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Assimil Experiment Group Log

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Flarioca
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5880 days ago

635 posts - 816 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Mandarin

 
 Message 81 of 344
15 November 2012 at 3:05pm | IP Logged 
El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Day 1 - Lesson 1 (Lliçó primera)

My Catalan Experiment started today. Lesson 1 required only 12 minutes, but Catalan sounds less familiar than expected, although reading is really way much easier. The exercises are more "active" than in some other Assimil courses and will be done only after repeating the lesson aloud.

Some people complaint about the use of not so common words already in the first lesson and it also happens here. Maybe, the idea is exactly that! You'll always meet them and it is better to get used to that from the beginning.

I'll keep the time required for each lesson and maybe some extra details in my log.

Edited by Flarioca on 16 November 2012 at 1:15pm

1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4705 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 82 of 344
15 November 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged 
Another excerpt from my log in French.

Le Breton sans Peine (jusqu'à leçon 14)

Ce soir je vais étudier la révision de la semaine dernière, mais comme j'ai écris autre
part, ce semaine a introduit des particularités concernant la langue bretonne, qui sont
assez représentatives de son héritage. La semaine dernière a introduit des mutations.
J'ai déjà parlé des mutations de la lettre "k", qui mute toujours suivant un article,
soit des mots masculins, soit des mots féminins. Mais le règle pour les mutations des
mots féminins singuliers existe aussi pour quelques autres consonnes initiales
(souvent ces mutations consiste d'un opposition voisée/devoisée).

J'ai vu que des mots commençant par b (bag, bateau en français) ou m (malizenn,
valise en français) ont une mutations vers "v". Donc bag, mais "ar vag".
"Malizenn", mais "ar valizenn".

Une petite note orthographique: bien entendu, le mot malizenn est un emprunt du
français. Mais en breton, des mots commencent guère en "v", et par consequent les
brittophones ont modifié le mot et l'ecrit comme malizenn (qui, bien sur, mute vers
valizenn après une article).

Il faut aussi noter que le plupart des mots en breton paraissent d'être masculin, mais
je peux pas passer un jugement assez précis.

Un autre particularité que j'ai remarque c'est que toujours, les mots nouvelles
dénotant des technologies inconnus aux anciens celtiques, sont souvent construits avec
des racines celtiques. Bien sur, le breton ne résiste pas utiliser des emprunts ("ur
bilhed", "an aerborzh"), malgré la tendance à "bretoniser" l'orthographe, mais pour pas
mal des concepts étrangers, ils utilisent une autre méthode pour construire des mots
nouveaux.

Un avion est un "karr-nij" en breton courant (un char-vol) mais la comparaison s'étend
vers la voiture aussi, qui est traduit comme "karr-tan" (un char-feu), ou tout court
"karr" en breton plus familier. L'essence est donc "dour-tan" (eau-feu) etc.

Veuillez noter que karr est un mot masculin, comme tous les mots de ce genre sont
souvent masculins en breton. Donc le mutation est vers c'harr (et ne pas garr).

Et on demande l'heure seulement en disant "combien heure est" (Pet eur eo?). La réponse
sera "tri eur hanter eo" (il est trois heures et demi). Hanter signifie juste "demi".
Donc littéralement la reponse est "trois heures demi est".

Plus court, plus précise.
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 83 of 344
16 November 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged 
Le suedois sans peine (8)

I've done this lesson a day later. Unsure whether I should rather catch up by reading
14 right after doing 13 or should I just go on as if nothing happened.

Many changes happened between the first and the second week.
1.Assimil humour is here
2.The level of difficulty has grown noticeably. I no longer have the urge to do several
lessons a day. Even one is quite challenging. The sentences are longer, there are bits
of new vocab, old grammar is used again.

I'm happy about the changes and I hope my skills will grow at least as fast as
difficulcy of the following lessons.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Marishka
Newbie
United States
Joined 5246 days ago

25 posts - 56 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, French, Dutch

 
 Message 84 of 344
16 November 2012 at 4:48am | IP Logged 
Roman wrote:
Marishka wrote:

Dutch With Ease


He also offers much practical advice, advising me to do the following:

  • Read the sentences aloud, over and over again, not to memorize the material,
    but to learn the proper pronunciation and to be able to say the sentences smoothly
    without hesitation.
  • Write down the Dutch sentences whenever you have any spare
    time.
  • Don't neglect the sentence structure exercises, as only by repeating
    typical Dutch constructions over and over will they become familiar to you.

  • Make a list of neuter nouns, studying them as often as possible, since much of
    Dutch grammar relates to the distinction between de (masculine and feminine) and
    het (neuter) nouns.
  • Remember to read and carefully examine the page and
    lesson numbers in order to be able to count in Dutch 'with ease'.
  • Read the
    texts in the previous lessons as often as possible, or better yet, just listen to the
    audio alone, in order to become familiar with the sounds and rhythm of Dutch sentences.





Aside from this experiment I'm doing El Alemán (2011 edition) and am now wondering if
wouldn't it be good if they had made the same thing with sentence structure and
recommendation to write down things like your Dutch with ease... Since German has three
genders and you have to deal with nominative, accusative, dative and genitive cases.


So many people have said that doing Assimil together with FSI is a great combination, so you could always add the drills from that course. I don't think FSI made a Dutch course, so I'm really glad these sentence structure drills were included in Dutch With Ease.

