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Super Challenge Update thread 2014-15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5163 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 113 of 198 20 July 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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My current stats (I'm not part of the Twitter bot) in numbers of pages and hours:
French book 1365 = 27 books + 15 pages French film = 12:51:46 Norwegian book = 540 Norwegian video = 14:39:03 Mandarin book = 371 Mandarin film = 37:01:24 Georgian book = 239 Georgian film = 11:30:48 German book = 477 German film = 10:33:59 Russian book = 188 Russian film = 16:28:28 I'm aiming for a full challenge (5000 pages, 150 hours) in French and for a half challenge (2500 pages, 75 hours) in the other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5979 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 114 of 198 31 July 2014 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll give an update for June and July:
Japanese Total since start of challenge: 10.6 books, 11.6 films I watched a few more episodes of 相棒, which I'd been enjoying quite a bit, as ridiculous and flawed as it is, but was totally put off by the way one episode treated domestic violence, so I'm not sure if I will watch any more. I'm now half way through My Boss My Hero, which I'll write up properly after I finish it (hopefully in August). I managed to finish the children's novel 地下室からのふしぎな旅 (The Mysterious Journey from the Cellar) which was a real struggle. This is despite it being aimed at 8/9 year olds, with complete furigana gloss for all the kanji, and I've already read one novel by the same writer aimed at the same age group. There were just far too many unknown vocabulary and expressions, making a fairly uninteresting story painfully obscure. I've now made a start on 魔女の宅急便 (made famous by the film Kiki's Delivery Service) and, despite there being less furigana (aimed at a slightly older age group, but still not adults) I'm 50 pages in and it is a much, much easier read. It just goes to show it's not just kanji that's the problem. French Total since start of challenge: 9.4 books, 5.8 films I've watched a couple of documentaries (one on poverty, the other on poker!) and three films. L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie annoyed me while I was watching it, but some of the themes lingered in my mind for a few days afterwards in a thought-provoking kind of way. The other two films were comedies which I barely understood (no subs) and didn't find very funny! Books went a bit better, as I finished Amelie Nothomb's Ni d'Ève ni d'Adam, and then read Le tour du monde en 80 jours, an experience altogether improved by the fact that large quantities of it were consumed while travelling from the UK to Spain by rail. In fact, while our Eurostar on the way back was delayed by a couple of hours, I was positively Fogg-like. I was certain it would all work out, and indeed it did. Anyway, being stuck for a couple of hours at Gare du Nord is without doubt preferable to discovering that the railway line you are taking through India hasn't been finished yet, despite the announcements in the British press and the fact you were able to buy a ticket for the whole journey! German Total since start of challenge: Read 1 book, watched 1.9 films I have watched an episode of Tatort with German subs and a dubbed episode of The Big Bang Theory, also with German subs. Plus a current affairs show which I'm now not sure if I should have counted anyway. I also read a short graded reader for learners. I'm not quite ready to drop German yet and will still aim for a half challenge I think, but I'm fairly certain now I have a better chance with both French and Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| VivianJ5 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4259 days ago 81 posts - 133 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 115 of 198 01 August 2014 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I've had a break the last two weeks or so; I think I was "Frenched out." An uncomfortable visit with my French in-
laws probably had something to do with it, as well as increasing stress due to upcoming move from Europe back to U.S.... Now that most of the move planning is over (the actual move-out from our home in The Hague is next week), I'm hoping to catch up with some French TV series and films. I'd love to get my film count up to the book count, but don't see it happening anytime soon. If I can get to 50 films before the end of the summer, I'll be happy, but it will probably take most of the next six months to get to 100 films. I pretty much already accomplished my personal goals, which were to feel comfortable reading and speaking in French again. My latest goal is to catch up with French cinema of the last five years (ten years?) or so. Will get working on that! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5388 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 116 of 198 01 August 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Made some more steady progress in July. My Irish times went down a bit since we finished
the book we were reading in my Irish study group. But I'm hoping to get some more reading material so I can keep up the habit. I'm still not on the board in Spanish but I plan on doing something about that this month. Here are my monthly French reading times thus far - I think this is a good trend! 
