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Expug’s All at On(c)e Log - TAC14 | ||
Tags: Papiamento | Estonian | Georgian | Native Materials | Norwegian | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Mandarin | Russian | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 369 of 415 20 November 2014 at 8:24pm | IP Logged |
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Esse mesmo. E o time ultimamente está mais morto que o seu patrono (mas deve voltar à primeira divisão no ano que vem).
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| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 370 of 415 21 November 2014 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
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Read a nice Estonian fairy tale. I see some progress in my reading, even if I haven't started native materials yet. It is said that Estonian fairy tales are very interesting and unique.
Finished book2 for Estonian. Now I'm gonna try a youtube series called Let's Learn Estonian, it seems basic but I don't want to go for another textbook simultaneously. I didn't even plan on taking another second resource for the day at first place, but I think these short videos won't hurt. Studying from the Georgian-Russian textbook is taking longer than expected - longer than the Estonian textbook by Tuldava, for instance - but it is worth it. I'm learning a lot in terms of conversational Georgian as well as Russian. Today's lesson had sets of phrases on travelling by train, boat and plane. The grammmar explanations on noun declension didn't really feel essential, but I read the Russian nonetheless. I tried taking photos of the book so I could OCR it, but the photos weren't good enough. Then I tried scanning one page and it worked. I selected just the portion with Russian and translated. Only that it turned out the whole process was too much time-consuming, as there weren't that many words to be looked up at each session, either in Georgian or in Russian. Most of the times I either knew both Georgian and Russian or could figure out one thanks to the other. Well, that's good news! I am feeling attached to the story of my Norwegian novel. It just turns out that when one new chapter starts and things get too descriptive I may lose track when the narration restarts. It is also the case with Georgian. By the way, I'm understanding more and more from the novel i'm reading in Georgian. I even feel less pressure now that I'm adding up pages from the Georgian-Russian textbook I'm reading, so I can read the descriptions at the novel more extensively and focus on the dialogues and the short paragraphs. Yesterday I started watching Le trône de fer! Logged in 20 minutes more to the French SC, which makes 30 minutes. Won't be enough to finish the SC at this pace, but I'm happy I'm finally doing something I'd like to. I won't worry about doing it everyday - for example, today I'm a bit behind schedule because it took me too long with the Georgian-Russian textbook, but I'm glad I have this option and also that I can still understand dubbed French fairly well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 371 of 415 24 November 2014 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
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I startedt the youtube series Let's Learn Estonian. I find it important: extra info on greetings, for example. It won't take long anyway.
Georgian/Russian textbook. I found it easier to work through the explanations today. Also, there weren't that many new words. The dialogues were the best part, once again. ეჭვი მაქვს, რომ დავიკარგეთ - I suspect we're lost. I learned this expression today. Yesterday I checked the film status for the SC. I've already completed a half challenge for Mandarin, and I may reach a full challenge (considering 75 hours for a half challenge). I'm at 43 hours for Russian. The worst case is French, only 28 hours and I'm aiming for 150. It's not that bad, though, if I notice the SC is coming to terms and I'm staying behind, I can decide to just watch 10 hours a weekend and catch up whenever is necessary. Video is more flexible than reading at this respect. I can't increase my reading speed without a lot of previous study. Not seeing much progress with Mandarin. In fact, I'm learning a lot from the Intermediate Chinese book, but I'm not retaining it. I'm using Chineseskill and it's a lot of fun, but it is basic knowledge. Maybe I active need practice for all that vocabulary I learned to come up actively. Now for some plans for the future. It turns out my trip to Italy and Germany will happen. I'm already studying German, maybe I know enough notto get lost with signs - and if I do get lost people may just talk to me in English regardless of what I say. Now, Italian. It's on my hitlist and, truth be said, I'm at least an A2. Though I'm not really in the mood for adding up a new language now. At least not for having one more routine of reading a couple of pages and watching 10min of video each day. Doing several languages means even your fun time is fragmented. Sometimes I may enjoy a specific film or book but I have to stop and study other languages. This happens mostly with languages I'm better at. Anyway, I'm more in the mood for textbook learning and maybe some tourist things. So perhaps I could do one or two Assimils the way I did German, 7 lessons in a day, then the Perfectionnement Italien and then I'd try something more oriented towards travelling so I really get Italians to speak Italian to me. I have no idea on how to sound "Italian" for example and I wouldn't like to sound like a fake Brazilian soap opera Italian accent :) As for other language learning plans, next year I may not resist and start a new language, be