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| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5826 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 89 of 133 10 September 2012 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In a message on this thread our fellow HTLALer druckfehler, native German speaker, said:
I guess that since you already enjoyed "Effi Briest", "Frau Jenny Treibel" will be an even better book to read. I haven't started to read it, but it would be very nice if we could try once more to create and mantain a German reading group. This book may be a good option. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 90 of 133 10 September 2012 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, it's a good book. I think I read it 2 or 3 years ago, and for some reason found it easier than, for example, Effi Briest. I didn't have an audiobook to encourage me along then, although I think I did probably have my electronic dictionary by then, which would have helped. I'll happily join the group if it gets going again! :-) Edit: p.s. a little while ago, I got hold of an audiobook version of "Pride and Prejudice" ("Stolz und Verurteil"), which prompted me to go looking for an English edition, which I had never read up to that point. I listened to and read a few chapters, and thought it was quite promising. If people were able to get hold of the German version of this, maybe we could read both, and compare. Edited by montmorency on 10 September 2012 at 3:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 91 of 133 11 September 2012 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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2012-09-10 Montag|mandag
Dansk CC days=29 cn=24=fireogtyve (fireogtyvende) >10 words units 15, but also 18 (& working backwards, for variety). A new thread about mnemonics yesterday got me thinking about these again, and as it happened, I'd been able to make associations (I'll use "associations" & "menomics" interchangeably as shorthand) for 2 words quite easily. I used to be a big fan of them, influenced by the books of Harry Lorayne, who was an old time memory man in the USA. (I was surprised and pleased to see he was still going when I looked online last year! Must be in his 80s!). He was a sort of Derren Brown de ses jours. I'm sure he could have memorised 100 foreign words straight off if he'd wanted. Whether that would help him speak the language is a debatable point. To cut to the chase, I thought just for fun, I'd specifically try to use mnemonics to learn at least 10 words today. I'll use my normal methods ("...you know my methods, Watson...") for a similar number of other words, and see how we get on. I must say, my initial choice of words hasn't been very promising. I went to the last chapter to specifically find words I'd probably not come across before (actually I had come across a lot of them). But we'll see how it goes. ~Later: Read and listened to chapter 4 of "Kvinden i Buret" (immediately after listening to the equivalent in German). Deutsch Hopefully, it will be at least 1 chapter from "Erbarmen", as well as L-R-ing it in Danish. I also want to do a chapter or so of "Frau Jenny Treibel". Interesting his use of the name "Jenny". Was it common in Germany then? It sounds English to me, although I have known the name in some other European countries in modern times, although I thought that might have been English influence. Fontane may well have been influenced by English in this case, as he was in other ways. I suppose he was at least in some senses an anglophile, which does of course bias me in his favour (yet again). Being an old romantic, I'm reminded of the poem:
~Later: Listened to chapter 4 from "Erbarmen". Edited by montmorency on 11 September 2012 at 11:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 92 of 133 12 September 2012 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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2012-09-11 Dienstag|tirsdag
Dansk CC days=30 cn=25=femogtyve (femogtyvende) >10 words units 15 I can't say my mnemonic experiment yesterday was a great success. Perhaps my imagination isn't up to it. I'm going to concentrate on my usual methods, although emk (in the mnemonic thread) reminded me that putting words into a sentence usually helps. He puts them in anki. My wordlists don't really allow for full sentences (I do put short phrases in), but I could just use my work book. And maybe "Harry/Palmer". I haven't totally given up on mnemonics. The idea intrigues me, and I got diverted reading a forum devoted to them, but you could spend a lot of time building elaborate mnemonic systems (rooms, palaces, towns, villages, etc), and I wonder how much you'd really get out of it in terms of number of words learned. People here are apparently learning up to 200 words a day with Anki, and even I've approached 