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What Expug is doing in 2015 (TAC n more) | ||
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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 97 of 364 06 March 2015 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Radioclare: thank you for your support! I have strong reasons to believe it will get better with time. This repetition is important because it will force us to deal with our most frequent errors, for example, cases. The Georgian case system is simpler than the Slavic one, but when it comes to combining cases and adjectival declension it gets a little tricky. It's just a matter of whether you let go of the nominative ending in the adjective or not and whether you add an s letter or not.
You can see the missing post from March 3rd! No more gaps, I believe. Today I realized something that made me really happy about Chinese. I was trying to remember how the program 'Happy Journey Across China' starts. It says 今天的节目...for a glimpse I confused 节目, program, and 周末, weekend, which they say when they introduce the weekend's edition. What made me happy was that, even though any affricate initial still sounds similar to me, the tones where totally apart. I mean, when I think of 节目 and 周末 in my mind, I hear the tones in my mind. It's not that I have to first remember pinyin then 'add' the tone. For me, the tone is already an inseparable part of the word. And 节目 and 周末 sound totally apart, because it's 2nd tone in 节 and 1st in 周. I started E Nagu Eesti. It's the first lesson, I know, but I'm happy with the format. The recording isn't long and covers most of the lesson, so it works as a guide for reading as well. Let's see how vocabulary-greedy the upcoming lessons will be. There are some quick input exercises in the end of the lesson and I have to check the answers. In order to make it more practical but avoid copying the book into the tablet, I am going to copy the lesson's answer in the Paint and split the windows. I'm happy that I'm going to work on a useful resource entirely in the native language while still reviewing and consolidating, and I'm even happier that there is a sequel, T Nagu Tallinn, so that there is a lot of material to work on gradedly and consistently. The French book I'm reading now has some quite poetic words. It's not that they are 'alien' words. Most of the times they are Portuguese cognates but they do sound poetic and less strict in Portuguese as well. Today I was so focused on reading in Chinese that I read one more page than usual. Not the best day, though, as some parts were descriptive and confusing. But then there are still the Short Chinese TV Plays, which I read almost intensively. I learned a lot and understood better than usual. Fortunately there were only 4 pages today, I was a little behind schedule. The explanations on syntax and the examples are quite helpful. The Georgian reading also got back to daily language. There were so many sentences related to what I was trying to write yesterday! If I had read today's pages yesterday, I'd have solved a lot of doubts I had when writing. Ideally I should save today's pages and drill on them, but that's not a habit here. Subordinate clauses, verbal forms I had doubts about, all showed up. Now I'm more excited to keep reading, as it's becoming easy as well and I can analize some grammar features here and there while following the story. I have similar ideas to what is said about The 3 currencies of productivity , only that I try to reduce money expenses to almost non-existent and I pay a lot of attention to the energy account, to the extent that I almost never skip physical exercises early in the morning. Started the "advanced" Italian tests from Goethe-Verlag. They're not really advanced, just a bit more intermediate. At least they introduce new words with a lot of repetition. One I should remember: Aceto. It doesn't mean olive oil as the Portuguese cognate would seem, but vinegar. Our 'azeite' is olio d'oliva in Italian, just like in French (or in English for that matter). I didn't know it in French when I went to France, so it's something I should keep in mind because we often ask for it when eating out. I was unable to concentrate on the German film because the audio is too low. It is the second film with the same problem, which adds up to the lack of legends. It's getting difficult to learn spoken German like this. Once I'm done with the French Super Challenge I'm going to pick whatever American contemporary film and just get the German subtitles. I need it more now than just listening to German. I've been listening to German enough in my learning time, and now I need more objective dialogue instruction. The book Acquisition of Word Order in Chinese as a Foreign Language was suggested in a thread at another subforum. I can't wait to start it. It seems really interesting, even with all the linguistics roundabouts. To try food is assaggiare (cf. essayer). Matured cheese is stagionato. Uno sconto del 20% = a 20% discount. What can I say?! I got my long text corrected by a Georgian at lang-8! It wasn't that bad after all and I even received some compliments. It's not like I got corrected on stuff I had no idea about and though "Uh?! So that's how they say it?". On the contrary, I was always pointing to the right direction. Besides, I even got right some sentences I was mostly doubtful about. That's truly inspiring!! Thank you rdearman, Radioclare and others. I really need to keep doing this. first Georgian post The last remark:
Jeg har litt tid som er nok for å skrive noe på norsk. Alt blir lettere når du får litt selvtillit. Jeg vil prøve å gå hjem tidligere i dag, og jeg håper jeg klarer det. Det er ingenting å gjøre på jobben igjen og jeg har ikke tid nok for å se på en av de 20-minutters lang episodene av den russiske serien 'Кухня' (som jeg ser på georgisk fordi det finnes ikke noe georgiske serie med undertekster). Jeg er glad at å ha fortsatt å arbeide med alle mine språk, fordi nå synes jeg det blir endelig moro med å lære. Jeg har lært mange ord og kan fortsette å lære bare med å se på serier og lese romaner. Jeg har lest et eller anet sted at det blir snart Dag Sesong 4! Imidlertid ser jeg på filmene av trilogien 'Elling' og på seriene av Brødrene Dal. (EDIT: Formatting). Edited by Expugnator on 06 March 2015 at 9:59pm 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 98 of 364 09 March 2015 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just one film in French during the weekend. At least it was almost two-hours long. I'm really not in the mood for reading at the weekend or in the evening, even when I have enough time, and this is my quality time for non-language reading. Yesterday I was tired of watching films and TV and so I finally managed to read, but still at the rhythm of 5-10 pages from each book in a total of 5 books I'm reading in parallel. Not the best thing to do, but better than nothing. Btw, at the French film I watched, L'aventure c'est l'aventure, there was a scene entirely in Italian from which I understood everything, better than in French.
