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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 57 of 364
03 February 2015 at 9:16pm | IP Logged 
Thank you @Emme once again! Here in Brazil Pullman is a wholewheat bread's brand, so I find it very curious. My main concern now in Italian is stress, because I don't trust Duolingo's stress all the time, since it seems to be a synthetic voice. What is the stress in Termini (the central station in Rome), vicini and autobus?

I've already moved on with Estonian Language and Mind after reviewing the first 9 videos intensively. Now I'm going to watch the new ones intensively as well, that is, looking up every unknown word. There's already a translation available for the sentence, but by translating word by word as well I learn even more. My vocabulary for Estonian is way too short, but I think I'm going somewhere. The Estonian Blog has some short practice texts which are not translated, but since they are part of the author's practice they are not so complicated. All I have to do is paste them in Google Translate and study them. It is quite effective.

I'm a bit bored with both Linguaphone Russian and Learn Norwegian, even if they are taking me much less time now. Learn Norwegian ends next week, and Linguaphone Russian is going to take a few weeks more. At least in the case of Norwegian I am under little pressure because I can ready nearly everything in the book and I'm writing notes at lang-8 rather often.

I'm considering reducing my minimum, dedicated French reading to 10 pages a day. I can already read in French so well that it doesn't feel like studying and I don't have preference for English over it. Besides, there is so much in French that it also encompasses some books I'd read anyway in English or Portuguese. That is to say, I will be reading French in the evening as well, apart from my language-learning routine. The SUper Challenge is already at 5770 pages, so 10 or 20 pages of comitted reading won't make a big difference, and I am already reading apart from this moment anyway. I want to feel free to read in French alongside the day and not as part of my daily schedule.

It wasn't a good day for Georgian reading, it happened right after I was informed of some changes in work. They may affect my routine but I don't know how yet. Anyway, I didn't have an easy time associating sentences and the paragraphs were rather long. I wonder if I should try to add some intensive reading to my routine again. I better cool off for the moment, as I am going to redo the Georgian Newspaper Reader after I finish Learn Norwegian. That will help.

It was slightly better for German. I mean, there had been better days, but I'm reading faster and making less use of the French. Only in some denser paragraphs when it is important to get the full meaning I resort to reading the whole paragraph first in German then actually understanding it through re-reading in French. This is a practice I should let go of in my stronger languages, but I can't help doing this most of the time in Georgian or Russian and when necessary in Norwegian and German.

Whole I wait for the occasional changes, I'm taking profit of the time I have. Today I finished watching Le Trône de Fer and doing my daily Duolingo chapters earlier than usual, which left me two more hours to go.

It was an interesting Turkish lesson about the past. This book does move fast, but my idea is just to have an idea of the language so I start a proper course later as a false beginner.

This one is awaiting for correction at lang-8. I'm keeping an almost daily streak, alternating languages. Not bad! I should adopt Radioclare's habit of posting the corrections here later, as it will force me to reflect upon the corrections more intensively by actually rewriting the text.

- შაბათ-კვირას სად მიდიხართ?
-ზუსტად ჯერ არ ვიცი. ჩემი ქმარს უნდა თხოვოს მისი და, შეგვიძლია აქ წასვლა თუ არა.
- ის სად ცხოვრობს?
- კომფორთულ, დიდ სახლში მთებში.
- შორს აქედანაა?
- არც ისე შორს. უბრალოდ ერთ-ნახევარი საათი მანქანით.
- კარგი. სასიამოვნო მოგზაურობა გვისურვებ.
- რას ამბობ? დარწმუნებული არ ვართ, აქ რომ წახვალთ.
- კი, მართალი ხარ. სხვა არჩევები გაქვთ?
- კი, გვაქვს. იქნებ ქუთაისში მივდივართ. ცოტა მოშორებითია, მაგრამ ჩემი დეიდა აწ ცხოვრობს. მას ძალიან მოსწონს ჩვემი ბავშვების ზრუნვა.
- კარგი, კარგი. მაინც ყველაფერი კარგად იქნება. ორშაბათამდე.
- ნახვამდის!

-Where are you going in the weekend?
- We still don't know exactly. My husband has to ask his sister if we can go there.
- Where does she live?
- In a large, comfortable house in the mountains.
- Is it far from here?
- Not that far. Only one and a half hour by car.
- Right. Wish you a nice trip.
- What are you saying? We are still not sure about going there.
- Yes, you're right. Do you have any other option?
- Yes, we do. Maybe we will go to Kutaisi. It is a bit farther, but my aunt lives there. She really likes to take care of our children.
- Good, good. Tehn everything will be fine. Until Monday.
- Good-bye!
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Emme
Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 5345 days ago

980 posts - 1594 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English, German
Studies: Russian, Swedish, French

 
 Message 58 of 364
04 February 2015 at 3:41pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
[...] What is the stress in Termini (the central station in Rome), vicini and autobus? [...]


I'm sure you have no problem if I use IPA. Am I wrong?

