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Geoffw in TAC2015: RU, HE and Friends

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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4475 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 129 of 251
09 October 2013 at 4:50pm | IP Logged 
È molto strano: ho studiato il francese a lungo circa 3-5 volte di più di l'italiano (credo), e tuttavia mi sembra che posso già capire programme di radio e di televisione in Italiano meglio di in francese. Beh. Non voglio dire che non mi piace capire Italiano, naturalmente! Solo penso che è strano, particolarmente quando posso leggere così bene in francese, ma non così bene in Italiano (ancora--sto megliorando rapidamente sempre).

Edited by geoffw on 09 October 2013 at 4:51pm

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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5319 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 130 of 251
09 October 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged 
Sorry for the English response, but my Italian output has always been limited to a few hundred tourist words, despite a decent amount of exposure once upon a time.

Even though my French comprehension is far better than my Italian, I still find that some of my low-level decoding actually works better in Italian. In French, I can rely on a pretty good model of what French people are likely to say, and I can use that to decode many phrases from the "top" down. It's only very recently that I've had the ability to write down unknown words from a French TV broadcast. But in Italian, I can often decode sounds from the bottom up, and reliably perceive many more word boundaries.

Not sure what causes this. Certainly, as an English speaker, I find the Italian phonetic model much simpler, I appreciate the regular spelling, and I find it easier to identify Latin roots. None of this is really a barrier to French, because I've got so much input that I've made it past the biggest challenges. But still, I can imagine that Italian might be a bit easier.
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4475 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 131 of 251
09 October 2013 at 8:03pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
Sorry for the English


I had no idea you had any experience with Italian in the first place! Obviously no problem. Yes, I agree that phonetics must play a large role in it. While certain French materials like "Horde du Contrevent" may zoom over my head, I can usually read easier stuff like Le Monde/Le Figaro with rather high comprehension, whereas as Corriere della Sera or La Repubblica are more of a slog. And yet when I switch over to TV5, unless there are captions (English or French, doesn't matter), I still only catch bits and pieces. But when there are (relatively accurate) French captions, all of a sudden I can understand what's being said.
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4475 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 132 of 251
10 October 2013 at 1:15am | IP Logged 
J'ai pensé récemment aussi, qu'il est pour moi déjà plus facile d'écrire ou de parler en italien qu'en français. C'est possible, peut-être, mais je crois maintenant que j'ai me trompé sur ce sujet. Peut-être j'ai seulment peur de m'exprime en français, parce que les gens sont plus difficile à satisfaire quand on parle français (par exemple, l'accent est souvent un sujet de critique), et même quand on écrive (presque tout les mots ont des lettres muets que changent et qu'il ne faut pas oublier à modifier).

En revanche, toujours quand je m'exprime en italien, il n'est que des félicitations, même pour seulment quelques mots tres simple! Ouf.
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espejismo
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4838 days ago

498 posts - 905 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani

 
 Message 133 of 251
10 October 2013 at 4:36am | IP Logged 
In my limited experience with French, the French were generally unimpressed with my attempts to speak their
language, but the Québécois were much more patient with and tolerant of it. The very best conversation
partners were francophiles who weren't native speakers of French. I once met a Chilean lady who spoke
excellent English, but upon hearing that I was learning French, she didn't let me use any other language for
the next two hours of our conversation (even though my Spanish was much better at the time). :)
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garyb
Triglot
Senior Member
ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4994 days ago

1468 posts - 2413 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 134 of 251
10 October 2013 at 11:15am | IP Logged 
I agree with all the points in the last few posts. I picked up Italian listening comprehension very easily after having learnt some basics, and compared to French it was definitely a lot easier to pick out words - even before I had much vocabulary, I could mostly quite easily tell where the word boundaries were. French rhythm is based on syllable groups that often contain several words, as opposed to individual words, so sometimes you need to have a reasonable knowledge just to pick out the words.

And yes, generally speaking the Italians have a far more positive attitude towards people who are learning their language than the French do; I have encountered a few bad attitudes with them telling me their language is useless and I shouldn't learn it, but that doesn't happen often and they're generally quite encouraging. Sometimes a bit too much so, to the point of hugely exaggerating your ability like saying you're "fluent" because you can say a short and not quite correct sentence, but after French it's still a breath of fresh air.
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4475 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 135 of 251
10 October 2013 at 11:35pm | IP Logged 
I'd previously seen videos of exemplary oral production of English under exam conditions, graded with commentary according to CEFR, as well as graded commentary of written exemplars. I'd not found any such exemplary materials for other languages until now:

LINK

You can see videos of people speaking at levels graded between A1 and C2 in English, Spanish, German, French and Italian.

Not having perfect passive skills in all of these languages, I got to wondering: what CEFR level of passive understanding is generally needed to understand a qualifying oral production at the different CEFR levels? For example, if you understand at B2 competency, can you understand the people speaking here graded as C2, or do you need C1-level understanding, or is B1 enough?
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4475 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 136 of 251
15 October 2013 at 11:14pm | IP Logged 
SUPER CHALLENGE UPDATE - Italian audio entries COMPLETE

So this is yet another update all about Italian audio. At long last, I have finished ALL of the audio portions of the Super Challenges for which I signed up (and completed well more than a similar amount of German listening). As expected, the reading has been the hard part to get done...

BOOKS (Italian): 3. ...

FILMS, ETC. (Italian):
46. Italy v. Denmark
47. Italy U21 v. Belgium U21
48. Italy v. Armenia
49-50. RAI Radio / TV

BOOKS (French): 22. ...

FILMS, ETC. (French): 50. COMPLETE

BOOKS (Dutch): 42. ...

FILMS, ETC. (Dutch): 50. COMPLETE

I am not entered in any Super Challenge for German, but I also am still reporting for my log:

BOOKS (German): 25. ...

FILMS, ETC. (German): 75. ...


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