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4248 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 117 of 198 04 August 2014 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Not much progress in the challenge yet, but that will probably dramatically change soon, at least in the reading category.
I purchased a couple of books in Spanish (that I know in English) but they were accidentally sent to the wrong address, so I have to wait longer for them. In the meantime, I picked up the Spanish version of Divergent, Divergente. I love the books in English. The books average about 500 pages each... although I currently only have the first book in Spanish. I have it on my Kindle. The good thing about Divergente is that since I already know the story pretty well, even though a lot of the words are over my head, I understand what's going on. I'm sure that the more that I read, the more details that I will get from the Spanish version. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 118 of 198 13 August 2014 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Six Week Update (July - mid August)
For the record, I was in the lead on the boards for all of July! ... among those who hadn't earned a star yet. I was going to amuse myself by bringing everything up to 24.9, and then earning four stars in a night. I still have a ways to go with Italian, though, so that was never a realistic plan. French TV & Movies - 27.1 Three short films by Jacques Demy: Le sabotier du Val de Loire (a documentary on a shoemaker), La luxure (Lust; from a series on the seven deadly sins), and Le bel indifférente (Jean Marais confronts her beautiful but aloof lover, based on a play by Jean Cocteau). I also took a look at Parking, his attempt at making an 80's rock musical. I didn't even try to finish it, I just wanted to see if it was as awful as the critics said. And it was. 
I love the style of Demy, but - like a lot of the nouvelle vague directors - I don't think he's very good with dialogue, or at actually telling a story. He does best when he's working with someone else's script. Saltimbank. Jean-Claude Biette, 2003. Another fail. A movie with lots of subplots, none of which are ever developed or resolved. Nothing much happens, and then the movie ends. The kind of movie that makes people hate French movies. *** Un village français. Saison 1. And a winner! It's 1940, and a French town falls under the German occupation. It really captures the chaos and fear of the initial days, and then the growing tensions of living under a police state. There are a couple heroes, but no real villains (yet) - it's mostly people having to make horrible decisions in a horrible situation. That, along with the normal affairs, dramas, and jealousies of a small town. 
French Books - 26.7 André Malraux, La condition humaine. 1933. Set over the course of 22 days in 1927, during a worker's uprising in Shanghai. The workers are betrayed be everyone - the European merchants, international bankers (of course), the international communist party (the uprising didn't fit into their master plan), and Chiang Kai Shek's nationalist Kuomintang - who ends up massacring them. The explores how the different idealistic men and women continue their fight, knowing in advance that they have been betrayed and are facing death. It's a challenging read, but was a fascinating look at a part of history I know little about. Jean Giono. L'homme qui plantait des arbes. 1953. This has been discussed a couple times on the boards. A nice, short work, good for all levels of French students. There's also a nice animation of the work on YouTube. 
M. Joseph Bédier, Tristan et Iseut. 1900. The biggest tale of forbidden love from medieval Europe, rewritten in modern French. Everyone loves Iseut because she is beautiful. Her personality never goes beyond this. Everyone loves Tristan because he is perfect. Tristan and Iseut love each other because they drank a magic potion. They weep, they sigh, they have one last goodbye, they weep and sigh some more, they long for death, they arrange one more secret meeting, they kill everyone who finds out about it, they say goodbye again for the last time, they weep and sigh and see each other again and kill again and long for death again and finally, after a few more rounds of this, they finally die. I meant to read this in a weekend. Instead it took me three weeks. *** Jean Racine. Phèdre. 1677. (drama). Racine is referred to a lot by modern writers, but I knew nothing about him when I picked up the book. I was worried when it started off like another tale of forbidden love. But unlike stupid Tristan and boring Iseut, Phèdre is complex and layered and truly tragic. Theseus has descended to the underworld to rescue his latest lover; back at home buried passions rise to the surface. His wife Phèdre declares her love for his son Hippolyte, while Hippolyte declares for Aricie, the sister of Theseus's enemies. Then Theseus returns from Hell. It took me awhile to find the rhythm of Racine, and I had to go back and re-read the introduction a number of times to keep the mythology straight, but the language ... the language was just beautiful. Once I made it past the first few pages I was hooked. Ce n'est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée: C'est Vénus tout entière à sa proie attachée. It is no longer a passion hidden in my heart: It is Venus herself fastened to her prey. This is the first book of the challenge that I've stayed up late to finish. 
