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Italian the lazy way | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 25 of 53 18 January 2015 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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My first month of learning Italian by not making much of an effort is now behind me. So, how is it going? Well, I can't produce a lot of spoken Italian at all, but I can write conversationally about what I am doing, what I am going to do, and what I have already done. I can listen to new material aimed at native speakers and have an idea of what is going on if the topic is fairly familiar and I can read articles on fairly familiar topics by looking up a few words per paragraph. It's a little bit frustrating to get new subs2srs cards every now and then and know that I understand word for word, including the tenses, fast native-speed Italian that I've never heard before, but not being able to reproduce any of it because the vocabulary is passive and I haven't exactly drilled the conjugations. When my mind tells me "You should know this!" I have to remind myself that, actually, I've spent less than a month doing 10-15 minutes of playing around per day, so, no, I absolutely should not know this, and my passive knowledge will slowly mature, and I will be able to make the effort to make it all active if I want to. One of my (poor) excuses when I started playing around with (still refusing to call it "studying") Italian was that due to its similarities with French I would partly be reinforcing things that I had already learnt. The two languages, I said, could support each other in a sense. While my French has certainly been extremely useful for my Italian (understatement of the year), I've already made use of my Italian to improve my French! In the past two weeks, I've spent an hour or so every other day doing French tests for French school children to figure out what level I am at and what I need to improve. I actually came upon something on the high school level that I've already learnt in Italian, but not in French. So, I guessed that this particular grammar point was the same in both languages and it paid off. BUFFY I'm introducing 50 new cards per day. It takes me approximately 4-6 minutes to go through those new cards with my fast and loose method of learning, so it's not particularly overwhelming. In fact, I use these cards as a mini-reward for myself throughout the day. I'm still only learning only what's truly important, of course.  When what I hear doesn't at all match what is written, but (1) I don't immediately understand or (2) there are new words I would like to practise, I now tend to edit the card to reflect what I hear:  DUOLINGO The fun factor goes up and down. This week I've not been particularly impressed with it. Once again leaning towards quitting for a while. LEARN Italian WITH LUCREZIA I watched Vlog in Italian: I go grocery shopping in an Italian supermarket. I was pretty disappointed by the video in itself, but not with my ability to understand it. NATIVE MEDIA During the week, I have read 1,037 words on container gardens, 605 words on eating yourself happy, and 232 words on how to beat the blues... or 1,874 words total of native media this week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 26 of 53 21 January 2015 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
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Alleluia! I have discovered the awesomeness that is UniNettuno, a TV channel that broadcasts only university lectures in Italian.
More importantly, I've found 40 lectures on Graeco-Roman art history, and I had no trouble following the first 40 minute lecture.  That I can follow a 40 minutes long university lecture in Italian, after making minimal effort to learn Italian for a month, probably comes down mostly (albeit not entirely) to cognates and strong familiarity with the topic, but I don't care. It's native level material, it's comprehensible input, and it's fun (no, I'm not kidding), and that's what matters to me. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 27 of 53 25 January 2015 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
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Salve ragazzi! Sono ritornata per dirvi come stata la mia settimana. DUOLINGO I'm at level 7 and I'm about to start with adjectives, but I'm not feeling it at all. I broke my streak a couple of days ago and haven't bothered with it since. It wasn't fun anymore. Maybe I'll pick it back up later. BUFFY  I spent a fair few days letting the cards for the third episode of season three mature. I had an unusual amount of trouble with these cards. A lot of them were just plain difficult. They were quick, rambling, and about unusual topics. When I did finally watch the episode, though, I had no trouble keeping up. This prompted me to have a bit of a spree: I watched three more episodes, which I have not reviewed any cards for. It went a lot better than expected. I could keep up, occasionally word for word. I sometimes missed things, certainly, but, I don't mind. It was late at night, I had half a bottle of wine to myself, and some Christmas ice cream (bûche de Noël) that was on sale, and a fun DVD... that I practised my Italian was just a bonus. THE HOBBIT The Multilingual Hobbit Read-Along started today! We're reading one chapter per fortnight, so it isn't going to be particularly overwhelming.  I read the first few pages this afternoon, and it was surprisingly easy. Of course, I've only read a description of a hobbit hole and a hobbit, so far. I'm sure further down the road I'll have to start looking up a fair amount of words per page. NATIVE MEDIA It's been a busy week, but I did squeeze in a 40-minute lecture on the geometric phase in Greek art. Having a degree on the topic means that even though the language level is beyond me (as a university lecture obviously should be if you've been studying a language for 40 days) I could follow along just fine. Edited by eyðimörk on 25 January 2015 at 5:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 28 of 53 28 January 2015 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
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Apparently the quick, sloppy, and lazy learning you get when you do something like 50 new cards in 3 minutes still results in ear-worms and entire phrases stored away for later retrieval.
