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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5677 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 41 of 261 14 February 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sometimes, I like to look for the etymological roots of already well known words.
Today, it was very nice to find out that the German word steigen and the Latin vestigium (Portuguese vestígio, same meaning) come from the Indoeuropean root *steigh-. I cannot prove that this method has any real positive effect, but it is fun! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5677 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 42 of 261 17 February 2012 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As already said, I've been trying to understand the vocabulary relationship among German and other languages, mostly those I know, of course.
The Pokorny's Dictionary seems to be another great online tool. Edited by Flarioca on 01 March 2012 at 4:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5677 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 43 of 261 25 February 2012 at 4:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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The thread Self-teaching speaking ability, although its title may seem weird, actually have got good answers, specially from Splog, which brought me to the site of Boris Shekhtman, whose advices seem very interesting.
Since the productive skill of speaking in German is by far my weakest one, I'll try his ideas, as well as other Splog presents in his own site. I'm very happy about Assimil "Perfectionnement Allemand" and have worked on it every day (except twice) since the beginning of this month. On the other hand, I decided to work on LwT with "20.000 Meilen unter dem Meer" instead of "Effi Briest". This may offend German literature lovers but I wasn't getting much stimulus from Fontane's book. Jules Verne was one my pre-teen favourite authors (in Portuguese) and I'm already eager to keep reading a chapter after the other. The vocabulary is much easier than "Effi Briest", but it also seems more adequate to my present knowledge level. Edited by Flarioca on 25 February 2012 at 5:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5677 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 44 of 261 01 March 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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German Monthly Report
1 - Activities done a) Almost every day: *"Assimil Perfectionnement Allemand". Finished lesson 27 today, wonderful lyrics from Pete Seeger, translated to German by Max Colpet. I've imediatelly bought this song performed by Marlene Dietrich and listened to that about 15 times while driving. Language learning is already a great activity, but moments like this make my day. So far, most of the vocabulary and grammatical structures of this course are already known. I've enjoyed every text and I would say that this is the strongest point of Assimil. * Alpha-Centauri. Maybe, I've done it EVERY day, not sure. Anyway, many times, I've seen two episodes on a row. Needless to say how much I like it. * Anki. Missed two days. After the change for a new book with LwT, my interest on SRS increased too. Conclusion (obvious, maybe): you must be interested on the vocabulary you are learning. b) About three times a week. * Reading news (from RSS feeds). This is when I really feel that I'm improving. * LwT: As already said, I'm reading "20.000 Meilen unter dem Meer" instead of "Effi Briest". My second best decision after the beginnig of this thread, the first one being to use Assimil. * Phrases translation in Tatoeba. Not only a relaxing activity, but a nice way to learn new words. Not many, but high profit/effort ratio. * Etymology search. I'm organizing my verb studies through etymology and verb valency. * Grammar studies. This month, mostly with "Hammer's Grammar and Usage", by M. Durrell. Genders, plurals and verb valency got most of my attention. c) Once/twice a week. * Random word search with Lexipedia. * Random read, though mostly from Wikipedia. * General work (reading, listening, writing, grammar review) with Erkundungen B2. * Listening to music. 2 - Productive skills barrier update: Though even less texts in Lang-8, I've written more during my grammar and Erkundungen studies. Assimil forced me to speak and even record myself speaking. Besides, this thread and this site have given me some new perspectives on the speaking skill. Today, I went to Goethe Institue and will either hire a private tutor or engage in a course there. 3 - Progress so far The easiness with which I'm dealing with Assimil PA makes me feel that my C1 by the end of 2012 is a feasible goal. Edited by Flarioca on 01 March 2012 at 2:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5677 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 45 of 261 15 March 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Today I've started my private lessons phase. Of course, one lesson is not enough to evaluate how much this is going to really burst my progress, but it was very good to speak German again with someone else, after more than 10 years.
Summing up, I've spoken German more than one hour, and my tutor has shown an amount of patience and correction remarks that really made me feel good and gain confidence, in spite of my many mistakes, bad accent und so weiter. We are going to integrate many of my self studying activities and this weekly lessons. That said, I hope to bring here more often some upgrades about all my German studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5677 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 46 of 261 16 March 2012 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Very interesting to learn that the Indoeuropean root dek is the origin for the Latin word decent (same meaning in English, decente in Portuguese) and the German word zechen, which means to booze :-))
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4663 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 47 of 261 17 March 2012 at 12:25am | IP Logged | |||||
I thought Effi Briest was a total bore :) So much needless description, so dreadfully serious... I think it's totally overrated, but then I didn't study German literature, so I may simply not be aware of its merits or something... I enjoyed some other books by Fontane, though, so if you ever feel like giving this author another try I recommend "Frau Jenny Treibel", which is quite witty in places and reminiscent of Jane Austen's works in some of its sarcastic descriptions of polite society. But Jules Verne will probably much more useful in terms o vocabulary acquisition. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5677 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 48 of 261 17 March 2012 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the suggestion! I've already downloaded the corresponding Librivox audio and the Gutenberg project text of "Frau Jenny Treibel". I can't dispute about the literary value of "Effi Briest", but I really wasn't enjoying it. This is not the first or only one highly praised work of art that I don't like. Moreover, maybe I may enjoy it more in the future, or would have enjoyed it more if read it in the past. This sort of things has already happened to me, in both directions, form dislike to like and conversely. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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