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Total Annihilation - Volte | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 17 of 72 25 June 2007 at 5:33pm | IP Logged |
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This was a lazy day. I hit the target, but no more, despite having some free time. Then again, I did say that I consider July 10th my 'official' start date for this challenge, as that's the first day after my final exams. [Edit: I also spent a couple of hours proofreading for project Gutenberg, in English, German, Dutch, and Italian; I suppose this counts].
On the good side, at least I ordered the books on linguistics that I was asking about on the forum, along with the book Seth recommened on syntax, and 2 of the 4 Assimil things I wanted. amazon.fr didn't have the other two, annoyingly - so I decided that getting the second French course, and the book for the second Italian course, which I have but without the book, would keep me more than busy enough for a while yet. The book for the Italian one is in German, since I couldn't find it in English; that should be quite educational. Edited by Volte on 25 June 2007 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| egg_uk Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6416 days ago 203 posts - 204 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 72 26 June 2007 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
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thanks volte, for you comments of encouragement, im keeping an eye on your log as well
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 19 of 72 26 June 2007 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
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I hit the target again. I think I did closer to an hour and a half of reading than an hour; I didn't time it exactly. I finally finished "L'isola del Tonal"; at 394 pages, I'm pretty sure it's the longest book I've read in Italian. Overall, I'm happy with how reading it went. I barely used a dictionary (I looked up a small handful of connectives, and nothing else). There were some sentences where the meaning evaded me; they were a tiny minority, and I don't think my understanding of the novel suffered much.
I'm going through Assimil Persian the normal way at this point; I just finished lesson 4 today. I could 'shadow' (in parallel, not after) it from memory even the first time through. This is the second time I start going through Assimil Persian from the beginning, in more or less the normal way; the first was during the 6 week challenge. After going through it twice with an onion approach, without using the book, it seems a lot easier; it'll be interesting to see how it goes with the lessons I've never done the normal way. I did another 2 hours or so of proofreading for project Gutenberg; mainly Italian and Dutch this time, though I tried one old French/latin text. I've hit the point where I should be doing the active wave in the other 4 languages I'm using Assimil in. I plan to start that later today (the 27th). I'm thinking of putting any phrases that give me trouble into mnemosyne. My other goal for today, on top of the usual ones, is to go through In der Strafkolonie, using siomotteikiru's method. I've found an English copy of the text here: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm; I hope it corresponds well. I'd prefer to use a longer book, but this was the longest work of Kafka that vorleser had. My heartfelt thanks go to reineke, for mentioning vorleser! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6445 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 20 of 72 26 June 2007 at 5:44pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, man. Just for that here's some free Kafka and a few other things:
http://www.theateraufcd.de/ http://librivox.org/ (Un)fortunately librivox accepts contributions from non-native speakers. Edited by reineke on 26 June 2007 at 6:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 21 of 72 27 June 2007 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks again, reineke!
Today was a true total annihilation day. First, a mea culpa: I did -no- Italian reading (not counting my usual Assimil). Aside from that, I hit my usual target, with a bit of a twist. I started the active phase of Assimil French, Italian, German, and Dutch. I repeated lesson 50 briefly for each as a warmup (I would have done lessons ranging from 51 to 55, depending on the language, otherwise), and then spoke and wrote the text of the first lesson of each, looking at the English, after reviewing it once. Overall, it went well, with 2 or 3 mistakes in every lesson except the French one, where I made spelling mistakes in most phrases (my worst phrase had more mistakes than I made in any of the other languages in the whole lesson!). I also did an hour and a half of an Italian/English language exchange, on skype. On the real life side of things, I spent a while at a local snack shop, and engaged in a bit of random small talk there, but that was minor. And now, the total annihilation part. I've fallen in love with siomotteikiru's method. It's almost a combination of the two methods I've found that I like best - reading in my target language, even when I'm a beginner and can't understand much - and comprehensible input with bilingual texts and audio, similar to Assimil. I read the short story I mentioned in the previous post in English (~25 minutes), and went through it three times (1h:10 per time), learning more every time, with German audio and the English text; by the last pass, I was understanding significantly more than the first time, even if I'd look away from the English. I also spent more than half an hour between the first and second pass thinking almost purely in German; I was so into it that it seemed natural, and English seemed slightly foreign. I also tried reading a novel for about half an hour; I only got through about 4 pages, and my comprehension was still quite limited. That's about 5 hours of German. I also thought in it quite a bit throughout the day. From private messages with siomotteikiru, I received a few clarifications on the method; I'll post them if siomotteikiru doesn't mind. Edited by Volte on 27 June 2007 at 6:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 22 of 72 28 June 2007 at 5:08pm | IP Logged |
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Lazy day. I studied all my languages, but I didn't do any Italian reading. I only did the active part of Assimil French, lesson 2, orally; it went fairly poorly. I did the other 3 orally and in writing, and they went fairly well. It's weird how I make about as many mistakes in Italian as in German and Dutch.
I did more than 40 minutes of listening to another work of Kafka ("The Hunger Artist"), while reading the English text. It went reasonably, but I'm more than ready for another, less dark, author. A change in diction will also be nice. Beyond that, I did some proofreading, and some talking in Italian. I also listened to ~40 minutes of Esperanto music. The highlight of the longest written Italian conversation I had today was at the beginning. I managed to avoid mistakes in the first few sentences, and correctly use the subjunctive, leading my (natively Italian speaking) conversation partner to say that I spoke Italian better than he. Further conversation proved this to be entirely incorrect, unsurprisingly. Still, it's the first time I've had anyone say this, and it suggests my Italian is heading in the right direction. Edited by Volte on 28 June 2007 at 7:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 23 of 72 29 June 2007 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
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From a total annihilation point of view, today was awful. I 'did' 20 minutes of each of my languages, but largely in the background; earlier in the day, I only proofread one page in another language (Czech). On a scale of effectiveness from 1 to 10, where 10 is the usual and 1 is doing nothing, today would be lucky to hit a 3.
However, I'm not mea-culpa'ing. I managed to submit my undergraduate thesis, which was due today. I consider that sufficient excuse. My copy of "An introduction to the languages of the world" arrived today. Now that my thesis is done, I'll be able to start reading it. My language goals for the weekend are to read it, to do my usual language studies, including the Italian reading, and to do as much German audiobook parallel-text study as I can. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 24 of 72 30 June 2007 at 7:10pm | IP Logged |
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I reviewed yesterday's lessons and did my 20 mins/language, except in Esperanto, where I spent half an hour, and finished 'La Zagreba Metodo' and started looking at "Jen nia IJK".
I read a bit over 60 pages of "An introduction to the languages of the world". It's fascinating, but the author's warnings about prerequisite knowledge are well-founded; I lack a firm introductory knowledge of linguistics, and my comprehension suffers resultingly. Thus far, it's introduced the concept of language families, provided brief sketches of some types of classification, and introduced the languages of Europe, including a couple of extinct ones and some minor ones of the Caucasus. I have a better idea of what subject/object vs ergative/absolutive is now; I'd heard of the latter, but my concept of it was extremely blurry. No Italian or German reading today; I don't feel too bad about this, as I spent 7 hours coding and finished my last serious assignment. I'm -not- going to start counting time in 'C' for the purposes of this challenge - but I'm glad to have this out of the way. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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