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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | Catalan | Ancient Greek | Turkish | Polyglot | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 153 of 331 16 June 2013 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Pimsluer Level IV Rant: Lesson 13 was absolutely ridiculous. I'll demand my
money back if the rest of the level is like this. Or at least leave a nasty review on Amazon. The crimes: - Calling email "electronic messages" and phone cards "cards for making calls" (tarjetas para hacer llamadas). I'm sure these are technically correct, but I do not believe for a second these are the words people use in their day to day conversations. - Having a third of the lesson be devoted to buying air mail stamps, and sending a package via air mail. I've never in my life had to buy an airmail stamp, though I remember seeing them from when I was young. Didn't that go out in the 1960s or early 1970s? I cannot figure out why a course that was written in 2011 is so focused on obsolete terms. But I really lost it when the closing dialogue was asking for a beer at a cafe - I swear this was the dialogue from Level 1, Lesson 2. grrr. Level IV started out so well. I really hope it gets back on track. Edited by kanewai on 16 June 2013 at 8:23am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6083 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 154 of 331 16 June 2013 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||
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oo, "airmail stamps" is pretty bad. Are they talking about collectors? :)
I have to scratch out words like "Baba" in the very first lesson of German as a foreign language. This is supposedly something only Austrians say (from bye-bye) that all learners are supposed to accept. I don't know where these language programs get their ideas for translations. Sometimes my only friend in these matters is Google. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 155 of 331 25 June 2013 at 12:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I went to the Friends of the Library booksale this weekend, and found lots of old
French paperbacks, hiding in the same back shelf they were on last year. And so cheap - I guess there's not much of a market here, as I picked up nine novels for $7.50. Of course, I haven't even finished the books I bought last year, and now I have two to three years worth of French lit waiting for me. On my Kindle: Les misérables, Tome V: Jean Valjean. Victor Hugo. A la recherche du temps perdu (édition complète), Marcel Proust La belle et la bête. Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, 1740 Le Rouge et le Noir. Stendhal,1830 La chartreuse de Parme. Stendhal, 1839 Pêcheur d'Islande, Pierre Loti, 1886. Les chants de Maldoror, Comte de Lautréamont. 1869 Books at home: La condition humaine. André Malraux, 1933 Vendredi ou les limbes du pacifique. Michel Tournier,1967 Nadja. André Breton, 1928 Candide, ou l'optimisme, Voltaire, 1759 René, Chateaubriand, 1802 L'écume des jours, Boris Vian 1947 La vie mode d'emploi, Georges Perec 1978 lib:eng Antigone, Jean Anouilh, 1944. Voyage au bout de la nuit, Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 Le soulier de satin, Paul Claudel. 1929 Journal d'un curé de campagne, Georges Bernanos. 1936 Le petit Nicolas, Jean-Jacques Sempé, René Goscinny. 1960. Les caves du Vatican, André Gide. 1914 Le moulin de Pologne, Jean Giono. 1972 Parallel Texts: Vol de nuit. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1931 Les liasons dangereuses. Choderlos de Laclos Suite française. Irène Némirovsky, 1942 Right now my plan is to finish the first book of Proust (200 pages in, and there is finally a plot!), to finally finish Les Mis (I left everyone at the barricades), and then read a couple easier works so that I can get my page-count back up for the Super Challenge. For Spanish, I finally settled on Harry Potter y la Orden del Fénix. I was having trouble making the switch to reading full novels, and I was taking me hours to read just a couple pages of even the easier authors. HP is working for me - I'm 100 pages in already. I had a rough start, but am starting to internalize more of the verb conjugations, which makes reading much easier. Edited by kanewai on 25 June 2013 at 7:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 156 of 331 25 June 2013 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, Kanewai, it's been too long since I last read your log and so much has been happening!
I read L'homme a l'envers too and I totally agree that the middle is worse than the beginning and the end. I wouldn't personally recommend this one as the first Vargas, I believe she wrote better ones. Debout les morts is totally awesome and really fun in my opinion. Persepolis is a wonderful choice and I am troubled by that Chicago issue (thanks for the information, I hadn't known). How can something like that happen in a civilized country? It is a great book which I hope to get for my younger siblings when they are around 12 or so. And the wordings (in the article) like "making sure the children take the right message of it", that is disgusting. What the hell happens to America? You found Spanish easier to speak despite your French being at higher level? It is a bit similar to me. I am having much easier time with the practical skills in Spanish (compared to what I was able to do when I had the same level French). One of the reason might be the shared vocab (and grammar) that you already know and that isn't an obstacle. But I think there is more. I felt much more at ease speaking with the Spanish than the French. Despite my mistakes and everything, the Spanish weren't trying to switch to English. Perhaps this lack of need to defend your language choice is making you more comfortable and that helps? Congrats, you are the first to make me consider reading Proust! Several literature teachers have tried but now, for the first time, I am putting it on my "to read" list. Thanks. It's great to hear of your progress, you are amazing! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 157 of 331 27 June 2013 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
This sounds very familiar for me too, but for Italian - my French is technically much better, but in Italian I feel much more, exactly as you put it, at ease. I think it's because I've made friends with Italian people recently and we often converse in Italian, which has made the language more "real" and more a part of my life as opposed to an academic exercise. People not wanting to switch to English is probably also a big factor - in French, I often feel like I have to speak at my very best in order to "convince" them to take me seriously as a competent speaker and so not switch to English, which just puts me under pressure. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 158 of 331 15 July 2013 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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34 Pages