Termini ['tεrmini]
vicini [vi'tʃini]
autobus ['autobus]

Ask away if you have any other doubt: I’m happy to help you.

But just so you know, RAI has put a pronunciation dictionary online that you may find useful. It’s called DOP or Dizionario Italiano multimediale e multilingue d’ortografia e di pronunzia and it teaches proper “dizione”, the kind that actors and newscasters are supposed to use. Unfortunately it doesn’t use IPA, but the graphic conventions they use are pretty easy to master and moreover the words are also spoken by a voice-actor: you can listen to the audio by clicking on the little red arrow. The site is still “Provvisorio e incompleto”, but with 92,000 items I believe you’ll find most of the words and names you might be interested in.


Edited by Emme on 04 February 2015 at 3:44pm

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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 59 of 364
04 February 2015 at 9:28pm | IP Logged 
No problem with IPA, Emme. Thank you again, my suspicious were right. And thanks for the dictionary, I'm definitely going to use it!

Btw, today's Duolingo had "Sei un medico?" for "Are you a doctor?". Besides the inappropriate informality, I was wondering if people just asked "Lei è medico?", without an article. Is that so?

One more doubt: is prenotare used in all contexts when we talk about booking a room, a ticket, making reservations, or is there a more common or a likewise common verb?

----------------------

No foreseen changes in routine yet, though I was a bit upset that a colleague was inforing the newcomers that I study languages and such. Don't like that, people just meet me and already face a stereotype.

Brødrene Dal's episodes are less than 29 minutes each, so I'm watching 15 minutes then the remaining time the next day. With that I take some extra time for the Super Challenge. The situation isn't that bad now that I'm doing extra efforts with French. Only Georgian and German are lagging behind with less than 25 hours but that can be easily fixed once I've reached my goals with French (that is, in about 100 days, which will still leave me a few months before the challenge is over).

It's funny how I am starting to understand more of the 'mumbling' in the French film Un printemps à Paris when I'm less focused. It also helps that I'm more used to the voice of the main character after 1:10 of film, but nevertheless I find it curious how exposing yourself to different listening situations help your overall comprehension (especially in those particular situations. I'm forcing my French listening to be treated like a native listening - in the background, listening to different sources simultaneously (e.g. watching Game of Thrones while typing in some sentences in Duolingo) and I'm starting to see the results. It's a sure thing that my ability to evolve towards comprehension in busier, noisier contexts relates to the level I've already reached at listening in ideal contexts, but nevertheless at one given point you need to try harder things to improve and not only do easy things a zillion times.

Due to a computer crash I was forced to read 8 pages of the German book in German-only in the tablet, not to lose time while the system rebooted. Not too bad, though I missed on some important adjectives describing the issues being mentioned. Reading Georgian was quite nice, and the repetition of a vocabulary pattern from the author already has an effect in my reading, that is, I'm starting to recognize some words that are said often. Still some problems with decoding grammar but mostly with longer sentences.

Since I was already late in schedule thanks to a short meeting, I wouldn't dedicate full attention to the Georgian series (was browsing the forum as well), but I'm happy to realize I only needed to pay more attention and start to understand several words. I'm a little more confident about Georgian now. It helps that I'm watching Kuxnya dubbed in Georgian (I did yesterday), so for the first time I'm having consistent exposure to decipherable Georgian audio day after day. It may not seem much, but it makes all the difference. My interest in Georgian is high but my progress is slow and much of this owes to the lack of quality material. It may sound as just complaining, but someone who is learning Spanish where one has everything in terms of resources besides language transparency can't really have an idea of what it is to learn a less common language and struggle to find the odd video with subtitles.

With the extra pages from Linguaphone, I've finally gone through the 1000-page threshold at the Russian Super Challenge. I do believe I'm reading better. I read everything ikn Russian today before using translation, but I think I understood a lot of what's going on, that is, the main plot, only missing details.

Not much luck with Norwegian and Georgian corrections at italki, after a positive streak. Was it just because I promised to post the corrections here? j/k.

Time goes by so fast and I'm already dealing with the future in Turkish. It's all a matter of infixes, anyway (not saying it's easy, though). I really love this language and I also like the way I'm healing from wanderlust while leading myself astray from burnout. Somehow I'm working similarly with Turkish and Estonian: small doses, no struggle understanding longer texts. I expect to take my false-beginner languages (Georgian, Russian, Chinese) to a higher level before I add native materials to new languages, and things are moving towards this direction anyway. By the way, the Duolingo Turkish course is estimated for February 17. I will be already done with Italian by them (or almost - there is a Carnival in between), so I can start this one. Or maybe I will wait for the Norwegian one first and work on Norwegian before Turkish while I improve my Turkish so I can make a better use out of Duolingo. I think doing Duolingo as a total beginner would be like working on Assimil only by doing the active wave. Btwm the Duolingo Norwegian contributors mentioned they are going to use the moderate norm at NTB . Being from the Communication field, I don't find it a bad idea to base my studies also in such norm, for example, in a more advanced phase on writing non-fiction. What do other learners and natives think about the site above?

