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What Expug is doing in 2015 (TAC n more)

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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 225 of 364
05 July 2015 at 11:35pm | IP Logged 
Just for a change, I'm going to write about the weekend on a Sunday evening. That leaves less to be done on a hectic Monday.

This weekend turned out quite productive. I read 20 pages in Russian. With 43 during the week (I read 19 from the Estonian textbook intro on Friday) that leaves me with 63 pages this week. If I keep the rhythm I'm going to reach my goal of 2500 pages in about 15 weeks, and there are indeed more than 15 weeks left till the end of the year. I won't tie myself to this, though. My real goal is to be able to read Russian extensively and actually follow the story. It's a goal I've been having for a long time. I know it only gets closer and I shouldn't stress about it, but it's normal that I get a little anxious when the checkpoing is getting closer and closer. The amount I'm understanding now, I'm already starting to enjoy what I read, like this book I read at weekends. I could barely read more than 2 pages before, and now I'm comfortable with 20 and hooked up to the story. Quite a sign of change.

In terms of German, like I said about last weekend I'm not obsessed about 4 hours a weekend anymore. After all, I'm only 4 hours from a half challenge! And I'm able to follow each video with German episodes and actually have fun. I wrote one episode from Pastewka, which is becoming addictive, and then I went for a film I found on Youtube, Ein Freund von mir. It is nice to have gems as Pastewka on Netflix but basing on Netflix-only, which requires me to be sitting at my home PC, is too restrictive. After all, I did most of my French film SC at weekends by watching films at Youtube at my tablet while leaning comfortably on the wall, in bed.

Thanks to daegga again, I picked the Norwegian series I'm going to watch in the long run, with subtitles. It's Mysteriet av Sommerbåten, available at NRK without a VPN. I plan to watch it intensively, as the number of unknown words is lower than that of German, for instance. Only the first episode I preferred not to pause and look words up because that would prevent me from getting into the 'flow' of the story, which is important for a first episode. That didn't prevent me from understanding almost everything, anyway.
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 226 of 364
07 July 2015 at 12:59am | IP Logged 
I have nothing specific to say about today's routine. All went well, only adding up to the high number of words I still have to learn in my languages before reaching basic fluency. Norwegian and German audiobooks start to get a bit slow, though my understand from films and TV series isn't good enough yet.

At Uzbek, I'm starting to get the hang of some sentences, I mean, I'm listening to the basic sentences and I can figure out how they are formed just through comparison with the translation and my previous knowledge of Turkish.

Another episode of Kuxnya, always helpful. I think the problem with the native Georgian series I watch early during the day is that there is way too much dialogue, in the sense that all characters seem to speak at once, and at long streams. In Kuxnya the dialogues are short, there are pauses, transitional takes, while in the native Georgian series it is all one scene after another in studio.

Jeg synes jeg har tid nok for å skrive noe på norsk i dag. I helgen har jeg begynt å se på en ny serie som heter 'Mysteriet på Sommerbåten'. Det var morsomt at det jeg likte best om serien var at den består av 41 episoder. Det mener at jeg skal tilbringe lang tid uten å tenke på hvilken serie jeg skulle se deretter. Denne serien er alltid tilgjengelig fra NRKs siden og den er også tilgjengelig fra hvor som helst i verden (vel...faktisk er jeg ikke sikker at man kan se den fra Nord Korea.

Det er sommer nå i Norge. Jeg lurer på om det er virkelig varmt selv i Sør-Norge. Her i Brasil er det 'vinter', men jeg bor i breddegraden 19ºS og selv om vinteren har vi få dager unter 15ºC varmedager. Man kan da si at det er varmere her om sommeren enn det er i Norge om vinteren. Jeg liker det godt om vinteren vår, for jeg kan gå eller sykle til jobben uten å smelte ned av svette. Desverre blir det varmt og - det som er det verst - tørrere hvert år, og nå er det helt normalt å ha en solskinndag med 28ºC midt i juli.

Jeg gleder meg til å reise til Norge, men jeg vet ikke ennå når jeg kan gjøre det. Jeg har ferien i juli hvert år, men kona mi har ikke den. I år reiste vi til Europa i april og det var fortsatt litt kaldt i Italia og Tyskland hvor vi var på besøk, ikke minst i Norge som ligger ved polarsirkelen.

