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Gary’s TAC 2013 - PAX | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 89 of 160 23 July 2013 at 11:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Short post-weekend update...
Français I had a Skype chat which went well: my French seemed to be at its peak for fluency, accent, and pronunciation. If I could always speak like that I'd be happy! Of course I can't say whether it's a real improvement or just an unusually good day, but I can't help but think that the daily speaking work is helping or at least stopping me from getting too out of practice. I saw the rest of Rosetta and started watching Paris (the 2008 film). So far it seems like a great film for seeing French being used in a variety of everyday contexts like work, family, relationships, in shops, at the doctor's, etc., and it's full of useful idiomatic speech. I need to find more films like that. Italiano I was out with a lot of Italians and I had quite a few conversations. I still find it amazing that I've managed to reach a point where a good part of my social life is in Italian, especially without living in Italy. Obviously some of them are more willing to speak Italian with me than others, but in group conversations or if I'm assertive enough I can get at least a few sentences in most times. I watched La migliore offerta, which I quickly discovered is, despite being an Italian film, filmed in English and then dubbed in Italian. Still, good dubbing and good film; quite a difficult one as the language was quite formal and elevated and there were a few specialised terms relating to art. After that I started watching a stupid teen movie that I'm embarrassed to even name, but conversational language and all that. Italian Super Challenge Films: 80 done, 20 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. 4/5ths of the way now. On reflection on the Super Challenge, I'm not sure how useful counting the conversation hours really was, since conversation something I would have done anyway, while counting the films has encouraged me to find and watch more of them. I suppose it was interesting to watch how my ability improved as the hours went up though. I'll probably do it again for Spanish next year, but only the films. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 90 of 160 26 July 2013 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I finally went to the Couchsurfing meeting. Ended up spending the best part of an hour speaking Italian, and I met some interesting people. I heard a couple of French accents but didn't manage to speak to the people. Seems like a good place to go to meet people, practise the old conversation skills, and maybe get in some language practice. I suppose that's going to be my go-to on the Wednesday nights when there's no French meetup.
Books: I've read about half of Dune now and I think I'm giving up on it, at least for the moment. It has good bits but overall it's long and not really holding my interest. Like I said, sci-fi isn't my thing. And I think I've read enough of the book to get most of the benefits of vocabulary repetition. I just can't help but think I'd rather spend the time reading something more interesting or relevant. In Italian I started reading La testa degli Italiani, which is the Italian version of La bella figura, a not-completely-serious book about Italian people and culture. It has mixed reviews, but so far it seems like a fun and easy read and it's getting me more excited about going there. On that subject, I'm hoping to make travel plans soon. It's going to be sometime between late September and early November, but I'm sure exactly when just yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5328 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 91 of 160 26 July 2013 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm quite fond of Dune, but I'm not hugely impressed by the French translation—though I did have fun reading it. Overall, the text is decent, but there's some pretty sloppy mistakes, as I noted on lang-8. There's certainly never been a French translation that really captures the style of the original book. (The translation was written by Michel Demuth, who is a science fiction author in his own right, but I've never read any of his books.) Dune is a profoundly political book. Its major themes include: 1. Wars over scarce natural resources. Among other things, the empire's dependence on "spice" is a metaphor for our dependence on oil. 2. Environmentalism, as seen in the teraforming efforts of the Fremen. This is perhaps a minor theme of the book for most modern readers, but it was apparently a pretty big deal for many readers in 1965. 3. Ibn Khaldūn's classic theory of revolution in middle eastern states. Here's a good summary:
The second part of this cycle is actually described in Dune Messiah, as the stresses of conquest rapidly erode Fremen society and character. It's less fun the original book, because who likes reading about decay and corruption? The books after Dune Messiah can be quite safely ignored, as can the prequels written by Herbert's son. I would honestly recommend the English version of Dune for anybody who's at all tempted by science fiction. I suspect that the French translation is best reserved for people who enjoy rereading Dune and who want to try it in a new language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 92 of 160 29 July 2013 at 11:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the interesting post about Dune. I suppose I found the idea of it really interesting but just didn't enjoy actually reading it as much, which could well be just due to the French translation. I'll take your advice and read the original at some point.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 93 of 160 30 July 2013 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was mostly busy with music stuff at the weekend, but there were still a few interesting language points. On Friday night, I randomly bumped into a few French people I know from Meetup in a bar, and I chatted with them for half an hour. It was a full-speed conversation between natives in a noisy and crowded bar - something I only witness a few times per year, so needless to say it wasn't easy. But I just had to make an effort to pay attention and I got on fine. And on Sunday I had dinner with some Italian speakers and we mostly spoke Italian. I was a bit tired and my brain was still very much in music mode rather than languages mode, so some vocabulary felt "hard to reach" but overall it went well.
