuming parts of my life, and then basic sustenance and sanity alongside (oh, and Italian), so I'm plenty busy, so I'm not sure when I'd fit in anything else that major. Unfortunate, but that's how it is - I'm comfortable with that reality, but it does mean I can't take on that much else unless it's really interesting. Sounds like an interesting experiment, actually seeing what texts look like if you take out certain words. Let's have a look at part of your post if you take out some of the words: "The ???? has something about this somewhere on here. It shows two ????? texts in English the way they would look to an English ?????? ?????? if they knew only the 2,000, 5,000, and 10,000 most ????? words... Or something like that. It was ?????? ??????, because even ?????? I knew all of the words around the ?????? out words, I had no ????? ?????? what the word was." And that is why I want passive understanding of every single word as a reasonable minimum for understanding. The example above is somewhat exaggerated perhaps, but I tend to question how much you can really pick up from context alone, unless you encounter the same word over and over such that it becomes glaringly obvious to you what it must mean. That's not really going to be the case for most words though. And I'd still check with a dictionary, no matter what - there's always the chance we could be wrong, or a little off, and I don't trust myself to automatically know the difference between that and genuine understanding. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 28 November 2009 at 12:30am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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