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Expug’s All at On(c)e Log - TAC14 | ||
Tags: Papiamento | Estonian | Georgian | Native Materials | Norwegian | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Mandarin | Russian | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 145 of 415 28 February 2014 at 8:27pm | IP Logged |
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Auf jeden Regen folgt Sonnenschein. Or in Portuguese "Depois da tempestade vem a
bonança". @Hekje, thank you team mate. I think I'm disappointed at most with the Georgian subtitles not working/not being decoded. I was really counting on that to boost my learning. I think my Norwegian will find its way back eventually. So, today's Georgian class went much better. At first, because we decided to stick to English. The sound quality is still not good but at least I can understand the English. We also started writing down more often, and that's ok. We decided to work on sentences: I come up with sentences that would call for specific troublesome idiomatic or grammatical issues and I ask the Georgian partner to translate them, then we discuss. The mere fact he is trying to explain something in English also represents a good exercise for his English. I may even save parts of the conversation for further studies. As a whole, I'm happy that I'm usually coming up with close translations for the rather complex, subordinate clauses I give a try on. It would be terrific if I found another Skype contact for daily conversation. Speaking of phrases, I'm working systematically on Mandarinebi's ones. I have to type them down, but that's still pretty effective. It starts as a war movie, so sentences are not long, and they seem to just fit my needs for now. Call it intensive watching! I pause and translate. Sometimes it's hard to see the subtitles in white but I'm finally following the texts for a Georgian film in a consistent way. Too bad this may be the last for a long while, but that's life. It just happened today when I noticed the translation for Paulo Coelho's book got a bit loose and with longer sentences which I can't always map up. I will monitor it next time. If sentences keep at low transparency I'll have to scrutinize sentences. The fact is, I can't waste either of these invaluable resources for Georgian (film and book). When the resources are scarce, you have to use them intensively - this I keeping telling myself. Norwegian was cool again. I was thinking it would be a good idea to consistenly try to write paragraphs and dialogues in Norwegian and in German, so that I can tell the languages apart in my head. This is for when I manage to add active skills to my routine, though. Who knows? A lot of repetitive tasks such as 1 Anki deck and Duolingo will be gone before April. I forgot to mention yesterday how much I enjoy the film Le Père Noël est une ordure. Yesterday I wasn't simply learning languages. I burst out laughing in the middle of the room. It's a foreign language and yet it sounds so close humor to me. I got hardcoded subtitles, which is not good for my studies, but they are abridged and I manage to get the full spoken sentence likewise. La pratique de l'Allemand's lessons were a bit more boring today, but I think I still can take it. It was almost 4 lessons in a row, because the review came right after lesson 6, but it wasn't numbered. Lesson 7 comes with a long dialogue as a normal lesson. I'm in search for new textbooks for Russian and Chinese. I don't know if I can already take an intermediate Russian textbook. In the case of Chinese, I have a few options and I'd be glad to learn some business - which reminds me there's this German Business course at DW I can't miss. I've asked about the materials at the team threads. Edited by Expugnator on 28 February 2014 at 9:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 146 of 415 06 March 2014 at 11:12pm | IP Logged |
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So, Carnival is over and I'm back to the routine. I was away from partying but still
got to travel and so I haven't been studying normally for the past 3 days. I went to Gramado, a town with German and Italian colonization. It was a really nice trip and I may write about it at Team Exploradores' thread. I did a little Memrise and even less Duolingo and I spent a few hours today cleaning up the forum's 200+ notification emails. Serpent, was it you who said things would be much calmer after January? I don't regret it, on the contrary =D At a bookstore there I found a 2nd hand book von Otto Erich Hartlebens - Ausgewählte Werke Teil II - Prosa. I flipped through it and it seems like easy German! The stories seem simple, short, easy to understand. I didn't buy it because it would serve more as an allergy trigger. I am going to