I thought this was supposed to be fun (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

I thought this was supposed to be fun
Tags: Michel Thomas \| Pimsleur \| Italian
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numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 73 of 182 19 October 2009 at 11:04pm \| IP Logged
	What's this? Noone mocking my accent? I'm disappointed in you people! I'm doing a rather thorough chapter on the condizionale composto and I'm seeing a lot of sentences like: > Sarei venuto in città, ma la mia macchina è stata rotta. Where conditionals are involved the meaning of the sentence tends to become more complicated and thus I more often hit upon the need to translate the structure to myself part by part so that I can make it out. This doesn't work exceedingly well in English, because you would say "I would have come", with the verb in infinitive. So it's not a good mapping. However, in Norwegian we do use the perfect form for this: "Jeg ville ha kommet". 1 person has voted this message useful
Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5901 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese	Message 74 of 182 19 October 2009 at 11:16pm \| IP Logged
	Nice work on the audio! You sound a bit like me (poverino) which kinda has me wondering what Norwegian dialect you speak. There is something vaguely Norwegian-sounding about it... So put me out of my misery: Whereabouts did you get your Norwegian from? :-) (We may have gone to the same school, you know. I'm curious!) Also, about the conjunctive words thing that you talked about on, uhm, page 7 - the more I read, the more I'm convinced that's the only way, reading lots and lots (and LOTS) until things start to make more sense. Extensive (as opposed to intensive) reading has helped a lot with those pesky oh-so-important words that show up and change everything - sometimes the whole meaning of the sentence hinges on them, so they feel too important to miss. It seems I can look these words up a kajillion times and still not really know what they mean, but some of them started to make a lot of sense just 50-ish pages into LOTR (which is even better in Italian than in English, who knew?). I still have serious issues with some of them, notably anything involving -pure (except oppure! ...maybe) and a few other bad boys that evade understanding, but I figure if reading helped with some of them, it's bound to help with others too. Keep up the good work, have fun :-) Liz 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 75 of 182 20 October 2009 at 12:20am \| IP Logged
	Welcome, lurker. In my early formative years I lived in Oslo (I miss thee), upon which the family made the move to Trondheim where I spent 15 years fighting tooth and nail (I like to think successfully) not to be influenced by the butt ugly local dialect. I don't know how that plays out for you school wise. Somehow I got the impression you're from the south but I don't remember why I would think that. Flips back to page 7 Oh yeah, that. Yeah, it's not the end of the world. I have bigger fish to fry these days as my mastery of new grammar is actually slipping unfortunately. So that probably means my original assumption being "finish this textbook and I'll be golden" does not hold water. But I do believe I'll have enough of a grasp on everything to not be particularly stumped once I see it in my reading. And it also probably means that even if I remain active in Italian it's going to take a year or two before I'll have the grammar down pat. But that's tolerable, it won't impede my ability to gain more depth just with the grammar basis I'll have. Yeah, I'm reading a bit myself. 100 pages so far of a Robert Ludlum novel. At first I was reading with a highlighter, picking out a lot of stuff. But I got tired of that and right now I don't look up anything, it annoys me and it means I have to do a postmortem every time I finish reading. So I'm just gonna let the cognates and the comprehensible grammar and idioms sink in and try something else later (LR?). Oppure you know from "oppure la metropolitana", chapter 5 or something from Assimil. :) I do wonder a bit where I want to go after I'm done with the textbook. Clearly I'd like to continue a fairly rapid rate of progress, but I haven't gathered a lot of strategy for that yet. Edited by numerodix on 20 October 2009 at 12:21am 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 76 of 182 20 October 2009 at 12:30am \| IP Logged
	Oh and what you said about smoking in Assimil? Dear god do they bring it up a lot in the textbook too. I remember when I went to Italy in 2005, just after the smoking ban had come into effect. What a delight that was! 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 77 of 182 21 October 2009 at 2:37am \| IP Logged
