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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 97 of 344 22 November 2012 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
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L'Egyptien, Day 16
After the first week of L'Egyptien,, you do move into short phrases and sentences. It's not the most exciting stuff - things like "There are figs and grapes there" and "The god is good." For the third week, you are working through a short text about a sycamore that is based on an actual poem, so it's almost real Egyptian. However, I have to confess that my favorite moment to date is when I divined that the cat with his paw in the pond was saying "There's a fish in the water." So far, the grammar presented is mostly for the sort of subject predicate sentences that authors love to start you with when there's no verb "to be" used in the present tense. And the basic rules of adjective agreement have been presented along with possessives. All in all, it gives you a lot to remember but there's the rub... In the past when I've done Assimil, there has been some sort of hook out there for the language I was working on. And the purpose of an Assimil experiment like this is to see how it works with a language you don't already know. On that score, I would say that I'm assimilating bits and pieces, but finding too often that I have to go back and double-check a word. Usually, it's a word from the first week where words were not given in context. The words that have been used in sentences in the main texts and those that appear in short sentences in the writing practices stick much better. So I stand by my earlier assertion that this would have been better had they started Assimil style from the beginning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 98 of 344 22 November 2012 at 11:00am | IP Logged |
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This post is copied from my log where I've also added other observations about learning Russian with Assimil
Il nuovo russo senza sforzo, Italian edition of Le Nouveau Russe sans peine Three weeks into this experiment and I'm starting to feel the need to slow down to have more time to try and learn something. Rushing through one lesson every day in only half an hour is really just that: rushing. I'm not saying that these 3 weeks have been badly spent: on the contrary, in just 21 days I've been exposed to a fairly big chunk of the language both in terms of vocabulary and grammar structures. Even taking into account different formats and layouts, I doubt there are other courses out there that cover 150 pages of content in just three weeks. The problem is that I don't have the time to focus on that material in a reasonable way and the hope that any of it may stick is very little. So I suppose now it's time to start reviewing the previous lessons while at the same time moving forward with the new ones. So from today I will start what we may refer to as a 'First & 1/2 Wave': I'll go through the lessons one more time, hoping to be able to assimilate something more. I plan to alternate a review lesson and a new one on successive days. Remember that my Russian course is just 70 lessons long, so if I keep my pace I will end almost at the same time with the other partecipants anyway. I'm not putting any pressure as far as the results I'm expecting at this stage. The work will be just as passive as before, with no attempt at translation or anything like that. Basically I'm just beginning the first wave of Assimil again, but with a little more background in the language this time. I'm quite sure that the hours spent up to now have prepared a modicum of foundations on which it will be easier to build my knowledge. Three weeks ago, I knew absolutely nothing about Russian, now, in a sense, I'm starting again as a false beginner: I have a decent grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet, I have an idea of the basic rules of grammar, and I have acquired a minimum of vocabulary and even though for the moment all these skills are just of the passive kind, I'm sure they will be very helpful. --------- EDIT: I’ve written that Assimil covers 150 pages in the first three weeks, I was wrong: you actually reach page 150 during lesson 27. The data may be wrong, but the concept doesn’t change much: you get to read and listen to quite a lot of Russian over a short period of time! Edited by Emme on 05 December 2012 at 9:35pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Mani Diglot Senior Member Germany imsprachendickicht.b Joined 4906 days ago 258 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, Welsh, Luxembourgish | Message 99 of 344 22 November 2012 at 2:34pm | IP Logged |
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Italienisch ohne Mühe heute - Lesson 1-7
Well, not that hard for me up till now. I benefit a lot from French vocabulary. I often read the Italian text and knew what it meant/how to translate it without looking at the German text (I checked it nevertheless). I know it won't stay like that, but it's a huge motivation! Getting the right c/ch-e/i, g/gh-e/i, sc-[insert vowel] pronunciation while reviewing the lessons (I read the previous lessons out loud before I start the new one) is still a bit of a problem, I sometimes mix it up, but I think I'll remember it soon enough. Articles were a bit confusing at first. I was used to the fact that la and le are for feminine and masculine words (French), and now there both feminine (singular and plural) - irks? But heh, therefore it's Italian and not French. As I wrote in my first post, lesson 1 covers the present tense of the auxiliary verb "essere" (to be), in lesson 2 it's "avere" (to have), lesson 3 introduces the regular verbs on -are and lesson 5 on -ere. First thing that really made me laugh was at the end of lesson 6 where they wrote: [DE:]Wenn Sie meinen, daß in diesen ersten Lektionen viel wiederholt wird, seinen Sie nicht enttäuscht; wir haben versucht Ihnen die Grundstrukturen der italienischen Sprache auf eine möglichst klare Art beizubringen. Machen Sie einfach weiter: Es wird sehr bald lustiger! If you think that there's a lot of repetition in these first lessons, don't be disappointed; we tried to teach you the basic structure of the Italian language in the clearest possible way. Just go on: it'll be funnier soon! (They're apparently aware what their reputation is and that they are not meeting it yet.) My favorite word up to now is "rotto/a" - broken/out of order :) introduced in lesson 6 by the useful sentence: "[...], ma ... l'ascensore è rotto!" - [...], but ... the lift is out of order! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 100 of 344 22 November 2012 at 3:46pm | IP Logged |
