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Inhaling Belgium | ||
Tags: Belgium | Super Challenge | Living abroad | Dutch | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4015 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 57 of 116 01 January 2014 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Merci pour tes mots gentils, agantik!
Happy New Year! I am incredibly happy: Yesterday I finished Inferno! Still within the original time frame! I still can't believe I made it! So, what made this undoable task feasible in the end? I think there were three major factors helping me finish this book more easily: 1) I am having some problems with my knee these days, which killed all my plans for the Christmas break and forced me to stay on my couch, cooling my knee. Being unpleasant in general, it definitely helped me to improve my French :-) 2) The book finally became the page turner I had hoped for! At times, I found it quite boring. Robert Langdon really is a know-it-all. I mean, it's what makes the books so successful, we love him for being that way, but this time I really was annoyed. It felt like he was describing the architecture of a Florentine building in three pages, then would enter the building within half a page, only to continue to babble about the architectural features of its interior in detail. Sigh. I am not very much into architecture anyway, and looking up every second word really did not help to enjoy the book. But there was a point where it all changed, and content became more important to me than knowing all the words. I guess that's the point of extensive reading :-) 3) I could see how my vocabulary was improving during digging through the book. After two thirds, I crossed much less unknown words, but many I had looked up before and still remembered. Looking forward to reading the next book! But first, I have to finish some non-language-related projects before I can dig back into language studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4015 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 58 of 116 01 January 2014 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Time for the summary of my achievements in December:
FRENCH 1) Words: 20 new words; total 38.67 % 2) Phrases: - 3) Text book/exercise material pages: - 4) Reading: 295 pages (Inferno), adding up to 2.51 % in total 5) Listening: 1471 minutes, 30.0 % in total [6) Writing: 231 words, 0.32 % in total This was email communication with Belgian authorities due to complications with the registration of my car. Sigh. Still not completed. :-( 7) Conversation: around 2h; 2.92 % ENGLISH 1) Listening: 525; 20.52 % in total In December, I listened to the audiobook "Enigma" by Robert Harris, only finding out afterwards that it was an abridged version of the book. I guess the unabridged book is much better than this version. In addition, I watched a Miss Marple film as well as (again) the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who. 2) Reading: - 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4144 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 60 of 116 14 January 2014 at 7:02am | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting summary! How can you be so precise? You seem to be doing a very good job with everything. By Inferno, you mean the Dan Brown book? I listened to it in English, but it must be fun in french as well. I also love English detective and historical books and films. They make learning so much fun! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4015 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 61 of 116 19 January 2014 at 8:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Salut DamedesLangues and Renaissancemedi, and thanks for visiting my log!
@Damedeslangues: I don't think I am the perfect person to correct you - my grammar skills are not yet that gorgeous.... I would have written "commencer à", but please double-check yourself :-) @renaissancemedi: I totally agree with you that exciting novels make language learning much more fun! "Inferno" was indeed the Dan Brown novel. And it took me more than half a year to complete it....
A bit frightening, isn't it? That's my nerdish side. I have an Excel spreadsheet and love to add all those bits and pieces. Conversation-wise, I think I have to start to guess now - or deal with it otherwise. I fear if I would start to stop the time for any small talk with colleagues, they would learn about my true nature too soon..... January has begun quite...well...bumpy. My knee forced me to slow down with my life and to reconsider my priorities, and three weeks of pain killers have resulted in some fatigue. So my activities have not progressed as much as I liked. French I did my daily Anki drills, including 50 new words per week.
I think I don't need to wait until December to know this is rubbish. I am pretty sure that a C-ish level will require me to know far more than 1000 words more than now. I have therefore increased the word target to 2500 new words, split into 50 new words per week in 2014. Beside that, I did some intense training focused on grammar and conversation exercises, which made my brain melt.... The next new addition to this year's training plan turned out to be quite interesting: I am now (finally) starting to read Wallonian news, which gives me now much more insight and makes me realize how little I understand this little country! Dutch Wow, Dutch! What a mindblowing experience when I let back this beautiful language into my life! I had avoided any exposure to Dutch in the past months - for good reasons. Only after minutes of reading some websites, my brain was flooded with this beautiful language, I started babbling in Dutch and couldn't stop. It seemed to me that all the knowledge was still there, surpressed though, and it felt as if I had woken up Sleeping Beauty. I've had my first conversation in Dutch already, with a poor new colleague who couldn't refuse, and started to read a novel that I had begun for several times, and had given up because it was too difficult - not only because of the language, but also because of its content: De tweeling (Tessa de Loo). This time I want to complete it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4695 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 62 of 116 20 January 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you like detective stories, you should try Georges Simenon. His stories are interesting, and very humanistic, in that the inspector Maigret investigates people more than he investigates clues. Et en plus, Simenon est un vrai Belge. (I couldn't figure out if I should have written "c'est un vrai..." or "il est un vrai...", so I went with the name!)
Welcome to team two! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4015 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 63 of 116 20 January 2014 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Jeffers, thanks for visiting my log! To a great TAC year!
I also consider Maigret as one of the "must haves" for my stay in Belgium. I remember my Dad had one of these books, but I never made it to the end (I must have been a teenager, but still...) So I am a bit frightened to start this too soon. At my current (low) level, I still need either a very easy book or a real page-turner. But I plan to participate in the Super Challenge, and Maigret will definitely become a part of it! Today, I had a great moment....For me, the worst part of the language learning process is to set priorities in vocabulary learning. Which words to choose, and - more important - which not to learn??? I am awful in setting priorities, I want to learn everything. Those who know the TV series "Bones" will also know that the scientists are called squints, and their work is described as squinting. In the French version, they do "fouiner" and thus are called "fouines". When I looked up the meaning of "fouine", it was obvious to me that I would probably never ever need this word in my entire life. Nevertheless I added it to my Anki desk, with a bad feeling, justifying that I would at least need it for watching Bones....Now imagine my joy when a colleague mentioned today that "une fouine a attaqué son chat"! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4695 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 64 of 116 21 January 2014 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's funny about "fouine". Of course I had to look it up. I wonder if it also has colloquial usage for people like the English word? The verb form is translated as "to snoop" by google translate. How are you watching Bones? Do you have French language + subs?
About Maigret, the advantage is that the books are short and have a reputation for being easy. So far I have only read two that are available in CLE simplified editions (marked as A2 I think). But I got a full book from my library and it is only 55 pages, so it feels achievable. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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