	Doing a little reading at my desk for a change. Also feel like I'm letting Leopejo down, he's sitting there twiddling his thumbs. > Non però se si tratta di un lavoro concentrato che si svolge in gran parte nei locali stessi. Though not if it concerns work that happens/unfolds in large part in those very offices. "si tratta" is the important find here, a phrase used a lot that more or less mirrors "it concerns". > Mi ricordi di mostrargliele, fra un paio di mesi. Remind me to show them to you in a couple of months. > Si tratta in entrambi i casi di informazioni. In both cases it concerns information. > Allora perché diavolo non hanno fatto niente al riguardo? Then why the hell haven't they done anything about it? riguardo here is curious, it tends to come up, meaning "regarding it" > Sarei perfino in grado di esporle la logistica dei costi e della dislocazione. Here we find esporle, of the verb esporre. Which means to expose. These are Easter eggs, sometimes they make them harder to find. > Sarà meglio che andiamo a dare un'occhiata a questi ultimi due indirizzi. We better go take a look "give an eye to" the last two addresses. I don't particularly care for this "dare un'occiata". Idioms get sort of annoying sometimes if they are overly literal. > Questo non riuscivano a tollerarlo. Again this redundancy of reference. The "lo" is not necessary because the object is established using "questo". And yet Italian loves to reiterate the object whenever possible. > Trevayne aveva la sensazione di essere appena passato attraverso una sala piena di specchi in cui la sua immagine si rifletteva migliaia di volte, ma non necessariamente a se stesso. A beneficio di altri. The "se" is puzzling. Is it supposed to be sé? But if so I think "stesso" might be redundant. > Si scambiarono il solito bacio, ma Trevayne quasi non se ne accorse. Remember kids, when "si" is part of a composite pronoun it turns into "se". No cause for alarm. > Dove sono? In giro per tutta la città con un simpatico giovanotto che la sera prima di andare a letto legge soltanto Clausewitz. "la sera" of course means not "the night" but "at night", every night. Just like "la domenica" would mean "on Sundays".. an Italian curiosity > Ma ce n'era uno da parte di un certo "signor De Spadante". n' = ne? If so I haven't seen this before "there was (of them) one" > Sono quasi due anni che non li vediamo. It's been almost two years since we last saw them. Seems a bit lazy to just use the present tense here. > Vado a farmi una doccia e a cambiarmi. Most probably he's not talking about a metamorphosis as such, merely changing clothes. Notice how "e" could have been "ed" because of the following vowel, but this is optional. > Squillò il telefono, e per un attimo Phyllis sperò che fosse Walter Madison e che dovesse vedere Andy. Here is the subjunctive in use. I haven't reached this construct yet, but it seems fairly clear that "fosse" means "it could be" and "dovesse" means "he might have to". > Be', lascerò comunque il numero dove sono rintracciabile, se non è troppo disturbo. Può darsi che voglia parlarmi. Not sure about this one. "può darsi" is used sometimes to say "you can do that if that's what you want", but here I don't understand the rest of it. > Il fatto che sono andato in macchina con lui; si era offerto di darmi un passaggio. Odd way of putting it, isn't it? "he offered himself to give me". Why not just "mi era offerto"? > Tuttavia conservava ancora una cert'aria di grandezza. Notice how Italian doesn't obsessively chop off words, mashing them together with a billion apostrophes and hyphens, unlike some people we know.. This kind of shortening is the exception in Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful
Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5901 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese	Message 79 of 182 21 October 2009 at 12:46pm \| IP Logged
	If you don't like the idioms that just means the examples you're using aren't lively enough. Behold another instance of "dare un'occhiata a...", from Personalità confusa: "Sono all'Avana, in un bar della città vecchia, sto sorseggiando un pessimo caffè liofilizzato e intanto scrivo appunti su ciò che ho sognato stanotte (il blog di Yemayà e quelli degli altri Orishas del mare). Un temerario turista Italiano si siede al mio tavolo e mi chiede se può dare un'occhiata alla mia lonelyplanet. Per tutta risposta gli getto il caffè bollente in pieno viso e lo prendo a schiaffi, senza aprir bocca. Mi alzo dalla sedia, raccolgo le mie carte, le infilo nello zaino e abbandono il locale senza pagare." Fiction, btw. If you're not reading this guy, you totally should. I don't know what it is you're reading, but it doesn't sound particularly interesting :-) I had the opposite reaction the first time I saw "ne è" instead of "n'è" - can they do that? And yeah, I guess they can - I've seen it a ton of times, but I still prefer them together. Assimil had a good explanation of può darsi somewhere, it's made sense every time I've seen it after they explained it. I tend to think of it as the Norwegian "kan hende"... Liz 1 person has voted this message useful

