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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 17 of 160 14 January 2013 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Italiano (+ Español)
Another weekend with lots of Italian. Seems that Italian is my weekend language and French is my weekday language. I watched a film, Il mostro, a funny but strange comedy, starts off the former and becomes more and more the latter. The version we found had Spanish subtitles, which was interesting as it was hard to not read them while listening to the Italian. It was very reassuring - I knew that Spanish and Italian were similar, but I hadn't realised just how much so. It seems that the biggest differences are in the basics: pronouns, prepositions, common verbs and expressions. I was surprised by how many nouns and verb forms are almost identical or at least follow a relatively predictable pattern. The gap between Italian and Spanish seems significantly smaller than that between French and Italian. I get the impression that Spanish will be quite difficult at first just because there's a ton of pronouns and verb forms to learn. The verbs are, from what I've heard, more complicated and irregular than in French or even Italian; in particular, the simple past is far more commonly used, so knowing it is essential rather than a nice extra, and the subjunctive is supposedly a bit of a nightmare unlike in French where it's fairly easy and in Italian where it's a bit more awkward but becomes simple enough with practice. Fortunately that basic stuff is exactly what Michel Thomas focuses on. After all these initial speed-bumps, I imagine intermediate level should be fairly plain-sailing especially once I get the hang of all the "mappings" from French and Italian (-tion/-zione/-ción, -té/-tà/dad, etc.), although still time-consuming of course. Anyway I'm saying all this about Spanish because it's now pretty much confirmed that I'm going to Madrid for a long weekend next month. I'm going to do quite the same as I did for Italian a couple of years ago: learn some basics for the trip, then pick it up seriously at a later point when doing so is more realistic. I don't expect to be able to speak with much proficiency, although as I've said I should be able to get by very inelegantly, but my comprehension should be pretty decent between knowing some basics and all the similarities to Italian. Italian Super Challenge Films: 46 done, 54 to go. Conversation hours: 85 done, 15 to go. Français Last week I got stuck into Grammaire Progressive, and I've done the first few lessons now. Like Assimil it seems to be split into lots of small lessons so you can work through one per day in 15 to 30 minutes. So far it seems to be exactly the book I was looking for to help with my goal of polishing and cleaning up my French. It's confirmed things I knew intuitively, pointed out things that I had already learnt but forgotten about, taught me new things, and it's keeping Anki well-fed with example sentences. As a bonus, many of the lessons have questions at the end which make interesting topics for writing or self-talk. 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 18 of 160 14 January 2013 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can confirm that this is a pleasant and useful grammar book, and the lesson size is very convenient. It would be entirely feasible to do a lesson a day for two and half months or so. And it also makes a great reference book—if I have a question, I can flip it open to the appropriate section, read the left-hand page for an explanation of the rule, and then do the exercises on the right-hand page. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fezmond Groupie Korea, South Joined 4722 days ago 72 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 19 of 160 14 January 2013 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What level is the Grammaire Progressive? I need a grammar book to help supplement my
Assimil (plus I like grammar books too) but nothing too advanced...baby steps and all that. 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 20 of 160 14 January 2013 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
I believe there are four versions. From most basic to most advanced: débutant, intermédiare, avancé, perfectionnement. I have perfectionnement. It seems to mainly focus on the small and fiddly details that even advanced learners often get wrong, like in exactly which situation you use each preposition. The sort of errors that generally won't result in misunderstandings but will make your French sound not quite right. As an example, I often used to miss out the "à" in sentences like "j'habite à 5 minutes de chez lui" - it's the sort of mistake that could probably go uncorrected for years, since it isn't likely to cause any misunderstanding. So it's not advanced in terms of unusual language, but more in terms of polishing up the basics and making your usage more precise as opposed to learning the basic grammar. I'd guess that the less advanced titles focus more on things like verb conjugations and sentence structure, but I've never looked at them in much detail so I don't know. 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 21 of 160 16 January 2013 at 11:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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So it turns out I'm not going to Madrid after all, at least not next month. Bit of a disappointment as I was quite excited, but I suppose at least it means I can stick to my original plan of staying completely focused on French and Italian for the coming months. On the subject of Spanish however, I did read a bit about pronunciation in order to get a better idea of what's to come: Wikipedia Spanish Phonology (which is surprisingly detailed and useful, unlike the ones for French and Italian) and the thread on the pronunciation of b/v.
