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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 337 of 1317 21 December 2012 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you, tastyonions and DaraghM! I'm glad to know that people enjoy the links. I'll post some more when I find them.
Here's a card from my Egyptian Assimil deck which I posted in another thread, and I thought was worth reposting here: 
Let me translate that to English, replace the special characters with their standard uppercase equivalents, and give a literal translation:
This is an example of a really easy Anki card that uses only 5 words to demonstrate 3 or 4 interesting facts about Egyptian grammar. It's based on a end-of-lesson exercise in Assimil. Notice how much of the work is already done for me on the front of the card. And yet I don't forget that m-sA means in back of. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 338 of 1317 21 December 2012 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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tastyonions and geoffw have inspired me to give up my slothful ways and make some actual recordings. Because I'm way too lazy to play around with Audacity and Dropbox right now, I used the Soundcloud app to make the recording on my phone:
So not an expert
The first time I made this recording, it was spontaneous speech, but it took me several tries to figure out what I was doing, so the final version is a bit rehearsed. Despite that, I've still managed to find 6 pronunciation errors. The really awesome thing about Soundcloud is the way that we can leave comments on each others' recordings, marking the specific moment where we hear a problem. I got the idea of using Soundcloud from Idahosa Ness, who gave me feedback on an earlier recording. If anybody else wants to join Soundcloud, I'll happily accept "Friend" requests so we can all keep up with each other's efforts. I suppose I should mention that Idahosa Ness has an interactive course where he teaches people to rap in French and other languages, and he gives you this kind of detailed feedback. At $75, his course is a bit pricey. And you'll spend as much time working on your rhythm as you do on your accent. Still, I always always try to sing along with this in the car. Occasionally I keep up for several consecutive sentences before making a total fool out of myself. :-) So I'm pretty much the target market for Ness's course, I suppose. Edited by emk on 21 December 2012 at 10:25pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 339 of 1317 21 December 2012 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So apparently "emk" doesn't stand for "eat more kale" after all?
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| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 340 of 1317 21 December 2012 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Awesome! You speak so much more fluidly than I do. :-P
I've used Soundcloud before, and actually thought about making an account for the specific purpose of languages, but hadn't done it yet. I think I will now. I actually kind of enjoy the sound of French with alveolar Rs. I remember in the first season of Engrenages there was a Romanian character who seemed to waver between flapped and trilled Rs and it sounded pretty cool to me. :-D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 341 of 1317 21 December 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, good catch. I've fixed the URLs to remove my name. It's not a secret, but I try to keep HTLAL from showing up in Google searches for my name.
Yeah, for some reason my brain really wants to flap my Rs in French. It's a constant fight. Which is bizarre, since the only language I've ever practiced flapped Rs in is Old Frickin' Norse. My brain has figured out that French uses a weird R, but it keeps trying to lock onto a phoneme in a dead language that I studied almost 10 years ago. Now, if I hear a recording of myself, the flapped R sounds so painfully wrong that it makes me wince. But without a recording, I don't hear it. I've always been something of a natural accent mimic, but (a) French is pretty tricky as accents go, and (b) I'm not getting any younger. So my ability to pick up accents through osmosis has been misfiring in various ways. I had good luck with the non-aspirated Ts, which mostly sorted themselves out without any conscious attention, but the R and the front rounded vowels have been a battle. I'm making progress, but it's slow, and certain words like veux have been rehearsed so many times with the incorrect sound that I tend to revert. I also want to say that I've been really impressed with the recordings that you and geoffw have made. You still have work to do (don't we all!), but you both have good ears for what French actually sounds like. Edited by emk on 21 December 2012 at 8:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 342 of 1317 21 December 2012 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, aspirated Ps and Ts tend to slip into my speech if I'm not careful. And don't ask me to say words with Rs separated only by a vowel, like "rare" (or worse yet, the phrase "très rare"), heh. :-P
Thanks again, re: the recordings. I think it would be awesome if we had more people uploading sounds, and I'm glad you two have uploaded yours. Edited by tastyonions on 21 December 2012 at 8:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 343 of 1317 21 December 2012 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks so much for the encouragement! As far as the work to do, that much was obvious when I realized that I had more self-criticism of my German sample than of my French sample. That seems to me to be a pretty sure sign that my "ear for what French sounds like" still needs more practice. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6149 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 344 of 1317 22 December 2012 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
I've just signed up to this site. Your accent is very good, and I'd love to be at that level next year. I'm very tempted to record my own language endeavours. This sounds like the perfect place to record ourselves without the nasty attacks the YouTube community experience. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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