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NeonQwerty’s Italian and German thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes  Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 201 of 206 24 November 2009 at 5:15pm | IP Logged |
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Post #200 in the thread! Woo!!! I should make this into a big deal!
But I won't. :-D However, if you read this blog, thanks for your interest. If you respond to it, thanks for your support and feedback. Italian I added about 25 new words to my big anki list; I'm up to chapter 15 of my book. I'd like to finish that chapter by the end of the week, but that may be a tall order given the amount of schoolwork that I have to do. I also listened to yesterday's Faccia a Faccia (a Radio 3 program). I enjoyed it as usual, although they cited some studies that I found either dubious or very interesting, depending on their validity. The topic was the lack of women in top positions in the Italian workplace. It turns out that for all the gender disparity I read about in Canada and the US, Italy is much, much worse. In fact, one of the funnest things about these podcasts is that I'm learning genuine things about Italy, its culture and politics. Much more inherently interesting than learning stock phrases. German, Listened to Deutsch Welle, and I really think I'm getting a much more comfortable feel for the language. What does that mean? Well, one of the most difficult things that I needed to do with Italian was to learn how to parse the sentences correctly. I remember it not always being clear where one sentence ended and the other began, whether a weird sound was one word or two separate ones, etc. Obviously, there is an analogous difficulty with German. I do think I'm making some progress in that department, though. I even noticed improvement when I was watching Downfall. This is significant because unlike the newscasts, Hitler didn't slow down his speech in order to help my comprehension... Plus Pimlseur. I'll say a couple of words about that too. I recommend Pimlseur Italian wholeheartedly. Pimlseur German... I'm not 100% sure. I'm starting to find myself confused about some of the grammatical rules that Pimlseur expects me to intuit. I'm not saying that Pimlseur is bad, though! My lack of confidence relative to where I was when doing Pimlseur Italian might just be because German is a tougher language, especially for someone with a French background. The upshot of all this is that I'll definitely want to look over grammatical rules after finishing up the program. But to be clear: on the whole I'm getting a lot out of it. Just *possibly* not quite as much as with Italian. Pimlseur 6 (twice): 50 minutes Total: 2405.5 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 202 of 206 28 November 2009 at 7:06pm | IP Logged |
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I took a few days off language learning (sort of; see below). Back on it now.
But first, a philosophical interlude! :-D <ahem> One of the take-home messages from Ludwig Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" is that we are limited to what we can doubt at any given moment. So if I see you put an apple in the fridge and then hear you say upon closing the door "There is an apple in the fridge", I can be cheeky and say "How do you KNOW there is still an apple in the fridge". The doubt being expressed is the presence of what we understand to be "apple" in what we understand to be "fridge". But the sentence doesn't work if we simultaneously doubt the nature of "apple", "fridge", and whether or not whatever corresponds to the use of the word "apple" is in whatever corresponds to the use of the word "fridge". Seriously, try thinking of the sentence while doubting all things at once. It just turns into gibberish. What is the point of that interlude? Unit 7 of Pimlseur was the hardest yet for me! Usually a "hard" unit means that there are a bunch of sentences where I get something wrong. Still, the sentence is usually coherent in my mind; it's just that there's a blank or incorrect word where a particular word should be. In this case, there were a lot of times where there were *multiple* sources of uncertainty. By the end I was sort of making it make sense again, though. Italian, I bought Italian GQ and read through a bit of it. It was more expensive than Vanity Fair, but I think I'll enjoy it a lot more (and skip fewer articles). German, I added 21 words to my anki file, and I accidentally did more work when I watched a documentary on Heidegger. Many of the interviews were conducted in German, and thankfully the producers chose to subtitle rather than dub them. I was happy to realize that it wasn't all complete gibberish to me. :) Content-wise, I was a bit disappointed that the show was long on his Nazi ties and short on his actual philosophic output, but that's sort of par for the course with these types of shows. I did enjoy it for what it was, though. If anyone is interested, you can find it here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-858369328131624007# Plus of course, Pimlseur... Pimlseur 7: 27 minutes total time: 2432.5 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 203 of 206 01 December 2009 at 4:24am | IP Logged |
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Wow.
