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The Super challenge! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 569 of 713 08 June 2012 at 1:30am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm going to count poetry normally (unless it's just 4-8 lines lol). I know what you mean, I'll be very disappointed if I fail even one part of *my* challenge!
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5395 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 570 of 713 08 June 2012 at 2:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Ouch. FYI, I fully intend to finish a Full Super Challenge for both Spanish and French. I will be pushing myself to do the same in Italian and German, although - to be fair, those will probably extend beyond the deadline of this particular challenge. I have no idea how far I will get with Croatian (as far as the Challenge goes), but if I can complete two full super challenges in Spanish and French, halfway there for Italian and German (by the end of next year), and can make significant progress in Croatian, I will consider myself a real winner. Make light of that if you want to. I certainly won't. Edited by Kerrie on 08 June 2012 at 2:02am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 571 of 713 08 June 2012 at 2:10am | IP Logged | |||||
Solfrid, I just wanted to thank you for organizing the challenge! It was a great idea, and you've inspired tons of people here at HTLAL to indulge shamelessly in their languages, and push themselves to their limits. You've gone above and beyond your already significant contributions to this community, and helped us take it to the next level. Sadly, with every great success, there are some inevitable growing pains. Whenever you affect so many people in such a major (and positive) way, you're inevitably going to have some complications and headaches. So if it helps you any, you could always think of the occasional glitch as a sign that you're helping a whole lot of folks. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5227 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 572 of 713 08 June 2012 at 2:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Ay, ay, ay. I'm not coming across the way I mean to at all today! I really had no intention to make light of your post in any way whatsoever. I think the basic argument of simply challenging yourself is a very good one. All that I was trying to do was explain why FOR ME it is important to have reasonable standards worked out in ways that would allow me to finish the entire challenge. I think that it is PERFECTLY OK for anyone else to take an entirely different tack on this, and, of course, so long as you move forward in your language learning that that's great for you! I would never make light of that; I think it's totally fine. It's just not what I would feel comfortable doing. I mean, if I don't end up finishing every last thing, that's no disaster, but I want to do what I can within reason to do so. That's why I also think that it really is a great thing that Solfrid Critin has expanded this out to include more things that people care about (even if it is a real--and understandable--headache...) Let's face it, if she left it at the exact original rules, there would have been FAR fewer people participating, and less people getting the benefit of the challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 5186 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 573 of 713 08 June 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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| RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5227 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 574 of 713 08 June 2012 at 5:16am | IP Logged | |||||
I was wrong! I freely admit it. I've started going though my libretti and plays just to check on length, and lo and behold the Nico Castel libretti really do appear to only have about 1/5 of a normal page's text in the foreign language. Each page has a line in Italian, then a line with the pronunciation, then a line with the translation, and then a big blank line. This is the only time I've ever seen a libretto or play set up like this. I'm sorry Solfrid Cristin for doubting that you'd really ever seen this before! Just because it's rare, I assumed it didn't exist. Bad on me. I just couldn’t let this lie there when I was incorrect. Unlike the Nico Castel volumes, though, further exploration has shown that most of my libretti and plays that are published as books seem to have between 125 and 325 words per page, or in other words a little bit over that of a normal book page with big print (like HP at 250-300 words/page) down to around half an equivalent page. It occurs to me too that what many people might think of as a libretto are those little booklets that come with a lot of opera recordings. I checked a few pages of these of varying density (some with big blocks of text, others with quick back-and-forth dialogue/recitative), and they were at around 60-140 words in very small print per page counting the foreign language only. So I’ll keep that in mind too if I ever use those. Of course, all this just goes to show that you really need to evaluate each piece on an individual basis. Really, I'm thinking now that I should have just done the word count and comparison thing on my own instead of bothering Solfrid Cristin about it, but like Jeffers I had just assumed a page was a page was a page (or after the ruling on lyrics that perhaps a page was half page was half a page…), so I didn't really think about it until the music conversation came up…which seems like it may have been inspired by my half challenge plus writing request--oh my, I’m starting to think I’m Pandora with her open box. Sorry folks, I’m a stickler for rules, but I really do find clear-cut rules to reach for and to plan around to be more motivating than a laid-back just do whatever you feel like attitude. OK, I'll shut up now (finally, huh?)--I'm happy with the "Golden Rule + Word Count to be fair" solution. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 575 of 713 08 June 2012 at 8:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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Having slept a somewhat more reasonable amount of hours now (6) I would just like to appologize if my answer came across as impolite, I did not mean it to be, and I am not offended by anyone. I was just so tired I thought I would faint, and a bit unprepared for any heavy discussions.
