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Gary’s TAC 2014: Spanish, Italian, French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4808 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 73 of 138 28 May 2014 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the updates. Your Italian is beautiful, even though I don't understand all
the details. Welcome back among the Spanish active learners, I am sure you'll catch up soon. I wonder: Do you find Destinos worth the time? I would guess switching to real tv series would be easy for you, given the Italian and French background, so what are the advantages? I considered Destinos in past and wonder whether they would be worth reconsidering. Thanks for the note concerning the French. However, why did they go to the international meetup anyways, if they hadn't thought there would be any non native speaking the language? Thanks for the hope that it isn't so hard to convince people when you actually tell them. It has worked for me in past but not always. There have been people who heard me speaking French with others in the groups, to whom I told that I had no trouble understanding etc. yet they just said something like "yeah, that is nice" and continued in English :-( Perhaps I just need to become more assertive and follow your example. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 74 of 138 28 May 2014 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the comments Cavesa! Now if only I could speak Italian like I write it, and besides I'm still waiting for suzukaze or one of our other friendly Italian speakers to come and point out all the mistakes :).
As for Destinos: I'm not sure to be honest; at this point I'm just thinking that I've started it so I might as well finish it, and I'm generally of the opinion that there's no such thing as enough repetition of the basics. But maybe I'd get more benefit and enjoyment from real TV, and you're right that with my background it probably wouldn't be too difficult. So I'm afraid I can't really give an answer. If you're not a beginner I'm not sure how worthwhile it is. Regarding the French, I think there are always going to be some people who're willing and helpful from the start, some with whom you just can't win no matter how hard you try, and many who're in between and simply need some convincing. So I think assertiveness can help in a lot of cases, but it's not a cure-all and won't always work. This probably goes for every language - a month or two I even wrote about seeing a non-native but very advanced Spanish speaker have a bad experience - it's just that for French the proportions are a bit less favourable let's say. I'll be the first to say it's a blow to the ego when someone refuses to take you seriously even after you insist and you feel like you've proven yourself, but it's just something that's going to happen and you have to accept. Yes it's an international meetup, but it's still a French-language meetup so chances are they just wanted to meet other French people. Some native speakers go to these meetups because they want a break from expat life and to spend a bit of time with their culture and language, which is fair enough, although I don't see why it should exclude being respectful towards non-native speakers who come to practise and improve, especially when they're quite capable of keeping up with the conversation. For most of the night there was the all-too-familiar dynamic of all the French people in one conversation at one side of the table and all the learners talking amongst themselves at the other; I just managed to get a prime seat in the middle a bit later on after someone else left. It's also worth noting the different types of meetups, since you mentioned the cases when they refuse to even speak French with you. The one I was at was one where everyone is supposed to speak French, so if someone's speaking English to you then you can quite rightly accuse them of being out of line, but the "exchange" or more free-form ones can be trickier and often you have to make it quite clear that you're there because you want to practise French (and you'll probably want to say that in French to show that you mean it). And normal social situations with French people as opposed to language meetups are of course a whole different kettle of fish again, and at those you're often going to have a hard time unless either your French is immaculate or their English level is extremely low. Even in France. Edited by garyb on 28 May 2014 at 4:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 75 of 138 02 June 2014 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Some bits and pieces of Italian speaking at the weekend, and I watched a couple of films. Some old and some new: a classic, Roma città aperta, and a modern comedy, Tutta la vita davanti, which was better than I had expected and a bit close to home as quite a few of my Italian friends work in a call centre.
Lesson 97 of Spanish Assimil this morning. The active wave is getting more difficult and less useful as the later dialogues are very idiomatic and hard to translate directly. Now that I'm back into the rhythm and almost done with the book I'm really starting to feel like checking out some films or TV. I'm not sure where to start; the selection is a bit overwhelming, especially when you consider Latin America as well, although Spanish material is my preference for now. Recommendations are welcome, and I'll check out the super challenge threads/wiki and maybe ask some friends. Someone emailed me wanting to meet up for a French exchange, and I'm hardly going to say no. I'll see how that goes; it would beat going to meetups. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 76 of 138 04 June 2014 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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More on pronunciation:
Another thing I've struggled with is the "next step", after the individual sounds and the prosody of short phrases as per chorusing, is putting it all together into longer sentences. Chorusing etc. has helped with saying a few words, but saying a few sentences in a smooth way is something else that seems to need its own practice. An idea came to mind when I was in Bologna and I went to an exhibition that was happening at the university, at which a young woman was explaining the exhibits. After hearing her speak for around twenty minutes, I found that the melody of her accent had really gotten stuck in my head in much the same way as that of a catchy song does, and I could quite easily imitate it for a certain period afterwards, both saying sentences she had said and making up others. I've tried to duplicate this effect a few times by watching videos in which one person speaks for a while, such as the Italian videos on Luca Lampariello's Youtube channel, and also with interviews in which the interviewee talks a lot and you hear different intonations for questions, statements, and exclamations. Then I talk afterwards, either reading from a page or spontaneous self-talk style. And it seems to work pretty well! I did it last night and while I certainly wasn't speaking perfectly, to be honest if I could always speak like that then I'd be extremely happy. It was night and day compared to the Italian meetup I went to a couple of days ago where I was speaking terribly. As for all pronunciation work, its effect only lasts a short time afterwards before the old habits creep in again, but once again I'm hoping that frequent practice can make the improvements eventually stick. I'm wondering if shadowing would help out here as well. Chorusing to build up the individual pieces of the puzzle, then shadowing to put them together? I might give it a try with similar materials. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 77 of 138 11 June 2014 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Italian: For once I'm actually managing to stick to the daily speaking practice. I've spent plenty time with Italian friends, and on days that I haven't I've been able to fit in at least a bit of reading aloud, self talk, etc. I like Tastyonions's idea from a few posts ago of doing a bit of speaking aloud every day just to keep your pronunciation "fresh". In the last week or so my accent and fluidity seem much better, even despite tiredness, so I'm hoping to keep it up. I feel like I'm slowly building up a mental model of how to pronounce a given phrase and it's getting a bit more complete. I'll try to keep it up for a few months and see where it gets me.