it Turkish, Indonesian or Croatian (it will depend on whether I will have finished the textbook season with Russian). What I've decided for sure is that that language will be a language of Assimil. Georgian and Estonian will remain as the hardest and with lack of resources just because they don't have Assimils. Chinese would also benefit a lot if I had the rare La Pratique du Chinois. So, be it Turkish, Indonesian and Croatian, I'm home (I know, Indonesian Assimil isn't the best one but may be enough, there's this great 'The Indonesian Way' too). I'm reaching a conclusion on what is the ideal set of materials for starting a language: - Assimil book - Routledge Modern Grammar: A Practical Guide - A contemporary podcast-like series. The main point is that the lessons are full of cultural references and are written for the online format, no shortage of explanations related to page space etc. - A good, really good grammar+texts textbook with translation exercises. Learn Norwegian, Estonian Textbook all come to mind. Now for the intermediate level: - A good online course focused on video - A TV series aimed at learners with bilingual (ideally) or L1 subtitles (Happy Chinese, Deutsch Plus etc.) and/or the possibility of getting films and composing double subtitles - Translated novels of light literature, especially contemporary (after all, how else I'd find time for reading Divergent, Dan Brow, The Time Traveller's Wife?) - Other resources that would allow L-R, be it a newspaper reader (Georgian), audiobooks for novels thta meet the condition above (happened with Norwegian), a site with short, downloaded news. I could think of more later, but so far that's it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 372 of 415 26 November 2014 at 8:00pm | IP Logged |
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Didn't write about yday, but was a productive day. I manages to pay more attention to the videos, even to the Georgian one. Pity that the video I found at Youtube has sound only in one speaker. The overall quality isn't optimal due to that.
I managed to finish everything so early that I could watch over 20 minutes from Le Trône de Fer, 10 minutes from the Norwegian film Fritt Vilt and even read some texts my mom asked me to help her with. I believe it's important to have that sort of flexibility once I'm done with my main tasks. I'm tending to watch more, but when you have almost two hours of extra time you wouldn't expect to have, you had better use it for something new, like reading intensively or writing. I will try my best to use these minutes for reading intensively. In the evening I also checked my TediSubs app and there were new dialogues subtitled into Georgian. I started watching an interesting one about the abuse of the word 'awesome', with subtitles in Georgian and in English. It was easy to follow and I noticed I was learning a lot. I already know what helps me learn more: dialogues with translation and intensive reading. THis is my counterpart for the SRS I don't enjoy doing. Now I happen to be stuck at extensive reading and listening, both of each not helping much: three years with Georgian and Chinese, two with Russian and I'm far from having a vocabulary that would allow me to read a simple text now. If only I could make an SRS with only Spaced and Sheet, not repetition. One way would be to pick all of the drills in an FSI course and set each lesson to a deck. I would flip through the drills, which are very repetitive, and at least make the new content in the lesson stick. Today was a little busier and I don't get why, since the Georgian-Russian lesson was actually shorter, on numbers. It's 7 pm and I just finished the schedule activities. Will watch a new episode from TBBT and then read the forum. If there is time, I will see what I can do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 373 of 415 27 November 2014 at 8:38pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday I got down to my TEDiSubs app again. This time TED I could watch 1 dialogue
in Georgian and 1 in Estonian. I finished the Georgian one I had started, and I must say I learned a lot and that's the way to go. I'd benefit from less scientifical ones like this, so maybe I should browse the list and review some. Today I checked and realized there are two other new ones. Maybe I can do them when I have a break in the evening (I can only use the app at the iOs device that I leave home). I also did a Estonian one. I could already start to perceive some grammar constructions and expressions. Surprisingly, Rio's mayor gave a speech in English instead of Portuguese. I had switched Portuguese subtitles and I left it as it is. It looks promising to learn Estonian this way, even though Estonian has less videos than Georgian. Not good news, but that means I should indeed work at these videos intensively, pausing sentence after sentence and making it my bilingual sheet without spaced repetition. On the other hand, there are plenty of Russian videos which means I can start as of now, and I may give it a try even though I already do Assimil lessons which are obviously bilingual. Speaking of Russian...it's getting easier each day with the Russian explanations at the Georgian-Russian textbook, and maybe that's encouraging for using other Russian-based textbooks in the future. Or maybe I'm just being more selective as to which words carry the new information in the sentence and what I already take for granted from what I already know about the Georgian grammar - but hey, if this is the case, that's encouraging too. Only the texts are getting longer and not that easy. I OCR'ed the Russian translations and pasted at GT, and it didn't return too meaningful translations, and I had trouble following the Georgian fable. It