Is it just me or there is some retroflex in the r in sonra? (Turkish). Also, in -gel- sentences it sounds like both the g and the l are slightly palatalized. Interesting how the use or not of the accusative helps render definiteness.

I managed to watch more Revolution with subtitles in Norwegian. It's good to keep track of which 'post-schedule' resources I'm using. It left no time for Kuxnya, though. Anyway, I'm also managing to write more in my languages after this post-schedule moment. I just shouldn't feel discouraged by the lack of corrections for my latest Norwegian and Georgian posts.
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 60 of 364
04 February 2015 at 10:28pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
[...] Btw, today's Duolingo had "Sei un medico?" for "Are you a doctor?". Besides the inappropriate informality, I was wondering if people just asked "Lei è medico?", without an article. Is that so?

One more doubt: is prenotare used in all contexts when we talk about booking a room, a ticket, making reservations, or is there a more common or a likewise common verb? [...]

Both sentences are fine, but the register (level of formality) is definitely quite different. Without context (and I’m not sure how much context something like Duolingo offers for each sentence it teaches) it’s very difficult to judge whether a translation is appropriate or not. After all, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with translating Sei un medico? with Are you a doctor?. In some contexts it might be the right choice.

Sei un medico? is rather informal. I imagine I could hear such a sentence in a movie, when people try to get to know (or even pick up) someone they’ve just met at a party or at a bar. The register is neutral to informal, but in everyday speech it seems slightly strange to choose the term medico (rather formal) instead of the more common dottore. We normally use dottore for “medical doctor”.

Lei è un medico? or even better È un medico? is what I would say in a neutral register using the 3rd person pronoun for courtesy.

Lei è medico? Perfectly correct, but very formal.

Omitting the article when talking about professions is correct, but seems somewhat stuffy in today’s Italian.

---

Prenotare is both the more common and the more versatile of verbs for “to book” or “to reserve”.

Examples:

Se vuoi partire questo weekend ti conviene prenotare il volo già stasera. = If you want to leave next weekend, you’d better book your flight no later than tonight.

Ho prenotato due biglietti per la Scala per martedì prossimo. = I’ve booked two tickets for La Scala for next Tuesday.

Vorrei prenotare un tavolo per quattro per domani sera. = I’d like to make a reservation for a table for four people for tomorrow night.

Hai già prenotato l’albergo per le prossime vacanze? = Have you already made a hotel reservation for the upcoming holidays?

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kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4845 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 61 of 364
05 February 2015 at 4:28am | IP Logged 
Emme wrote:

I'm sure you have no problem if I use IPA. Am I wrong?

Termini ['tεrmini]
vicini [vi'tʃini]
autobus ['autobus]

How do you type IPA on a computer? I would love to know. :)
1 person has voted this message useful



vonPeterhof
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4770 days ago

715 posts - 1527 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German
Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish

 
 Message 62 of 364
05 February 2015 at 6:57am | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
Is it just me or there is some retroflex in the r in sonra?

Wikipedia's page on Turkish phonology says that "At the margins of words, the passage at the alveolar ridge is closed so that [the phoneme /ɾ/] becomes fricated". It's less of a retroflex and more of a Czech ř-sound. I hear it all the time at the ends of syllables, but sonra is the only word where I hear it syllable-initially, so I'm not sure how that's explained.
Expugnator wrote:
Also, in -gel- sentences it sounds like both the g and the l are slightly palatalized.
True, those are both consonants that undergo changes in pronunciation due to vowel harmony (at least in native Turkic words). Although it might be more technically correct to say that it's not the /l/ in front-vowel words that gets palatalized, but it's the one in back-vowel words that gets velarized, but this is probably just a question of which variant you view as the default pronunciation of the phoneme.
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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4663 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 63 of 364
05 February 2015 at 7:21am | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
Emme wrote:

I'm sure you have no problem if I use IPA. Am I wrong?

Termini ['tεrmini]
vicini [vi'tʃini]
autobus ['autobus]

How do you type IPA on a computer? I would love to know. :)

Here is one option: http://ipa.typeit.org/full/

bɔ̃.ʒuʁ! kɔ.mɑ̃ sa va?

Edited by tastyonions on 05 February 2015 at 7:23am

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Emme
Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 5345 days ago

980 posts - 1594 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English, German
Studies: Russian, Swedish, French

 
 Message 64 of 364
05 February 2015 at 11:07am | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
How do you type IPA on a computer? I would love to know. :)


I usually write my posts in my word processor (Windows Word) first and then copy and paste the result in the edit box of the forum.

Since I rarely use the IPA, I haven’t bothered learning the character code for every symbol, I just use the Symbol dialog box.

If you’re using fonts such as Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman, in the Symbol dialog box you can find not only non-Latin alphabets such as Greek and Cyrillic, but also the IPA symbols subset.


Edited by Emme on 05 February 2015 at 11:08am



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