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Italian and Spanish for X-mas -- TAC | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 37 22 August 2008 at 4:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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C and G in Italian are 'soft' (like j and the English ch) before e and i; otherwise, they're hard. To make a hard c or g sound before one of these vowels, you follow it with h.
Hence: ce -> roughly like English "chay" che -> roughly like English "kay" ci -> roughly like English "chee" chi -> roughly like English "kee" Etc. Due to this, I'd be extremely careful about using 'ch' in your transcriptions of how to pronounce the soft c sounds. The effect of the h is roughly reversed in Italian and English. This used to trip me up all the time. Other than that, your transcriptions look ok. 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 10 of 37 23 August 2008 at 9:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks Volte! I went ot Wordreference.com and typed in "certo", "ci", "chiave", "che" for listening/repeating. I have to remember to keep it short and not prolong the "kay" sound. It's tempting!
I'll try to remember to use "c" as in "chess" or "chin" and then hard before h --"Pinocchio". That's the reason why I can still only read a paragraph at a time ;) "zz" is also hard to remember. I heard "mezzo" today and it sounds like "medso". Moving along... I've just spent 8 hours on Spanish. I woke up this morning with the intention of flooding my ears and eyes with as much as I could possibly hold and I may even go back to it ;) Actually, no. I've been so neglectful of my family today that I need to do something with them for a while. I read all of Aesop's Fables from Alba Learning.com, along with 3 other short stories. I went between listening/reading these stories several times. Then I moved onto "Notes in Spanish.com" and listened to most of the Intermediate podcasts. I was surprised to get a lot out of some of the beginner podcasts as well, so I'm making it a point to go back. I wrote down plently of notes on the uses of "por" vs. "para". I often think that beginner podcasts are a waste of time because there's very little vocabulary involved, but the ones I listened to were very good. I played around in the NiS/"Spanish Only" forum, despite better judgement. (I don't learn as much when I write.) There's an Italian forum member who has been studying Spanish since last Saturday and I'm interested in getting his opinion on the website and the two languages. Anyway. I don't expect to get much Italian practice in today since I'll want to keep with the Spanish. I'm hoping to dissect some phrases out of my listening practice and use them in sentences. Maybe I'll have time for some drills? That will have to wait until later.. Now it's break-time Edited by Sunja on 23 August 2008 at 9:48am 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 11 of 37 24 August 2008 at 7:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's about 2:00 and I'm going to stop for the day -- if I can help it.
I spent yesterday evening going over conjugations of irregular verbs in the two past forms. I've been in and out of the "Specific Languages" thread with questions about "estuve" and "estaba". This morning I've been working on one NiS podcast, for which I have a transcript. I think the next step will be practicing Present Perfect. I tried LearnItalianPod and listened to the beginners podcasts 1-50. I only listened to the dialogs + the translations. I figure I can go over it again myself without their prompts. My main criticism of the "LearnItalianPod" is that they don't start doing dialogues at a normal speed until much later, like about Lesson 35. I was happy to finally hear Italian spoken normally at the end of the beginner series; I moved into Lesson 1 of intermediate and they started talking like robots again (*groan*). It's very difficult to hear Italian spoken so slowly. I understand that this is so you can hear things like "e" and "il", but it sure would be nice if they would repeat the dialog at a normal native speed, just once.. I'll check back in tomorrow. Edited by Sunja on 24 August 2008 at 7:52am 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 12 of 37 25 August 2008 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm slowly going over the beginners podcasts in Italian and transcribing what I hear. It's tricky business, but I think I learn more that way than by just reading the transcripts. I've listened all morning to the same introductions and short stories:
mi chiamo Francesca, io estudio il Italiano qui a Venizia. io lavoro anche come fotografo e viaggo molto. io sono molto contenta perche io amo vivere in italia. I make mistakes of course, but mistakes will get corrected with my other reading. Transcribing the material really forces me to examine the language and the pronunciation. They're speaking so painfully slow that I can make out everything so far. My Spanish spelling is interfering with the Italian but I don't see that as important right now. It's more important that I learn the proper pronunciation. I've made sentences 118-165. Transcription is slow, but I have the native speakers to fall back on. I've got a lot of material to cover so I'm taking a few days off from the log.. 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 13 of 37 25 August 2008 at 5:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I know you said you don't consider the spelling important right now, but given that Italian is (nearly) phonetic, a couple of the mistakes are somewhat important. Specifically, "io estudio il Italiano" should be "io studio l'Italiano"; they sound fairly different. Good luck! 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 14 of 37 25 August 2008 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
whoa, I see what you mean...:) If you wouldn't mind, maybe you can take a look at this: I have a phone conversation that I'm trying to pick apart. I have A- Giovanni non è en casa.... B- Sai quando ritorna? A-.... Then I'm sure it's something like "sorry, but.." but I can only make out the end which is "no lo so". What could be the proper response there? (it doesn't matter that it doesn't match the transcript, as long as it makes sense. Then the last sentence is B- Va bene, regiamo più tardi. Here's a study of reflexive verbs: Ogni mattina mi alzo a le sette. Mi lavo, mi pettino e mi vesto. A le sette e trenta Jane si alza, si lava e si pettina. A le otto fecciamo colazione insieme e poi andiamo a lavorare. E tu? che cosa fai? Quando ti svegli? Then I can continue practicing with the dialog. I know this looks tedious but it's kinda fun..:D Edited by Sunja on 25 August 2008 at 10:32am 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 15 of 37 25 August 2008 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
First: the second line should be "Giovanni non è a casa"; 'en' is French. The missing 'A' is probably "Scusa, ma non lo so", or "Scusi..", depending on the formality; this translates to "sorry, but I don't know" (non lo so -> I don't know; hyper-literally, it's "not it I know"). Also, 'regiamo' should probably be "richiamo" (I [will] call again)).
"A le" should be "alle", but other than that, it looks good. Keep having fun! 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 16 of 37 27 August 2008 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Great! ;)
I've almost made it through the beginners podcasts: dissecting, looking up words and repeating. The podcasts are starting to get really wordy, so I think I'll take a break on that. I think the next step will be to work on vocabulary + read. Where did I leave off at? Oh well, at any rate I've made 276 sentences. I think about 150 of those are from the podcast material -- judging by the amount of red ink in my notebook.. (Switching to Spanish now:) This morning I spent most of my time making flashcards. These from LearnSpanish.com are great, because they list irregular verbs, stem-changers, exceptions, and my favorites -- the signal words! Really academic, but it helps if I come across a certain adverbial phrase and I can say, "oh that verb must be the preterite". Awesome. EDIT: I added 66 new verb cards to Italian and 53 to Spanish. Edited by Sunja on 27 August 2008 at 9:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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