The day started a little hectic but I hope it will go fine. I answered a French-Portuguese pen-pal and was a bit late for the Estonian studies, but they still turned out quite productive. I feel I'm starting to consolidate the basic vocabulary and this will allow me to review grammar in a more familiar way, I mean, I will recognize the noun forms from my experience. It is the same that I have in mind for the Georgian verbs. It is important to have a personal corpus to think about when you study grammar more deeply, or else everything will remain in the field of imagination and it will end up like the first time I studied the language: I studied grammar rules while I still didn't know enough words to think of myself actually applying the rules. Accomplished Language Textbook: The Bun 
I liked the stories in this booklet. There are many words unique to the fairy tale universe, which I wouldn't use right away, but the stories are good fun. Now I'm going to start a Portuguese edition of a Berlitz course, it's called Russo Essencial. I don't plan on spending a lot of time at it but it will be good to have audio again and a warm-up before dealing with grammar more deeply in the other books that I have lined up. Norwegian vocabulary learning is a big stagnated. I need to get back to reading more intensively or at least looking more words up. Current book is not helping motivate me because it is a translation, but I will try to keep this in mind. Today I'm a bit behind schedule so let's see what happens tomorrow. Currently at chapter 92 of Poor Nastya. The story is becoming more interesting. No spoilers, please ;D It wasn't one of the best days but I'm ok with that. I don't think I learned that efficiently but at least I found everything so fun to work on. I'm more than halfway through most of my native resources and so I'm feeling attached to the stories. The vocabulary is also becoming more familiar. I finished watching the 4th season of Game of Thrones, which means I'm done for the moment. Now I want to start an authentic series, Héro Corps, and see how much I can understand from watching in the background while reading the forum. I have a Super Challenge to finish. Btw, I'm writing in French quite often. What's more, I feel an urge to write in all of my languages. I am supposed to write 49498 words in Georgian but I also want to write in Chinese and Norwegian. Not so much in German (overcoming the trauma of a friend making fun of what I write) and even less in Russian (non-existent output skills). When I have an idea of what to write, I can come up with a paragraph in no time, like I did last Friday with Norwegian (still uncorrected at italki). Accomplished Language Textbook: Teach Yourself Italian Conversation 
I liked this book better than Teach Yourself Instant Italian. It is like having a phrasebook turned into a set of Assimil lessons, all quite objective. Now I'm going to work on Assimil Perfectionnement Italian. I don't want to waste time on resources for beginners. I will work at a normal pace now, maybe only 1 lesson a day, and then I am going to use some grammar in order to brush up my skills and then either I'll put Italian on hold or I will start reading some pages a day - but only if I find books I was already going to read anyway. I can't stand another session of commercial novels a day. Even though I was kind of willing to write in all of my languages, I only managed Georgian (after having replied to a message at italki in French). I wrote to paragraphs to a story which I hope gets longer and longer. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5791 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi | Message 99 of 364 10 March 2015 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Congratulations with accomplished Russian fairy tales! They should be really difficult to traduce...
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 100 of 364 10 March 2015 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Anya, thanks, I didn't translate on my own, the book has parallel stories, but it still has some difficult vocabulary like those in fairy tales that almost sound like they were made up.
So I'm back at actually studying Estonian (instead of dabbling) and I'm falling for the language again. I like the way the textbook E nagu Eesti is structured and how it allows me to consolidate basic grammar. I wouldn't have understood anything if I hadn't studied all the other textbooks, that's for sure. Yet I find reviewing through these monolingual textbooks as a good warm-up for tackling native materials while consolidating what you already know. So I plan to keep doing this for my next non-transparent languages. Today I payed more attention to reading Norwegian, and it paid off. I understood nearly everything and looked up a dozen of words, the most important ones, in 10 pages. I was planning on starting Héro Corp today, but for some weird reason I couldn't find it at my HDD after copying the series into it. So I went for the next film lined-up for weekends, Tu Veux ou tu Veux Pas, and watched the beginning. I didn't understand much at a noisy environment, much less than I usually do when I watch films at weekends. Started Assimil Perfectionnement Italien. No exercises, yay! I should try translating the dialogues mentally from French into Italian, but I'm afraid of interferences. 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 101 of 364 11 March 2015 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday was such a busy day with so much work that I felt exhausted after finishing (my) first part of the film Tu veux ou tu veux pas, the Assimil Italien lesson and the Turkish lesson. That means I had no energy to write anything, be it in Georgian or in Mandarin (for which I have to write the challenge). Today is turning out the same way, as I am quite behind schedule.
