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Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6902 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French
| Message 17 of 140 09 August 2012 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
03-09/08/2012 - lots of English. Dutch... not so much :(
English
First I got lazy and tired, and spent a lot of time watching movies in English (it was nice to tweet about it for 6WC but honestly, it was really more fun than learning). Then I had a translation assignment (again, English). As a result, my 6WC pie chart is very blue (English mostly) but I hope it will change soon :)
Dutch
As I predicted, I didn't have a lot of time for my 6WC target language but I did manage to continue the Michel Thomas course. I'm in the middle of CD4 and it's still enjoyable. Today, I've tried formulating some sentences on my own (so far, without saying them out loud) and I was able to express quite a lot (as for a complete beginner with tiny vocabulary, of course).
In the meantime, I also watched a couple of videos on http://www.2bdutch.nl - I can recommend it. I tried reading and listening to "Harry Potter" in Dutch but I got quickly bored. Looking for some words and guessing their meanings from the context or by comparing the text with the German translation of HP was quite interesting but I guess I need to understand Dutch better to really enjoy it. The Dutch and German translations are by
the way quite different in terms of structure (including sentence boundaries).
French, Spanish
I managed to watch quite a lot of TV in both languages, and I'm really glad about it. I know that 132 minutes of French and 82 minutes of Spanish are not all that impressive but especially for my Spanish, it's a big step forward. My Spanish has been dormant for quite a long time and I am pleased to see that after just about an hour my listening comprehension is already much better, and I start to recall some vocabulary I learned and used a couple of years ago. I have to watch and read more to really deserve the "basic fluency" I've got in my language profile...
Arabic
Lots of impressions and observations - I'll edit this post later.
Russian
Just a couple of minutes of Russian TV here and there. Maybe next year I find enough time (and motivation) to do something serious about it.
German
I listened to some podcasts on dradio.de, watched German TV, and I also practiced interpreting from German into Polish. Next week, I am going to Germany for 10 days and I am already excited! I haven't really spoken German since last December, just some short conversations but nothing longer and more demanding. I hope all of my German will be back after a day or so. Unfortunately, for the last three years I didn't have opportunities to speak German regularly so I always try to make the most of the week or two that I usually spend in Germany every year.(I
won't probably have a lot of time for Dutch, though.)
Edited by Julie on 09 August 2012 at 7:15pm
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| 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 18 of 140 09 August 2012 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
Have fun in Germany! Where exactly are you going?
When I went to Poznań I came back to Warsaw by the Berlin-Poznań-Warsaw express :) Had to ask several people to make sure I wouldn't end up in Berlin haha.
I'm going to Finland next week *knock on wood*. Will also do less Spanish, but my focus in this challenge is total hours :) OMG my target hours were so good when I was doing a Polish 6WC and went to Poland...
Really nice to be competing for the first place with you, btw <3 I don't even know half the people who did well in the previous challenges:/
Edited by Serpent on 09 August 2012 at 7:44pm
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6902 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French
| Message 19 of 140 09 August 2012 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
I'm going to the surroundings of Wittenberg (officially, "Lutherstadt Wittenberg", as
I've recently found out... so it's clearly THIS Wittenberg ;)), and I'll have a chance
to visit Leipzig, too. I'm actually going to take the Berlin-Poznań-Warsaw express :).
I guess I'll log many German hours (I'm not sure how regularly I'll be able to tweet
about them, though so don't be surprised if all of the sudden my hour count increases
significantly ;).
I wish you same fun and lots of practice with Finnish... I can imagine how much you
miss being surrounded by this language :) (I'm so excited about speaking German!:))
6WC is a lot of fun and very motivating... I wish I took part in previous challenges
(they started when I was mostly off the forum, though). And I have to admit I look up
your scores - especially your tags - from time to time, just to see what you manage to
do for such a long time :). I hate the #rest tag :PP). I guess I wish I was a football
fan ;). So... I'm right behind you and hope to be able to keep up with you till the end
of the challenge (though this might be really hard from what I can see :)).
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| 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 20 of 140 09 August 2012 at 8:10pm | IP Logged |
Well, I came back from Finland just three weeks ago :) This excitement without sadness is really nice:)
#rest is for all the randomness... i'll try to tweet it without the hashtag. In English it's mostly writing fanfiction (about footballers). It can also be anki, talking (yes, I speak so little that it doesn't deserve its own tag), interviews... basically, everything for what I had tiny tags in the previous challenge. :) Or even not so tiny - I'm going to do far less LR this time, for example.
I have a Finnish number with cheap mobile net so I'll update regularly :)
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6902 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French
| Message 21 of 140 09 August 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
Lucky you, with your immersion stays! I do have a German number. Not so cheap, though ;).
I'm actually going again to Germany (Berlin) in September. Not for long, though so there
will be some sadness for sure ;)
I tag everything so that I can see how much time I actually spend on each of the language
activities. With your challenge experience, you don't need that ;).
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 22 of 140 09 August 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
If I'm proved wrong come October or so, you can shoot me :-) but I would be surprised
if you got too much interference between Dutch and Swedish.
Wittenberg looks really interesting, and I confess to being a little envious :-)
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6902 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French
| Message 23 of 140 09 August 2012 at 9:59pm | IP Logged |
montmorency wrote:
If I'm proved wrong come October or so, you can shoot me :-) but I
would be surprised if you got too much interference between Dutch and Swedish. |
|
|
I'm not sure if I understand you correctly: would you or wouldn't you be surprised?
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6902 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French
| Message 24 of 140 12 August 2012 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
10-12/08/2012 - some quality time with Dutch music
Unfortunately, I came down with a cold and allergies, and I didn't do half of the
things I had planned to do, including language learning. I watched a couple of movies
in English, and some TV in other languages... nothing special.
However, yesterday evening I felt better and decided to look for some Dutch music. The
best decision ever! I found names of Dutch singers and bands here on HTLAL and gave
some of them a try. Among them, I enjoyed Jeroen van de Boom the most. I listened to
his songs both in the background and fully focused, sometimes while following the
lyrics. I even tried singing along ;). I recognize quite many little words that I've
learned with Michel Thomas, and I could understand some lines fully admittedly, not
many of them).
I also looked for some information about various songs and singers, and I read some
short music news in Dutch. Nothing complicated (well, how hard this can be...?) but I
was pleased to see that I could understand the most of some news, and get the gist of
the others.
I continue Michel Thomas, I'm in the middle of CD5 now. Still nice and enjoyable :). I
can't get used to the Dutch word order after 'omdat', though. Instead of 'omdat hij het
wil hebben', I often say 'omdat hij het hebben wil', copying the word order from
German. Well, with some practice, I should get rid of this problem easily.
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