I've mostly come to the conclusion that all the people who say that "Spanish pronunciation is easy" and "it's spoken exactly as it's written" are, well, full of shit. The vowels, for example, are certainly simpler than in French, but there's a lot of subtle details in how consonants are pronounced in certain situations. I suppose that what these people really mean is that you can get away with a very "simplified" pronunciation and still be understood just fine, which isn't really the case for French. I've heard a few people basically speak Spanish as if it were Scottish English, and while they'll sure as hell never pass for native speakers, Spanish people do understand them. Much of my motivation for working so much on French pronunciation was just so people would actually understand me all the time; if this hadn't been the case then the idea probably wouldn't have even crossed my mind and I'd still be speaking it with English sounds and intonation. Français I spoke quite a lot of French on Monday night, and hope to do so again tonight. I was definitely on form and I was noticing the things I've learnt so far from Grammaire Progressive are already integrating themselves into my speech, which is surprisingly quick. I suppose that's because it's teaching me to say things that I was already saying, but more correctly and precisely, as opposed to teaching me brand new concepts. Italiano I recently received a late Christmas present: a copy of the Italian translation of Fight Club. Despite having been studying Italian for over a year now, I admit that I've yet to actually read a book, or anything longer than a newspaper article or Assimil lesson for that matter. So I guess that'll be my first! I'm working through Perfectionnement Italien slowly as always, but I only have three lessons to go now. The last lessons are all on literature, so I haven't been going through them in the same amount of detail as the more "useful" conversational lessons. I really enjoyed the extract from La Coscienza di Zeno and I plan to read it all at some point, but none of the others so far have exactly jumped out at me at all and much of the language in them seemed too difficult, literary, and often non-standard. It's also been a very long time since I read anything longer than a news article in French, although I did work through a few books back in my beginner/intermediate days. I'm still not sure how useful reading is for someone whose main goal is spoken proficiency, so I just see it as a nice optional extra to the essentials of listening, conversing, and studying. I think it could benefit me and help me expand my knowledge a bit and give me more exposure to different parts of the languages, and perhaps all that reading is part of why my French knowledge, at least passive, is so broad. Also, all the talk of bandes dessinées from Emk et al is tempting me; I tried a few of the online BDs a while ago and never got into them, but some of the paper ones look very appealing. Also, I wonder if there are any books similar to Grammaire Progressive for Italian. There are obviously plenty of grammar books aimed at beginners, but I don't know of any aimed at helping more advanced learners get the details right. It would probably be useful to me a few months from now, perhaps for once I've finished the Super Challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4461 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 22 of 160 16 January 2013 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
Haha, that must sound interesting. I've heard plenty of Spanish spoken with a Texan or other American accent, but none with a Scottish one. :-)
That is also a big reason I do lots of pronunciation work. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Quique Diglot Senior Member Spain cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4478 days ago 183 posts - 313 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, German | Message 23 of 160 16 January 2013 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
I guess I'm not working mine enough :( I noticed that the same publisher of Grammaire progressive has some other series: Phonétique progressive du français (Débutant, Intermediaire, and Avancé), Vocabulaire progressif du français (Débutant, Intermediaire, Avancé, and Affaires), Conjugaison Progressive, Littérature progressive , etc. Has anyone used their phonetics books (or any of the others)? 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 24 of 160 17 January 2013 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe. Some lucky people seem to be able to pick up a good pronunciation just from listening and repeating, and so don't need to do much focused pronunciation work. They're the sort who make the claims that "Pimsleur/listening/shadowing is good for learning pronunciation" - because for them it's enough. Some, like myself, simply can't, and have to study and practise it in detail. And of course plenty people are in between: they pick up a decent pronunciation without really trying but could benefit a lot from some work on certain aspects of it, for example certain sounds, rhythm, intonation...
Interesting, I didn't know they did phonetics books, that's another thing I wish I had known about earlier! I'm also curious as to whether anyone's used them. The last two French meetups went pretty well, it seems like I'm on another "up" / burst of progress and finally starting to get fluent. Which is exciting, but I do say just "starting" - I still hesitate and pause too much, and of course there's the times when I just can't say something, although those are becoming less common. Compared to even a few months ago, I'm expressing myself more easily, more accurately, and more elegantly. I feel like all that passive knowledge is finally coming into my reach when I'm speaking, even if it sometimes takes a few seconds to find what I'm looking for; I credit my "more active" listening and reading and the corresponding Anki use in the last six months or so for that. I also felt that my pronunciation was a bit less "all over the place" than in recent months, although I can't testify to its accuracy. The fluidity part should just improve with practice, so I need to keep up my meetup attendance and self-talk. It's definitely one thing I notice with the people who've lived in France: they certainly have a very enviable fluidity and lack of hesitation when they speak, even if they lack slightly or are out of practice in other areas of proficiency. I'm feeling quite optimistic about this year so far. Of course I know by now that I'm not going to keep progressing quickly and there'll be plenty more of the usual plateaus and backwards progress to come, but I think that being quite fluent and proficient by the end of the year isn't completely unrealistic, especially now that my learning methods seem to be more efficient than ever. Although after writing all this, I'm probably going to go into my next meetup and find myself no longer able to put a sentence together. Edited by garyb on 17 January 2013 at 2:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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