კვირას შარვალის ყიდვად წავედი. სავაჭრო ცენტრში ბევრი ხალხი არ იყო. მგონია, ამ თვის ბოლოს ვიყავით და ამჟამინდელი ეკონომიკური მდგომარეობა დღისთვის არც თუ ისე კარგად. ძალიან ბევრს ფეხით მივდივარ ყოველდღიურად. სამსახურში დავდივარ და ზოგჯერ, როცა ქალაქცენტრში უნდა წავიდე, ასევე ფეხით მივდივარ. რაშია ეს საქმე შარვალთან დაკავშირებული? ასე, რადგან ბევრს ვსეირნობ, ჩემი შარვალი მალე დამპალებს. ამიტომ ახალი შარვალი უნდა ვიყიდო.

ასე რომ, ჩვეულებრივ თანსაცმლის მაღაზიაში შევედი. ძალიან მომწონს ამ მაღაზიის ჯინსები. კარგად მიჯდება, დვირფასი არ არის, ბრაზილიელი მარკაა. უფრო ბნელი ჯინსი სევარციე, რადგან ქორწილში უნდა წავსულიყავი და სრული კოსტუმი ჩაცმა არ მინდოდა.

So I spent the rest of the evening doing output, which I don't regret. I'm having access to better Georgian dictionaries with examples. Only verbs are still troublesome because when Google gets puzzled it simply doesn't translate at all.

I'm wanderlusting but I'm resisting. The fight for the place of the second Slavic language in my mind is quite level. Czech had consolidated itself mostly because I want to travel there, but it's so much fun to follow Radioclare's and basica's log that I start to think about it again. Again, I need to be comfortable with Russian before that. Greek is also high on my wanderlust list, but on the other hand I never thought about Indonesian again. As for Turkish, I'm studying Uzbek now so the Turkic Challenge on itself takes care of any wanderlust I'd have for it. I'm patience enough to set the wheel to spin and wait till it stops and I decide when is the best time to take Turkish for real.

I'm also looking forward to using Duolingo for any of the new languages I'm a false beginner at, but I decided I'm going to wait till Norwegian gets released from beta and start with that. Strongest languages first.
2 persons have voted this message useful



daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4519 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 227 of 364
07 July 2015 at 10:50pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
e
Jeg synes jeg har tid nok for å skrive noe på norsk i dag. I helgen har jeg begynt å
se på en ny serie som heter 'Mysteriet på Sommerbåten'. Det var morsomt at det jeg
likte best om serien var at den består av 41 episoder. Det mener at jeg skal
tilbringe lang tid uten å tenke på hvilken serie jeg skulle se deretter. Denne serien
er alltid tilgjengelig fra NRKs siden og den er også tilgjengelig fra hvor som helst
i verden (vel...faktisk er jeg ikke sikker at man kan se den fra Nord Korea.


I just saw that "Kampen for tilværelsen" works now too from foreign countries, it
did't work when I last tried. I've seen the first season by other means and it was
good TV, season two is completely accessible now too over the summer.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Radioclare
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
timeofftakeoff.com
Joined 4581 days ago

689 posts - 1119 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto
Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian

 
 Message 228 of 364
07 July 2015 at 11:11pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
I'm wanderlusting but I'm resisting. The fight for the place of the
second Slavic language in my mind is quite level. Czech had consolidated itself mostly
because I want to travel there, but it's so much fun to follow Radioclare's and basica's
log that I start to think about it again. Again, I need to be comfortable with Russian
before that.


:) I know exactly how you feel because I still have Czech and Russian fighting it out to
be my next Slavic language, although I don't dare start either until I'm more comfortable
with Croatian. It is such a difficult decision to make, and I am so impatient to start
both.
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 229 of 364
07 July 2015 at 11:58pm | IP Logged 
Why are slavic languages so hard to choose from? Polish and Russian are my struggle (ok, but basica's serbian posts I can understand quite a lot of, that is quite tempting too). Just kidding, choosing the next language is always such a problem that makes people a bit brokenhearted, it isn't a slavic only problem :-D

There seems to be a small epidemia of htlalers considering Greek, I've seen at least two or three in just a few days. Obviously, all those news everywhere have an unexpected effect on our community.

