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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5901 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 17 of 182 24 September 2009 at 12:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello there, just thought I'd make an appearance just to say... Well I never know what to say when commenting on these things. Except, don't stress about the things that are still completely unfamiliar, it's always a bit like writing with the wrong hand in the beginning but in no time at all these things will be second nature to you, honest... The things that don't make sense now, soon will. And in the meantime, all you have to do is just sit back and enjoy :-)
Liz 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 18 of 182 27 September 2009 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for coming by, Liz, you're a big part of what got me into doing this (no, seriously!). It's one thing to want to learn Italian, it's another to actually believe you can do it, and pretty fast at that. These logs are great for other people to be encouraged, and especially when the person is doing it right now rather than reading about some fait accompli.
Thanks in part to your inspiring tales I've clocked quite a few hours already and if I can keep it going for another 2 months or so I might be looking at a tolerable grasp of the language structures. Which means it'll be time to go out there and try it out, not to mention enjoying the language through writings and media, in order to cement the fundamentals and explore further intricacies. Now then. I've neglected my Italian activities a bit in the last few days as I got consumed by a programming spree (don't ask). I generally think it's okay to take breaks now and then, so that the language can simmer deep in the subconscience somewhere, and when I return to it it's not quite at my fingertips anymore. But this means I can test myself to see how much I actually have assimilated, when it's not loading out of short term memory. Nevertheless, I try not to have days where I didn't do any Italian at all. So far I have two zeros in my spreadsheet over the last 40 days. That's shockingly consistent if you know me. I finished chapter 5 in the textbook in a day. Generally I prefer to take it over 2-3 days, that way I get a longer exposure. But this one was short and simple, about possessives (il mio, tuo, loro etc). I'm now on chapter 7. These days I basically write out all the instructional text, notes and so on in the book. I also write out all the fill-in problems. It's a lot of effort, but I think it might be worth it. I don't have any other particular method for learning this thoroughly. And it doesn't really bore me. The only one complaining is my hand which still hasn't come around to writing 6 pages of handwritten text everyday. Despite all that content, I still feel that I should be revising these lessons at some point. I decided to postpone that, though, thinking a revision will probably be more fruitful after a longer absence. And by then I'll also know more Italian in general, which sheds light on these little dialogs and stories. Right about now I'm mulling over the idea of getting some deadtree books. The thing is I'm not sure what I would do with them. Would I just be able to read them without too much hassle (I can put up with not knowing everything, I don't desperately have to look up every word, in fact it's more of a puzzle that way :), or would I have to do study sessions at my desk, writing down words and stuff? I'm not so keen on the latter. Well, if I do get some and they're too hard to read right away I can just stash them for the moment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 19 of 182 03 October 2009 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just finished chapter 8 in the textbook on l'imperfetto indicativo. The chapters are starting to get pretty long, this one was 25 pages and I used up 10 sheets of paper writing it out. I thought it would take me a whole 5 days, but it took 4. Anyway, I don't mind getting the practice.
So in this chapter they spent a lot of time explaining when to use the imperfect tense and how you mix it with the perfect. Unfortunately, those explanations suffer the same flaws as any explanation on language does. Namely, from the point of view of someone who knows the language inside out, they are correct. And this is what I no doubt will discover one day myself if I get to that level of fluency. But for a learner, whose intuition is based largely on a different language, the hints they convey are just wrong and don't seem consistent. One of the things they point out is that you use the imperfect to describe something in the past that was being done as a matter of habit. Then comes a sentence like this: L'anno scorso sono andato molte volte a Milano. And now you're supposed to say whether "sono andato" is correct, or whether it should be "andavo". Well, let's see, on the one hand the imperfect describes habit, on the other the perfect describes actions completed. So which is it? Here's the rub. Suppose they had intended to describe this as a habit. If they hadn't put "molte volte" in there, then noone would have known whether it happened once or many times. So that indicator is necessary. But on the other hand it then also becomes a completed action in time, so the perfect tense could apply. And the more precise they try to be in their explanations the more flawed those explanations become. Because in the end, when someone who knows the language reads those snippets, they know, based on a whole lot of experience with the language, what is meant precisely in that instance. But that is based on a whole heuristic of formulation, in the sense that "You wouldn't say *that* to express this. It wouldn't be wrong, but you just wouldn't say it like that." And that obviously is not there for someone who's just looking at the meaning of the words to understand it, rather than beyond the words. Anyway, I don't think there is much that can be done about this. These nuances are clarified slowly with a lot of live language seen and heard, they evade capture in a simple explanation. Other than that, I peeked a little ahead in the book, because I still don't know the subjunctive tense and that sticks in my craw, but unfortunately they only get to that at the very end, 10 chapters ahead. I could skip ahead, but I'd rather maintain the steady flow that I have going now. I find that whenever I break the succession in something I'm doing, and skip over stuff, I find myself much less enthused to go back and do it later. So it will have to wait. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6101 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 20 of 182 03 October 2009 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm finding difficulties explaining when to use imperfetto to a Pole. I fully understand your concerns.
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5559 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 21 of 182 03 October 2009 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
When I was learning the sibilant sounds in Mandarin, I also noticed that they are very similar to the Polish sibilants. Those sounds can be very difficult for English speakers, but to a Polish speaker they should be no problem at all. My advice is: definitely learn Mandarin! When you are ready, of course. Once you learn one language the next one is way easier to learn, so get to a comfortable level in Italian first. But Mandarin isn't as hard as everyone says. The trickiest part of pronunciation is the tones, but there's only 4 of them and they're pretty distinct if you pay attention to them. The characters aren't too hard either, if you study them the right way, i.e. using James Heisig's method (through his book Remembering the Hanzi I). You can get through that book in a couple months and be able to understand the meaning of 90% of the Chinese characters you encounter (1,500 characters total). Soon there should be a sequel out with another 1,500 characters, which covers most of the remaining 10%. Plus, Chinese grammar is extremely simple. There's no conjugations or declensions or genders or plurals or anything like that. You just need to know what words to use and what order to put them in. Edited by Levi on 03 October 2009 at 6:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 22 of 182 03 October 2009 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If it helps you can think of me as a Norwegian or an Englishman/American. I can play those roles too. :) But let me ask you a specific question. In my book they make a big point out of explaining this pattern: > Quando preparavo il colazione ha suonato il telefono. That is to say "while I was doing something, something else happened". The idea is that the thing that I was doing was a period in time, whereas the thing that happened was an instant in time. The instant took place some time within the period. But why do we even need "preparavo" at all, isn't that what "stavo preparando" is for (or is it just "preparando" on its own)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 23 of 182 03 October 2009 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Levi, thanks a lot for the encouragement! I'm maturing to the idea of learning Mandarin, and at this time I'm very pleased to get the kind of background information that you stated.
If I may ask, how do you rate your own fluency in Mandarin and how long have you been working on it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6101 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 24 of 182 03 October 2009 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, I wasn't referring to you. I was talking about a Pole in "real life" who also is studying Italian. The easy way of "imperfetto = imperfective verb" doesn't really work.
(it's LA colazione) In Italian it's not so clear cut. In this case I'd use "stavo preparando", but I think imperfetto is right too - and in spoken language it has supplanted "stavo + gerundio" almost completely. "Preparando" alone is not allowed in this case, as you can use it only if the subject of the main clause is the same: "Preparando la colazione mi sono fatto male". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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