50 on a good day (admittedly those days haven't been so frequent lately, but I could if I put my mind to it). Could I build enough "palace rooms" to accomodate 50 words a day? or even 20? And would it actually help? I'll still make up the occasional visualisation or verbal association though, I'm sure. And keep on trying to think up other ways of remembering, e.g. sensory. Exposure is obviously a big part of it (although whether exposure alone can do it is the $64,000 question isn't it?). One thing I'm finding now I've started listening to Danish audiobooks while reading the Danish text is that the "music" of Danish lingers in my head long after I've stopped listening, just as it has in the past with German. At the moment, I'm not really listening (to the Danish) for meaning (I listen to the German for that). It's more a case of 1. learning to associate the spoken with the written word (for a large number of words, in contrast to the TYS, or even Copenhagencast), and 2. Just letting the sound wash over me, and absorb the "music" and rhythms, and the "tones" (as I think of them, although it's not supposed to be tonal in the sense that Swedish and Norwegian is). I Listened to and read Chapters 5-6 of "Kvinden i buret". I'm glad to notice that I don't usually lose my place in the text, but if I do, I usually find it again quickly. Edited by montmorency on 15 September 2012 at 9:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 93 of 133 13 September 2012 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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2012-09-12 Mittwoch|onsdag
Dansk CC days=31 cn=26=seksogtyve (seksogtyvende) >10 words units 16 (seksten, pron siksten) og 17 (sytten). As well as word listing, I wrote short sentences for some words in my Danish workbook. I think it definitely helps. These were my own sentences, but if I was stuck, I would try to use some from TYS if possible. Haven't bothered with mnemonics or even "H/P" today, but I might later. Seem to be in a word-list and writing mood. General I was wondering if there was an easy way to get the system date into the clipboard, so I could paste it into files like this. I found a free enhanced version of Notepad (Notepad++) that has lots of fancy plugins that could probably do it in a fancy way. Then just idly looking at the menus at the top of this, boring old fashioned Windows XP notepad, what to I find? Under "Edit"-> "Time/Date-F5" - ha! like this: 20:36 12/09/2012. Ok, it's not quite the format I'd normally use, and maybe notepad++ would allow you to format it more fancily, but heck it's there, it's free, it's no trouble, and I can edit the basic output into the format I want. The point is, it's accurate at the time I hit F5, and that's what counts. Not that I need the time for this log although the date is very useful. Day would be nice :-) ~Later: Read/listened to chapter 7 of the current book "under both kinds". Too tired to go on, but would like to have done. Edited by montmorency on 14 September 2012 at 3:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 94 of 133 14 September 2012 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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2012-09-13 Donnerstag|torsdag
11:06 13/09/2012 (just playing with PF5. I'm just a kid at heart :) ). Dansk CC days=32 cn=27=syogtyve (syogtyvende) >10 words units 18 (atten). Reasonable start with my word lists today, and seem to have reached the last unit, although I've been skipping back and forth through units 15-18 in the last week or so, and need to go back and consolidate. For the whole book actually, so that will be at least another week before I can declare my initial consistency goal achieved. Deutsch The Fontane books I ordered a few days ago have started to trickle in. "Effi Briest", the translation by Helen Chambers and Hugh Rorrison in the Angel Books edition (I was depending on a Penguin edition from the library before), which is old, but in good condition, and "L'Adultera" in German, in a cheap yellow Reklam edition, but it appears to be new and was only 63p+£2.75 postage, and seems to have good notes. This one was first published in 1880, and it says it was his first "Berlin" novel. It's fairly short at 144 pages. As the title implies, it is about marital infidelity, and was apparently so shocking to the respectable Prussians that he couldn't get a publisher for a long time. He also wrote about marital infidelity (highlighting the vulnerability of women in this situation) in "Effi Briest", and marriage breakdown in "Unwiederbringlich". He even apparently wrote about incest, in his first novel ("Geschwisterlieb"), which is said to be very bad - he hadn't hit his stride then, and in some later ones. So clearly not afraid of difficult subjects. Quite interesting for someone who didn't take up novel writing until (I think) his late 50s. Went