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Italian and Spanish for X-mas -- TAC | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 37 17 August 2008 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the latest TAC still fits in with my goal of wanting to take the DELE -- Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera at the end of May. We'll see if I can get there! Christmas is my mid-way point!
I started actively studying Spanish the beginning of July. I'm still reading the short stories in Spanish from AlbaLearning.com. That list I have in my previous log which I just ended. My word level is about 1,300 -- that's how many I can recognize, but I don't know exactly how many of those words are active. I'll have to go through the words that I've dropped from my list and try to recall Spanish from English -- this includes spelling. That's a tall order. Going through all those cards takes me a few days. I'll post the results. I'm still making my way through "Notes in Spanish". I started Italian just a few days ago. I'd like to order my café latte at the Italian Eisdiele without the owner, Manuelo, giving me a pained expression and asking me to repeat myself. I haven't made a date for the next café latte. We'll see how I progress in the next few weeks. GRAMMAR : I read one short story in Italian today. I got the google tip "raccolta" from Volte. I'm currently looking for more reading materials. I barely know grammar. I understand ere, are, ire and some prepositions. I still don't know the asking words, articles or conjunctions. That's where the stories come in. I plan to digest each story for the grammar. VOCAB : Here's a list of 1,000 most common Italian words. I'm almost through the nouns. I spent the morning going over pronunciation of those words and writing sentences, most of which I gathered as compounds from WordReference.com. My vocabulary study will be taking center stage for the first few weeks. LISTENING : I haven't left Adesso since I discovered it two days ago. I have to take the earplugs off when I don't want to be antisocial -- otherwise the podcast follows me around. I barely have any idea what they're saying. Sometimes I catch something like "l'altro giorno". I like the exercises where I'm supposed to fill in the proper article or preposition. I'm looking forward to participating in that. Edited by Sunja on 17 August 2008 at 12:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 37 18 August 2008 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I have to go to work in a few hours so I'll log what I did today.
Time for complete honesty: I went through 1,000 words last night and I counted about 256 words as being part of my active vocabulary. Those are the cards that've been dropped. Pretty lame. Buuuut that doesn't include numbers, pronouns, months, days, food, household items and verbs like "lavar" that weren't a part of that common word list that I printed from the internet. So I have to cut myself some slack on that. Most cases I got the word right but the accent wrong, like "maximo" instead of "máximo" or "communicacíon" instead of "communicación". That would be counted wrong on a test, so I had to keep those words in the "to be reviewed" slot. My old-fasioned index system seems to be working, and I can get through them pretty fast. Let's see.. Well, I left the house this morning and deposited all my family members at their respective job, school or preschool, then I came home and listened to Adesso while doing typical household-type things. I copied two or three sentences from the short story that I mentioned yesterday. I went over some unknown words. One thing kept leading to another and I got on this great grammar tutorial. I went over all pronunciation but I skipped ABC's and Tourist Vocabulary. I went over basic grammar "to be" in presente, imperfetto, and ... uhm.. the one that they use when it's completed in the past...passato remoto. I think I'll ask in the forum about the forms, just to make sure I'm learning the right thing. Websites teach grammar differently. I also managed to write sentences 43-57 using irregular verbs avere, essere, veire, uscire, andare, dare, fare, sapere, stare, potere, dovere, volvere. I'll continue that tomorrow. Then I went over articles and I can tell that's going to take some more study. I printed out an Italian article and circled all the articles in each sentence and numbered them. Then I wrote the corresponding grammar rule for each number, something like, "la comes before fem. nouns starting with a consonant" for number 2. "la famiglia" The article was one paragraph so I hope to finish it this evening when I get home. I listened to Ben and Marina during our "siesta" which is from 1:00 to 2:00. This has dragged on until 3:00 because I was digging for materials in Italian, and since I can barely read those websites I kept getting bogged down. No matter. I have enough to keep me busy. Anyway, I did a huge amount of vocab work last night so I'd like to go and see what I can pick out of my second hearing of "Spanish Notes" -- while I'm peeling potatoes. Then I have to pick up my kid from practice and go to work. Edited by Sunja on 18 August 2008 at 9:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 37 18 August 2008 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Studying the passato remoto this early on strikes me as a somewhat odd choice. It's rarely used in speech; when it is, it's mainly in Southern Italy. It's worth recognizing the most common verbs in it (as they're quite irregular, and it's used heavily in some literature), but the passato prossimo is infinitely more useful, despite being a 'compound' tense rather than a simple tense. The compound/simple terminology is misleading; all 'compound' means is that it uses an auxiliary verb.
The most important tenses in Italian, in my opinion, are the presente, imperfetto, condizionale, congiuntivo, and passato prossimo. Know them, and know them well. It's worth recognizing the futuro (semplice), but it's not critical to be able to use it at first, as Italian uses the present tense heavily for future actions. The futuro anteriore doesn't have a substitute, but it also expresses something which you need to less often. For reading, you should definitely be able to recognize it. The presente progressivo and passato progressivo are good to recognize, but used much less frequently than in English. A common mistake for English speakers is to grossly overuse them. It takes a while to get used to saying "mangio" (I eat) to mean "I am eating" or even "I will eat" (example: "mangio fra un'ora": I will eat in an hour), but this is correct Italian. The trapassato prossimo and trapassato remoto are fairly unusual. To my shame, I have to admit that I don't spontaneously use them in speech or writing. Wikipedia lays out the Italian tenses nicely. It's not much use for learning them, but it's a really nice summary to be able to refer to, in my opinion. I hope this provides a little light for your decision about what order to study tenses in and what relative importance to give them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6236 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 37 18 August 2008 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for that link, just what I needed for listening comprehension. Great site. Loads of stuff, great variety, even songs. Love it. And your site for racconti is nice too. A little easy, but a nice change from those other short stories I've been reading lately (Giovanni Verga, Dino Buzzati etc.) that are a little too rich in vocabulary and, though interesting, not so very cheerful. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 5 of 37 18 August 2008 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I'd say this saves me a lot of hours! Thanks so much, Volte! I'll definitely check out Wiki tomorrow. Glad you liked the link charlmartell. Here's a listing of Italian podcasts where I got Adesso. There's a couple of others that look interesting but I haven't had time to try them yet. I did try Italopod. The speaker has a nice voice but he lectures too much in German: "Italienisch lernen mit lernpsychologischen Tipps und Tricks." So you can probably skip that one. Let me know what you think of the others. BBC, Italian Better Listening is cute. I barely know anything and I received an average score so it's probably easy for someone who's been studying awhile -- the format is a lot of fun! I love the floating heads! Something else I'll check out when I have time: BBC TV Transcripts Italian 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 37 20 August 2008 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I have to leave in 10 minutes so I'll log now..
