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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 18 22 October 2010 at 7:30pm | IP Logged |
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Malheuresment, je suis une grande personne. J'ai quarante ans. Alors, peut-être c'est impossible mais je vais essayer apprendre.
That's enough for now. This is going to be my somewhat distilled notebook of thoughts and reactions to finally trying to learn at least one new language and hopefully some more following that. Since about the middle of July this year, I've been studying French. That got started with purchasing an old Pimsleur course, it still uses francs, and right now I'm up to lesson 25 of the 2nd level. As of late, I've been getting 2 or 3 lessons done per week, I listen to one every morning on my way to work, but I only go forward when it feels like I've done well and not struggled too much with it. The other formal program I'm using is Assimil's New French with Ease. I've liked it a lot so far, and today I'll be doing my first passive acquisition of lesson 69 and doing lesson 19 for the active phase. I've been pleasantly surprised at well I've been doing with the lessons in the active phase, I remember a lot more than I might have thought I would. Reading comprehension of French is probably my strongest aspect presently. I've actually read a French translation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone now, and I've got the 2 books that are the translation of The Stand. And as those of you familiar with the tale might guess from my log title, I have Le petit prince although I haven't finished reading it yet. So don't spoil the ending for me. I've been going slowly at it some unlike The Dead Zone which I used my previous readings of it in English to help me see what was written and figure things out. With Le petit prince, I have no prior knowledge of the story. It's been interesting to see my comprehension grow with it. It was fairly incomprehensible when I first looked at it late in July when it arrived. Now, here after lunch, I can read its first few pages without much struggle. Some of the reading is very much translate it over into English, but there are larger chunks now where I can see and comprehend it as French. So that's much of the tale about French presently. In the future, probably starting some time next year, I hope to crack open Finnish and learn the language of my ancestors and the language which my father knew some when he was a kid growing up in North Dakota. Also this week based upon some threads I've read on these boards, I went ahead and got both beginning and advanced Michel Thomas's Spanish. Out of the 3 mentioned so far, Spanish has the best chance of being immediately helpful, as there is a good-sized Spanish speaking population around here. I've gotten through the first 6 CDs of the beginner's course and feel quite positive about it. I had some Spanish in college, and in all that time, don't think I ever began to grasp the difference between ser and estar. Michel Thomas's explanation made sense and I feel like now I can most likely correctly use/choose which one to use. I suppose my primary goal of curiosity in all this is that I want to learn what it will be like to be able to think in another language. It's a bit daunting, I've been thinking with English ever since I first cracked it naturally as a child. I'm used to it, I rather love its prosody and rhythm and phonemes, I love its mixture of Germanic roots and French influence that gives it a bit of a split personality. Enough of that. Things I've learned and feel are important to remember -- Don't be afraid of mistakes. Yeah, they suck, but you'll make them in the process of learning. And sometimes, those mistakes provide a seminal contrast that help you finally acquire the right form. Be consistent. Get some exposure to the target language every day. There's only been a couple of days so far that I've stayed away from any exposure. But now, after 3 months of consistent effort, I'm so far ahead of what I knew after 2 years of high school French. Of course, back in high school, there weren't so many quickly and ready accessible resources to help with all of this. Makes you wonder what Kato Lomb could have done with the resources we now have. Or maybe she would have ended up with Internet Induced ADD and would have never become a polyglot. On that last note, watch out for IIADD, it can be a killer. You have to put in some active diligent study sometimes. Or at least I do. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll end up writing down some bits that others will find useful. Maybe not. Who ever knows? I don't. Je sais pas. No sé. Oh, other books I highly recommend: The Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer Don't Sleep, There are Snakes by Daniel Everett Polyglot: How I Learn Languages by Kato Lomb That's enough. Ça sufft. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 18 22 October 2010 at 9:24pm | IP Logged |
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Pardon, mais je n'ai pas observé aucun chapeau ci-dessus. Qu'est-ce- qui est si extraordinairement terrible à ce chapeau?
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| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 18 25 October 2010 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
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C'est possible! Peut-être terrible! Je ne sais pas. Moi, je dois dire que "Je ne sais pas" est très important.
