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Super Challenge Update thread 2014-15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6058 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 145 of 198 20 October 2014 at 12:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Fair enough. I'm doing the SC in Italian (I'm a C2 student, so I need to practice a lot) and in French (I don't really need it, but I want to keep track of how much I read and watch). I try to stay away from translations as much as possible, but I think that will be difficult after a certain point. I figure this will be especially hard with films, so I plan on seeing some with subtitles, but I'll try to keep away from those spoken in English or Spanish (mainly) but also German. I remember going to the cinema in Brussels once to see an American movie and they had subtitles in both French and Dutch. I ended up with a bit of a headache because I heard the English dialogues, read the French subtitles and still tried to make sense of the Dutch ones (which I didn't understand). I'll try to avoid interferences, by watching films spoken in languages I don't understand at all and therefore focusing on the subtitles. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4906 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 146 of 198 20 October 2014 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Like others have said, I'm mostly updating in my log. But I think it's worth posting something about my favourite French TV series, Boulevard du palais. 
The main characters are a police inspector and a judge, so the obvious point of comparison is the more famous Engrenages (although it started about 6 years before Engrenages). Fans of Engrenages might initially be disappointed with Boulevard du palais, as I was. It is less "gritty", and there are no cliff-hangers at the end of the episodes, so it is less "compelling". But I think these factors actually made me like the series more. Episodes of Boulevard du palais are essentially self-contained, so you watch the next one because you want to, not because you "have to". The cliff-hangers and "grittiness" of Engrenages actually feel a bit contrived in comparison; clearly the producers of Engrenages had to push the limits since their show would have been perceived as an imitation when it first came out. So what is Boulevard du palais like? Commisaire Rovere is an ageing inspector who is drinking himself into his grave, due in part to guilt over the death of his son. He fits in with the tradition of Commisaire Maigret: an inspector who studies people more than clues. Instead of relying on DNA evidence, he observes people, and sifts through personalities rather than combing through evidence (he has other team members who handle that end of things). He spends most cases sitting in a car or on a bench watching or chatting with suspects or witnesses, unless he's drunk (or often while drunk). Judge Nadia Lintz is the one judge who is capable of putting up with Rovere, and their relationship is sometimes a bit like a dysfunctional old couple. Dimeglio is Rovere's assistant, a Corsican who alternates between laughing with suspects and shoving them roughly. He is fond of saying, "Eh, guignol!" to suspects he knows are lying to him. The cast is rounded off by Docteur Pluvinage, the coroner who spouts poetry while dissecting the victims. In fact, the character has introduced me to some interesting poems by Hugo and Baudelaire. Here's a good example:
Most series consist of 4 episodes of 90 minutes. There is a bit of character development across episodes, and things like Judge Lintz's relationships carry through. But cases only take place in single episodes, which I think is a good thing. It has run from 1999 to 2014, which I hope means they are still making new episodes. I've only been watching it from season 8 (2006), so I'm very tempted to plunk down a decent chunk of money for the DVDs of the first 7 seasons. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5233 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 147 of 198 23 October 2014 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been updating my Super Challenge Log, but thought it would be a good idea to do a summary of what I've done since the start of the Super Challenge. I took the SC with two languages, French & Italian.
French I've seen a massive improvement in my French reading and comprehension since the start of the challenge as evidenced by the increase in reading speed as well as my scored on some tests, which have now put me at around high B2/low C1 for reading. I started the SC with a score of high A2/ Low B1. Most of the things I have been watching for the SC are TV series. For French the majority of time spent on films has been: 1) Valerian and Laureline - a cartoon show based on a comic book. Very good and highly recommended. 2) Mafioso Le Clan - all four series. A show about a Mafia family in France and the story of a woman who take command of the family and her struggles to keep it all together. 3) Engrenages (Spirals on Netflix) - Police procedural show set in Paris. A very good series and well worth watching. For books I've spent almost all my reading time with 3 authors! Which has made reading my log a bit tedious. 1) Stephen King's "Le Fléau" which is known as "The Stand" in English, and if you've ever read a Stephen King book you'll understand why I'm still reading it, it is huge. 2) René Goscinny "Le Petit Nicolas" series. I've read all but one of these and they are very witty and charming. 3) Lovecraft and his short stories. These I found too hard and I abandoned them quickly. Italian I didn't have anyway to accurately test myself at the beginning of the SC in Italian, but it was better than French. I think over the course of the SC my French seems to have out-stripped Italian for reading, but not listening. Again I tend to watch TV series and I've spent a lot of time with Italian detectives, but also some great comedy. 1) Inspector Montalbano - a great series which is available everywhere nowadays, but personally I preferred the "Young Montalbano" series which I thought was very well done. 2) Tutti Pazzi Per Amore - A brilliant comedy which I highly recommend, happy, funny, sad in places. Basically a brilliant TV show. Books I struggled with in Italian, especially at the beginning of the SC, and I switched to reading kids and YA books. For the last month or two I've been reading the Hardy Boys series in Italian and I've completed a lot of them. I've switched up the Italian books more than the French. 1) Frank Dixon - The Hardy Boys. Read 4 or possible 5 of these now? 2) Io Sono Leggenda (I Am Legend) the book about vampires which has been made into 2 movies, one staring Vincent Price and the other was the Fresh Prince of Belair guy (who's name I can't be bothered to google). 3) Doppio Misto, a funny biography of two Italian celebrities who are married to each other. Not bad, but a little to difficult for me when I read it, might need to go back and re-read at the end of the SC. 4) Roald Dahl "Il GGG" and some other of his books. So there you have it. Still enjoying the SC, and still finding it a challenge. 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 148 of 198 02 November 2014 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess I should put in my update here for October.
