IT/NL Not knowing where this is going log (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

IT/NL Not knowing where this is going log
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numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 1 of 112 26 February 2010 at 11:04pm \| IP Logged
	For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm this guy. I'm here with a new log on the back of 6 months of Italian, from beginning to intermediate. So I guess in terms of language learning skills I'm not a complete noob anymore, I'm on "basic" or something like that. Starting to understand what is what, and when to use it. I find myself at a loss at the moment, because I've reached my Italian goal in my original log, and I'd like to be very clear about what I'm doing next. But in the meantime I've started a new and busy job and found myself disconnected from my customary reflections on language learning. So rather than wait around until I have a good idea, I've decided to jump in right now, come what may. LANGUAGES Italian: intermediate Dutch: beginner ITALIAN My situation with Italian is odd at the moment, because I've reached a point where I can read books quite comfortably, but my active skills haven't really been activated as such. I can use them a bit, but it's slow and error prone. At the same time, I have a good foundation on grammar and vocabulary, such that I feel as if this is the time I can really sink my teeth into the language. If I choose to do that. But doing passive things like reading or watching lots of tv is a lot easier to set up than organizing conversations and things that are active. This has proven more difficult than I expected. I also counted on finding an online community or two where I could build up my skills, but haven't found them yet. Ideally, I would like to write on a regular basis, and my own thoughts on learning Italian should suffice for that purpose. If not for the fact that recently my head is dominated by work and all other thoughts have all but vanished. This is a problem, but maybe it will pick up again in the near future? In the meantime, I'm reading books and I'm doing passive things. I'm also using Anki (albeit not on a regular basis) for vocabulary training. I have a love-hate relationship with Anki, on the one hand I deeply respect how it helps me remember far more words than I otherwise could. But on the other hand I just can't keep it going for say 7 days in a row, I do it a bit and then it drops off. Some days I just don't feel like starting it up. I have now a word frequency type dictionary, which should serve to solidify my grasp on the crucial vocabulary, and ideally I should be systematically mining it for words to feed into Anki. We'll see about that. DUTCH Technically, I'm a complete beginner at Dutch in the sense that only last week I was using "van" (from) to say "naar" (to) when buying a ticket. However, I'm living here for 4 years and despite having made no particular effort to learn, I must have soaked up quite a lot all the same. I say that, because Pimsleur (a short course for Dutch) seems horribly boring, and Michel Thomas seems really, really easy. Not as in "I know this stuff", but as in "I could pick this up in very little time". So after only 3 hours of Dutch, the forecast is very promising. Truth be told I have no idea how much effort it will cost me. I'm set for Pimsleur+MT for starters, then Assimil. Say what you will, I have faith in that process. And then move to a textbook. That's pretty much the amount of thought I've put into it. I'm shooting for intermediate. THE BIG PICTURE I'll be trying to juggle a second language, and frankly I have quite a few reservations about that. But I've decided not to put off Dutch any longer, because it is an issue of clear practical importance. Ideally, I should have started with that back in August, but hey hindsight is what we'd all like to work on. The overall plan hasn't changed for the last couple of months. I'm thinking to run these two languages for a whole year, until the end of 2010 thereabouts. Then, if all's gone well, we might decide to season the soup further. Edited by numerodix on 27 February 2010 at 4:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 2 of 112 27 February 2010 at 8:42am \| IP Logged