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 230 of 364
08 July 2015 at 12:03am | IP Logged 
@daegga: please do pm me about those other means ;) I'm running out especifically of comedies with subtitles

@Radioclare and @Cavesa: there are at least tree different groups with different flavors, and even within each of these groups you can still find some gems. There are so many languages to choose from, all belonging to interesting countries. About Greek, it hasn't to do with the news, it's a long paasion, I even started listening to Kypros.org lessons years ago =D

Started an actual Estonian lesson from the textbook in Russian. Still basic sentences involving the verb 'to be' and some greetings. As a result, there is much less Russian, which is fine but then I was expecting to read more for the SC. My guess is that as the grammar explanations become more complex I'm going to read an average of 4-5 pages per lesson as it used to be the case with the Lehrbuch der estnischen Sprache in German. The exercises are still rudimentary so I decided not to try them. When they start to get more tricky I will give lang-8 a try. I will probably paste the Russian at GT to get the vocabulary and then work on editing for the grammar mistakes till I reach something compatible to the amount of grammar I know so far. The lesson took me less than 15 minutes. I bet with things getting more complicated and demanding more translation from both Russian and Estonian, I might be spending 30 minutes on each lesson throughout the book, which is still reasonable. That seems too little to learn a language, but I'm not in a hurry about Estonian. I am going to start native materials only after I become more comfortable about my results in the SC about my previous languages.

"I read Russian" is quite practical to follow. Short stories, GT takes care of most of the translation. Only the stories themselves don't seem to make much sense. They are fables, after all.

"When edges meet" is by far the most useful citybooks' story. Short sentences, contemporary, concrete themes (even some Math), short stories and chronicles. As a result, I'm learning a lot from this one and I'm following Georgian and translation almost in real time.

It turns out there's no ebook for "Norwegian wood" in...Norwegian. Since I have the audiobook, I'm going to listen to it as I read the book in Portuguese. It's working wonders for my current book, Froskeslottet, and I think when I pick a book for adults my understanding of complex sentences will improve even more. And no, L-Ring Norwegian audio and Georgian text is not an option. I wonder if there is a place to get cheaper Norwegian ebooks. I can always list by price, but I decided with Norwegian I'm going to read mostly what I want because I've already learned enough to allow myself that.

Best Norwegian day ever. i'm starting to follow entire scenes at 'Karl & Co', which I watch with no subtitles at all. It's nice to finally feel you're getting closer to your goal. Another best in Georgian reading. Definitely I could follow the story extensively. I'm reading with translation and focusing on tricky verbal forms in the past and present (as you don't get much future from reading novels, literally).

Best day with Mandarin as well. There were few sentences I understood nothing from. Most of the times I could listen to the speech and read both subtitles fast enough to learn and almost 'study' the sentences.

Bednaya Nastya is over! Now I feel as orphan as Polina. I never thought I would. Some days were really boring, as the story was tedious and I didn't feel I was learning much Russian from it. Now I think I've learned enough given the subtitles only in English, and that it allowed me for an increase in comprehension of the spoken language, to the extent that, if I had active skills, I could already be speaking Russian. The vocabulary I acquired is limited to those short dialogues you find in soap operas, though (it doesn't help me with reading a novel, for instance). Considering a) the trouble with finding subtitles in Russian and b) the convenience of having my daily Russian series on the web as opposed to Norwegian, French and German where I have to browse files and write down where I stopped within the file, then repeat this everytime a film is over...I decided I'm going to keep at Viki and start Tatyana's Day. It sounds a bit cheesy but at least I will get exposed to more contemporary instead of fake historical language now, and so I hope I will be able to consolidate some vocabulary by paying close attention. I'm also to take my time and watch only 1 part of the whole episode each day. With Bednaya Nastya I used to watch 2 parts at about 20 minutes and doing this now would be a stretch, as I'm reading more than I was in Russian and am also busy with other languages. I've already logged over 80 hours for Russian which is more than the initially planned 75 hours, a half challenge. My Russian still needs more written vocabulary than other stuff. Update: the videos don't load here. Videos are blocked here, but Youtube isn't. Bednaya Nastya was hosted on Youtube so I could always watch it. I wonder if something has changed for the other videos. If this is the case, I will have to work hard to find Russian subtitles and combine them with the English ones or at least just English subtitles for Russian films for the moment. Oh, wait. I think it's Geo-blocked and Viki only lets you access the Fan-subs ones. That limits the options, so, for now I'm going for 'Don't be born a beauty', an Ugly Betty remake (which itself is a remake from a Colombian telenovela which itself had already got a Brazilian remake much earlier than there was an Ugly Betty). I won't give up on Tatyana's Day, will try at home with a VPN. There's also a historical novel which is part of the Fan-subs, called 'One night with love' and a few scattered episodes of some other series. What matters now is to keep doing something in Russian.