I finished reading Insurgente. Since it's 525 pages, that's 10 book-segments right there. I started reading Leal, the final book in the trilogy, which is another 526 pages. I'm not very creative with movies. I watched Divergent with the Spanish audio track, listen to Buenos Dias America, and occasionally listen to Notes in Spanish Advanced. Not very exciting, but I've noticed that my Spanish is improving. I'm understanding so much more from Leal than I did when I originally read Divergente. In the first book, I was relying primarily on my knowledge of the English book to keep from getting lost... now with Leal, I am understanding quite a lot of the details just from the Spanish itself. Still have farther to go, but I notice a huge difference. Edited by Lorren on 02 November 2014 at 11:29pm 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 149 of 198 13 November 2014 at 2:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Update Six
I'm still in the middle of a bunch of thick books; hopefully I'll finish them by next month. I'm ready for some light holiday reading - I'm thinking of Le Petit Nicolas for French; it's been sitting on my shelf for a year already. And for Italian I bought I have Umberto Eco's Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari (The Book of Legendary Lands) waiting. It's a series of essays on the background myths behind Atlantis, Mu, King Arthur's court, El Dorado, and other fabled places. The writing looks straight-forward and not too difficult. And it's also just beautiful. I can't wait to dive in. 
____________________________________________________________ __ And my 'winning' streak with movies and tv is over - I've seen a few good flics and a lot of flops this past month. From top to bottom: La sang de la vigne (Blood of the Vine) (bande-annonce) Wine and murder in the French countryside - this is my current favorite. Benjamin Lebel (Pierre Arditi) is a famous enologist and part-time detective, and each episode revolves around a mystery set at a different château. It's fun, and I've ordered the first two seasons. Episode one opens with a dégustation macabre in Bordeaux, and my buddy and I are already planning a theme night around it. So ... if any HTLAL'ers find themselves in Honolulu this winter and are up for a night of Bordelaise wine and food, drop a line and we'll have you over! French is optional; diets are forbidden. A few episodes are at MHZ 
____________________________________________________________ __ Un village français (Saison 2) (bande-annonce) It's 1941, and the French are settling into life under the occupation. The Resistance is still young, and the real evil of the Third Reich isn't yet apparent. This wasn't as riveting as Season 1, though it's still good. A lot of the drama this season revolves around who's sleeping with who, which didn't interest me at all. Most of the tension, for me, came from knowing what is coming in the years ahead. 
____________________________________________________________ __ La Piovra (Stagione 1) started off so well, but then took a twist mid-way through that I didn't like at all. Without spoiling it too much, it started to feel more like an 80's style Dirty Harry movie than anything deeper and more complex. And I know that it's a popular genre, but it wasn't really my thing. Still, the season ended with a bang, and Season 2 is on You Tube with subtitles, so I'll probably continue with it. I do appreciate that the Mafioso are genuinely the bad guys, though. A lot of American movies glamorize them too much; in La Piovra they are without doubt the villains. Currently on MHZ's You Tube channel. 
____________________________________________________________ __ I've never been able to finish any of Luis Buñuel's famous surrealist movies, but I actually enjoyed his pulpy adventure La mort en ce jardin (Death in the Garden, 1956). An adventurer, a diamond miner, his deaf-mute daughter, a hooker, and a priest flee into the jungle to escape a revolution in South America. Jealousy, betrayal, and madness ensue. Good times. 