	[it] Non ho ancora capito bene quando si usano gli articoli con i nomi delle lingue. Si deve dire "parlo l'italiano" o va bene "parlo Italiano"? "conosco l'italiano"? "in Italiano si dice.." oppure "nell'italiano si dice.."? Naturalmente, s'intende dire "la lingua Italiana", non soltanto "italiano" come aggettivo, ma quali sono le regole? Infatti, se dicessi "parlo l'italiano" potrebbe anch'esso significare Italiano come aggettivo. Non avrebbe senso, ma tecnicamente se lo potrebbe interpretare così, mi pare. Edited by numerodix on 27 February 2010 at 8:43am 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 3 of 112 27 February 2010 at 11:00am \| IP Logged
	[it] Ho finito un altro libro, questo era "The time paradox" di Philip Zimbardo. Tutto sommato è stato molto interessante. Si tratta della psicologia di tempo, cioè i modi in cui percepiamo il tempo come una condizione in cui vivere. Secondo Zimbardo, ci sono cinque modi di pensare di tempo. Essi sono il passato-positivo, il passato-negativo, il presente-edonistico, il presente-fatalistico, infine il orientamento sul futuro. Quindi, ci sono delle persone che vivono sopratutto nel uno di questi "orientamenti", ciò influenza la loro vita molto più di quanto se ne rendono conto. Tanto per cominciare, loro che hanno un passato molto traumatico, e in più vivono come si può dire "nel passato" non riescono a estrarsi da questi avvenimenti. Secondo questa psicologia del tempo, il passato è importantissimo per tutti noi, perché ci dà una continuità, ci dà dei radici. Senza un passato felice (o almeno un passato tranquillo), non si può vivere sanamente il presente. Poi, c'è il presente. Ci sono delle persone che vivono "l'adesso" vivacemente, ma ci sono anche quelle per cui la vita non ha senso, è tutto deciso, non si può cambiare nulla. Quest'ultimo orientamento è distruttivo, ci fa cadere nel depressione. Infine, c'è il modo in cui capiamo il futuro. Per cui il futuro è più importante del presente vive sempre incatenato dall'orologio, sforzandosi contro il passo di tempo. Come ho detto, mi è piaciuto questo libro, ma non è proprio di letteratura. Questi libri sul base nella scienza contengono molti noti biografici, cui attraversando puoi accedere le fonte scientifiche. Ma per questo sono anche un po' fastidiose. Sono stati scritti per essere precisi, non per essere belli da leggere. 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 4 of 112 27 February 2010 at 4:52pm \| IP Logged
	[nl] Dutch pronunciation is bizarre to put it politely. There are at least three different ways to pronounce an r. There is the rolled r (the Italian r), there is the English r and there is this other thing that is just weird. The funny thing is that people like to mix it up, they will mix the rolled r and the English r based on which word it's in. So much so that certain words now sound natural to me one way but not the other (for instance "erst" sounds horrible without the English r, but "recreatie" is the opposite). Then there is the third r, which some people say is the French r. This is not so. The French r, as in "je cRoix", is not the same as the r in "nederlandeR". The latter comes from a place deeper in the throat and is even more uncomfortable. In fact, I've discovered that it's the same as the r in "Stavanger" spoken in Stavanger accent. Anyone? No? If you were wondering whether the rs in "nedeRlandeR" are the same, they of course are not. An r at the end of a word will sound different and more distinct, so much so that "nederlander" might sound like the first r is English and the last is Italian/throat thing (depending on your accent). Then there is the great g vs h debate. I once got myself embroiled in a hilarious exercise where I kept saying the same word (a foreign name starting with h) in the exact same way while a Dutch person kept saying alternatively that I was pronouncing the Dutch g or h. I'll be damned if I can hear the difference between "Heel Goed". Sounds like fun, no? It's my feeling that Germanic languages in general share this peculiarity (Norwegian does for damn sure). For how simple they may seem on paper, the spoken language does not "jump off the page", you really have to get used to the quirks. 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 5 of 112 28 February 2010 at 12:04pm \| IP Logged
	[it] Ho trovato un blog divertentissimo. Che ne dici di questo? :) 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 6 of 112 01 March 2010 at 2:49pm \| IP Logged
	[it] I punti cardinali sono il nord, il sud, l'est, l'ovest. Ma più spesso si usano i nomi alternativi: il nord - settentrione il sud - meridione l'est - oriente l'ovest - occidente Sembra che questi nomi provengano dal latino. Per me sono molto più difficili da ricordare. Oriente va bene, perché si usa anche in inglese, perciò occidente dev'essere la direzione opposta. Ma meridione non mi dice niente. Su Wikipedia si può leggere che quel nome vuol dire che a mezzogiorno il sole si trova verso sud. 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 7 of 112 01 March 2010 at 7:02pm \| IP Logged