I can only answer from the (limited) experience I have, but as my mom always used to say, "When the terrain and the map are not equal, it is the map that is wrong".But please keep in mind that when I started this thread I was just hoping for two, three people who might be crazy enough to do the challenge with me. Not in my wildest fantasy did I expect this to grow to the proportions it has. I am delighted that so many have joined,because that has added also to my motivation and generally I am having a blast, but I still find it a little overwhelming. I am doing my very best to give fair rulings, but ultimately you are the only one on the ground who can say whether this would be fair for your particular item. Whenever in doubt please do use The Golden Rule. Again, the point is to read as much as possible, and to give yourself a language bath. Sometimes you do not know until you are half through the book, how you can count it properly. I started on a guide book on the Transsiberian Railways in French yesterday, and since there are both pictures and maps here and there, I expected to perhaps lower the page count by 30%. However I soon realized that where I fly through a Agatha Christie in a few hours, doing 60-70 pages per hour, here I had only done 45 pages in almost 4 hours. The print is much smaller, they have all sorts of fact boxes, and a historical time line at the bottom of the page, which all in all added up to more text than in a Agatha Christie book. Plus it gives so much food for thought that you are slowed down. So the basic rules - which trump all other rules are: - Do as much as you can - Have fun - Stay motivated - And the Golden Rule - when in doubt use you own best judgement. Remember I am your coach and motivator for this Challenge, I am not the Spanish Inquisition :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6620 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 576 of 713 08 June 2012 at 9:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Cristina is very, very right. The Golden Rule is the most important and really the only possible way of doing this. Even in books, you will find quite a huge difference in how many words there are per page. I'm currently reading Harry Potter and I find that even though it is sort of meant for children, it is pretty densely packed with words. Some of my other books (even for adults) have a lot of conversation. Since each utterance usually is its own paragraph, that makes for a lot fewer words per page.
I think also it is important to try to vary the things one reads. I once heard a story of a man who'd learned English primarily through reading the bible and upon meeting a native speaker asked him to explain the proper use of thee and thou. I don't know if this story is true (probably isn't), but I do know that there are a lot of people who've learned Japanese by using mostly manga and anime and their Japanese ended up being both odd and rude. In general, I think books (fiction) and plays (not the poetic type, but those in ordinary everyday language) give a somewhat more natural language than manga or poetry, but even then, I would recommend varying a bit with both fiction and non-fiction. I agree that poetry is both beautiful and difficult to read. But it should definitely be supplemented with other types of literature. I have no idea how much a page should count for; some pages might be dense, others not. I think giving general rules on anything is very difficult since there is so much variation even within one type of literature. The only solution is Cristina's Golden Rule. It's also important to remember that this is a challenge not a competition. If it were a competition, I could read a bunch of children's books and be done in a month or two. However, I wouldn't learn anything from it. I am currently reading Harry Potter because it is the perfect level for me -- a bit of a struggle to read, but possible. There are some people here that are complete beginners in their languages and I think it is amazing that they even attempt such a challenge. And I'm sure that for them, a page in a book meant for 5-year-olds is just as difficult for them as a page of Harry Potter is for me. So we should always remember to push ourselves (and I think everyone is doing that) and to use our own judgement when counting/estimating pages. PS: I don't think this sounds like a tirade, but if it does, it certainly wasn't meant to be. Edited by Brun Ugle on 08 June 2012 at 9:57am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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