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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 5851 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 49 of 244 11 August 2009 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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OK here's the thing: Since I started the 5-day plan thing, I don't feel like I can take time off it. Cause I write out the dates at the top of the page and such, so not finishing on time would mean... Well I'd see it, and I don't like that very much. So here's me officially telling myself that I can indeed postpone things by a day if I need to without it needing to be a big deal. That's not to say stop it altogether, but today has been reserved for meetings and project work and whatnot, just stuff that needed to be done and had to take priority.
I was able to sneak in some Italian too though of course, a bit of random reading after work while waiting to be picked up (thank you wordreference.com - you're such a star), and a bit of listening. Some days are going to be like this though, and I have to just deal, without having it feel like I haven't done my duty or whatever. So I guess today is my day off, to the extent that I'm ever gonna have one (which would be never), but tomorrow looks like it's going to be less full. For now anyway. It seems my days have a tendency to change on their own accord these days. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 11 August 2009 at 10:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5866 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 50 of 244 11 August 2009 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Edited by mick33 on 11 August 2009 at 11:58pm 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 51 of 244 12 August 2009 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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That's the idea. I'm undecided about what I might want to do next (good thing I have 8+ months to decide) and need a blatantly biased reason to head in either direction. The decision may be made for me due to circumstances that it would be pointless to go into here, but for now I'm thinking either Greek (because the Greeks are such a prominent group in my life and the language is sweet), Estonian (or Finnish? or Estonian? or Finnish? or...?), og more romance languages (maybe Portuguese).
Finnish is pretty awesome though, you're quite right. Been curious about it since high school, where I knew a Finnish girl who was just altogether delightful... I'm awful at keeping in touch with people so I haven't seen her that many times since, but I should get back in touch - have actually been thinking about that for a while anyway. And I've had some contact with another Finnish girl recently, whom I might see (possibly a LOT) more of. So who knows. I never understood what the big deal was about the 50 billion cases in Hungarian, I was much more comfortable with that than the weirdie-pants case systems in other languages that have only a handful. I kinda love the finno-ugric group as a whole, so that's definitely a possibility, and I guess I've kind of decided I'll have a proper stab at one of them at some point. Some of my fellow countrymen would probably be horrified that it would be anything other than Sami but oh well. Maybe my next log will be "The 1-lightyear challenge: Finno-Ugric"... Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5866 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 52 of 244 12 August 2009 at 1:13am | IP Logged | ||
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| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5780 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 53 of 244 12 August 2009 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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You are a real inspiration!
I am interested to hear what 'methodology' or study-plan / strategy you use, if any. How is it helping you..? Are you able to measure your progress in Italian, if so, how do you do it? As for Finnish... Hmm... well you know Swedish is an official language there too... It is completely acceptable in Helsinki. As awesome as Finnish is, I'd never try learning it unless I found myself stranded forever in Eastern Finland.. (quite a nice thought really, just me and the moose and mosquitos in the land of 1000 lakes...) 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 54 of 244 12 August 2009 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mick, I'm sure you could find materials for Sami outside of Norway if you wanted to, or order things from here, you would surely be able to find a bookstore that could be armtwisted into shipping to the US or order things through a bookstore over there. If not then I could help. I have no idea how one would go about learning Sami though, never considered it :-) I am by no means anti-Sami (completely seriously), just so that's clear, it was just always way too far north for me to really know much about the culture. Most of Europe is easier and cheaper to reach than the north of Norway if you're from the south. Weird but true.
Cordelia: I don't really have a strategy to be honest, more like "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks". Kinda like spaghetti, which seems oddly appropriate, considering... When trying to learn a new language I just look at the things I want to learn it for in the first place and try to understand everything in them in stages (usually the language finds me, I have relatively little say in the matter), starting with a decent course and using lots of input (initially mostly music) I enjoy, which lets me firmly cement the things I know in my mind. Once I've started down that road I don't really stop as long as I still find the input interesting, it's self-motivating and my understanding just gradually builds up from me looking things up as I need to and continuing to study the things I like. It doesn't ever feel like a struggle because I'm only doing things I enjoy because I enjoy them (rule #1), and because I consistently refuse to consider things difficult (time-consuming or complex, maybe, but I don't like the word 'difficult'). I wasn't planning on using wordlists and whatnot for Italian but because of a recent change in circumstances there's more of a time aspect for learning vocabulary, so I've been adapting Iversen's wordlist method to suit my needs (I've described it earlier in this log somewhere) and have been using that as well as translation L2 > L1 > L2 to practice. It's new to me and I'm still experimenting to find the right way to do it, but it's great fun so far - watching things set up camp in my brain is just great. Mostly though, the main focus of my learning is just based on the things I want to read and listen to, and gradually understanding those better. In the beginning I understand very little but as I carry on learning that natural feel for the language develops more and more and I give myself as many opportunities as possible to be surprised at things I understand. I guess that's how I measure progress - there's no good way of measuring it (though I'm trying to develop one for vocabulary, which I've been working on in the last few pages of this log) but I try to keep things bookmarked that are above my level and then look at them later to see how much better I can understand them. The results have been quite enjoyable so far :-) It's nice to re-watch an interview or something that I just couldn't understand before, and now be able to follow it almost perfectly and without straining to understand. I guess that's how it goes, I know what the things I want to understand are, and then I just work in a fairly haphazard way learning bits and pieces, and then suddenly it all comes together and I don't know how it happened. I'm quite a messy learner (the previous sentence also applies pretty well to how I've tended to write essays for school and uni) but it seems to work. </essay> Anywho, as for what I've been up to today... Have been reading (and chuckling at) some random texts from my favourite blogger Personalità confusa, and I'm halfway through translating text 3 into Italian. I love working with texts this way - it's great for showing me the things I still need to fix. One major point that came up today was prepositions, which are definitely the kinds of things my eyes can skip in my reading because I understand them, but then when I try to produce them I'm frequently unsure about which one to use. So that needs some work. I'll continue to note their use in my texts and input and just try to produce them correctly in my translations into Italian, I imagine that, as per usual, after a couple of failed attempts things will make sense and the right word will come to mind easily enough. Oh and I shouldn't ever take a day off again, ever, EVER. That was just awful for momentum, even though it wasn't even a full day off. Or maybe I'm just tired today, I don't know. Actually I do think it's just tiredness, too little sleep these last few nights, which tends to mess me up. I'll need to be more structured when I get back home though. Not sure if I'll start another text today, probably not. If not then text 4 will start tomorrow. As long as they overlap by at least a day I'm fine with whatever time allows me to do. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 12 August 2009 at 8:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MLSUSA94 Groupie United States linguisticventures19 Joined 5650 days ago 50 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 55 of 244 12 August 2009 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a really good blog; very rich with suggestions. I am fascinated to see your progress. Good luck ;)
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| densou Senior Member Italy foto.webalice.it/denRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6074 days ago 120 posts - 121 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 56 of 244 13 August 2009 at 2:12am | IP Logged | ||
*wondering* Did you go to a 'fest' ? :D Heh, hangover is a baaaad thing *grim smile* Just kidding again. Come on, I shall wait for your incoming Italian essay :D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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