look for ebooks for his works, but I'm just wondering if the language there wouldn't be a bit dated. I finished the Russian film Связь, and with this my short incursion into Russian native materials. There's still a lot to progress at the textbook stage. Won't add any other films by now. My next attempt will be at the reading side, with translation, naturally. Not much new on Georgian. I'm reading the subtitles from Mandarinebi intensively, and that's what I need. Other languages are just going with the flow, and maybe that means I need some changes in the schedule for adding up more active tasks, for example: A symptom of my progress in a language is when I start to mentally translate lyrics of Brazilian lame songs into them. So, I guess I'm doing this for Norwegian and German as a way to both practice each and split them into my mind. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4153 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 147 of 415 07 March 2014 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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If there was ever a perfectly valid reason not to study, it is the Brazilian carnival!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 148 of 415 07 March 2014 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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I hope that will boost my Georgian understanding. I wish I had more Georgian subtitles
to play with, but no sign, apart from those with bad encoding I can't find the fonts for. Speaking of subtitles, I might work with Ted. The problem is how to overcome the audio/video block. I could download the official app but I can't do this at my former device. So, I found that other app that claims to bring up 2 subtitles at a time. It's cheap so if it's the only option available I may buy it. I will test the official app soon, though. Again on videos...I am currently at lesson 50 of Travel in Chinese. It's quite appropriate, but there's that issue with the video that makes me miss the explanations (while I do have access to the - almost always - full dialogue and notes at the first part I find on YT). So, today I realized the video is back at CCTV site, at least from lesson 50 on. The problem is - the player is totally disabled! I can only play and then click to stop. No volume option, no jumping option. That means I can't jump to parts 2 or 3 and download the other parts either. So, I'll keep working with only the first part of the video as I have been doing so far. I'll make sure next series will be fully available on YT or to be downloaded at the site. I've been talking mostly of technical issues. When I started my routine I couldn't imagine there would be so many technical issues and that I'd have to spend that much work on (sometimes partial) workarounds. That is part of a learner's routine that can't be neglected. Another important issue is organizing materials beforehand. I may be missing some interesting Russian or Chinese stuff because my folders and bookmarks aren't that much organized. While it is terrible to spend so much time searching and organizing material to never study - and I won't fall in that trap I had been standing for years again - a compromise should be found so that you don't miss the resources that work the best for you. I resumed Duolingo. Really want to finish it in March. May replace it with my first native German resource, even though I will still be working on Assimil. It will probably be a translated book with English original. Well, officially the first one, but technically not, as I've used one textbook and one grammar in German for Georgian. Now I'm going to use a third one, Kurze Grammatik der Georgischen Sprache. I can't wait to start it, so I can check my progress for both languages and compare it with the last time I browsed it, over a year ago. I hope the German text is clear and the Georgian concepts are familiar by now. Since I had to pick up the Russian book at the post office, I got extra dead time on the bus. After doing all the possible SRS and native reading-only tasks, I decided to extensively read a few pages from the Norwegian Beatles in advance. I liked the result so far. I could follow the story with no problem, and actually not stopping to look words up helped me figure out some more syntactically complex periods i'd normally have a hard time with. I read for about 3 pages (one track at one tape), then I resumed listening/reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5057 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 149 of 415 07 March 2014 at 10:44pm | IP Logged |
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Expug, all I can say is- Wow! You keep making it happen, even through adversity. O que não nos mata, nos fortalece.