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Norwegisch ohne Mühe
Day 14: 15 November 2012 Today was a good day for Norwegian. I found this lesson easier to understand (aurally) than the last three or four, and it didn't introduce any weird or confusing grammatical concepts. The big new idea of this lesson was the purely reflexive possessive pronoun, "sin"/"sine"/"sitt". But this was already familiar to me from Esperanto, so I accepted it with no problem. If I had to explain it in translation, I would do it like this: You know how, if you say "Anna used her pen", it could mean "Anna used Anna's pen" or "Anna used Betty's pen"? Well, in Norwegian (and Esperanto), you differentiate between these two potential meanings of "her". They say something like "Anna used her pen" (referring to Betty's pen) and "Anna used own pen" (referring to Anna's pen). It actually makes a lot of sense. Day 16: 17 November 2012 Another good day for Norwegian. I'm getting a bit more confident about the pronunciation. Fun discovery of the day: the name of the band "Husker Du" means "Do you remember?" Another observation: I can't make myself pay any attention to the tone markings. This is going to have to be another thing I pick up from listening. Day 17: 18 November 2012 I can't decide whether, in an ideal situation, it would be better to study the Norwegian Assimil from a German base or an English base. I'm leaning towards German. All I know for sure is that using French is a bad idea! Due to familial similarity within the Germanic branch, I've noticed that the same linguistic concepts "click" literally about twice as fast for me when I'm using "Norwegisch" as when I'm using "Norvégien". It's really remarkable what a difference it makes. It's worth noting, though, that certain aspects of Norwegian grammar are much closer to the equivalent English rule or construction than the German, which would make either base language a good choice. Dutch would also be a good language from which to "step into" Norwegian. I continue to feel more and more comfortable with pronunciation, and I think I'm picking up the tonal patterns pretty intuitively. I've somewhat settled into a pattern of studying that looks something like this: 1. Listen to audio while reading German text (translation). 2. Listen to audio while reading Norwegian text (transcription). 3. Read through entire lesson: pronouncing the Norwegian, comparing with the translation, and reading all the notes (except the phonetic version, which I don't bother using at all unless there's a sound I'm having particular trouble with). This also includes the first exercise, which I simply do as part of the lesson. 4. Try to do the second exercise (filling in the blanks). Can't get most of it on the first try, no big deal. 5. Optional step: quickly review previous lesson (listening to audio while reading Norwegian), then try to transcribe it by hand in Norwegian without looking at the book, just listening to the audio and pausing it after every sentence. When I'm done, I look at the lesson text again and correct my transcription. I've only added in step 5 for the past three lessons or so, but I'm already noticing that it makes a significant difference to my retention. Slowing down and focusing on the process of handwriting foreign words is an extraordinarily useful technique for me. However, doing this step does generally double my study time. For example, my study session today (doing lesson 19, transcribing 20) took me a solid 45 minutes, and about half of that was the transcription. Day 19: 20 November 2012 Today was the end of the third week, and the review lesson was quite long. Not unmanageable, though. The grammar is finally starting to really show what makes it different from German and English, which also makes it more interesting. I still haven't entirely got the hang of all the articles and pronouns, when they get doubled and when they add an "e" to the end of the adjective, but I trust that I will assimilate it as we merrily roll along. And for now, I will only add that I've passed the one-fifth mark of the course: 21/100 lessons finished! (Although I suppose that's only the one-seventh-ish mark if you count the active wave too…) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5883 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 102 of 344 23 November 2012 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
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Chinese With Ease, Lessons 8-14
The first set of 7 lessons went smoothly, and I didn't have trouble remember previous material. This time, it was a bit harder to remember words from previous lessons. When I start up for the day, I listen to the previous lesson's dialog. For 1-7, I didn't have trouble understanding it. For 8-14, it was tough. Part of me wants to stop and just tackle it the way I would normally do it - listen to the dialogs over and over again for weeks and read the sentences over and over again for weeks after. But...the idea of Assimil is that review is built in, and that you'll get it later on if you happen to not get it now. I guess this means the experiment is now officially on for me as I'm moving on and leaving these lessons behind until the active phase. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 103 of 344 25 November 2012 at 12:15am | IP Logged |
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Today I didn't do any language study other than Breton, so I will now give a proper