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numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 73 of 182 19 October 2009 at 11:04pm \| IP Logged
	What's this? Noone mocking my accent? I'm disappointed in you people! I'm doing a rather thorough chapter on the condizionale composto and I'm seeing a lot of sentences like: > Sarei venuto in città, ma la mia macchina è stata rotta. Where conditionals are involved the meaning of the sentence tends to become more complicated and thus I more often hit upon the need to translate the structure to myself part by part so that I can make it out. This doesn't work exceedingly well in English, because you would say "I would have come", with the verb in infinitive. So it's not a good mapping. However, in Norwegian we do use the perfect form for this: "Jeg ville ha kommet". 1 person has voted this message useful
Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5901 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese	Message 74 of 182 19 October 2009 at 11:16pm \| IP Logged
	Nice work on the audio! You sound a bit like me (poverino) which kinda has me wondering what Norwegian dialect you speak. There is something vaguely Norwegian-sounding about it... So put me out of my misery: Whereabouts did you get your Norwegian from? :-) (We may have gone to the same school, you know. I'm curious!) Also, about the conjunctive words thing that you talked about on, uhm, page 7 - the more I read, the more I'm convinced that's the only way, reading lots and lots (and LOTS) until things start to make more sense. Extensive (as opposed to intensive) reading has helped a lot with those pesky oh-so-important words that show up and change everything - sometimes the whole meaning of the sentence hinges on them, so they feel too important to miss. It seems I can look these words up a kajillion times and still not really know what they mean, but some of them started to make a lot of sense just 50-ish pages into LOTR (which is even better in Italian than in English, who knew?). I still have serious issues with some of them, notably anything involving -pure (except oppure! ...maybe) and a few other bad boys that evade understanding, but I figure if reading helped with some of them, it's bound to help with others too. Keep up the good work, have fun :-) Liz 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 75 of 182 20 October 2009 at 12:20am \| IP Logged
	Welcome, lurker. In my early formative years I lived in Oslo (I miss thee), upon which the family made the move to Trondheim where I spent 15 years fighting tooth and nail (I like to think successfully) not to be influenced by the butt ugly local dialect. I don't know how that plays out for you school wise. Somehow I got the impression you're from the south but I don't remember why I would think that. Flips back to page 7 Oh yeah, that. Yeah, it's not the end of the world. I have bigger fish to fry these days as my mastery of new grammar is actually slipping unfortunately. So that probably means my original assumption being "finish this textbook and I'll be golden" does not hold water. But I do believe I'll have enough of a grasp on everything to not be particularly stumped once I see it in my reading. And it also probably means that even if I remain active in Italian it's going to take a year or two before I'll have the grammar down pat. But that's tolerable, it won't impede my ability to gain more depth just with the grammar basis I'll have. Yeah, I'm reading a bit myself. 100 pages so far of a Robert Ludlum novel. At first I was reading with a highlighter, picking out a lot of stuff. But I got tired of that and right now I don't look up anything, it annoys me and it means I have to do a postmortem every time I finish reading. So I'm just gonna let the cognates and the comprehensible grammar and idioms sink in and try something else later (LR?). Oppure you know from "oppure la metropolitana", chapter 5 or something from Assimil. :) I do wonder a bit where I want to go after I'm done with the textbook. Clearly I'd like to continue a fairly rapid rate of progress, but I haven't gathered a lot of strategy for that yet. Edited by numerodix on 20 October 2009 at 12:21am 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 76 of 182 20 October 2009 at 12:30am \| IP Logged
	Oh and what you said about smoking in Assimil? Dear god do they bring it up a lot in the textbook too. I remember when I went to Italy in 2005, just after the smoking ban had come into effect. What a delight that was! 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 77 of 182 21 October 2009 at 2:37am \| IP Logged