	[it] C'è una cosa che ho visto soltanto in Italiano, cioè l'uso dell'articolo con i nomi delle persone. Qui si legge che non si usano, comunque li ho visti spesso, come "Pronto? Sono la Giovanna". Per me è già una stranezza vedere "la Norvegia" oppure "la Google", perchè sono i nomi propri, no? Vuol dire non esiste più di una Norvegia, dunque perché mai si dovrebbe specificare di quale Norvegia si parla? Inoltre, appare il problema di decidere l'articolo. Non esiste nessun motivo per cui Google è femminile oppure maschile, perché non è proprio una parola appartenente all'italiano. Probabilmente esiste un tacito accordo su di Google - visto che è una ditta nota in Italia - ma che mi dici della banca polacca PKO? Il PKO oppure la PKO? 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 8 of 112 01 March 2010 at 8:52pm \| IP Logged
	As before, I'm tracking my hours, because I think it helps give meaning to what I'm doing. But it's an odd feeling. As I gaze upon the total for my Italian beginner adventure, I was able to clock 730 hours there. Now my hour count is looking like this after 12 days: Italian: 23.5 Dutch: 4.5 I thought it would be refreshing to "start with a blank page" and see how the numbers add up from the very beginning, but a part of me is still thinking about the old hour count in the hundreds, which makes me feel strange looking at these small numbers. Another fact quickly becoming obvious is that I don't have much of a process going at the moment. My Dutch is getting completely dominated by Italian. This is no surprise, because I've built some strong habits with Italian, and I feel very attached to it. I'm not really willing to give up much, either of time or of focus. In the beginning of my Italian I was packing it in with the time I put into it, and now with Dutch it's a trickle of that. But it doesn't really seem to bother me, because despite bringing it up just now I don't intend to make any changes at the moment. 2 persons have voted this message useful

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numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 1 of 112 26 February 2010 at 11:04pm \| IP Logged
	For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm this guy. I'm here with a new log on the back of 6 months of Italian, from beginning to intermediate. So I guess in terms of language learning skills I'm not a complete noob anymore, I'm on "basic" or something like that. Starting to understand what is what, and when to use it. I find myself at a loss at the moment, because I've reached my Italian goal in my original log, and I'd like to be very clear about what I'm doing next. But in the meantime I've started a new and busy job and found myself disconnected from my customary reflections on language learning. So rather than wait around until I have a good idea, I've decided to jump in right now, come what may. LANGUAGES Italian: intermediate Dutch: beginner ITALIAN My situation with Italian is odd at the moment, because I've reached a point where I can read books quite comfortably, but my active skills haven't really been activated as such. I can use them a bit, but it's slow and error prone. At the same time, I have a good foundation on grammar and vocabulary, such that I feel as if this is the time I can really sink my teeth into the language. If I choose to do that. But doing passive things like reading or watching lots of tv is a lot easier to set up than organizing conversations and things that are active. This has proven more difficult than I expected. I also counted on finding an online community or two where I could build up my skills, but haven't found them yet. Ideally, I would like to write on a regular basis, and my own thoughts on learning Italian should suffice for that purpose. If not for the fact that recently my head is dominated by work and all other thoughts have all but vanished. This is a problem, but maybe it will pick up again in the near future? In the meantime, I'm reading books and I'm doing passive things. I'm also using Anki (albeit not on a regular basis) for vocabulary training. I have a love-hate relationship with Anki, on the one hand I deeply respect how it helps me remember far more words than I otherwise could. But on the other hand I just can't keep it going for say 7 days