I had a really interesting series of events since my last entry. I found a really nice coffeehouse close to where I live, one with ethical policies that really resonate with me. I decided to go there and read for a bit last Saturday, and figured that I should resume Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations". Like most Wittgenstein translations, the original German is on the left-hand side and the English is on the right. When I first started the book, the left was pure gibberish. That day, the left was in part comprehensible. Seriously, I was overjoyed. It was a very, very exciting feeling, one that I never got with Italian... Even before I started studying Italian, it was similar enough to French to allow me to sort of intuit the point of what I was reading. Not so with German. So my increased comprehension was really, really encouraging. Something else got me really excited: the fact that I was reading Wittgenstein in the original language! Italian is beautiful and all, but I have to admit that there isn't really any one text that I'm dying to read in the original Italian. The Divine Comedy and Machiavelli's works would be nice, but I could die a happy man having only read the translations. But German... there are definitely German texts that I really, really want to read in the original language. So much philosophy has been written in German... Wow. The experience didn't end there. I remembered Assimil, and I decided to give it a go. I got hold of "L'Allemand sans peine". So far I love it, and I actually think that this is precisely what I might need to get over the hump with my Italian studies. I'll go through the German course first and decide then. Italian, I've pretty much accepted that Italian has taken a backseat in terms of my interest. I still do my ankis, and I listened to a few interesting podcasts, but I'm going to need to do some more concerted work at some point in order to raise my level significantly. Italian is in "maintenance mode" right now. German, Sort of like finding a stray puppy that you fell in love with, I found Assimil. I'm still new at using it, but here's how I've been going about it. For each new lesson I... 1)listen to the recordings (hearing the dialogue twice) 2)read the translation and notes 3)read the dialogue out loud twice 4)do the exercises (while repeating the questions aloud before thinking the answer in French) 5)re-read the dialogue out loud one more time I also copied some of the recordings onto my mp3 player and have been playing them when going to and fro. When possible I repeat after the speaker; otherwise I subvocalize when yammering on would be too embarassing. Finally, when I encounter a new word, I add it to my anki list. Seeing the text while hearing it is really great, and a huge improvement over Pimlseur. With Pimlseur, I oftentimes can't really tell if the speaker is saying "den" or "dem", for instance. Plus, since Pimsleur rarely gives you explicit grammatical rules, it just gets really confusing. For the sake of this blog, I'll only record the time spent with Assimil at my computer. My private mumblings outside of my apartment will be "bonus", like podcasts. assimil 9 lessons: +/- 60 mins Pimlseur 7 (2 more times. yes, it was that tough for me): 54 minutes Pimlseur 8: 26 minutes Total: 2572.5 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 204 of 206 17 January 2011 at 7:08am | IP Logged |
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Holy cow - sono di ritorno!