	Doing a little reading at my desk for a change. Also feel like I'm letting Leopejo down, he's sitting there twiddling his thumbs. > Non però se si tratta di un lavoro concentrato che si svolge in gran parte nei locali stessi. Though not if it concerns work that happens/unfolds in large part in those very offices. "si tratta" is the important find here, a phrase used a lot that more or less mirrors "it concerns". > Mi ricordi di mostrargliele, fra un paio di mesi. Remind me to show them to you in a couple of months. > Si tratta in entrambi i casi di informazioni. In both cases it concerns information. > Allora perché diavolo non hanno fatto niente al riguardo? Then why the hell haven't they done anything about it? riguardo here is curious, it tends to come up, meaning "regarding it" > Sarei perfino in grado di esporle la logistica dei costi e della dislocazione. Here we find esporle, of the verb esporre. Which means to expose. These are Easter eggs, sometimes they make them harder to find. > Sarà meglio che andiamo a dare un'occhiata a questi ultimi due indirizzi. We better go take a look "give an eye to" the last two addresses. I don't particularly care for this "dare un'occiata". Idioms get sort of annoying sometimes if they are overly literal. > Questo non riuscivano a tollerarlo. Again this redundancy of reference. The "lo" is not necessary because the object is established using "questo". And yet Italian loves to reiterate the object whenever possible. > Trevayne aveva la sensazione di essere appena passato attraverso una sala piena di specchi in cui la sua immagine si rifletteva migliaia di volte, ma non necessariamente a se stesso. A beneficio di altri. The "se" is puzzling. Is it supposed to be sé? But if so I think "stesso" might be redundant. > Si scambiarono il solito bacio, ma Trevayne quasi non se ne accorse. Remember kids, when "si" is part of a composite pronoun it turns into "se". No cause for alarm. > Dove sono? In giro per tutta la città con un simpatico giovanotto che la sera prima di andare a letto legge soltanto Clausewitz. "la sera" of course means not "the night" but "at night", every night. Just like "la domenica" would mean "on Sundays".. an Italian curiosity > Ma ce n'era uno da parte di un certo "signor De Spadante". n' = ne? If so I haven't seen this before "there was (of them) one" > Sono quasi due anni che non li vediamo. It's been almost two years since we last saw them. Seems a bit lazy to just use the present tense here. > Vado a farmi una doccia e a cambiarmi. Most probably he's not talking about a metamorphosis as such, merely changing clothes. Notice how "e" could have been "ed" because of the following vowel, but this is optional. > Squillò il telefono, e per un attimo Phyllis sperò che fosse Walter Madison e che dovesse vedere Andy. Here is the subjunctive in use. I haven't reached this construct yet, but it seems fairly clear that "fosse" means "it could be" and "dovesse" means "he might have to". > Be', lascerò comunque il numero dove sono rintracciabile, se non è troppo disturbo. Può darsi che voglia parlarmi. Not sure about this one. "può darsi" is used sometimes to say "you can do that if that's what you want", but here I don't understand the rest of it. > Il fatto che sono andato in macchina con lui; si era offerto di darmi un passaggio. Odd way of putting it, isn't it? "he offered himself to give me". Why not just "mi era offerto"? > Tuttavia conservava ancora una cert'aria di grandezza. Notice how Italian doesn't obsessively chop off words, mashing them together with a billion apostrophes and hyphens, unlike some people we know.. This kind of shortening is the exception in Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful
Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5901 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese	Message 79 of 182 21 October 2009 at 12:46pm \| IP Logged
	If you don't like the idioms that just means the examples you're using aren't lively enough. Behold another instance of "dare un'occhiata a...", from Personalità confusa: "Sono all'Avana, in un bar della città vecchia, sto sorseggiando un pessimo caffè liofilizzato e intanto scrivo appunti su ciò che ho sognato stanotte (il blog di Yemayà e quelli degli altri Orishas del mare). Un temerario turista Italiano si siede al mio tavolo e mi chiede se può dare un'occhiata alla mia lonelyplanet. Per tutta risposta gli getto il caffè bollente in pieno viso e lo prendo a schiaffi, senza aprir bocca. Mi alzo dalla sedia, raccolgo le mie carte, le infilo nello zaino e abbandono il locale senza pagare." Fiction, btw. If you're not reading this guy, you totally should. I don't know what it is you're reading, but it doesn't sound particularly interesting :-) I had the opposite reaction the first time I saw "ne è" instead of "n'è" - can they do that? And yeah, I guess they can - I've seen it a ton of times, but I still prefer them together. Assimil had a good explanation of può darsi somewhere, it's made sense every time I've seen it after they explained it. I tend to think of it as the Norwegian "kan hende"... Liz 1 person has voted this message useful