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TAC 2011 - Team Ohana – Le Cinéma Rex | ||
Tags: Dabbling | France | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Immersion | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 17 of 198 19 January 2011 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for your corrections, Ellasevia.
You're right, it was a typo. But thanks for pointing it out anyway. The different rules on the use of apostrophes in Dutch and English are really confusing sometimes. And thank you so much for the compliment! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rob4languages Groupie Egypt Joined 5197 days ago 53 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: English | Message 18 of 198 19 January 2011 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I think you have a very good plan for these accents , really I'm very impressed , to know the both Accents is like a real treasure , 'coz when you need to speak to a native from UK or US 'you'll not find any problem , really I'm really impressed for what you've doing to improve your English , I'll follow your log ! I'll try also to learn more about the two accents but my high priority for now is A.E , maybe I'll try Assimil for British but in the forth quarter of this year . Edited by rob4languages on 19 January 2011 at 8:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 19 of 198 23 January 2011 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for your encouragement, Robert. I agree that being able to switch from one accent to another effortlessly would be really cool but it is annoying to always get tired of one after a while and want to switch to the other. I would advise you to try to stick to one accent as much as possible. That’s what I’m doing with French as well and I hope it will make acquiring a good accent a lot less confusing and time-consuming. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 20 of 198 23 January 2011 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 3: January 17 / January 23
French Week 3 (20): 24 h. (New Record!) 2011: 45 h. 40 min. This week I dreamt in French. I know I did because I was dreaming about a couple of literary characters (who, in the interest of preserving my dignity, shall remain anonymous) and after a couple of minutes my unconscious brain thought “Hey, wait a second, these people are English. Why are they speaking French to each other?” and that thought promptly woke me up. I studied for nearly 15 hours this week, and next week I have absolutely nothing to do so I hope I can improve my own record of 17 hours. After next week it’s back to the grindstone and because I have, in an inexplicable moment of folly, elected to take 8 courses this semester, I’m afraid my language studies will have to take a back seat to my academic studies. Arabic Last Wednesday I finally got my act together and officially got started on Arabic. I worked through the first half of the first chapter and finished it today. It’s all pretty simple so far; pronouns, possessive suffixes and some syntax. The exercises are good practice but they’re not very practical. I’m fairly sure I’ll never need the sentence “No, that’s not my paternal uncle, that’s YOUR paternal uncle!” but it’s still better than Pimsleur teaching me how to invite the whole town out for a drink. I also thought it was unfair to ask me to address someone named Fawzi with the correct form of the second-person singular pronoun because how am I supposed to know if Fawzi is a boy’s name or a girl’s name? Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 2:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 21 of 198 30 January 2011 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 4: January 24 / January 30
Last week I thought I was going to have this entire week to myself but of course this didn’t happen. Tomorrow is the start of a new semester at the University of Amsterdam and, as per usual, everyone has done their best to make the transition as cumbersome and confusing for us students as possible. I’ve been receiving letters and emails all week, informing me that I’ve been kicked out of most of my classes because I “don’t meet the entering requirements.” A trip to the administration revealed that some of my grades haven’t been processed but they can’t figure out which ones… Apart from that I still don’t know what books to buy for most courses and a couple of classes are suddenly being taught by a different professor, multiple professors or no professor at all. Sigh, welcome back to the UvA! :-) English I’ve been reading a little book called “I have it in my own hands”, about the amusing mistakes Dutch speakers make when speaking English. Most of them are pretty lame literal translations of Dutch expressions but sometimes the misuse of false friends make them kind of funny. For instance, being “in the war” is a lot more dangerous than being “in de war” and “a brutal little girl” sounds a lot scarier than “een brutaal klein meisje”. One I found particularly interesting was “Ze wil het uitmaken” which was turned into “She will make it out”, an acceptable phrase but with a completely different meaning. ;-) The book seems to be some sort of sequel to a book I already owned called “I always get my sin” which includes these gems: “How do you do and how do you do your wife?” “I thank you from the bottom of my heart and also from my wife’s bottom.” “I am the first woman state secretary for the inside and I am having my first period.” Reading the book reminded me of the time I ran into a similar spot of trouble on my first trip to England as a seven-year-old, when I learnt that the word “fat” means the same thing as “vet” and falsely assumed it also had the additional slang meaning of “cool”. I was heartbroken when I told the balloon shaper on the boat how fat I thought he was and he gave me a murderous look in response. Since then I’ve been very very suspicious of English words that look like Dutch words. French Week 4 (21): 28 h. 10 min. (WHEE, new record!) 