I spent a good hour looking for those Russian resources, so all the time I had saved in the morning went down the drain. Fingers crossed so I still manage to write some output.

Yesterday's Georgian writing (see previous post) was the best one ever in terms of grammar. I had some typos, some silly mistakes like forgetting a case ending here and there but I didn't write any 'alien' sentence. Should keep working! I believe in a sort of graded writing - I might get back to it later.

Had to pause a Kuxnya episode at about 16'. Well, Morgen ist auch ein Tag. The most important thing is that I'm learning a lot of spoken Georgian from comprehensible input.
1 person has voted this message useful



daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4519 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 231 of 364
08 July 2015 at 12:24am | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
@daegga: please do pm me about those other means ;) I'm running
out especifically of comedies with subtitles


Actually I just used a VPN (hola unblocker) - but it stopped working reliably for NRK
later on. But both seasons are now accessible without a VPN, so you should be fine.
Season 1 for another month, season 2 until September.

3 persons have voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5332 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 232 of 364
08 July 2015 at 10:29am | IP Logged 
I am so impressed by all your work - and that you have the capacity to actually report
about it! I see I am very unoriginal, since I am also struggling to pick my second
Slavic language, and I would really, really want to learn Greek. I am 90 % decided on
making my second Slavic language Polish. It is an old love of mine, there are tons of
resources for it, and there are more native speakers everywhere around me than I need,
so it is the perfect pick. The only reason why I am even hesitating, is that I would
also really like to learn Ukrainian, and I would love to learn Croatian. I guess that
once I get to a decent level in Russian (B2 - I am hoping to get there by the end of
next year), I could afford starting on a second Slavic language.

Your Norwegian level is really, really good. I am giving you a few corrections to make
it perfect :-)

Jeg synes jeg har tid nok TIL å skrive noe på norsk i dag. I helgen BEGYNTE jeg å se
på en ny serie som heter 'Mysteriet på Sommerbåten'. Det var morsomt at det jeg likte
best VED serien var at den består av 41 episoder. Det BETYR at DET VIL TA lang tid FØR
JEG BEHØVER å tenke på hvilken serie jeg SKAL se PÅ ETTERPÅ. Denne serien er alltid
tilgjengelig fra NRKs HJEMMEside og den er også tilgjengelig fra hvor som helst i
verden (vel...JEG ER faktisk ikke sikker PÅ OM man kan se den fra Nord Korea.

Det er sommer nå i Norge. Jeg lurer på om det er virkelig varmt selv i Sør-Norge. Her
i Brasil er det 'vinter', men jeg bor PÅ 19 breddegrad og selv om vinteren har vi få
dager unDer 15ºC varmeGRADER. Man kan da si at det er varmere her om sommeren enn det
er i Norge om vinteren. Jeg liker vinteren vår GODT, for jeg kan gå eller sykle til
jobben uten å svette FOR MYE. Desverre blir det varmt og - det som er det verstE -
tørrere FOR hvert år, og nå er det helt normalt å ha en solskinndag med 28ºC midt i
juli.

Jeg gleder meg til å reise til Norge, men jeg vet ikke ennå når jeg kan gjøre det. Jeg
har ferie i juli hvert år, men kona mi har ikke deT. I år reiste vi til Europa i april
og det var fortsatt litt kaldt i Italia og Tyskland hvor vi var på besøk, ikke minst i
Norge som ligger ved polarsirkelen.

It may look like a lot of corrections, but I have been super strict and even corrected
stylistic matters since your level is so high, but you really did very, very well!

And to answer your question about the heat in Southern Norway - we have had a few
spectacular days with 30 degrees, but now it is cold and rainy again.

Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 08 July 2015 at 10:30am



2 persons have voted this message useful



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