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zu verrückt für euch/Rätsel|Adv|En TAC’15

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Elenia
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
lilyonlife.blog
Joined 3854 days ago

239 posts - 327 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto

 
 Message 737 of 812
03 June 2015 at 1:06pm | IP Logged 
Yeah, it's on my UNDERSTAND!!! playlist on youtube, which is full of things I want to get
back to when I'm more advanced...
1 person has voted this message useful



Via Diva
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4232 days ago

1109 posts - 1427 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek

 
 Message 738 of 812
05 June 2015 at 4:13am | IP Logged 
Hehe, if I had such a playlist, I would fill it so I'd never get to see it empty, I think :)
______
Not much to write about. I have attempted L-Ring La louve de France (Fra-Rus), and so far I can only separate sentences (and not all the time). I hear some familiar words, plus there is some international vocabulary, but hey, no high demands to L-R
anyway, just enjoy the sound of the language, of one of my favourite books.
Reading Neverwhere and Saphirblau, The Stand is long forgotten. Apparently even an interesting plot cannot help in case of Stephen King, I just can't assimilate what's going on. Thus my weekly challenge for Rätsel is failed.
Currently I am trying to revive Memrise with Esperanto and French, the latter is really annoying, I need to find a better vocabulary course, the rest I can learn anywhere else.
I'm thinking about replacing German Duolingo with some grammarbook. But we all know how bad am I at sticking to courses, so I really have to think it through.
Also tried playing one of games for Android released by Goethe-Institut. I ended up not noticing how fast 58 minutes have passed. Whoops.

Edited by Via Diva on 05 June 2015 at 4:29am

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Via Diva
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4232 days ago

1109 posts - 1427 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek

 
 Message 739 of 812
06 June 2015 at 6:21pm | IP Logged 
Today is 316 years since Pushkin's birth, and I just needed an excuse to trilingual reading.
So here's the letter from Tatiana to Onegin in:
English
German
Russian
Even the Russian version is sort of shaky, but no one said I am good at reading.
1 person has voted this message useful



Via Diva
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4232 days ago

1109 posts - 1427 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek

 
 Message 740 of 812
07 June 2015 at 5:52pm | IP Logged 
And let me talk French stuff again.
People say that French is all about romance, the language of love, bla bla bla. For me French is more like drama, a roller-coaster, which leaves you with WTF expression engraved on your face.
It must be fairly easy to speak French. Lots of verb conjugations which sound the same (even if they shouldn't I can't hear any difference), liasons which let the speech flow... the hardest thing to get, I think, the right pronunciation. I still haven't read
the rules. I am that stubborn.
It should be pretty damn hard to write French. Verb conjugations betray you and screw with you just like they want. Excessive diacritics. Lots of letters that aren't bloody pronounced.
Reading comes somewhere between.
I read bits of that funny French grammarbook again, and I had only one question: what the hell have I gotten myself into? The rules don't look like rules, more like piles of exceptions. Tons of patterns to memorise. Lots of nuances to notice.
French is going to be the biggest headache in my language corner if I proceed to proper studies.
I guess Duolingo is useless here. The rules that are explained in every lesson there are much harder than tasks that are given.
I have downloaded French in Action, but this is a proper course with lots of work expected to be done consistently. The only thing I can be consistent with is Duolingo, but it's ineffective with French.
I also must define the desired level that I am to reach. A while back a birdie recommended me some Mirrorthone (Swiss guy who goes black metal and sings in French and English). I have one song, and its lyrics aren't translated from French. A few days
ago I just copied the lyrics into Google Translate. The outcome is amazing. I have never seen such a good automatic translation ever before. Well, maybe I am trying to fool myself, but check it here, if you like. Of course it's not
perfect. But if I compare my efforts put into studying French with inserting the text into
GT... erm.
The grammar is really terrifying me that much. I think that French is much harder than German. The lack of motivation and feelings for the language adds up.
And yet I really enjoy L-Ring La louve de France. I become better at separating one sentence from another, yay! I even begin to hear some constructions, forgetting about them really soon, but still. Some words I expect to hear while reading the
Russian translation - that's why I almost always hear mais and don't mix it up with tons of homophones this word should have.

I must say that no matter how French would go, I'd really preferred to study Greek instead, if only Greek had at least a half, or even a third of stuff that exists in French. Eh.

Edited by Via Diva on 07 June 2015 at 5:55pm

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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5007 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 741 of 812
07 June 2015 at 7:30pm | IP Logged 
Hmm, I could write most of your points and exchange the word "French" for "English" or "German". I totally hated English years ago when I saw it just like that, as a pile of irregularities. Well, it is still mostly a pile of irregularities but I learnt to live with it :-D

French is actually pretty phonetic. Sure, sometimes one sound isn't equal to one letter but still, once you get used to the rules, you just apply them everywhere.
I can recommend not being that stubborn and going through some pronunciation explanation and exercises :-D You might thank yourself later. Good pronunciation drills tend to be in the FSI. I've already used just the pronunciation chapter of the FSI courses, they tend to be pretty thorough.