I don't know if you are aware but you can download an .srt file of subtitles for many US television series and movies. These files are very small, about 30-50kb. If you have the DVD or are watching the video in the VLC media player, you can drag and drop the srt file and get subs, though you'll have to experiment to find one that matches the time codes. Another alternative is to open the file in another device and read along as you watch and listen or minimize the text file and the video and scroll through as you watch the video. You don't even need to watch the video at all. You can download the English or Portuguese subs and make your own bilingual text with the Georgian subs. Here's a link to opensubtitles.org list of Georgian subtitles. The advantage is that the language is conversational and the only cost is time. Boa sorte! Edited by iguanamon on 08 March 2014 at 2:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 150 of 415 08 March 2014 at 11:03am | IP Logged |
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Due to a mispaste yesterday, I lost half of my post, including the part where I replied
to renaissancemedi about the Carnival. It is an important extended holiday (5 days) even for those who won't party. This year I decided to travel and didn't party - well, except for some minutes when a band with old people partying the Carnival passed through the street where I was, it was really fun, they dressed with old Carnival clothes and playing old songs. I went to Gramado, a town in Southern Brazil that was colonized by Germans and Italians. I plan to write about it for Team Exploradores. It really made me feel going to Germany, now that I improved the language. So, I am willing to bring more consistency to my Russian studies, therefore I decided to resume Russianpod. I couldn't do so yesyerday, due to the audio/video block (and that's when the technical issues narration started). I have to resume at Beginner's Season 2 lesson 14. Then there's Upper Beginner, Lower Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, Advanced Audioblog 1, 2 and 3. You see there's enough to play around for a long time. And it's another resource I can play on the background, for busier times. I got the Russian book which is a translation of a Brazilian one. Will start it probably next month. I have to finish the previous one in the series, which I'm reading in Portuguese. Reading a translation from Portuguese is being quite effective for Georgian, Paulo Coelho's book. I'm starting to anticipate sentences, read longer in Georgian before gazing at the original. I have another book from Paulo Coelho already. At first I wouldn't use it because I couldn't find the Brazilian original, only English and Spanish but now I don't really care, reading from him is working fine. I'm also enjoying watching the film Mandarinebi with Georgian subtitles. I am noticing how effective it is to work with them, and how my Georgian could be better now. This film is ideal for that: a war context, people talking to unknown others with short sentences and periods, mostly very common and useful sentences. It's really worth working on the subs intensively. Pity that yday I got this issue with both the subtitles and the audio desyncing from the video, so I had 3 instances to follow. By the end of my daily 10-min excerpt, I was beginning to get used to the delay, but it's still regretful, considering the situation with my Georgian resources. It's at YT, so there's not much I can do to remedy this. There's another post there but it's the film with subtitles in Estonian, I bet for the Russian dialogues, so that's totally missing the point. @iguanamon: those subtitles at OS are exactly the ones I can't decode, can't find the proper font either. That is, don't even know if that's an encoding or a font issue or both. I sent them to a Georgian but he couldn't either. That's frustrating, as I couldn't find other subtitles elsewhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 151 of 415 10 March 2014 at 10:26pm | IP Logged |
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So, the weekend. I only did a little Memrise and Duolingo. It was important to keep
with the Duolingo, as current chapters are bigger. I need to find an attitude of doing Memrise and Duolingo on dead times on weekends, not restricting myself to one chapter a day. That way, I anticipate some most troublesome excerpts. I'm mostly neglecting Anki, as the only two remaining decks are over 20k and so it won't make much difference if I skip the weekend. I may as well just delete the app all for once and do stuff only at Memrise. There was a Russian meeting in town on Saturday, but I couldn't make it. I had clases that would end 1h30 after the meeting had started and it started raining before the class was over. I also had a birthday party to go and it started raining. Anyway, I hope I can make it next time - that is, I hope there is a 2nd time. I don't know any of the organizers and I can't really speak any Russian. Don't know, Russian is still the language I'm the least motivated for those extra activities. Maybe I can get more practice at our TAC team's meetings. We had one this weekend and it was nice to talk to Josquin and YnEoS. We still didn't get to actually having a conversation in Russian, but it looked promising, and I hope there's more people next time! One good news by the end of the weekend: I got the app TEDiSubs which allows me to play TED talks with two subtitles at once. I checked it early in the morning today here and it works, despite the block. That