____________________________________________________________ __ Last round I was intrigued by Alain Robbe-Grillet's films. That love affair ended with L'éden et après (1970), a movie that is so bad it's good. It starts in a French night club where the bored and beautiful play out rape fantasies. A stranger gives them a new psychedelic, there's a murder, and then suddenly it becomes a soft core porn movie. There's an artist in Tunisia who has cages full of naked women hanging from the ceiling, there's a lot of bondage, and then the heroine flees into the desert - wearing go-go boots and a mini skirt - after escaping from some psycho killer hippies. I'm sure it was meant to be a freaky-deaky mind trip, but forty-plus years on (man, the 60's were a long time ago) it's mostly just camp. But it's camp with some amazing cinematography. 
____________________________________________________________ __ Stupeur et tremblements (2003, in Japanese and French) is based on the novel by Amélie Northrumb, which a few people recommended in the Super Challenge last round. It's about a Belgian woman who takes a job at a mega-corporation in Tokyo. She ends up in a series of surreal and borderline sadistic relationships with her superiors. It's well done, but it just didn't keep my interest. I never finished the movie. 
____________________________________________________________ __ And finally, one big heaping pile of merde: the French tv series Détectives. There's a roguish detective who can seduce women with a single kiss. An uptight by-the-book female detective who he's forced to work with because I don't know why. They hate each other. Within ten minutes they're sparring off, chest to breast, staring each other down. I lasted 12 painful minutes and couldn't handle it anymore. MHZ stopped streaming Il Commissario Montalbano and replaced it with this. I can't even. Edited by kanewai on 13 November 2014 at 2:40am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5344 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 150 of 198 25 November 2014 at 11:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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If you’ve read my previous post, you may remember that I’m reading a lot of rather short books for the Super Challenge: I’ve been scouring my bookshelves, those of my friends and the library for books that can fit in my bag so that I’ve always got something to read with me. That’s how I came across a series of short novels called “Quick Reads” which I think are worth mentioning here.
As language learners we often make the transition from textbooks to native materials by using either children’s books or readers where well-known stories are retold in a simple way. Personally I don’t enjoy these readers as they seem somewhat infantilizing, and having spoken with friends about it, I know I’m not the only one. Enter the “Quick Reads”. These books may not be very literary, but they’ve been commissioned to well-established mainstream authors with the specific purpose of being a quick and easy read for native speakers who don’t usually read and whose literacy is not so strong. These same characteristics make them a viable option for language learners looking for something accessible to start reading autonomously. From the “Quick Reads” website:
Now, this is a British initiative, and given the nature of this forum these short novels in English are probably of interest only to a minority here. But the real question is: is there something similar to “Quick Reads” in other languages? 
Of all the titles in the series, I read Conn Iggulden’s Quantum of Tweed: the Man with the Nissan Micra which is a spoof on the spy/thriller genre. It’s certainly not the best book I’ve read this year, but if you keep your expectations reasonably low, it’s enjoyable enough. And yes, it’s very short: less than 80 pages. EDIT: fixed a link. Edited by Emme on 25 November 2014 at 11:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5236 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 151 of 198 21 December 2014 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it's been about 6 months since I entered anything. I haven't read much since August, but during the
summer, I did finish Crepusculo and started, then stopped, Eclipse, as well as El laberinto de la soledad y otras obras. I wanted something more serious than the Twilight series ... boy did I get that & more! Sometimes I'd be moving along pretty smoothly, happy that I could digest "adult" writing. Other times, I just didn't have the brainpower to tackle the challenge of something that wasn't People en espanol. I think I tried to read more of Malinche, but still couldn't muster what it took to finish it. I also discovered El Gran Hotel & watched every episode I could get on Netflix ... anxiously awaiting the final season. Listening comprehension was pretty good. Libros: (651/2500 26%) 1. Crepusculo (510 paginas) 2. El laberinto de la soleded (92 paginas) 3. Eclipse (49 paginas) Peliculas: 20% 1. El Gran Hotel (42 episodios de 44 minutos) I also discovered Les Revenants and watched it twice. Although I'm not doing a French challenge, it's so much easier for me to understand. Any of you doing French, I highly recommend it! 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 152 of 198 02 January 2015 at 8:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Looks like I haven't updated here in a couple of months...
I'm a little over halfway through Leal. We moved from Arizona to Colorado, so that seemed to take away some of my momentum for a while. I've been listening to Voice of America off and on; I also watched a documentary from National Geographic Channel in Spanish, as well as the first episode of Los Simpsons. I got a few more Spanish books for Christmas, so I've got a lot of reading to do. I'm at the point where I generally don't need any words translated to understand what's going on, and my work on grammar is helping me to understand more details from what I'm reading. I expect 2015 to be a great year for finishing this out! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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