I think my Italian pronunciation could do with some "tuning up" with the chorusing method I'm using for French, but it's not really urgent. I'll spend a few weeks on it sometime before I go to Italy. After an easy introduction, the difficulty of La testa degli Italiani has ramped up quite a bit, with lots of unknown vocabulary. I can guess half of it from the context and/or similarities with English or French, and my Kindle dictionary takes care of the rest (kudos to Amazon for making the Italian edition available on the UK site!). It makes me realise that there's still so much I don't know, but then again, there's a large amount of fancy vocabulary that is used in writing and formal speech but rarely in everyday conversation. So I don't think I have any need to worry about not having active knowledge of a lot of these words. With the Italy trip on the horizon, my focus is very much everyday conversation. I made it to the language café last night, and I was able to speak some French, although not as much as I'd have liked - there were several young French people there, but as usual, they were dead keen to speak English yet not quite as keen to help anyone with their language in return, and they (probably deliberately) joined groups where there were non-French-speakers, such that speaking French would exclude people. At times, learning French can feel like a battle against the French, but on the plus side, that makes it all the more rewarding when I do make progress or manage to have a good conversation. And of course I'm grateful for the handful of "exceptions to the rule" who I've met over the past couple of years, who have been extremely open and have helped me massively. As well as Italy, I'll also be visiting Greece later in the year. For that, I'd like to learn a bit of Greek - not only for the touristy stuff, but also because half of my family is from there yet I've never learned anything beyond a few simple words. I don't have big ambitions at all: it's a difficult language, I'll only be there for a few days, and I still want to keep going full-steam on French and Italian, although I don't mind putting the former on the back-burner for a few weeks. But even if I could spend a bit of time learning some basic stuff like the alphabet, pronunciation, and simple vocabulary and structure, I'm sure it would enhance my trip a lot and give me at least some idea of what's happening around me. So nearer the trip I'll try and set aside a bit of time and get a hold of Michel Thomas and a phrasebook or something. So that's my next three months all planned I suppose, at least vaguely! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4499 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 94 of 160 30 July 2013 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi garyb, I just wanted to post a quick note to say that I really enjoy reading your log,
and that I admire you putting yourself out there repeatedly with all these language meetups. Good luck with your language learning! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 95 of 160 01 August 2013 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks Hekje. Yeah, I enjoy the meetups; they can be hit or miss, but at the least you get to meet some interesting people and have some good conversations, and at best, all that in the target language. As much as I sometimes complain about the difficulty of finding speaking opportunities, I'm actually pretty lucky to live in a city where things like that exist!
I did more of that last night. An excellent French meetup, unusually filled with native speakers and advanced learners. Then there was the Couchsurfing meet, which is in a different bar each week, and happened to be very near the French meetup this week so I went there afterwards. Lots of Italians! However, the atmosphere seemed quite unfriendly this time, and I think it was in large part due to the ambience of the bar, which was a modern and soulless open space with unfriendly staff. Other people said similar things. I was also a bit tired, mentally as well as physically after all the French, so socialising was difficult. Could've been much better but it was still useful! July's over now, so I should assess the French pronunciation mini-mission. Although the main idea was to work on prosody, I think the most noticeable improvement has been in the individual sounds: I seem to be getting the slightly awkward things like vowels and non-aspirated Ps and Cs wrong less and less often. I'd say that my rhythm is good (although I don't think it was really much of a problem anyway) but intonation and voice still need more work. So I'll keep going for the moment. Beyond pronunciation, I'd say my spoken ability has been a bit more consistent in the last few weeks, but I still think a few conversations in a few weeks is far too short a time period to draw any real conclusions from. Main conclusion is as I expected: it's nothing miraculous, but it's useful. I'm keen to start doing similar work for Italian, although probably just once or twice a week. I've started booking my travel now. I'll be in Greece for a few days at the end of October, then Italy for almost two weeks, starting at Rome then probably going to Florence, Bologna and Milan. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 96 of 160 05 August 2013 at 11:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Another weekend with lots of Italian, including some nice challenging group conversations in a noisy area. I've probably said before: for these situations, the most important thing is to just pay attention all the time. Which can be difficult when there's lots of noise, people, and other distractions - it's too easy to tune out for a few seconds and completely lose track of the conversation. Also, to again state the obvious, some people are easier to understand than others; I was with a couple from the North who are easy to understand, and a guy from the South who I had more difficulty with. I also had an English/Italian Skype conversation yesterday evening, and a French one on Saturday.
So I've spoken Italian almost every day in the last week. I'm starting to see more ups and downs now: at times I can easily say several sentences completely fluently, and at other times I struggle with basic stuff, quite like in French. I've been a bit tired recently; I think yet another burn-out is coming. I've been making a ton of effort with music, social life, travel planning, and languages, and I've also started going to the gym regularly again and been trying to fix my sleep, which seems to be getting worse before it gets better. All that is most likely contributing to the ups and downs. Hopefully I'll get some chance to chill out soon! Films: Fantozzi contro tutti and De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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