2011: 73 h. 50 min. I had a bit too much time on my hands this week so I spent almost 30 hours on French, which might have been a little bit too much. I’ve been entering all my old word lists into Anki and now I have nearly 2,000 words to sink my teeth into. I also watched a whopping 10.5 hours worth of French films including the 5-hour-long Orgueil et Préjugés, which I watched in one viewing. I also re-watched Effroyables jardins which is a beautiful story but it was very disillusioning to see how little of it I understood. I suspect that the problem is that I’ve been getting too used to watching Disney films. :) FR : Cette semaine était probablement la plus productive en français que j’ai jamais faite. J’ai regardé en français, écouté du français, parlé en français, pensé en français, rêvé en français et maintenant j’en ai complètement marre du français. ;-) Donc ce soir je vais me concentrer sur l’arabe. C'est vraiment une belle langue, mais plutôt difficile. Au présent, composer des phrases assez simples est un vrai casse-tête. Mais malgré ça, j’aime bien sa grammaire et sa tonalité. EDIT: Corrections Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 2:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 22 of 198 01 February 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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French
In celebration of the start of a new TAC-month, I spent last night partly revising my study regime. I decided to stop actively studying grammar for now because I think I’ve pretty much got the basics down and I want the finer points to simply become second nature through immersion. I’m going to focus more on my reading skills and I also decided to watch the entire French in Action series. I read a lot of glowing reviews about it and Wikipedia even claims it has a cult following so I figured I’d give it a go and it’s brilliant! The first few episodes that I’ve watched so far have been way too easy but I wasn’t bored for a minute. The only thing that annoys me is that guy named Michael who keeps repeating everything the teacher says in a bad accent and with an infuriating smirk on his face. Every time he says “Pourquoi?” or “Si vous voulez” I just want to shake him and yell “Tais-toi, espèce d'andouille!”. The teacher has already won my everlasting admiration for putting up with him so admirably. ;-) I hadn’t really thought about how much time I would need to finish all 52 episodes so when I joined the Februarathon yesterday, I impulsively decided to try and finish it before the end of this month. That means I’ll have to watch 13 episodes per week. So far I’ve watched six… Staying with the theme of self-overestimation, I’ve also decided to make it my goal to finish the last nine chapters of Charlie et la chocolaterie in the following four weeks because I’m growing quite impatient for the story to end and Mr. Wonka is getting on my nerves. The amount of unknown words per chapter has been steadily decreasing over the last few weeks so it’s started to feel safe to try and take on multiple chapters per week. Arabic I won’t beat around the bush; Arabic vocabulary is kicking my butt. I faithfully review my little Anki deck every day and the next morning I’ve forgotten half of the words again. It’s especially frustrating when I compare it to my French reviewing, where I can easily add 50 or more words per day and get most of them right on the first try. I was prepared and even expecting to find learning a non-Indo-European language much more challenging, in fact I was hoping it would give me a bit more insight into what makes a language “easy” or “difficult”, but I wasn’t entirely ready to find simple vocabulary acquisition such a pain in the neck. Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 2:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5566 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 23 of 198 03 February 2011 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sounds like your French is coming along well Renee. I'm slowly becoming slightly more opened to the language,
that is my interest in it has always being zero, but for some reason the past two days or so has seen a light rustling of movement in that silent corridor of mental space where all things French tends to reside in me. I wonder if this trend will continue? But this is not why I wanted to write. I'm currently reading a book by Donna Tartt called 'The Secret History', I think it's a really good example of modern English being used creatively, fluidly, with apparent knowledge and a broad vocabularly, yet done so in a seemingly effotless and light manner. And best of all the story is unbelievable addictive and extremely interesting, and gloriously vivid in it's scenes and details (like watching a film when reading). One of those books which somehow manages to deter and elleviate the desire for sleep. So I highly recommend it to you if you ever need something in which to improve your English from, or simply want something in English in which to enjoy. All the best with the Month of February. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5409 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 24 of 198 03 February 2011 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi ! Désolé d'avoir mis en majuscules, mais je n'ai pas le temps de faire autrement. Rien que des petites fautes, comme les prépositions qu'on met après les verbes (regarder en*, écouter du*, parler en*, penser en*, rêver en*, avoir marre de* (donc du français). Dernière faute est une faute d'ordre de mots dans la phrase, mais rien de très grave. Ah et : c'est un vrai casse-tête* ;). Son n'est pas faux, mais tonalité sonne mieux. Voilà, j'espère que ça t'a aidé ! Bonne chance pour tes langues ! Kisfröccs 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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