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Evilado TAC14 - Fr 2ème(+ Es & Zh)

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Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4668 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 57 of 60
06 November 2014 at 11:16pm | IP Logged 
Ah, the Order of the Phoenix was my favourite in the series.
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evilado
Diglot
Groupie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3765 days ago

64 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 58 of 60
19 November 2014 at 8:56pm | IP Logged 
Spanish About 100 pages into La tía Julia, and it hasn´t grabbed me as much so
far. Lots of jerga and variants of words that I´m not familiar with, but it also has
that alternating chapters style that he does quite well in other books. So far I´ve
only read 2 chapters with Marito y Julia, 2 chapters of radionovela type storylines.
It´s rather long, so I wouldn´t be surprised if I ended up starting something non-
fiction in Spanish before I finish this. The series on Japan was very interesting, but
heavily stacked towards the Meiji restoration through WWII era and much too forgiving,
IMHO. Thinking about starting a series on Mexico or Egypt, but mostly listening to
science podcasts lately.
Mandarin Same, though I was pleasantly surprised to understand all the Chinese
from an episode of Louie that was left untranslated. Really simple stuff, but always
nice to encounter. Did some eavesdropping in a couple restaurants, but otherwise just
staying on top of reviews is a substantial task.
French Not much progress here, just some podcasts and a little bit of Harry
Potter.
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evilado
Diglot
Groupie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3765 days ago

64 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 59 of 60
08 December 2014 at 4:33pm | IP Logged 
I could have sworn that I wrote another update about two week ago, but I don't see it
here.
Spanish Finished La tía Julia and read about 100 pages of La Breve Historia de
Roma I. At times La tía Julia was brilliant, and there were some incredible sentences
and phrases that I can´t imagine would leap of the page in translation. I really like
his writing style and the bizarre world of Pedro Camacho was fascinating, then
repetitive, then fascinating again. The problem was that the main story of Marito and
Julia wasn´t very compelling. Julia seemed to be weirdly dimensionless, and even
Marito doesn´t seem to understand why a divorcee would be interested in an 18 year old
like him, other than to feel young again.
Mandarin Still just memrising, probably not gonna make much progress on this
for the rest of the year.
French Now about 10% through order of the Phoenix, and it´s still mostly in the
setup mode, but thankfully I´ve escaped from Privet Drive. I don´t recall who gave the
recommendation of Podprobleme, a montreal-based poscast on rzoweb, but I now listen to
that and Point de Vue on a regular basis. I really like the relaxed atmosphere and
improfessional tone, all of the france culture podcasts feel a bit stuffy.
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evilado
Diglot
Groupie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3765 days ago

64 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 60 of 60
24 December 2014 at 12:23am | IP Logged 
Spanish Finsihed Breve Historia de Roma I, rather short and not that
interesting to be honest. I forgot what got me all excited about ancient Rome, but it
faded by the time I finished it. I might hold off on nonfiction for a bit, but I just
started on Ensayo Sobre la Ceguera, or Blindess by Jose Saramago. I know he's
Portugese, but I figure the translation is probably closer to the original than the
English one.
Mandarin Memrise and ChineseSkill. Read the great "Our of Mao's Shadow" by
Phillip Pan, and reading about China usually kickstarts my enthusiasm for learning
Chinese. Hoping to get a Buddha Board for Christmas as well to practice my characters.
French Not much reading, a few podcasts. French has fallen a bit behind as I
try to get my Spanish Super Challenge numbers up for the end of the year. I'll be
travelling a bit over Christmas/New Year's so I will probably have the opportunity for
some lighter reading.

But the biggest news of the past month is my new language. After considering a
honeymoon in Spain, we took a turn to the south and decided on Tanzania. I had
originally wanted to avoid a new language at all costs, three was enough for me, but
it'd be too much for me to visit a Swahili-speaking country and not learn a
bit. So far I'm just going through some Pimsleur, Memrise, and Quizlet stuff, but it's
very different than anything I've studied thus far. Not sure how far I want to take
it, as I hear it's not that useful for English speakers and there's not a ton of media
available, but from a grammar and phonology perspective, very interesting.

One of the disappointments of learning French this year was how it was mostly
Eurocentric. Spanish is wonderful because I have this whole universe of media and
history stretching from Argentina to Spain. I'm hoping Swahili will help me connect
with East African culture in a way that I didn't do much of with West Africa and
French.


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