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Mick’s Continuous TAC Multilingual Bliss! | ||
Tags: Scriptorium | Afrikaans | Wanderlust | Thai | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Finnish | Polish | Swedish | Verbs/Conjugation | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Grammar | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 209 of 228 17 November 2011 at 9:46am | IP Logged |
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Since my last message, I have been spending a lot of time learning Italian words and little else. I knew I needed to learn more vocabulary when my attempt at reading Italian on sunday evening was cut short because I forgot simple words like "anche" and "dove". Is this a major setback? No, it isn't even a surprise. I simply need to continue learning words and making and using wordlists.
Buonanotte Mick Edited by mick33 on 17 November 2011 at 9:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 210 of 228 25 November 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so I didn't do much with any language but English for most of the day. Last night I did teach myself, or maybe I just reviewed, basic Italian words such as "miei", "ma" and "ecco" which correspond to "mine" (masculine plural form which usually, but not always requires the definite article "i" before it), "but" and "here" respectively. I think even more words in spoken and sung Italian are starting to sound familiar to me but how can I be sure? I have never learned how to measure my passive vocabulary at all in any language. Oh well, I'm getting gradually more comfortable with Italian and that what really matters to me right now.
The cold weather is doing strange things to my mind. Tuesday evening I suddenly decided that it would be a good to study Icelandic for little while and I had so much fun I studided Icelandic again on Wednesday night. I would have thought that the cold weather might make me curious about languages spoken in warmer climates, like Swahili, Zulu or maybe continue with Romance languages by dabbling in Brazilian Portuguese. No, I just sat on my bed shivering while trying to pronounce Icelandic vowels and diphthongs and when I slept I dreamt about ice fields, geysers and woke up wondering why English abandoned the letters ð and þ. Maybe I will continue with Icelandic and maybe I won't, but it was a nice change. Devo andare adesso ciao Mick Edited by mick33 on 20 October 2012 at 6:41am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 211 of 228 01 December 2011 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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I have discovered a very strange problem; I have been focusing mostly on Italian lately, yet I still do the following activities:
1. I passively think of Swedish words whilst listening to Italian. 2. I wake up humming Swedish songs. 3. When I learn Italian words my first thought is to wonder what the closest Swedish, not English, equivalent is. It seems I want to continue with Swedish but... 1. If I give in to the urge to consciously focus on Swedish, I wonder why I can't find the consonant cluster "gli" in the written language. 2. I wonder if the Swedish pitch accents I struggle to pronounce will work for Italian as well. I have, therefore concluded that my brain enjoys both languages and that both of them are competing for supremacy as my main L2. Neither one will be allowed to triumph at the expense of the other so they will have to learn get along and I will learn both. I have little to report otherwise, except that I think it's time to begin learning about the subjunctive mood in Italian. arrivederci Mick Edited by mick33 on 10 February 2012 at 11:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 212 of 228 03 December 2011 at 10:52am | IP Logged |
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I actually did have something else to report, only I forgot about it when I was typing on Wednesday. I found RAI Internazionale. I don't think this website shows live broadcasts online, but the shows are available for me to view later. One show that looked interesting was Regioni d'Italia which, as you can probably guess, describes various sites and activities in different regions of Italy and made me very anxious to actually travel to Italy. I especially liked with the first segment on the caves with stalactites but I had to watch the show a second time to notice that they are called "Le grotte di Frasassi" and located in Ancona province in the Marche region. I'm getting a little better at recognizing familiar Italian words but as I have written before, it is difficult to know exactly how many words I recognize and my listening comprehension remains low overall, so I'll just keep seeking out, and watching, TV shows and listening to the radio.
Yes, I did begin learning about the subjunctive mood, even though I have not run across yet. I figured this was better than wasting time worrying about it (which was my mistake with Spanish two years ago). As in Spanish, the Italian subjunctive mood (il congiuntivo) is used to express doubt, uncertainty, emotions, possibilities, desires and suggestions. There are 4 tenses in this mood, and they are presente, passato, imperfetto and trapassato. Very quickly I will mention that there are some phrases that require the use of the subjunctive which I found here and not surprisingly these include things such as "Credo che" (I believe that), "Non sono certo che" (I'm not sure that) and "È necessario che" (It is necessary that). I will begin decorating for Christmas in the morning and that could keep me busy most of the day, but hopefully I can think up a few example sentences for il congiuntive presente" before Monday. Buonanotte Mick Edited by mick33 on 10 May 2012 at 7:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 213 of 228 09 December 2011 at 10:26am | IP Logged |
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The December doldrums again AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! Why did I accidentally delete my original post earlier today? and Why do I often have my wildest bouts of uncontrolled language wanderlust in December? In December 2008, I began dabbling with Finnish and decided to take a Spanish class in college though these weren't distractions at all. In 2009 I got the bright ideas to dabble with Lushootseed, Welsh and Älvdalska, a regional Scandinavian language that I could only really have learned in Älvdalen a small Swedish town. December of 2010 I began the first of my ill-fated attempts to learn Polish, Icelandic, and Faroese even though I knew that resources for learning Faroese are very difficult to find without going to the Faroe Islands and then there was my second week-long dalliance with learning Hungarian. This year, almost as if on schedule, I suddenly got the brilliant idea to study Thai, Hindi and Korean. Hindi and Korean will not be added to the unofficial list languages I claim to be currently learning, so there was no harm in dabbling briefly with them. Thai, however is suddenly fascinating to me, although I can think of many reasons not to start this now; such as that my Italian is at too low of a level, learning any script besides the Latin alphabet terrifies me, Very soon I will want to focus more on Finnish, Spanish and Afrikaans, I need to continue my formal education. My last objection is best stated as a question, If I struggle so much with pronouncing Swedish, a language with only two pitch accents, what makes me think I can learn a tonal language like Thai? All of the aforementioned concerns are valid but who knows, maybe I will really learn a little Thai for the next 6 Week Challenge.