is better with non-fiction. Finished The Time Traveller's Wife (in Chinese). Will start Digital Fortress. I have the impression that my Chinese copy is also shorter than expected, as it happened with The Time Traveller's Wife, but when I come to an hyatus in the Chinese text I will just keep reading in Portuguese and maybe finish the whole book in Portuguese before coming back to Chinese. I believe reading a contemporary novel really helped and if I read the whole story in L1 before, even better. Things are getting better in German, even if one of my best friends refused to chat in German with me and kept making fun and answering in "freutsch", French + German. Oh what the aspiring polyglots have to go through? =P I understood much from the book I'm reading and also from Deutsch Direkt. As for Norwegian, I'm actually improving my Swedish by reading the "Swesubs" :P Really, I think I'm also getting better at Norwegian, though there are still the occasional blurred dialogues when people say everything at a sentence at a fraction of second. Reading Norwegian alternates good and bad days - and today was a good one - but I still have the feeling that the more I look words up, the more I learn. I'm actually looking up most words in French, they are not many from the book and from the film, and these few are being learned, so that's encouraging. It's a bit early to set plans and goals for 2015, I have to evaluate 2014 and see what I did mostly wrong (I kind of know) and how to fix it (still have to figure out, it demands a change in habits and learning style). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 374 of 415 30 November 2014 at 3:13pm | IP Logged |
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I'm writing here on Sunday. Friday was a busy day because something important
happened! We managed to buy the tickets to Europe! We'll be leaving in the end of March and travelling for 10 days, trying to take the most out of Italy and Germany one can see :) Through visits to the air company's offices and a lot of phone calls, we managed to book the flight at a reasonable price. More on this later, for now I should say it also explains why I left my schedule as early as of my reading on French and Norwegian: no Georgian, German or Russian video/reading, no Chinese textbook (though I did read 3 pages from Digital Fortress which seems pretty good and also easy to understand). The good thing is that I realized that the earlier tasks I accomplished are indeed the most important ones, at least to the point of letting me feel I've progressed: I studied Estonian, Assimil Rusian and the Georgian-Russian textbook. As a result, I finished working on Manuel d'Estonien, by L'Asiathèque, which I strongly recommend. This one, Tuldava's and Basic Course make a triad that accounts for the high quality of textbooks available for Estonian. I do feel the need of something more into the Estonian culture and daily conversation (though if you need dialogues the ones at Manuel d'Estonian and at the commercial TY and Colloquial will do fine), but I'm pretty happy with the quality of the grammar explanations I've run through. As I finished this book, I wished it was longer, because I did enjoy it. It does have 22 lessons and the dialogues are amazing, with vivid language and a lot of audio (3-4 dialogues per lesson). The grammar explanations are ok and seem logical. Even if Tuldava outperforms it in terms of content, Manuel d'Estonien makes things look simpler for a beginner, in the good sense, not in the sense of oversimplification. It would be good to have answers for the second part of the exercises, too, as there are only answers for the first part on grammar. It is not a textbook for a fresh start, you better leave it as one of the final ones as I did, and start with those that teach smaller chunks at once. Nonetheless, it is the one that presents the most natural dialogues I've seen. I've almost run out of textbooks for beginners that aren't written in Russian, and since I'm already taking a Georgian-Russian textbook I don't think I could take another one without a headache. So, as a result, I decided to go for Estnisch Lehrbuch, by Cornelius Hasselblatt (not the Lehrbuch des Estnischen Sprache by Inna Nulk and Katja Ziegelmann which has audio and which I don't have). That would allow me for some extra pages in German for the SC ;), pity that it lacks both audio and an answer key. Anyway, I'm really happy with the selection of materials for Estonian. There are intermediate textbooks in Russian, monolingua textbooks (E nagu eesti, T nagu Tallinn, Avatud uksed) and good grammar references. Now in order not to repeat the same mistakes with Georgian, I shouldn't start native materials too soon, at least not extensively, and if I finish all textbooks and notice i'm not a solid B1, then I should try to review until I master grammar and vocabulary. Next week is gonna be busy and atypical, as we get closer to the end of the year. I really don't wanna miss a day like I did last Friday, so I will try my best. At least today I managed to read/listen an article in Georgian from Radio Tavisufleba. I was happy that the reporter was slower this time as well as the interviewees, but the article was too dense for me to pay attention to each word, intensively, and this is something I still owe myself for Georgian, Russian, Chinese and even Norwegian and German, so maybe it's time to think of changes in my methods. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 375 of 415 01 December 2014 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
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Monday is almost over. I swear I worked with a bit more focus today in Russian and in Norwegian. Not so much in German or Mandarin.
