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Gary’s TAC 2013 - PAX | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 41 of 160 20 February 2013 at 3:24am | IP Logged |
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Sounds awesome. So much practice, I nearly envy you :-D
And 100 conversation hours, and half the movies: congratulations! 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 42 of 160 27 February 2013 at 12:44pm | IP Logged |
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It's really starting to seem that finding practice opportunities is just like the other parts of language learning - it's difficult and it often feels like you're getting nowhere, but after a lot of time and effort it does begin to get easier!
I'm well over the 100 conversation hours now, but I don't think I'm going to have quite as much speaking opportunity from now on; on the plus side I suppose that means I'll have more time to catch up on the films. I started watching La sconosciuta last night. It has very good Italian subtitles which is a bonus. I find that, while the Italians don't always do subtitles in their own language, when they do they tend to do it pretty well. Most Italian films seem to be either heavy and emotional stories, which I'm not always in the mood for, or strange comedies that I don't really get. And of course there's the 80s horror classics, but they don't usually have a ton of dialogue. Plenty other options though, like re-watching, TV, and dubs of English movies, so I don't think I'll have any difficulty finding things to watch. For French, I watched Une bouteille dans la mer. While the plot is somewhat ridiculous, it's actually quite a well done and moving film. Half of the dialogue isn't in French though. I'm going to check out Banlieue 13 next, it looks fun. I've been a bit ill in the last few days. On Monday I felt the need to leave the house so I went to the Café for a wee while. I wasn't exactly at full capacity, and the French table was too busy, but I did have one decent conversation. I felt like I was speaking relatively well, but as usual, pronunciation was the first thing to go. I've also started working on Grammaire Progressive again, and I'm keeping up with Anki. There's a meetup tonight and I'm feeling slightly healthier today so it should be decent. Edited by garyb on 27 February 2013 at 12:47pm 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 43 of 160 01 March 2013 at 11:00am | IP Logged |
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I watched the rest of La Sconosciuta. Very good film but like I say it's not exactly light entertainment. In the film I noticed a lot of grammatical "mistakes" which seem to be quite common in the spoken language, which are things I also heard a lot from the Italian who I was dating. An interesting one is using the imperfect instead of the conditional perfect, so for example "dovevo farlo" instead of "avrei dovuto farlo" ("I should have done it" or "dovevi andare" instead of "saresti dovuto andare" ("You should have gone"). I suppose using the imperfect is less wordy and takes less thought. And there's the old use of the present or imperfect indicative instead of the respective subjunctive moods - again it takes a bit less thought, perhaps even for a native Italian speaker; the present subjunctive is certainly often a little awkward, although the imperfect one is quite simple and regular.
I never hear things like that in French, but I suppose "j'aurai dû" rolls off the tongue far more easily than "avrei dovuto", their present subjunctive is considerably easier, and the imperfect one has been dead for a while in the spoken language. To a learner, all these sound quite incorrect, but I'm wondering if it's similar to, say, dropping the "ne" in French: incorrect in writing and formal speech but quite accepted in conversation. For now I'll stick to using the "by the book" forms myself, but it's good to at least know about these common "errors" so I don't get confused when I hear them. It's surprising that I've only really started noticing them recently though, but I guess it's one of these things that you suddenly start seeing everywhere as soon as you become aware of it. Another one I sometimes see and hear in Italian and French, and even occasionally in English, is the conditional instead of the imperfect after "se"/"si" ("if"), but I'm fairly sure that's almost much universally considered wrong :). I also noticed that the main character always addressed people formally as "voi" instead of "lei", which I already know is characteristic of Naples. You also see this in Il Cuore Altrove, in which the Roman main character addresses his roommate as "lei" who then replies with "voi". For French, I'm considering joining fellow members emk and fireballtrouble who're planning to take the C1 exam at the end of the year. I reckon that could be possible, but only if I put off Spanish until next year. I should have ample time to finish Grammaire Progressive and Alter Ego, get a bunch more exposure and practice, and do some preparatory lessons before December if I decide to go down that route. It's a question of priorities really, and I'm still not sure exactly what mine are. In any case I'm sticking with my current plan for the first half of the year, and I'll see how I feel and what progress I've made around June/July time and make a decision. My Italian progress is also going to be a big factor for deciding when to start Spanish. At the moment I'm definitely leaning towards continuing to put Spanish off and focusing on my current languages, because juggling two is already pretty hard work. (EDIT: As far as I can see, I don't think the DELF/DALF exams take place in December anywhere near me. I think I'd either have to do it this June (not realistic) or wait until next March...) Edited by garyb on 01 March 2013 at 11:27am 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 44 of 160 08 March 2013 at 11:23am | IP Logged |
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I'm mostly back to full health and normal amounts of free time. I made it to three meetups: the University one (fun although quite a low level of French and very English-heavy), the Café (interesting crowd as usual) and the Italian meetup (the usual small group of native/advanced speakers; if only there were something like that for French!). I also had a surprise Skype conversation with one of my Italian contacts who I thought had disappeared off the face of the Earth like the rest of them.