in a row, I do it a bit and then it drops off. Some days I just don't feel like starting it up. I have now a word frequency type dictionary, which should serve to solidify my grasp on the crucial vocabulary, and ideally I should be systematically mining it for words to feed into Anki. We'll see about that. DUTCH Technically, I'm a complete beginner at Dutch in the sense that only last week I was using "van" (from) to say "naar" (to) when buying a ticket. However, I'm living here for 4 years and despite having made no particular effort to learn, I must have soaked up quite a lot all the same. I say that, because Pimsleur (a short course for Dutch) seems horribly boring, and Michel Thomas seems really, really easy. Not as in "I know this stuff", but as in "I could pick this up in very little time". So after only 3 hours of Dutch, the forecast is very promising. Truth be told I have no idea how much effort it will cost me. I'm set for Pimsleur+MT for starters, then Assimil. Say what you will, I have faith in that process. And then move to a textbook. That's pretty much the amount of thought I've put into it. I'm shooting for intermediate. THE BIG PICTURE I'll be trying to juggle a second language, and frankly I have quite a few reservations about that. But I've decided not to put off Dutch any longer, because it is an issue of clear practical importance. Ideally, I should have started with that back in August, but hey hindsight is what we'd all like to work on. The overall plan hasn't changed for the last couple of months. I'm thinking to run these two languages for a whole year, until the end of 2010 thereabouts. Then, if all's gone well, we might decide to season the soup further. Edited by numerodix on 27 February 2010 at 4:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 2 of 112 27 February 2010 at 8:42am \| IP Logged
	[it] Non ho ancora capito bene quando si usano gli articoli con i nomi delle lingue. Si deve dire "parlo l'italiano" o va bene "parlo Italiano"? "conosco l'italiano"? "in Italiano si dice.." oppure "nell'italiano si dice.."? Naturalmente, s'intende dire "la lingua Italiana", non soltanto "italiano" come aggettivo, ma quali sono le regole? Infatti, se dicessi "parlo l'italiano" potrebbe anch'esso significare Italiano come aggettivo. Non avrebbe senso, ma tecnicamente se lo potrebbe interpretare così, mi pare. Edited by numerodix on 27 February 2010 at 8:43am 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 3 of 112 27 February 2010 at 11:00am \| IP Logged
	[it] Ho finito un altro libro, questo era "The time paradox" di Philip Zimbardo. Tutto sommato è stato molto interessante. Si tratta della psicologia di tempo, cioè i modi in cui percepiamo il tempo come una condizione in cui vivere. Secondo Zimbardo, ci sono cinque modi di pensare di tempo. Essi sono il passato-positivo, il passato-negativo, il presente-edonistico, il presente-fatalistico, infine il orientamento sul futuro. Quindi, ci sono delle persone che vivono sopratutto nel uno di questi "orientamenti", ciò influenza la loro vita molto più di quanto se ne rendono conto. Tanto per cominciare, loro che hanno un passato molto traumatico, e in più vivono come si può dire "nel passato" non riescono a estrarsi da questi avvenimenti. Secondo questa psicologia del tempo, il passato è importantissimo per tutti noi, perché ci dà una continuità, ci dà dei radici. Senza un passato felice (o almeno un passato tranquillo), non si può vivere sanamente il presente. Poi, c'è il presente. Ci sono delle persone che vivono "l'adesso" vivacemente, ma ci sono anche quelle per cui la vita non ha senso, è tutto deciso, non si può cambiare nulla. Quest'ultimo orientamento è distruttivo, ci fa cadere nel depressione. Infine, c'è il modo in cui capiamo il futuro. Per cui il futuro è più importante del presente vive sempre incatenato dall'orologio, sforzandosi contro il passo di tempo. Come ho detto, mi è piaciuto questo libro, ma non è proprio di letteratura. Questi libri sul base nella scienza contengono molti noti biografici, cui attraversando puoi accedere le fonte scientifiche. Ma per questo sono anche un po' fastidiose. Sono stati scritti per essere precisi, non per essere belli da leggere. 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 4 of 112 27 February 2010 at 4:52pm \| IP Logged