But maybe that's just me. I remember some time ago that I thought it might be cool to learn how to say "I don't know" in every human tongue. The sum of all we don't know far exceeds the little we do know. I'm on Leçon 71 of New French with Ease today for the passive, Leçon 22 of the active. I woke up early today, about 4 AM, so to help pass the time I watched a movie in French on a DVD. Interestingly, after this weekend where I was listening the Michel Thomas's beginning Spanish and where he introduced the idiomatic construction of using hacer + a unit of time to say "some time ago", for example, hace dos jours, 2 days ago, Leçon 71 in Assimil showed me "ça fait trois jours" to say 3 days ago in its lesson. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if I were to one day learn that Italian and Portuguese have similar expressions. I'm still holding off on advancing further in Le Petit Prince. I've been putting more time in on listening to French being spoken. It's definitely my weakest area. Ma faiblesse? I have a little bit of hearing loss which doesn't help and it's amazing how it seems like the French like to squish words down and together. Something of an example is how boire is to drink in French and it's beber in Spanish. The French squished two syllables down into one maybe. Something that's been rattling around in the cage of memories lately is an essay I read a long time ago in Harper's about hope. The author argued that hope is a lie we tell ourselves. I fear that lately I've come to accept that his contention is very much appropriate to this world. Perhaps cynicism is the end of the road for all of us. Then I tell myself, I don't know. Je ne sais pas. No sé. Et j'essaye oublier. L'espoir est un mensonge. Mais est-ce que j'en sais, j'en crois, vraiment? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 18 26 October 2010 at 2:56pm | IP Logged |
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I suppose it takes a masochistic streak to have what happened this morning and burst out into full laughter a couple of times while doing a Pimsleur lesson this morning. I first started laughing with a return of Dr. Pimsleur's favorite activity -- drinking. At least I guess that's what it must have been with the insistence upon drilling you about drinking, asking for something to drink, things to drink like coffee, wine, beer, Orangina, and now, mineral water. Very important stuff in France, drinking.
The other oddity of today's lesson was the drilling on prochain/e or next. Dr. Pimsleur, although he liked to drink, kept an eye on the future or I guess his next drink. When would you like your next beer? Quand est-ce que vous voulez la biere prochaine? They didn't actually explicitly have that in the lesson, but it was certainly implied. Dr. Pimsleur, if I had something to drink stronger than milk right now, I would raise it up and salute you on improving people's ability to drink in more languages than one. I did a lot of listening to the Assimil recording yesterday, and even finished up by listening to about 15 minutes worth before going to sleep. I had some French phrases turn up in my dreams last night, along with a bit of Spanish too, I think. I've had this happen sometimes before with the French, but I was surprised by the Spanish because I only listened to CD1 of the advanced course of Michel Thomas for about 30 minutes yesterday. Although I certainly had a lot of thinking towards Spanish yesterday along with French. I often find myself trying to find ways to say things in both French and Spanish. Today's been a good feeling day so far with the attitude towards the languages. It's a funny thing, learning new ones like this. Some days it has a sense of ease and amazement -- "I know more! I understand more!" and then you have days where it's like, "Ugh, everything is back to gibberish." But yesterday was good and I pretty well nailed the translation of Leçon 22 in Assimil, only going blank on en fonction. But that blankness has probably now cemented it in my head, as the lapse was so unique and when you get a lapse like that, it's like the brain gets the memory etched in. Je n'ai jamais bu l'eau minérale. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 18 01 November 2010 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
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Il fait froid aujord'hui.
In spite of it being cold, I wasn't completely reluctant to leave the warm bed this morning after all the restless dreams. Maybe there'll be nice dreams again some day. I'm up through Lesson 77 of Assimil New French with Ease, passively, and Lesson 28 on the active part. Last week, my order of Using French arrived, so I'm all set to roll into that when I get through New French. This morning, after getting up, I watched, well, more listened to the 5th video of French in Action. I try to listen to it and comprehend all that I can without visual cues or the text that is sometimes used. Nothing much with Spanish last week, just mostly passive listening and watching of some material. I don't like the word certainly in English and I don't like it in its French form, certainement. Although I suppose that's not really so much about the innate nature of the word, and it's more reflective about something twisted around up inside of me. 4 prepositions in a row. Language is sometimes a poor poor shadow of all of our thoughts and feelings. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 18 04 November 2010 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
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Il fait mauvais. Il pleut aujord'hui. Mes doigts sont(?) ont(?) froids.