I've also decided to try the language exchange thing again, which is maybe a stupid idea considering how much I've been messed around and wasted time with them in the past, with people changing their minds at the last minute, not turning up, and stopping all contact after one or two good meetups. But I did do a couple of good ones last year that lasted a couple of months each and that made the rest worth it. I know I should just bite the bullet and start paying Skype tutors, but I guess my idealism about the whole "exchange" idea hasn't been completely destroyed just yet and the thought of meeting someone in my city face-to-face is appealing. My French practice is still overwhelmingly with intermediate learners rather than native speakers and I'm keen to redress that a little, although there have been a few more natives at the meetup events recently. Italian Super Challenge Films: 53 done, 47 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. I watched the first half-hour or so of L'ultimo bacio, a comedy/drama about relationships. It seems good: enjoyable enough (better than most US/UK films on that subject, but that goes without saying!) and with tons of colloquial conversation. But it's hard: everyone speaks very fast and there's a ton of words that I don't know. On the plus side, there are almost-perfect Italian subtitles, which so far seem to match most of the dialogue exactly: I've only noticed one missed line, and a couple of times where the dialogue had a Roman-style infinitive with the ending truncated that was written normally in the sub, which perhaps isn't a bad thing. But even with the subtitles I often need to pause or rewind to catch everything as it just goes too fast for me to hear and read it all. It seems like a nice challenging film that I'm sure I'll get plenty mileage out of. I believe it has a sequel too. I also read a couple of chapters of Fight Club in Italian. Some passages are relatively easy but some are packed with unknown vocabulary, and the context and already knowing the story only get me so far. I'm once again feeling that lack of vocabulary is my biggest obstacle in Italian, for both understanding and speaking, but it's the sort of problem that sorts itself out over time and practice, and Anki helps it along. 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 45 of 160 11 March 2013 at 5:18pm | IP Logged |
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At the weekend I watched the rest of L'ultimo Bacio and Banlieue 13. Certainly two of the most difficult films I've seen in their respective languages, and I'm thankful for the good-quality TL subtitles for both. I'm not sure how far I would have gotten without the subs; I probably would've been able to follow but missed a lot of details because of all the unknown vocabulary and slang.
L'ultimo Bacio is the sort of thing I'd never watch in English but I enjoyed a lot in Italian - it's a good language for family/relationship drama :). And I'd say it's the best film I've seen so far for hearing modern conversational language, especially some of the more "colourful" language let's say. A lot of the language in Banlieue 13, on the other hand, is probably more "slangy" than what I'll ever need for 95% of conversations, so I won't be making huge efforts to learn a lot of the vocabulary. I'll definitely check out the sequels to both films. I think I'll be getting language practice almost every day for the next week, seems like there's lots of stuff going on in all the meetup groups. Should be good! Italian Super Challenge Films: 54 done, 46 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. 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 46 of 160 13 March 2013 at 3:26pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday evening I watched the first half of Ricordati di me, another nice film about family drama and all the rest from the same director as L'ultimo Bacio. I couldn't find Italian subtitles so I watched it without any, and I felt like I was easily understanding at least 90%. There were a few moments when I missed a word or two and couldn't pick them up clearly enough to look them up even after rewinding, and things get a bit tricky when the arguments really heat up, but apart from that it was fairly easy as long as I stayed focused. It must be a significantly easier film than L'ultimo Bacio, especially in terms of vocabulary, but I'm still quite impressed at myself as understanding almost all of a modern native film is no mean feat. I won't have time to watch the rest until the weekend; it's a shame I rarely have time to sit down and watch a film in full from start to finish. Maybe I'm speaking too soon and it'll turn out that the first half was just the easy part...