Yesterday I spent time with Spanish Notes. (I'll edit adn redefine the URL later, but the link is still good.) pr mi no me gusta mucho supermercado (...) no tienes trato directo con la gente (...) porque muchas veces las por ehemplo para comprar la fruta (....) se pasa en mas ein una semana hasta que te la fruta... Directly after hearing that I made up my own sentences based on what I heard and started talking outloud: "porque no te gusta mucho supermercado? porque la fruta, por ejemplo, no es la fresca y entonces creo que la calidad de la comida en el supermercado no es igual que en una tienda pequeña." The mistakes don´t matter so much as the flow of the language and I try as best as I can to copy Mariana. It was time well spent! For Italian I spent most of my time reading about grammar. It's hard to recall what I read now, but hopefull I retained something from all that dry reading. I also copied a TV transcript (link in above post) and read it, but it wasn't very interesting. "what's your name?..and what's his name?..and what's her name?" I made sentences 58-102. I'll try to continue to keep track. Mostly the verbs again. Speaking of verbs, I've finished the nouns from the list and I copied down all the verbs -- I'll go over them (pronunication and conjugation) later. I'd like to do it today, but I think it's more important to keep reading. As a matter of fact, I plan to read as much as I can this afternoon --- a reading marathon! I'll edit in the results. I think it will be interesting. Edited by Sunja on 21 August 2008 at 1:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 7 of 37 21 August 2008 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, the reading marathon will have to wait for the weekend. It's hard to concentrate with all these interruptions.
This morning I had to give up listening to "Spanish Notes" in the car when my kids wanted to hear "Das Magische Baumhaus". They start complaining as soon as they hear it, "Is that Japanese?!" Then I have to correct them and say my Japanese is on hold. They don't have much of a reference for Spanish. In Germany "Dora the Explorer" speaks English instead of Spanish! I was able to continue as soon as I got home and things were quiet. Anyway. Today I did sentences 103-117 (Italian). I'm was getting sentences from reading and changing the verbs to the present tense. Then it occurred to me that the sentence won't make sense if the verb is changed, especially when there's a reference to a time other than the present -- pretty silly. So I decided to stop sentences and go straight to verb conjugations. I conjugated almost all the verbs from my list (see first post), present only. I'm trying to make sure I go over the irregular ones so that's what I did when it came time to take everybody to the park. I sat on a park bench with the rest of the moms and shuffled flashcards. I only read one short story in Italian. I plan on doing more of that in the next hour or so. My study is quite sporadic. Interruptions, interruptions. I'm sure I'll have more time on the weekend. Edited by Sunja on 21 August 2008 at 1:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 37 22 August 2008 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to log the work I just did on vocabulary, otherwise I'll forget, or all these little notes will go missing...
I read a paragraph of one short story about some mice that crawled into a tin box and couldn't get out. It was great because I was able to identify prepositions like "dentro". It appears that Italian doesn't have directional words like German does. "hin-", "her-", "herauf", "herunter", (or spoken "rauf" and "runter"). Boy am I glad of that. I've spent the last hour working on adjectives (Italian). I'm adding a link for piu and also più. One's an adjective and one's an adverb, but I have to study to keep these apart -- and there's a bunch of examples that I want to use in sentences later. There's not a pronunciation guide for piu, but my dict. says it's "pyoo". I spent quite a long time this morning writing pronunciation notes on my flashcards. When I'm out and about and I want to look at my cards, I'll also want to see how to pronounce it. My crude notes are probably better than guessing, but I'd appreciate any correction or insight, in case anybody thinks, "hey, she's not getting this.." ;) forte -- sounds like "fowrte" to me lungo -- almost sounds like a short "au" and not quite like the German "OH". giovane -- I have to correct myself with "jyovaneh", because I knew someone in college named Giovanni and never pronounced it correctly. giallo -- I make notes for all the "j" sounds. I'll try not to say "Jello" ;) semplice -- "sempliche" francese -- "francheze" ogni -- "ohnee" vicino -- "vichino" I only listen to Adesso and I don't know enough to compare how it sounds with how it's written. This is slowly getting better the more I study and the more times I listen to the same podcast. I have a audio book program on order from the library. The gap between reading and listening and the problem with knowing how to pronounce these words will surely close eventually. Let's see, where are my notes I did on Spanish comparisons...?? Okay, here we go. Ben and Marina were making comparisons between making purchases in Spain as opposed to other countries: las compras aqui en españa...es un poco distinto aqui que in otras paises... (sorry about the spelling.) Then I googled a bit more and found some more Spanish comparisons. That's it for now. It's 11:20 and I have to take off...I'll edit in the rest later.. Edited by Sunja on 22 August 2008 at 4:38am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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