means I'll be able to do the same I was doing with Mandarinebi: watch videos in other languages (in this case, English) while focusing on the Georgian subtitles, and now much better, with subtitles in English, too. That's as close as I can get for L/R in Georgian, and I'm happy about that! I may start it once Mandarinebi is over. At Georgian: a strucutural grammar, I decided to skip the long lists of verbs by thematic suffix (Aronson's Present-Future Stem Formant). I think such lists are just for reference, and I'll surely keep this in mind when I come across tricky verbs, as they are very detailed. Hewitt's grammar focuses more on morphology and I want to know more about usage, which I am going to read at further works. I put a little more effort at 大耳朵图图. I'm zooming in YT videos for this one and for Mandarinebi. I should have done it before, since the larger video size still isn't enough for reading subtitles in a different script and I can't play it fullscreen for adequacy reasons. Thus, I understood more from 图图 thanks to the subtitles but also following close the audio. Today Tutu asked his dad about 幸福 (happiness), he wanted his dad to give him some, he thought one could eat it. These episodes are really nice, and I wish I could get several at once. Maybe I should try youku and d/l. I'm more and more happy about French comedies, can't get enough. Still watching Le père Noël est une ordure, which ranks really high and, in terms of making me laugh, it's simply the highest. Today I found one more gem granted by that multilingual learning: at about 57 minutes, when the Père-Noël dressed thug gets back to his lair, one can hear the soundtrack that sounds exactly like 'Get Lucky', from Daft Punk!! A coincidence??! Knowing how electronic music works, I'd say probably not...The film is from 1982, just for the record. So, I resumed Russianpod and I'm happy about it. I want to keep working on further levels, I hope this helps me get used to the sound of Russian as well as with the colloquial language. Wish I could progress faster, but the lessons are longm both for reading and for listening to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 152 of 415 11 March 2014 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
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I haven't started Estonian yet (probably April), but got ammo. I've just bought 'Am I
small? Kas ma olen väike?' which is is at an offer for just 0.86 US$ kindle versions (the paperback costs over 9US$. It is really short, but at this price it will be motivating to say I've read a book in Estonian. Meanhwile, I've put on hold my consumption dreams such as Spoken World Croatian for another month. It's unfortunate that I have more technical than pedagogical issues to report. I did find the complete Tutu season at Youku, but can't save the videos: they are split into parts, and I just didn't get them to combine properly. I'm really disappointed again because I was expecting this cartoon would boost my comprehension, and now all I have is excerpts at YT - the same issue as with Travel in Chinese: the person only manage to transfer the first flv/mp4 excerpt that comprises the full video. Today was the highest comprehension day at my Tutu's excerpt but I saw it end abruptly at the highest moment of fun. I could decide to watch it at home, but I don't want to assign another task to home. I'm usually tired and busy there. At 'Travel in Chinese', I couldn't even find the short, 3 min 1out-of-3 excerpt of today's lesson, but I had a nice time with the text alone. Ty Russian is close to an end; it will take me the end of the month to be done with Georgian: a structural reference grammar, A Georgian Reader, Beatles, Duolingo German and La pratique de l'allemand. With so many books ending simultaneously, I hope I will manage to replace them with better materials and that April will be a month of accomplishments. It was a good day overall for Georgian. I managed to find another copy of Mandarinebi which is properly synced, though much smaller. We can't have everything. The dialogues are being really useful. I sense I could follow the story without translating the sentences I don't know, but I'd still have to pause nevertheless. I'm getting a better overall comprehension of A Georgian Reader's text, not to mention Paulo Coelho's book. I believe somewhere this year such Georgian translations will become transparent without me noticing. I don't want high expectations, though. This morning I watched the Papiamento video paying attention to it, and understood nearly everything. It's nice to realize you can actually understand a foreign language. The novel I'm reading is also coming to an end and I barely use the dictionary. For a moment I thought of playing the audiobook first when reading the Norwegian book 'Beatles', but gave up in the middle. Today was a busier day and I was glad I have the Russianpod to play in the background now as well as the Chinesepod, the French film and my daily English TV series dosis, but this may not be enough. I also need more extensive reading resources or any other reading that doesn't require an internet connection. I'm going to have less typical days at which it will be harder to stick to the schedule, namely at those activities that require two devices, internet connection, online dictionary, audio etc., so I better get hold of more activities for some moments that may suddenly turn into 'hidden' ones. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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