A good day for Norwegian, not so for Mandarin. I finished watching the first film of the trilogy 'Elling', It ends with Se på meg, by deLillos. Norwegian is officially a language I can hear a song into and understand enough of the lyrics to google for it and figure out how the song is called. As I imagined, it was an intense day and I had a lot of work to do. As a result, I ended up two hours behind at schedule and couldn't do everything that was planned. I'm still at the film Tu veux ou tu veux pas, I haven't started Héro Corps yet. I didn't have time for reading all the threads I had chosen for reading at the forum either. No Assimil Perfectionnement Italien either, though I may try to catch up tomorrow. At least I saved Le turc tout de suite. I want to finish it and work through another before the end of the month. 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 102 of 364 12 March 2015 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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In how large parts do you divide movies? And I am curious what you'll think about Hero
Corp :-) welcome on board Congratulations to such fast progress in Italian! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 103 of 364 12 March 2015 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
I don’t suppose the equivalent of a telenovela is what you’re looking for, but most German learners living abroad and looking for a long series with subtitles in German available for free and legally online end up checking out Lindenstraße. I think I watched an episode back in the day and decided that it wasn’t for me, but who knows, maybe you’ll find it useful. On the linked website you’ll find about 50 episodes i.e. the episodes of the last twelve months. If Lindenstraße is not to your taste, you may try this. It is the TV-movies and TV-series page of the ZDF Mediathek. Be advised that some of their programmes are geoblocked. Where you see the symbol UT, it means that the programme has German subtitles. Good luck with your search! Edited by Emme on 12 March 2015 at 9:42pm 3 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 104 of 364 12 March 2015 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Cavesa: Usually 10 minutes a day, but in the case of French I'm trying to log at least 1 hour each day. So, I watched 40 minutes on Tuesday and was intending to finish it yesterday, but a lot work got on the way. So I watched 10 more minutes from it and today I finished the remaining 30 minutes :) Hero Corps starts tomorrow, and I will be glad to write about it. As for Italian, I had been neglecting it for too long so I'm just making
justice to it. @Emme: Das passt mir sehr gut! Leider kann ich es nicht hier sehen ;/ I need something downloadable. I will take a look at both and maybe I can watch something at weekends, the way I watched the excellent series at nrk.no (which reminds me I have to finish watching that one about Christmas and the two rival groups of dwarves. ========================================================== Another nice lesson from E nagu eesti, though a little more tricky. There was a short text at the end of the lesson and I managed to go through it. If these start to become harder, I will have to restart the whole routine of copying-pasting-ocring-repasting. It is for the better. Now comes a review lesson. I'm taking a new approach, trying to fill in the gaps in my learning, so I won't join the review lesson with the previous one, as I usually do. Therefore I will work on the review lesson tomorrow. It consists only of exercises and has 4 pages, so I think it will be quite useful. It usually gets calmer from on Thursdays on, and so I could read calmfully in Chinese and particularly in Georgian. I read 10 pages from the 20-page last lesson of Short Chinese TV Plays. Average was 8 pages per lesson, so the last lesson was too much and it was a wise decision to split it. It was also convenient to paste the text at Pastebin and use Pera-pera instead of pasting page after page at Google Translate with no guarantee of understanding. I actually got more confused by Google Translate. I am at a level where I can figure out most of what is going on after translating the unknown expressions literally. I didn't even use the glossary today. I even watched the Georgian series more attentively and understood quite a bit. Then I got really busy on the way. All the rest went okay. I managed to catch up with Assimil Perfectionnement Italien: 2 lessons today. Just for today, it is better to work on these lessons as detailedly as possible as they encompass even aspects of the civil life in Italy. Btw, the actors in the audio (both this and the O novo Italiano...), especially the male voice, speak very neutrally in terms of intonation, emotion etc. That helps a lot find an authentic Italian intonation and avoid the exaggerated Italian intonation of the Brazilian soap operas which is the idea Brazilians have of speaking Italian. The curves of the phrase are still there, but they are much more subtle. I would have gone to Italian with a flat intonation rather than using the exaggerated one, but then I'm glad I found proper examples. Now, it seems there are too many and too long lessons; they are an overkill especially at an upper-intermediate level. Besides, now there are exercises, but at least they are just of the translation string, no fill-in-the-blanks. I'm trying to avoid writing things down, so instead I'm reading carefully the Italian text and trying to imagine myself in a context I'd say or hear this or that. I've long been a fan of the song Yaz, in Mor ve Ötesi's version (not despising Ajda Pekkan in the least). At today's lesson I learned that Yaz means summer. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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