to our monthly Anglo/German club meeting (which takes place almost all in English usually). The presentation was by an actor (Graham Rickett from Stroud) who had trained at one of the Steiner schools, and featured Goethe's Faust. He performed four scenes for us with great élan, in an English translation by John Shawcross, which he said was the only decent translation (at least for dramatic purposes) that he had found. Very interesting, and we all participated by reading one small section of verse in German which the chairwoman had prepared for us. I got talking to him afterwards, and it turned out that, among other things, he had taught in Denmark for 4 years and learned Danish! Inevitably we got talking about the difficulties with the pronunciation, and interestingly, he said that the older generation rather lament the unclear modern pronunciation (a view similar to that which I have heard reported here sometimes I think). He said that they thought it was for a particular reason, which I cannot now remember exactly. Perhaps it will come back to me. He also said that he didn't have any particular technique for remembering; it was just a question of massive amounts of repetition. He doesn't know the complete Faust; he has to learn the pieces he is planning to perform. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 95 of 133 15 September 2012 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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2012-09-14 Freitag|fredag
14:29 14/09/2012 Dansk CC days=33 cn=28=ottogtyve (ottogtyvende) >10 words units 18 (atten). Made a reasonably good start with my word lists. I have "done" all of unit 18 at some level, but I need to consolidate. In fact I think the next week or so is going to be one of vocabulary consolidation for the TYSCD. I'll go reasonably quickly through all the units, revising any words that seem to be lacking or have fallen away. I'll try to do as many writing exercises as possible, and also work on the grammar in each unit. I will probably need another week or so consolidating just the grammar, but we'll see how it goes. So, goal not yet achieved, but it's now within sight. Some distractions, so ended up not doing any reading or L-R-ing. :-( But the distractions were definitely language-related, so not all bad. Actually, I did listen to part of another JAO book in German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 96 of 133 16 September 2012 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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2012-09-15 Samstag|Sonnaben|lørdag
14:53 15/09/2012 Dansk CC days=34 cn=29=niogtyve (niogtyvende) >10 words units 18 (atten). "Consolidation mode". Word-listing. Comparing vocab at the back with vocab within the chapters. I was a bit surprised to find that some words in the vocab at the back I didn't seem to have encountered at all, suggesting that not all the words in the vocab at the back appear in the chapter "quick vocab" lists. That's consistent, since not quite all words or phrases in the chapter QVs appear in the vocab at the back. I'd already counted up the words in the vocab at the back, although I hadn't counted all the words in the QV lists. (I've now started to do so). Anyway, I suppose the total number of words aggregating them both together would be at least slightly higher than any one of the two sets of words. There is also some specialist vocab (e.g. parts of the body) given in tables in some chapters, together with some special phrases or set phrases, and I so far have not attempted to systematically learn those. I was always planning to come back to them when I'd been through the basic vocabulary. Anyway, I think I will also need at least one pass through the vocabulary list at the back. So I'm definitely still some way off properly finishing this book. I'm glad I've now started L-R-ing though, plus I also have plenty of Copenhagencasts to vary my material. I'd say that Copenhagencast is doing something slightly different for me than either TYS or L-R-ing. I'm having a subsection of the vocabulary and pronunciation explained to me by a native speaker in a lively way, together with little exercises and quizzes. It almost feels like having an individual native speaker as a teacher, and I'd definitely recommend it to fellow learners of Danish. Some nice German cognates recently, e.g. overleve (survive) cf. "überleben". Deutsch General Interesting Grauniad article in the Family section: A mother talks about bringing up her kids in Brussels, and learning to speak French (do they learn Flemish?), but missing out on the subtler aspects of English. french">http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/15/l iving-in-brussels-children- french http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/15/living-in -brussels-children-french
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