Today, our dinnerware was all over the kitchen in order to move the big old buffet and seeing the "good" dinnerware set stacked up next to the "regular" dinnerware, the following phrase from Buffy l'Ammazzavampiri started playing over and over and over again in my head: Mamma, Willow e gli altri non sono gente di servizio buono. Vanno bene piatti normali. Edit: Translation - "Mum, Willow and the others aren't good dinnerware people. Normal plates are fine." Edited by eyðimörk on 30 January 2015 at 4:07pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 29 of 53 01 February 2015 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
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BUFFY In addition to keeping up with my cards, which means finishing the fourth episode, I have watched one more episode that I have not yet studied. It went fairly well. I'm giving the last two episodes a few days to mature before I start the fifth episode cards, though, so that I don't have too many cards to revise daily. MUSIC It's rare that I have any music cards to revise, so I've added a new song: Fede Potere Vendetta by Rosae Crucis. I'm going to have to add more soon, though. LO HOBBIT I'm right on the read-along schedule: I've read half of the first chapter, which corresponds to ten pages in my English edition copy. I obviously need to look up words a lot, but so far it has been new words rather than an inability to recognise words or not understanding the conjugations. NATIVE MEDIA On Friday I attempted cooking in Italian for the first time. I made a torta salata con spinaci e ricotta (spinach and ricotta quiche). No Google Translate necessary, which I'm quite proud of.  I also read a blog entry about Swedish priests, written by an Italian living in Sweden (435 words). Otherwise it's been a slow week in terms of Italian media. I hope to rectify that next week. I've been very busy this week. Though, in all fairness, I have read half a chapter of The Hobbit. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4625 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 30 of 53 01 February 2015 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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Your log is very inspiring! It's great to see that you're able to make such fast progress. After reading your log,
I immediately searched through my parents DVD collection to find something that might work. I then realised that I don't have a CD drive! Anyway, Im going to dive into making some cards for tv shows in a month when Ive finished moving and can unpack my DVDs. I'm sure that I have something with Italian audio! Thanks for sharing 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 31 of 53 02 February 2015 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
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That's kind of you to say, dandt. :)
Best of luck finding something fun to work with! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4100 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 32 of 53 08 February 2015 at 10:50am | IP Logged |
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Without even really trying it seems to have been a week of reading. I have revised my Buffy l'Ammazzavampiri decks a few times, but not very regularly since I took the week off from language obligations. What I have done is read. I added interesting blogs to my RSS reader and I subscribed to some interesting sites on Facebook, which means that I'm getting updates throughout the day, and when I see something I want to read, I read it. I also get a fair amount short inspirational quotes about exercise and persistence through Facebook, which is fun. Wanting to read more, I found an Italian magazine that I'd like to try out, but it turns out that the shipping to France for an individual issue is 25€. Ouch! Apparently the Italian Post Office runs their vehicles on liquid gold. I spent less than that shipping Christmas gifts from France to Sweden. Alas, I don't have any device that will run the app for the digital edition either. But, and this is why I'm sharing this story, I found all of this out by writing to the magazine, in Italian, and asking about it. LO HOBBIT I finished the first chapter, also known as the first 10% of the book. Apparently the entire book is 95,356 words in English. So, assuming that it's roughly the same in Italian that means roughly 4,500 words last week and 4,500 words this week. NATIVE MEDIA I read an article on the Cinque cose – importanti – da imparare da Hunger Games (1,097 words). I also read an article about 7 Trappole da Evitare per Dare Slancio alla tua Vita (1,706 words). I cooked Tofu al cartoccio, another very simple but delicious recipe from one of the vegetarian websites I follow. Pizza bianca con mozzarella, zucchine grigliate e ricotta is a somewhat more difficult (linguistically), but very delicious, recipe I followed this week.  Additionally, I've read lots of Italian blogs that I won't do a wordcount for because each entry three or four sentences and ten photos. But, hey, I am now getting my house renovation/interiors inspiration in Italian! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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