I need to sort out travel plans soon. I'm still keen to spend a couple of weeks in Italy, maybe before my birthday in May since I'll still be a "young person" for train fares. I'm thinking Rome, Florence, and a couple of places in the North. And I'm fairly sure I'll be in France for a week or so in June. 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 47 of 160 18 March 2013 at 12:38pm | IP Logged |
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Italian Super Challenge
Films: 56 done, 44 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. Italian films: I saw the rest of Ricordati di me and, continuing along the same theme, Baciami Ancora, the sequel of L'ultimo Bacio. In terms of difficulty, I found it easier than L'ultimo Bacio but a bit more difficult than Ricordati di me - I got most of it without subtitles but I missed some details, and it doesn't help that the plot was quite strange and hard to follow. As a film it's not as good as the original but for Italian practice it certainly does the job. I need to look for similar films in French (modern, relatively realistic dramas with a lot of conversation and arguments) but I honestly don't know of any; I'm not sure if the French really make that type of film. Meetups: As expected I went to lots of them in the last week. Unfortunately I didn't have a very good week and I wasn't sleeping well, so I was a bit too tired to be talkative and really make the most of them. Most were for French, and speaking it felt decidedly more difficult than usual and I was struggling to find words and making mistakes, including some Italian-influenced mistakes like saying "par la ville" instead of "dans la ville". There was also a trip to a restaurant with the Italian group, where I found myself speaking decently after a certain "warm-up" period but I was still making a lot of basic gender and verb mistakes. The waiting staff mostly spoke to us in Italian which was cool, it made me feel like I was in Italy for a couple of hours. The overall conclusion is that the languages part of my brain doesn't work very well when I'm tired, but that's hardly anything revolutionary. I also went to the University meetup again, and perhaps for the last time. Partly because the level of French there is usually too low for me to get much benefit and everyone just ends up speaking in English, either out of laziness or to keep the beginners included in the conversation, and also partly because it's really aimed at students (apart from the English table) and I'm being made to feel that I've now overstayed my welcome, so it's not even really worth continuing to go for the social aspect. No luck with my latest attempts to find exchanges as of yet. I wish I could replace some of these hit-or-miss meetups with hanging out with native speakers, but that's still a bit of a pipe dream really. For French I decided to try something different: I've read posts on The Language Dojo and Lingua Frankly on the benefits of computer games for language learning, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was quite into games as a teenager but I stopped playing them years ago, preferring to do productive things with my spare time. These articles suggest that playing certain types of games (i.e., ones with lots of dialogue) can be even better than watching films and TV. I gave it a shot and played some Monkey Island in French. I don't think I'll be making games a regular part of my study, if for no other reason than because I already have no shortage of things to do in French, but I think they could be a good option for when I have some time to spare and I fancy something more interactive than a film but less involved than proper studying. I suppose it would be an excuse to play all these games I've always heard good things about while still doing something productive. 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 48 of 160 22 March 2013 at 11:29am | IP Logged |
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Language Café was a complete waste of time this week. Everyone at the French table was speaking English, then I went to the "international"/English one and apparently a group of Italians had left a few minutes before I got there. But I have said before that that event is good two out of three times and useless the other one, so I was overdue a "useless" one and it won't surprise me if it's the same next week.
I went to see a play in French last night. It's the second French play I've seen, as I saw one by the same group last year. From these experiences I'd say that plays are some of the most difficult "input" to understand - I had to really focus and even at that I struggled. The actors mostly speak in an "exaggerated" way that's quite different from normal conversation. There's generally a lot of shouting as well, and a female lead with a high-pitched and over-dramatic voice seems to be a mainstay. Of course that's just based on the two plays I've seen, which is hardly a representative sample, especially as they were of a similar style (19th-century absurd comedy); I imagine that, just like films, they vary a lot in style and in difficulty. Anyway it was a good laugh and nice for something a bit different. I'm supposed to be meeting someone for a French/English exchange on Sunday. Still two days for them to change their mind, so I'm not getting my hopes up just yet! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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