Italian Books - 19.5 J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter e l'Ordine della Fenice. It only took me ten weeks to finish! Hugo Pratt. Una ballata del mare salato. 1967. And this graphic novel took me nine weeks. It started off exciting enough - pirates, shipwrecks, and mysteries in the south seas on the verge of WWI. But the pen work wasn't that good, and the story jumped around too much to be compelling. It's a classic, but it pales compared to all the works coming out of France and Belgium. My pace will be slowing down a lot; I'm going to try and transition to native language novels. It'll be a big jump, and I'm not sure how I'll do. Italians Movies & TV - 17.2 Io non ho paura. Gabriele Salvatores. 2003. A boy discovers a child chained up in a hole on an abandoned farm. It's not a horror film, but it's still haunting. 
*** Il commissario Montalbano, Season 2. Each "season" is only two episodes, but the episodes are well done and each has a movie-like quality. This is very enjoyable; I wish it wasn't so expensive to order discs with English subtitles! *** Pranzo di ferragosto. Gianni di Gregoria. 2010. It's a light-weight comedy about a man who ends up caring for five octogenarian ladies over a holiday weekend. There is a lot of minor drama. Even though I knew that the movie was heading for a standard Hollywood happy ending it still moved me far more than I was expecting. It's so rare, at least in American movies, to treat older people and their concerns with respect - this ended up being a very touching flic.  Edited by kanewai on 13 August 2014 at 11:11pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5331 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 119 of 198 14 August 2014 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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@ Kanewai: I LOVE reading your updates. They constitute 50% of the pleasure of the Super Challenge for
me :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 14 August 2014 at 6:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5388 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 120 of 198 14 August 2014 at 8:38am | IP Logged | ||
A bit of precision needed - does it possibly fall into the so bad it's good category (because when you say 80s rock musical that's what I think of) or just plain bad? Some highlights for me: I'm on the board with Spanish films! Just one, but it's a start. It was Instructions Not Included (No se Aceptan Devoluciones) available on Netflix. It seemed like it was a bit confused as to what kind of film it was trying to be (like a romcom that would also appeal to men) and it was a bit over-long but decent enough. Finally saw Starbuck! It's a French-Canadian comedy. I enjoyed it, though it gets a bit too sappy towards the end. Quai d'Orsay (The French Minister), based on the BD series. Overall, I liked it despite its weaknesses. It doesn't have much of an over-arching plot but rather a series of sketches stitched together (it would have worked well as a short form comedy like Kaamelott, Camera Café, Un gars une fille, etc). And considering the lack of plot, the run time is a bit long. But the little moments like this one are enjoyable: Stabilo ! Eerily enough, the reading selection for French class this week was Suicide by Emile Durkheim, a landmark study that defined sociology. The teacher sent the excerpt out early Monday morning before any news had broken. It's a really interesting take on an individual's place in society and how the nature of society can have greater tendencies towards suicide. I think I might try to read the whole thing. I've also been thinking of taking on Proust - has anyone read all or part of A la recherche du temps perdu before? Did you think it was temps perdu or does it earn its status as (one of) the best novels of all time? I've started getting the Irish material that I ordered (some simple/bilingual books, a DVD with two historical documentaries) so that will give me more variety which I'm excited about. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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