Spanish: I finished the Assimil passive wave last week, I have less than two weeks' worth of active lessons to go, and I'm about 10 episodes away from the end of Destinos... so the "beginner phase" is almost over. It's taken me twice as long I had hoped, but that's not a bad thing considering what I've said about trying to relax more and do less and of course my focus on Italian. The recent nice weather and time spent with Spanish friends is definitely motivating me to keep going. I've not attempted any conversations recently, and while I'm not in a rush, I'll need to reactivate the little active skills I had a few months ago sooner or later. I have added some radio and podcasts back into the mix since at this point I feel like I need some exposure to reinforce everything I've learnt. There's a weekly Spanish meetup a few minutes from where I live so I'll go there sometime soon, maybe once I've caught up on sleep a bit. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| suzukaze Triglot Senior Member Italy bit.ly/1bGm459 Joined 4401 days ago 186 posts - 254 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, Spanish Studies: German, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 78 of 138 12 June 2014 at 7:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Some northern accents are quite clean in terms of intonation, pronunciation, and phonetics in general so they are a good start if you want to speak with a neutral accent, which I think is the best thing to do before trying to speak with regional accents.
I think one of the reasons we do that is because people tend to be monolingual or have only a basic knowledge of English, even in jobs were a good command of the English language should be compulsory. Granted, that's doesn't happen everywhere, if for example you work in tourist area it's more likely that your employee will require a high proficiency level.
If you'd like to practice with me, let me know :) I'm quite busy, but my schedule is pretty flexible. When I had to work on my English accent I found that 1:1 speaking sessions and movies were the best ways to make progress. I went to language meet-ups when I was abroad, but noticed that no one was paying much attention to my accent compared to other linguistic aspects, such as sentence structure or vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 79 of 138 12 June 2014 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
My experience is similar, and I suppose it's partly due to the general attitude/ignorance towards accent: people tend to think that it's something that one either can't change or that comes naturally over time, as opposed to something that one can work on. The comments I do get on my accent tend to be too vague and mixed to be useful. There were these people who said my accent sounded Northern but others have said or implied that it's very obviously foreign, so I never know what to believe. Plus most people aren't familiar with phonetics etc. so they can't put into words what makes an accent sound a certain way and how to change it, while with grammar or vocabulary for example it's usually quite easy to point out and correct habitual mistakes. Anyway I'd be happy to practise with you; I'm also busy but can often fit things in on evenings/weekends. Feel free to add me on Skype. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5006 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 80 of 138 19 June 2014 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I missed French meetup last night; it's definitely moved from a priority to a "I'll do it if I've got nothing better on" thing. I instead went out with Italian and Spanish friends. I've been speaking Italian with Italians almost every day recently, and I've managed to do at least a few minutes of pronunciation work most days. I'm seeing a bit more consistency in accent and fluidity but there are still of course ups and downs.
I'm not normally a big football follower, but the World Cup is a great excuse to go out and drink with international friends. The atmosphere watching the Italy/England match last Saturday was incredible. There were decidedly more Italians than English people at the bar we were at, and of course the Scottish tradition is to support whichever team is playing against England, so the majority were definitely rooting for Italy. And I watched a Chilean band play a few songs (sung in Spanish of course) last night who were full of energy, no doubt inspired by their country's success an hour previously. My Spanish friends weren't quite as happy though... Anyway the usual stuff I'm doing/reading/watching: Finished reading Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo and re-watched the film. The book is decidedly better and much more deep, but the film does capture its atmosphere to some extent. Also finished Il momento è delicato, which was definitely a fun and strange read. A particular highlight was the second last story about a plastic surgeon in Rome, which was co-written with another author. I can just imagine the two of them sitting drinking some beers and coming up with some of the ridiculous plot ideas and hilarious culturally-linked metaphors together. Sentences like "Il lungotevere era intasato come lo scolo di un cesso della stazione Tiburtina " only make sense if you've visited Rome. I've started reading Il giorno in più by Fabio Volo although I'm a bit sceptical after watching this episode of The Pills making fun of the author's work. Between recommendations from friends and a couple of threads over on Polydog I've got a big list of Spanish films and series to check out. But of course no time to watch them. And four more active Assimil lessons so I should be done by next week. It's been a good course but I won't miss it, and I've currently no intention of doing the advanced one. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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