Ho completamente abbandonato i miei studi di Italiano e di tedesco... Beh, li ho abbandonati fino al mese scorso. Avevo comprato molti mese fa un libro abbastanza avanzato di grammatica Italiana, e mi sono detto che le finirei prima di ritornare a scuola. Non ho riuscito a terminarlo prima del tre gennaio, ma l'ho comunque terminato una settimana dopo l'inizio dei miei studi. Per il tedesco... non voglio ricominciare i miei studi prima di passare alcuni mese con l'italiano. Il problema e che non so come fare di miglorare i miei capacita di parlare e scrivere in questa lingua. Secondo me, ci sono cinque materie sulle quale devo metter attenzione: 1-leggere 2-scrivere 3-ascoltare 4-parlare 5-praticare la grammatica e l'ortografa Come sempre, andiamo un soggetto a la volta... 1-leggere Non mi piace affatto leggere giornali sull'internet. E vivendo a San Diego, non ci sono molti testi Italiani disponibili qui. Questo detto, mi posso arrangiarmi abbastanza bene. Sto leggendo Il Principe questi giorni [n.b.: lo style di Machiavelli non e facile per me... gli altri testi che leggo mi sembrano molto piu semplici!], e ho un altro libro con quale posso praticare. Se non trovo altri libri, posso comprare libri sull'internet (ma costa tanto!), o comprare la versione Italiana di Vanity Fair. 2-scrivere Un po' piu difficile, ma ancora una volta, posso arrangiarmi. Il mio problema principale e che non posso scrivere solo per me; devo assolutamente avere un' udienza! Ecco perche ho ricominciato a scrivere qui. :-) Credo tuttavia che l'ideale sarebbe di trovare qualcuno con chi scrivere, in modo di "pen pal"... Ma non so dove andare per trovare qualcuno con chi potrei scrivere. 3-ascoltare Ancora piu difficile! Il mio mp3 non funziona, allora non posso ascoltare podcast quando prendo l'autobus all'universita. Guardo qualche volta il telegiornale sull'internet quando sto cucinando, ma parlano tanto velociamente! Non e sempre facile di capire tutto, ma almeno non e tanto difficile che... 4-parlare Ecco la "sezione" dei miei studi che mi rendo il piu nervoso. Sono capace di trovari metodi di praticare la mia lettura, la mia scrittura, e di ascoltare l'italiano. Parlare e molto piu complicato. -non ci sono molta gente a San Diego che parlano Italiano -non ho molto tempo - i miei studi universitarie prendono molto tempo -sono timido su Skype. Non l'ho provato, tuttavia... dunque, chi sa... E forse un "cop-out", ma mi piacerebbe molto di piu praticare di scrivere in Italiano prima di praticare di parlare. In in mondo ideale, gli farei tutti i due. Ma il mondo non e ideale, e non voglio avere troppo stress nella mia vita. 5-grammatica e ortografia Forse posso trovare esercizi di grammati sull'internet... Mi sono iscritto a Italian-flashcards.com Vediamo... Eh! Sono gia le ventidue ore qui! Devo terminare (infine!) questo post! Spero di scrivere di piu fra alcuni giorni... n.b.: non ho gli accenti su questo computer! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5502 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 205 of 206 18 January 2011 at 9:15am | IP Logged |
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Dopo di leggere e capire tutto il tuo messagio credo che io sia in una posisizione a
darti qualche consiglio, anche se tu sei a un livello più sviluppato di me. Vorrei dire... per favore, non aver paura! Ci sono molti Italiani gentili che sono pronti di aiutarti. Solamante 3 giorni fa, come tu hai letto sul mio blog, ho conosciuto una persona che è allegro e molto paziente. So che non sono un esperto, ma credo che sia importante a parlare quando si è pronto, ma è anche importante a domandarti a te stesso se sarà mai un momento perfetto a cominciare. Dico queste cose perché io, come molti altri studenti, passano per questa fase. Può essere molto divertente a sperimentare una conversazione con qualcuno dopo di avere abbastanza paura inizialmente. scusa se sembro condiscendente. E' dificile di parlare con sfumatura in una lingua straniera, non è vero? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5502 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 206 of 206 18 January 2011 at 1:08pm | IP Logged |
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Un'altra cosa che ho dimenticato di menzionare...
Ho passato un po' di tempo guardando per il tuo blog e ho capito che usavi un sacco di podcast per imparare Italiano. Solamente uno o due volte hai nominato il tipo di podcast (faccia a faccia per esempio) e mi piacerebbe molto se puoi indicare qual podcast ti interessava e ti aiutava più. Ti do il link dove ho postato del mio problema in cercando un podcast adatto per il mio livello. (http://how-to-learn-any- language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3700&PN=1&TPN=54). Questo potrebbe aiutarti di vedere ciò che sto cercando. Grazie mille. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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