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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4794 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 57 of 344 07 November 2012 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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first to QiuJP's question: no, "ř" is not much like "ž". It may be seen as something
between "ž" and "r" which ressembles "r" a lot more. I can't comment on the Assimil Czech audio since I haven't heard it but there are other sources. I'm sure you'll find something on youtube. Or I could make use of my new skills with audacity and make a small audio for you with something like: "Řehoři, řekni řeřicha. Neřeknu, ty křupane, ty by ses mi řehtal!" Suedois sans peine I started today. I did the first lesson and it was easy (this has been covered in my approximately two or three hours of previous Swedish studies). But I resisted the temptation and didn't do another one. I want to get out of my usual study style (get in a lot at once and take a break, repeat) at least for this experiment. My use of Assimil: 1.listen without looking 2.listen and read the Swedish, look at the translation when something is not clear 3.repeat after the audio 4.get through the notes and exercises 5.repeat after the audio until everything is easy to say (even though some things are not stuck in the memory yet) no writing or anki or external grammar or anything in the passive wave. Firstly, I need to keep this in the shortest daily amount of time possible, due to my other studies. Secondly, I really want to know whether Assimil works for me as it is. Thirdly, it's Swedish, it shouldn't be as hard as if it was Chinese! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5478 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 58 of 344 07 November 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the tips, Serpent! Yes, the course mentioned that there are many different "correct" pronunciations of the Norwegian "r", due to the proliferation of dialects. The course suggested to just pronounce it like a German "r". I'm not very familiar with the Slavic soft "r", but I might be doing it without knowing: I've been told in the past that I had a Norwegian accent, and I've never been able to correctly pronounce the American English "r" anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ayrrom Senior Member United States Joined 4348 days ago 9 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 59 of 344 07 November 2012 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Japanese with Ease volume 1
Lesson 6 Slow going, so 30 minutes a day not sufficient for me to learn each lesson - due to difficulty with the new alphabet, etc. It may be I am not doing the method correctly. About lesson 4 the notes "remind" you not to memorize the Kanji or Kana (i.e. the alphabet) unless you want to memorize a few for "fun" or impress your friends. In the notes it indicates you will learn them without trouble through repetition by the end of the "passive" phase. The instructions are not clear on what exactly you are suppose to learn before moving on to next lesson. Therefore I am not sure I am using the material as intended (Am I trying to "overlearn" the material?). Several days ago, due to my frustration, I stopped for a day and instead memorized all the Hiragana and some of the Katakana (all listed at back of book in a table), which has helped me retain the lessons a lot better, and made it a lot more fun. Objectively: in the first 6 lessons, most of the 46 Hiragana and half of the 46 Katakana have already been introduced. I think about 15 Kanji have also been introduced (out of 2000+ total). Subjectively: Beautiful language. Word order fascinating. Grammatically [so far] it seems to be a very logical language. Again pronunciation not difficult for native English speaker. Plan: Going forward I have decided to try to relax and just spend 30 minutes per lesson no matter how much I feel I retain. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4492 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 60 of 344 07 November 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This post is copied from my log, and is therefore in French, sorry. It contains a
few musings on syntax, vocabulary and word formation in the Breton language Le Breton sans peine Le principe absolument vitale qu'il faut savoir, c'est qu'en breton, ce qu'on veut rendre le plus important, ça COMMENCE la phrase. Toujours. Donc, c'est un verbe qui vous aimeriez rendre l'emphase sur - commencez avec ça! Un sujet? Commencez avec ça! Et, sauf dans quelques cas exceptionnels et rares, si ce n'est pas le verbe qui commence la phrase, il suivra le truc qui commence. Cependant, ce phénomène entraîne des conséquences particulières - si le sujet est exprimé et vient au début, ça demande que le verbe soit exprimé dans la troisième personne du singulier. Et dans le cas du verbe "bezañ" (être), ça change la conjugaison totalement: Ar marc'had e Breizh a zo bras! (Le marché en Bretagne est grand!) Mais si on veut exprimer la même idée, mais on veut garder la forme régulière du verbe, il faut l'exprimer comme ci-dessous: Bras eo ar marc'had e Breizh. (lit. Grand est le marché en Bretagne). Et donc quelques autres petites commentaires: la vocabulaire reflète l'héritage de la langue assez bien. Les mots ne sont pratiquement jamais déductibles, il faut vraiment apprendre chaque mot pour agrandir sa vocabulaire. Il existe des cas exceptionnels, et quelques mots sont soit empruntés du français, ou n'ont vraiment pas changé leur forme, quelque que ce soit en celtique ancienne ou en latin (il y a des mots qui viennent du latin et n'ont pas vraiment changé leur forme). Donc, en breton courant on peut trouver des mots qui sont reconnaissables: pesk - poisson (pisces en latin) arc'hant - argent (et ça signifie et la couleur et le métal) marc'hand - le marché (market) labourat - travailler (comme labor, labour en anglais/latin) Et la troisième remarque, c'est que le breton n'ajoute pas les mots comme dans les langues Germaniques. Mais on peut l'imiter car quelques mots sont composes de deux racines (comme ti-post, ou porzh-mor) et ça ne veut dire que maison-poste (donc la poste), ou cour-mer (donc le port). Ces mots sont courants en breton quotidien (en particulier le mot "ti", maison, qu'on peut conjoindre avec n'importe quel mot pour rendre un endroit à un village (ou une ville). Donc ti-ker signifie "la mairie" ou "l'hôtel de ville" tout simplement. PS: Assimil, j'aime votre méthode, mais est-ce qu'il est possible de ne pas ajouter des mots absolument inutiles comme "lançon"? Je sais que c'est un poisson qui est trouvé partout en Bretagne mais 1) c'est une type de poisson, pas le concept de poisson soi- même (et donc de la vocabulaire spécialisée), 2) je ne mange pas de poisson quand même, donc je vais jamais acheter un lançon quelque part parce que c'est dégoûtant, et 3) j'ai dû rechercher la définition dans Wikipedia et voilà - les mots anglais et néerlandais me semblaient totalement inconnus aussi. (Crabes, ça marche. Mais ce aussi n'est pas vraiment utile). Edited by tarvos on 07 November 2012 at 11:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4674 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 61 of 344 08 November 2012 at 1:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Le Grec ancien: 1-7
Even though the lessons are short - maybe four lines each - I feel like I'm not retaining a single thing. There are too many accent markers, I can't do the exercises without looking, and I only get a few of the fill-in-the-blanks right. I have to remind myself to chill, to keep it passive, and to see where it leads naturally. I'm glad to read on here that I'm not the only one experiencing this! But at the same time I am enjoying it immensely. I get a kick repeating phrases like Salut ô Athéna! dit Ulysse. (Χαῖρε ὦ Ἀτηνᾶ, λἐγει Ὁδυσσεὐς / Khairé o Athena, legei Odysseus). I think, OMG I'm quoting Homer! I also like the "étymologie sans peine" sections and the historical footnotes. I haven't seen these in the other Assimil I've done, and they're great. Already I know that Χαῖρε (khairé / greetings, salut) is the word that the angel Gabriel greeted Mary with at the Annunciation, and that Xénophon's 10,000 shouted Θἀλαττα, θἀλλατα (thallata! thallata! / the sea! the sea!) when they escaped Mesopotamia and first saw the Black Sea. And διδἀσκαλος (didaskolos / teacher) was a strange new word until the footnote mentioned that our word autodidact comes from this. I didn't intend to start this until later in the month. I really don't have time at the moment ... but, oops. I can't stop now! Edited by kanewai on 08 November 2012 at 1:25am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Roman Diglot Groupie Spain Joined 5237 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Italian, French | Message 62 of 344 08 November 2012 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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New French With Ease and O Novo Francês Sem Custo: 1-7
All good until now. I'm going trough the book exactly as I understand Assimil recommends: listen without reading; listen and read silently; read aloud; (here I read a sentence, play the recording, pause, compare and read the next sentence) compare with translation; do the exercices. Yesterday I couldn't do a lesson and today I did yesterday's lesson, todays lesson (6) and as the 7th is just a revision, why not do it? :) The only tricky thing in French is pronunciation, okay, spelling too... At first looking at Est-ce qu'il est cinq heures? is strange that all that just means "Is it five o'clock?" or even simpler São cinco horas?. Why not just "est cinq heures?", would be easier. Well perhaps I will encounter it later. I'm thinking about putting everything into Anki, but haven't done yet. We'll see. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4500 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 63 of 344 08 November 2012 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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O Novo Francês Sem Esforço: 4-7:
Already on lesson 8! After 3 lessons with that word, I'll never forget "beurre" or "beurré". The first revision lesson (7th as every Assimil course I guess) was very easy, I guess my main problem now is regarding the French diacritic signs. We have it in Portuguese as well, but we use it to mark the tonic syllable of the word (therefore, 1 sign at maximum), but in French they just put it anywhere! Ahahaha Also, I'm not following my usual method of copying every lesson to my paper notebook. That way, I'm progressing REALLY faster, but I'll probably retain less information and vocabulary. I hope I'll be able to compensate it during the active phase. Au revoir! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5667 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 64 of 344 09 November 2012 at 8:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Assimil Chinese With Ease - Lessons 1-7
Finished off the first batch of 7 lessons. Lesson 1-5 introduced at least 1 new major grammar point per lesson, and lesson 6 was a review of a few of them. Lesson 7, of course, was the grammar review. So far most of the sentences have been very short, and it's very slowly easing me into longer sentences. I think 2 of the lessons had 1 semi-long line in it. So far, I'm having a relatively easy time retaining what is being taught, but it's keeping the number of vocab words very low right now. Much lower than I'm used to. Just looking over other Assimils I have, I'd say more vocab is introduced in just lesson 1 of French With Ease than has been introduced in lessons 1-6 of Chinese with Ease. But that's fine with me. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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