It's The Year of Reading Proust at Goodreads, and there has been a great reading group who are working their way through À la recherche du temps perdu. The group, however, is already starting the fourth volume, and I'm still working my way throught the first. I've been following the conversation after-the-fact, and it's really helped me get a grasp on just what this novel is about. I only had 34 pages to go until the next benchmark & discussion forum. I hoped to reach it Friday after work ... but instead the whole weekend passed, it took me four tries & I still couldn't even make it. It was sentences like this that were killing me: And yet at this point a slight irritation or physical discomfort - by making him consider the present moment an exceptional one, outside the rules, one in which even common wisdom would agree that he could accept the appeasement afforded by pleasure and allow his will, until it might be useful to resume the effort, to rest - would suspend the action of the latter, which would cease to exert its pressure; or, less than that, the memory of something he had forgotten to ask Odette, whether she had decided which color she wanted to have her carraige painted, or, with regard to a certain vestment, whether it was common or preferred shares that she wanted to buy (it was all very well to show her that he could live without seeing her, but if, after that, the painting had to be done all over again or the shares paid no divident, a lot of good it would have done him), and like a stretched piece of elastic that is let go or the air in a pneumatic machine that is opened, the idea of seeing her again, from the far distance where it had been kept, would have come back in a single leap into the field of the present and of immediate possibilities. (from the Lydia Davis translation) I can't even make sense of this in English, much less French, and there have been a lot of sentences (note that that is only one sentence!) like this recently. There have have been other hard parts that have been brilliant once I've untangled them. Right now, though, I just want to get this section over and done with. Edited by kanewai on 15 July 2013 at 11:15pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 159 of 331 19 July 2013 at 1:06am | IP Logged | ||
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July Update
I'm entering into cruise mode here ... I intend to keep reading heavily in both Spanish and French, but I don't really have the time or inclination to actively study. There are too many English language books, movies, and podcasts that I also enjoy, and I've been putting them aside for close to two years now. I haven't decided what to do about Greek; I'm thinking about buying one of those books by Geoffrey Steadman or Pamela Draper that takes you through the Iliad or Odyssey line by line. What I haven't decided on yet is quite how to balance the two languages. I can try to do both (French books and Spanish movies, alternating with Spanish books and French movies), or I can alternate my focus (say ten days all French, ten days all Spanish). I'll experiment around until I find the right balance. Since my last full update: Cusco was wonderful. I was there with 11 members of my family, none of whom spoke much Spanish. I did a lot of basic translations at the hotel and at restaurants, but had disappointingly few one-on-one conversations. I thought my Spanish was sub par. I think being surrounded by the forces of chaos (a.k.a. my family) made it harder to transition to thinking in a foreign language. A lot of the people we met were either fluent in English, or native Quechua speakers whose own Spanish was poor. Pimsleur IV was a vast improvement over Pimsleur Plus, and a stronger entry in the series than the disappointing Pimsleur III. There were still parts that were weak, and too simple for a fourth-level series, and I wish that they had focused a lot more on more complex tenses and irregular verbs. Still, I'd highly recommend it for travelers if you can find a discounted copy. I paid $70 on audible.com, which was a fair price. I don't think it's worth the retail price at all. Assimil Espanol - Perfeccionamiento is still sitting on my shelf, sad and lonely. I just don't find it as interesting as Harry Potter. I think that it will help me make the transition to more serious literature, but I'm not there yet. FSI also sits on the side, for both French and Spanish. I intend to finish both some day. For now, the lessons are too advanced for where I'm at. I can do them, mind you, but I feel like my time is better spent getting more comfortable with the basics of the language than in drilling on the nuances of the subjunctive. My kindle says I have four hours left with the first book of Proust. Yeay! There are sections of the book that are agonizing, and feel like it's the most epic feat of navel-gazing ever. And then there are passages where I think: this is the most beautiful thing that I have ever read. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 160 of 331 29 July 2013 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Anyone who has attempted Proust might enjoy this alternate title:
The final section, Nom de pays: le nom, wrapped things up beautifully. I'd highly recommend Proust for anyone who has the patience, and time, to work through it. I was tempted to move right on to the second volume, but I want to tackle some of the books on my bookshelf first. So, I'm finally starting Mémoires d'Hadrien (Marguerite Yourcenar, 1951) a historical novel / meditation on the life of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. He was one of my favorite Roman emperors from Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast - he preferred the mysteries of Athens to the politics of Rome, took a cruise down the Nile with his Greek lover, and traveled through most to the empire. He also instigated the Second Jewish War ... he's definitely not a hero to everyone. I'm looking forward to the read. I'm still having trouble with French movies. I've been bored by the last four I started, and this includes some classics that everyone but me seems to love. Amazon just made a bunch available for streaming, but almost every single one gets crap reviews on IMDB. I'm debating how to move forward the rest of the summer. I have a handful of choices, and I change my mind about every hour or two on the best approach: 1. Continue with the Super Challenge with Spanish and French. This is actually the best, most rational, most enjoyable option. 2. Add Greek. I worked on Ancient Greek for six months, then took two off. At this point I need to use it or lose it. I enjoyed it, but it takes a fair amount of time and concentration to study. 3. Add Japanese. This is the worst option, but I might have the chance to spend ten days in Tokyo this November. If I do, I think I should be starting the Japanese now. I already have the Pimsleur and Michel Thomas courses, so I could actually start Japanese during my commute. 4. Do it all. Read on my lunch break, do Japanese while riding to work, do a half hour of Greek between work and the gym, & watch a bit of Spanish or French tv at night. It's theoretically possible. Edited by kanewai on 29 July 2013 at 9:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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