It was the day I started Cornelius Hasselblatt's book, Estnisch Lehrbuch. It has the most detailed explanations on the Estonian pronunciation so far. It does have answer to the exercises - it is placed in the next column, as is the case with FSI courses. So far, a good resource. The German in it isn't that straightfoward - the author uses a slightly vrbose, self-indulgent academic tone, which I hope will disappear as I delve into grammar topics that are familiar to me from other Estonian textbooks. There were several dialogues at the first lesson, and I hope the trend goes on. Language Orthodoxy and this thread I posted keep giving me food for though. I'm relieved to realize that extensive reading isn't the best way for me, and since I avoid SRS, I need to work on intensive reading through small chunks I can absorb. I need to stop doing one activity while thinking of the next one. I realized this months ago, but I resumed making this mistake, truth be said, I relaxed because I was already seeing good results with Norwegian, German and Mandarin. So, this is not part of a technique, it's part of the motivation component. I don't have to be motivated for the daily language-learning only, but rather for each activity on its own. I know that one day that series will seem boring, or that language will reach a plateau, but this has to be the exception, not the rule. Maybe it's too late to drop or reformulate the SC and maybe I do need it, but I can't refrain from doing intensive reading - as if I were continuing my own Assimil textbooks - and from practicing writing. I believe I may even combine both activities: writing paragraphs for practicing as well as posting doubts I run through in the texts (usually news) I try to study on my own. After all, the italki platform is suited for both activities. Will leave Italian for January. Maybe through Christmas and New Year's Eve, during holidays, when I won't be able to cope with my schedule, I may find small breaks when I can study from Assimil Italian in a more intense way, since I'm no beginner to the language. I need to reach tourist level comfortably in 4 months, and this may include even drilling through a phrasebook the way I did with Papiamento. It does help. Team Катюша's Skype session yesterday convinced me of the importance of speaking even when your goal is mostly reading. When you speak, you get the feeling of which words you need the most, and you also feel those words are now part of you, instead of just stains you see on a page that seldom go from incomprehensible to decipherable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 376 of 415 01 December 2014 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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Now it's my first attempt to translate a lame, pop Brazilian song into Norwegian:
Sorriso Maroto - Vai e chora Kamper, intriger, hemmeligheter av oss Det er ikke noe god stemning igjen, det kom til slutt Og det er ikke min skyld, jeg var sikker om oss Men jeg visste ikke at en dag ville du bare gjøre vondt i hjertet mitt Du holder å forsvinne, å lyve, å gå ut og jeg later som jeg ikke ser noe Det blir moro, stordrikking, selskap hver dag Jeg er lei av det gale livet ditt Jeg orker ikke dette livet lenger Det gjør meg skade Nei, du skal ikke overbevise meg, gå, gå Hver gang sier noen at du klager om meg Det må stoppe nå, ut, ut Du fortjerner ikke meg Glem om meg Det et bestemt Det er sånn med meg Jeg skal være lykkelig uten deg Jeg skal leve for meg selv igjen (gå bort) Hvis jeg treffer deg på vei, vil jeg late som jeg ikke kjenner deg (sitt og gråt) Sleng hendene opp, gå Sleng hendene opp, gå For those of you learning Portuguese, "Vai e...verb" is a typical serial construct that I thought could be rendered in Norwegian with "sitt og...". I don't know how to put this in English. It involves a sudden decision (on yourself) or a sudden command, not necessarily agressive, but aspectually related to getting down to perform that specific action at once and finally. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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