Back to the languages I am actually learning. In spite of being dictracted by Thai, I have actually been doing very well with the current 6 Week Challenge. Since Saturday I studied Italian for 10 hours and Swedish for 5 hours and according to Sprachprofi's Twitter bot I had logged 45.30 hours learning Italian as of this afternoon. I think my first paragraph may have been a little overdramatic. So with that I give you the next part in my continuing overview of the Italian subjunctive mood by listing a few example sentences before I go to bed. Spero che tu resti qui. (I hope that you stay here) Non è possibile che lui lo capisca. (It is not possible that he understands it.) I hope the last one is right. A presto Mick Edited by mick33 on 14 December 2011 at 10:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 214 of 228 10 December 2011 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
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there are add-ons that save what you type. if you use firefox I recommend lazarus but there must be others too:)
your progress in Italian sounds awesome! adfdksjgkd älvdalska? i'm gonna read about it, sounds interesting:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 215 of 228 11 December 2011 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
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I knew about the add-ons but I've had bad luck with downloading them before as I am not very computer-savvy. Thanks, I doubt my Italian progress is awesome yet, but it will be soon.
I mentioned decorating for Christmas in message #212 and I could not decorate without also listening to Christmas music, not all of which is in English. Among the notable songs I found were an Italian version of Stille Nacht Heilige Nacht (The original German name the song English speakers know as Silent Night) called Astro del Ciel,(other versions are called Santa Notte) a lovely choral arrangement of the Latin hymn Veni, veni Emmanuel and a Swedish song I didn't know Nu tänder jag tusen juleljus. I also found out about a few traditional Calabrian songs Filastrocca a lu Bambinuand Dormi Gesù e fai la vo vò. I didn't want to admit in my last post that I am indeed giving in to the temptation to learn Thai, I wanted to resist, but I am weak. I began reading about whether I should learn the Thai alphabet or one of the 4 or 5 romanization schemes earlier this evening and I am now seriously considering learning Thai for the next 6 Week Challenge in February; that is if I can wait that long. Sogni d'oro Ci vediamo lunedì Mick Edited by mick33 on 14 December 2011 at 7:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 216 of 228 14 December 2011 at 10:15am | IP Logged |
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The November 6 week challenge ended yesterday and I finished with 50 hours of Italian and and 70.25 hours of total language learning to get 13th place. YAY!!!! This is much better progress than I expected. Yes, I did get 45hours 20 (minutes?) in the August 6WC for Italian but I still do not how I did that, I was distractedand did not study Italian consistently. I know that the numbers show only a 5 hour increase in hours studying Italian for the two 6WCs, however in November I have been more consistent and since I increased my total language hours I am very thrilled.
I can't believe I am already pondering my study plans for the 2012 6WC's but the December weirdnesss continues. The December weirdness I mentioned in #213 has not prevented me from continuing with Italian. I give you il congiuntivo imperfetto the next subjunctive tense in my ongoing series on Italian grammar. I will discuss il congiuntivo passato later. Congiuntivo imperfetto is used in dependent clauses when the verb of the main clause is either in the past tense or conditional tense, which I take to mean that this tense is for fairly complex sentences. This tense is seems to uused a lot after the phrase "come se" though I can't figure out why that is, which means I need to learn the meaning of "come se". The conjugation pattern is actually quite regular for many verbs although there are some frequently used verbs that have irregular conjugations for this tense. For regular verbs the conjugations for Congiuntivo imperfetto are: Cantare Sapere Finire (to sing)(to know) (to finish) cantassi sapessi finissi cantassi sapessi finissi cantasse sapesse finisse cantassimo sapessimo finissimo cantaste sapeste finiste cantassero sapessero finissero Yes, in this tense "Sapere" uses regular conjugation. Now for some sentences Parli come se sapessi tutto. (You talk as if you knew everything) Credevo che avessimo ragione. (I thought that we were right) Non c'era nessuno che lo capisse. (No was there nobody who him understood) For the last one I attempted a literal translation to help me learn Italian word order and I'm unsure if the Italian sentence is correct, but I want to listen to some spoken Thai before I go to bed tonight. A dopo Mick Edited by mick33 on 20 October 2012 at 6:40am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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