I continue to chip away at French, doing a passive listen each day to a new lesson in Assimil and an active translation of a lesson. I've also been going through DVDs I have and using ones with French dubbing. I've been watching episodes of season 3 of the X-Files the last few nights, first I had English subtitles on but it almost seems like I don't really listen well to the French then, I get satisfied with reading the English. So I've turned those off and have focused on concentrating on listening to pick up all that I can. Yesterday, Assimil Spanish with Ease showed up in the mailbox and I've begun working on that. I had listened to all of Michel Thomas's Basic and done the first 2 CDs of the advanced. It's been a good introduction to the structure of Spanish grammar, but now I need more concrete examples and more listening to Spanish without all the English being spoken in instruction. Based upon my experiences thus far with French and Assimil, I've chosen Assimil again for Spanish. I like how it gives digestible chunks each day. I feel like it suits me well. At this point, I'm not too worried about too much interference between both French and Spanish. I feel like I've got a good enough sense of what French is that I will have a feel for what is French and what will be Spanish. I've also resumed reading Le Fléau by Stephen King. Je suis très fatigué. Eh bien. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 18 08 November 2010 at 2:59pm | IP Logged |
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Je suis un diabétique depuis vingt-cinq ans. Les fins de mes doigts sont souvent pénibles.
Overall, I continue to make progress with French. For the last 5 weeks, since starting the active phase in Assimil, I haven't had a skip day on lessons. So today I'll be listening to lesson 85 for the first time and doing the translation of lesson 36. If I remain consistent, I will complete the whole passive phase early next month. I'll have to make a decision then whether to roll directly into Using French or do a review of New French. But I'm inclined to roll right on into Using French, I took a look at the book last night and could read the first lesson in it without much trouble. I got a lot of listening done with French last week. I watched more episodes of the French dubs of the X-Files. Last night as I watched one, I had a stretch where even though I wasn't understanding everything, I had a sensation that there wasn't a strong sensation of lapsing into gibberish. By that I mean that I felt like I could distinguish nearly all the words, even those whose meaning wasn't known. Prior to that, I would often have lapses where everything would sound indistinguishable, and often then my attention would drift some. Listening to French right now is a lot of work, really. I have to concentrate and in some ways I'm not good at that. I've got a tendency to drift off into other lines of thought and I'll forget that I should be listening intently. I also got more listening by watching a French in Action episode every day, and a few nights before going to sleep, I would listen to Assimil lessons for about 10 to 20 minutes until I would notice that I was drifting off towards sleep. I felt pretty strong with the 2nd lesson of Pimsleur 3 this morning. Everything in Pimsleur is geared towards preparing you for cocktail parties in France. One of these days I ought to buy a good bottle of whiskey and do some sort of drinking game with Pimsleur. Although that could be dangerous, you could chose some key word or phrase and Pimsleur will be in the mood for repeating that numerous times. Bam, at the end of 30 minutes, you'd be completely blotto. Spanish I'm doing very passively right now. I've gotten through the first week of lessons in Assimil. And will continue on with that this week. Totally not related to language, but I was happy this past weekend to finally shoot under 90 again out on the golf course. I'm not a great player, but from 2006 to 2008, I got very consistent about shooting in the 80s, with my lowest round ever being an 81 that could have broken 80 if I hadn't blown up over the last 6 holes. But I got away from golfing consistently, but have been out there every weekend for the most part since September. And shooting up in the 90s, a couple of times over 100, ugh. I was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde would show up for enough holes to balloon my score, and then other times Dr. Jekyll would be playing and looking pretty sharp. Funny thing is that I wasn't really sharp on Saturday, my drives were weak and usually off into the rough. But I kept grinding and played smart, and reached the 18th hole with it pretty much in the bag. I could have posted a snowman 8 on the last hole and still would have broken 90. But I parred it as my birdie putt just lipped out and tallied an 86 for the day. Ça suffit. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 18 09 November 2010 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
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I had a weird dream last night, where I dreamed I was trying to talk Spanish with someone but wanted to try to ask them if I could address them as tu instead of vous. I guess lines between things aren't always drawn sharply in dreams.
It's a funny business, trying to learn a second language here after the age of 40. I think there's a certain resistance to it, my head is so used to putting its thoughts into English. It's a stubborn thing to try to change that now. It's not impossible, but I believe it is probably a bit more difficult than say I had the resources and inclination back when I was 25. Or even more difficult than it would have been in my late teens. But there's progress. I've been noticing that, from noticing how I'm slowly getting better ability at distinguishing words, even unknown words, where once it was all a gigantic indistinguishable mass of sound. I've also noticed that when doing Pimsleur, I'm finally getting good at noticing when they ask for something like "I am going there next month" that I almost always use y -- j'y vais le mois prochain. When those kinds of statements were first showing up, I'd almost always forget about using y. I would only say je vais le mois prochain. The different placement of object pronouns is being slowly acquired and understood. The use of la, le or les as object pronouns still makes me pause sometimes in sentences where it isn't immediately clear if the la or le or les will be followed by a verb or a noun. But I suppose it will continue to get better as I listen and read more, and as quickly recognizable vocabulary grows. Just a few stray thoughts I've been having today. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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