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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 369 of 407 06 September 2012 at 3:47am | IP Logged |
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For anyone who's interested, I created a thread on Québec French where I'll be answering any questions
about the language as it is spoken everyday by the Québécois. Québec French Thread I shall also be announcing a teach yourself type book on québécois, including dialogues, grammar, vocabulary and exercises, in the coming months. Edited by Arekkusu on 06 September 2012 at 3:50am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 370 of 407 06 September 2012 at 6:04pm | IP Logged |
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Here is an excerpt of the first chapter of my (upcoming) book on Québécois, to give you
an idea of the format: Leçon 1 Edited by Arekkusu on 26 September 2012 at 5:18am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 371 of 407 24 September 2012 at 9:16pm | IP Logged |
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In the two weeks since my last log post, I've barely done any studying at all (although I did use Japanese on a few occasions), but most importantly I've finally managed to finish writing my book on Québécois! This project has been on the back burner for almost 20 years and I can't believe I've finally done it!
I'm having a few problems finding the right people to record the dialogues with me (the recordings will eventually be downloadable), but otherwise, the course should be online and for sale within the next two weeks. It should then also pop up on a few blogs and websites that have agreed to review it. If you know of any site that might be interested in reviewing such a book, please PM me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 372 of 407 26 September 2012 at 4:14am | IP Logged |
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The book is now for sale!
Le québécois en 10 leçons Edited by Arekkusu on 26 September 2012 at 4:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 373 of 407 07 October 2012 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
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After working on my book and now trying to do some promotion of the book, and a simultaneous interpretation I had this week (and
which took me days to prepare for), I finally found myself with some spare time yesterday. And since this is a 3-day weekend here, I am making some study plans. I studied some Kansai-ben using this free course. I wish they indicated pitch, but it's still probably the best course out there. I read some Spanish (Cien anos de soledad). Really needed to get back into Spanish. If you know of a good intermediate-advanced textbook or manual, I'm all ears. Today, I shall study some Mandarin. I am meeting my tutor tomorrow. We've met about 10 times so far. It's a slow process (I had little time until now), but some old stuff is coming back. Quite enjoying it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 374 of 407 15 October 2012 at 3:58pm | IP Logged |
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Now this was an effective, productive and encouraging weekend for my languages!
Saturday morning, I studied some Mandarin, then I had a Mandarin session with my tutor. Right after, I did a Skype session and helped (as much as I could) another HTLAL member with Japanese pronunciation. Later, I went to bring some copies of my book to a second local bookstore. In the evening, I spent some time writing in Japanese on Yahoo! Chiebukuro and Lang-8. Sunday morning, I went to Spanish Conversation Group for about 2 hours, which I really enjoyed. Everyone was at a fairly advanced level and with the help of the 2 native speakers from Argentina, we discussed a variety of interesting topics. As soon as I returned home, I had a quick lunch, then grabbed my bike and scooted over to the Japanese Language Exchange where the Japanese/English speaker ratio was such that I had two Japanese speakers to myself (one from Kansai, one from Kanto) and we spoke about a variety of things again and I felt really good about how I did. I'd take more weekends like this! _____________ In Chiebukuro, a lady listed a bunch of French words and requested the pronunciation in katakana. If you know katakana, you'll know that it's just about the most awful way to indicate the pronunciation of foreign words -- it only allows for the Japanese 5 vowel sounds and limited consonants to be expressed. I replied by writing a sentence or two in overly broken Japanese, using katakana. This must have made the Japanese really hard to read. I then said that if I wrote the pronunciation of the French words in katakana, that's what it would sound like. She deleted the question. From a Japanese point of view, maybe I sounded like an agressive foreigner. Curious about this, I then imported my answer in Lang-8 and got interesting replies. Most notably, one lady got really mad. Something along the lines of "we know katakana is not as perfect as IPA or CD's, but this is how we do it and we certainly don't need to hear this kind of criticism from a foreigner. And by the way, you'd be making a big mistake if you thought that Japanese pronunciation was simple: just because foreigners can read the hiragana chart doesn't mean they sound good, it's just we, Japanese people, are too polite to say anything." Then another guy (whose correction this was written under) asked her the calm down, but she went on. Eventually, he deleted his correction (and the comments), and the lady eventually deleted her own correction (and comments) as well. Then the guy wrote to apologize for the woman's rude behaviour. I expected some Japanese people to be defensive on the issue of katakana pronunciation, but not to that extent. Later, at the language exchange, I mentioned this to my partners and they presented an interesting point of view. They said that when people learn languages in Japan, they don't care about pronunciation because interactions with foreigners are rare. They just want some approximate pronunciation they can use with other Japanese people in their class. Moreover, there is a stigma attached to trying to pronounce things properly (or differently from other students), as if you were putting on airs, trying to sound better than the others, so there is a reluctance to even try to pronounce things correctly. They are doomed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5115 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 375 of 407 15 October 2012 at 4:07pm | IP Logged |
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Well, it sounds like you had a great week end at least. Sorry to hear about the reactions from the Japanese lady, and the bleak view on their foreign language learning strategies.
I was also quite surprised at what a horrible accent most of the "English speaking" Chinese guides had, so I do not think China is much better. We often discuss the importance of a good accent here on the forum, but after having listened to hideous accents from guides from Russia, Mongolia and China, all supposedly fluent in English, I feel like chasing anyone who claims a bad accent is not a problem up a tree, and comdemn them to 3 months of listening to the above mentioned guides. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 376 of 407 15 October 2012 at 4:21pm | IP Logged |
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Interesting. It reminds me of what an ESL instructor told me about how some English classes in Japan work with pronunciation. Especially when those classes are taught by Japanese whose pronunciation of English is often as thickly accented as that of their beginning students.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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