The grammar: it is pretty regular, mostly. However, I'd say French belongs among the languages where you learn tons of new things at the beginning, that is the hard part, and later mostly combine what you know, following the same logic. I'd say that is a pretty good difference from Spanish, where the beginning is pretty easy and the difficulties get falling on your head a bit later.

What grammarbook are you using? Most are horrible, from my experience. French is like a pretty animal with tons of ugly parasites, that's my opinion when it comes to most publishers and their French resources. You should have something decent and sensible.

I understand you don't want a normal course, I totally get it. I can recommend you the same thing as to most people: Grammaire Progressive series. And perhaps there could be some good other grammar to use alongside it for even more explanations and examples but with Russian base. Your nation has a huge history of francophilism, I cannot believe there is nothing worth using :-)

French harder than German? I feel the opposite way :-D

P.S. ANY language is easier than pathology :-D I'd rather learn Hungarian, Mandarin or Klingon.

P.S.2 thanks for making me laugh, I needed it.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Mohave
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Mohave1
Joined 4005 days ago

291 posts - 444 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 742 of 812
07 June 2015 at 8:06pm | IP Logged 
Via Diva - If you want a very easy French Grammar book, I highly recommend Essential French Grammar
by Resnick
. I don't know how easy this book will be to find in Russia, but in the U.S., one can purchase it
used for $2 - $3. There are no exercises, but it provides very simple and easy to understand grammar
explanations. It is a very simple overview of French grammar. I also can second Grammaire Progressive if
you want a grammar book with exercises

I second Cavesa's recommendation to consider the FSI Phoneology course. It is one of those things I wished
I had done up front when I started learning French, and I will probably circle back and do in the next few
months.


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Via Diva
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4232 days ago

1109 posts - 1427 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek

 
 Message 743 of 812
08 June 2015 at 5:09am | IP Logged 
Cavesa, I was lucky enough to learn most of irregularities not even thinking it shouldn't be like this. Perhaps the irregularities of my own language helped me a lot. It just wasn't unusual, I could go learn 2nd and 3rd columns (hehe) of English verbs
table and then remember the poem we used to memorise the Russian verbs which conjugate irregularly. No big deal, so to speak.
As for the grammarbook I use - it's a hilarious overview of the important grammar topics. I mostly read it for comments to examples. For example:

Here's a completely normal sentence with the words about Swiss banks and watches. But banks in Russian can mean jars, and there's one word used for watches and hours, so he adds in brackets "Glass jars and traffic jam [hours]" :D
I wouldn't say it's really hard, it's just a sort of a guidebook. Don't wanna go study grammar blind, like I had to do with English.

And thanks for recommendations, I'll have a look at Grammaire Progressive and FSI Phonology.
_____
I really wanted to listen to Der Graf von Monte Christo, but der Vorleser des Buches is just utterly annoying, I can't stand the speed, the tone of his voice. I lasted for 40 minutes and then deleted this audiobook. Better get back to Andreas Eschbach,
now in German. But I also want to finally read Er ist wieder da, and I have yet to finish that trilogy by Kerstin Gier.
I have bloody exams starting next week and yet I act like I don't have to do anything. Damn.
Yesterday while waiting for the F1 race (which I couldn't watch for more than an hour and fell asleep due to... well, it happening too late for me) I gave up and tried Lyricstraining.
Now I have a new song which I can't stop listening to and willingness to go and explore.
Although I agree with an idea I saw somewhere around here - is it much more useful to go such a thing with spoken language, and movies and series are the ideal source, aren't they? Eh, dreams, dreams.
1 person has voted this message useful



Via Diva
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4232 days ago

1109 posts - 1427 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek

 
 Message 744 of 812
11 June 2015 at 8:30pm | IP Logged 
Even though the first (also the hardest) exam is nearing with awful high speed, I still happen to be more
busy with languages. I watched Firefly (how could these series be seen as a failure?!), read 50% of
Smaragdgrün since exactly 24 hours... I'm not even really afraid because of the exam. I just don't realise
how bad is the situation. And I'm not gonna learn much on 12th because it's my grandfather's birthday.
And there's one more birthday to disturb me. Daaamn.
I've been using lingvist for French, started reviewing English grammar on advanced level and plan to look
at some German grammar. The fact that I haven't been doing much of it recently is really upsetting.
And I need to either read Smaragdgrün really really fast or pause it until 18th.
Damn again.




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