Taking dictation from the audio is also helping me tremendously in a number of ways. I wish I had done that with Assimil Spanish and French, because my results this time around (so far) are so much better. I'll post more in detail about this the next time I report in.

2 persons have voted this message useful



Flarioca
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5880 days ago

635 posts - 816 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Mandarin

 
 Message 85 of 344
16 November 2012 at 1:28pm | IP Logged 
El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Day 2 - Lesson 2 (Lliçó segona)

Lesson two took me 17 minutes. I'll not register the time of repetitions during commute, because that would be a wasted time anyway :-) Besides, I live close to my job place and it takes me only ten minutes to get there.

I've also seen something about Catalan phonetics, but will not try hard to learn it now. Let's assimilate this too, even more with all of its similarities to other Romance languages. However, I really believe that speaking Catalan with a good accent will be my most difficult challenge in this experiment.

Edited by Flarioca on 16 November 2012 at 1:29pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Roman
Diglot
Groupie
Spain
Joined 5450 days ago

42 posts - 52 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, English
Studies: German, Italian, French

 
 Message 86 of 344
16 November 2012 at 2:17pm | IP Logged 
New French With Ease + O Novo Francês Sem Custo: 8-14

So far, so good.

I like this book. The lessons are entertaining, more than in my Italian one. Or maybe I
like French more, I don't know.
I don't know if it'll take me to B2, as I see some people here who already went
through the book saying it is not true, to the NFWE, anyway.

In the second revision lesson they asked if I remembered the meanings of the verbs
ending in er. (rentrer ; acheter ; monter ; décrocher ; déranger ; manger ; allumer ;
regarder ; laver ; se coucher ; penser ; écouter)

I only remembered manger, allumer, regarder, laver, penser and écouter. And four of
these are closely related to Portuguese, so nothing amazing here. After that they said
it's all in lesson 10, so it was expected that one wouldn't remember most of it. Bof!

That's it for now,
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4705 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 87 of 344
16 November 2012 at 3:40pm | IP Logged 
Marishka wrote:
Roman wrote:
Marishka wrote:

Dutch With Ease


He also offers much practical advice, advising me to do the following:

  • Read the sentences aloud, over and over again, not to memorize the material,
    but to learn the proper pronunciation and to be able to say the sentences smoothly
    without hesitation.
  • Write down the Dutch sentences whenever you have any spare
    time.
  • Don't neglect the sentence structure exercises, as only by repeating
    typical Dutch constructions over and over will they become familiar to you.

  • Make a list of neuter nouns, studying them as often as possible, since much of
    Dutch grammar relates to the distinction between de (masculine and feminine) and
    het (neuter) nouns.
  • Remember to read and carefully examine the page and
    lesson numbers in order to be able to count in Dutch 'with ease'.
  • Read the
    texts in the previous lessons as often as possible, or better yet, just listen to the
    audio alone, in order to become familiar with the sounds and rhythm of Dutch sentences.





Aside from this experiment I'm doing El Alemán (2011 edition) and am now wondering if
wouldn't it be good if they had made the same thing with sentence structure and
recommendation to write down things like your Dutch with ease... Since German has three
genders and you have to deal with nominative, accusative, dative and genitive cases.


So many people have said that doing Assimil together with FSI is a great combination,
so you could always add the drills from that course. I don't think FSI made a Dutch
course, so I'm really glad these sentence structure drills were included in Dutch
With Ease
.

Taking dictation from the audio is also helping me tremendously in a number of ways. I
wish I had done that with Assimil Spanish and French, because my results this time
around (so far) are so much better. I'll post more in detail about this the next time
I report in.


As far as I know, FSI does have a Dutch course, but it's simply not available online
for copyright reasons - this is why some other major languages like Japanese or Russian
don't have much FSI material either. But FSI does teach all of these languages.

Edited by tarvos on 16 November 2012 at 4:37pm

1 person has voted this message useful



ayrrom
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4561 days ago

9 posts - 13 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 88 of 344
16 November 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged 
Japanese with ease Volume 1

Lessons 7-13

Still slow going. Brutal trying to make it through a lesson in less than 30 minutes with any hope of retention. Resisting use of other materials is difficult. With no background or exposure in Japanese it is a very steep learning curve. Here is what I am doing:

1) Listen without book 2-3 times
2) Listen while reading Romanized text x 2
3) Listen while reading English translation x 2
4) Read without audio the Romanized and looking at English to get translation.x2
5) Sounding out Kana and Kanji and comparing to English translation.
6) Listen again to audio while trying to read Kanji. x3-4
7) Listen again x 2 without book.
8) Try to do exercises without looking.
9) Listen to audio only in car to and from work -->7-10x
10) Try to review same lesson next day.

I have found if I try to review all the preceding lessons each day it is all starting to finally stick. The earlier lessons I pretty much have memorized or over-learned. I am spending an initial 1 hour+ on each lesson. Even then, I think it is the later review that is helping. I find breaking down the individual sounds of each word and making a visual picture of each is helping speed things up. The amount of time involved is seriously hampering my ability to continue with my Spanish studies. I suspect that [at least for me] one lesson a day is not going to be attainable as the lessons get longer. May have to back off and spent 2 days per lesson to get the most out of it.   


1 person has voted this message useful



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