	[nl] Dutch pronunciation is bizarre to put it politely. There are at least three different ways to pronounce an r. There is the rolled r (the Italian r), there is the English r and there is this other thing that is just weird. The funny thing is that people like to mix it up, they will mix the rolled r and the English r based on which word it's in. So much so that certain words now sound natural to me one way but not the other (for instance "erst" sounds horrible without the English r, but "recreatie" is the opposite). Then there is the third r, which some people say is the French r. This is not so. The French r, as in "je cRoix", is not the same as the r in "nederlandeR". The latter comes from a place deeper in the throat and is even more uncomfortable. In fact, I've discovered that it's the same as the r in "Stavanger" spoken in Stavanger accent. Anyone? No? If you were wondering whether the rs in "nedeRlandeR" are the same, they of course are not. An r at the end of a word will sound different and more distinct, so much so that "nederlander" might sound like the first r is English and the last is Italian/throat thing (depending on your accent). Then there is the great g vs h debate. I once got myself embroiled in a hilarious exercise where I kept saying the same word (a foreign name starting with h) in the exact same way while a Dutch person kept saying alternatively that I was pronouncing the Dutch g or h. I'll be damned if I can hear the difference between "Heel Goed". Sounds like fun, no? It's my feeling that Germanic languages in general share this peculiarity (Norwegian does for damn sure). For how simple they may seem on paper, the spoken language does not "jump off the page", you really have to get used to the quirks. 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 5 of 112 28 February 2010 at 12:04pm \| IP Logged
	[it] Ho trovato un blog divertentissimo. Che ne dici di questo? :) 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 6 of 112 01 March 2010 at 2:49pm \| IP Logged
	[it] I punti cardinali sono il nord, il sud, l'est, l'ovest. Ma più spesso si usano i nomi alternativi: il nord - settentrione il sud - meridione l'est - oriente l'ovest - occidente Sembra che questi nomi provengano dal latino. Per me sono molto più difficili da ricordare. Oriente va bene, perché si usa anche in inglese, perciò occidente dev'essere la direzione opposta. Ma meridione non mi dice niente. Su Wikipedia si può leggere che quel nome vuol dire che a mezzogiorno il sole si trova verso sud. 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 7 of 112 01 March 2010 at 7:02pm \| IP Logged
	[it] C'è una cosa che ho visto soltanto in Italiano, cioè l'uso dell'articolo con i nomi delle persone. Qui si legge che non si usano, comunque li ho visti spesso, come "Pronto? Sono la Giovanna". Per me è già una stranezza vedere "la Norvegia" oppure "la Google", perchè sono i nomi propri, no? Vuol dire non esiste più di una Norvegia, dunque perché mai si dovrebbe specificare di quale Norvegia si parla? Inoltre, appare il problema di decidere l'articolo. Non esiste nessun motivo per cui Google è femminile oppure maschile, perché non è proprio una parola appartenente all'italiano. Probabilmente esiste un tacito accordo su di Google - visto che è una ditta nota in Italia - ma che mi dici della banca polacca PKO? Il PKO oppure la PKO? 1 person has voted this message useful
numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6774 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: English^C2, Norwegian, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin	Message 8 of 112 01 March 2010 at 8:52pm \| IP Logged
	As before, I'm tracking my hours, because I think it helps give meaning to what I'm doing. But it's an odd feeling. As I gaze upon the total for my Italian beginner adventure, I was able to clock 730 hours there. Now my hour count is looking like this after 12 days: Italian: 23.5 Dutch: 4.5 I thought it would be refreshing to "start with a blank page" and see how the numbers add up from the very beginning, but a part of me is still thinking about the old hour count in the hundreds, which makes me feel strange looking at these small numbers. Another fact quickly becoming obvious is that I don't have much of a process going at the moment. My Dutch is getting completely dominated by Italian. This is no surprise, because I've built some strong habits with Italian, and I feel very attached to it. I'm not really willing to give up much, either of time or of focus. In the beginning of my Italian I was packing it in with the time I put into it, and now with Dutch it's a trickle of that. But it doesn't really seem to bother me, because despite bringing it up just now I don't intend to make any changes at the moment. 2 persons have voted this message useful