Breton update. (In English, because I can't be arsed typing it all up in French tonight). Before I say anything about Breton, I want to mention that I do exercise 1 (the translations) differently now: I don't use the book, but I translate directly from the CD (I pause after every sentence). This forces me to translate directly from what I hear, and forces me to think on the spot, as well as LISTEN to Breton. I don't get much exposure to Breton, so hearing words in the sentence is very necessary to learn the language. Le Breton sans peine (until lesson 23) So far I have learned a good amount of things about Breton. The dialogues are fairly short, and that is a bummer, because you don't really learn a whole lot of vocabulary per lesson, but they repeat vocabulary a lot and thus you retain most of the new material very well. Furthermore Breton has a very caveman way of forming vocabulary at times: most buildings are just ti-<noun>, with the noun indicating what the house is or what is sold there. A few examples: ti-kêr is just "hotel de ville, mairie" (town hall usually), ti-bank is a bank, ti-debriñ is a restaurant (literally house-to-eat), ti- krampouezh is a pancake restaurant. To be at someone's place is described as being in the house of someone: e ti ma breur is "in the house of my brother", at my brother's place. Nothing really tough. Furthermore, plurals are very easy in Breton: for most words it suffices to add -ed (for animate things and beings). Pesk --> pesked (fish), krank --> kranked (crabs), mignon --> mignoned (friends) (don't confuse it with cute!) etc. Most inanimate things simply add -où. Bag --> bagoù (boats). There are also collective nouns, which are already in the plural and add -enn to make them singular (krampouezh - krampouezhenn). There are some irregular nouns as well, but I haven't met any of them. Many things that come in big quantities, such as food items, are often found in this collective state. There are some exceptions, such as apple (aval --> avaloù). More good luck: there are NO CASES! A possessive is just made by removing the article and thunking the possessor after it, so that is really easy as well (and there is no preposition needed. No need to use "of" or "de". Kozh Yuna is simply Yuna's cat.) Furthermore, what I have seen so far is that verbs are really easy because if you have an explicit subject, verbs don't conjugate for person/number. They just use a verbal particle + the infinitive (which verbal particle is used depends on what is expressed before the verb; if it's the subject, the direct object, or another verb, it's a, otherwise it's e). Verbs do conjugate if the subject is not explicitly stated though. "To have" (kaout as the infinitive) is actually another conjugation of to be - to say "I am hungry" you literally say "hunger to me is" , or Naon am eus. Nothing scary there, just think of Russian. Furthermore, things like poultry are just called "meat chicken" (kig yar). Yar is chicken, and you just put it behind kig (meat) to get poultry. Again, caveman style, but it's a really logical way of building vocabulary. In the same way, you can express opposites by using di(s): aes - easy, diaes - difficult. liv = colour(ed), disliv = decoloured. Note also that livañ = to paint (so literally to colour). Verbs are, to be, to have, to do, to go, and to know excepted, all regular (with the addition that to do is regular but the verb root does not correspond to the infinitive). Most verbs have an ending that needs to be removed to form the base - usually it's -al, -et, -iñ, or -añ, but plenty of verbs have no such ending and can be used directly (komz = to speak is used this way). Adjectives don't decline, they sometimes mutate with the noun though. In fact, there are few things that are not easy in Breton - they are verb conjugations (because there are quite a few tenses in Breton), word order (not inherently difficult, but takes getting used to), and the mutations. These mutations and the concept of liaisons and vowels are very important in Breton, and the mutations show the difference between masculine/feminine (the only genders in Breton). The mutations also change initial consonants a lot, and the mutation is triggered by two aspects: what is in front of the word, and for nouns it depends on gender as well. It also depends on the initial consonant whether the word mutates or not. Furthermore, a lot of conjunctions and prepositions obtain an extra consonant before a vowel. (ha = hag before a vowel). This, and prepositions are conjugated for person. That is weird, and not something I am very used to. But all in all, the mutations aren't very hard to remember usually (often it's a voiced/voiceless pair, and the ones that aren't are logical). The verdict so far: Assimil is not introducing most of the more complex things (such as verb conjugations) too quickly, but we have covered one of the four main mutations, noun plurals, the principles of worder, adjectives (which come after the noun), and we have seen some examples of declined prepositions. Furthermore there are some notes on word formation. Assimil is doing a decent job so far, but the humour is mostly lacking until now. And Assimil does have a tendency to introduce useless words here and there. Oh, and Breton counts using a vigitesimal system. Except for fifty, which is half hundred. Sigh. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 104 of 344 26 November 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged |
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L'Egyptien
I've fallen one day behind, doing lesson 20 today. Up above, Emme notes how hard it is to take in everything in the Russian course. This is the challenge with Assimil, and one I'm not fully meeting. With Assimil, you aren't supposed to learn everything on the first go; you're supposed to sort of wallow in it until the active phase, at which point enough is familiar that things really seem to stick. That said, I am behind schedule because I've been re-reading earlier lessons and re-doing writing exercises. It can be very hard to let go and trust that you're building the foundation when that foundation is still, so to speak, beneath the surface of things and out of view. But that is the nature of foundations. So if you're struggling around the three week mark, you might do what I say, and not what I do, trusting that while things get confused and you're not sure how much you're learning, once you start the active phase it will all come together.If you can manage it, you might just be reporting to the others of us how much needless time and worry we took when you hit the halfway mark in your course. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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