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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 17 of 129 19 July 2014 at 12:34am | IP Logged |
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The 'something everyday' plan did not work out. The first week went tolerably well, the second markedly less so, and this third week has
been a write off. I have listened to more of the audio for Manon Lescaut but I don't think I'll finish it. I'm not a particular fan of the reader, and also I recently received an email from one of my professors saying that this book is on a course that I will be starting in September. I will also be reading Les Liaisons dangereuses and one of Sade's les savoury works for this course, so wish me luck! I have been reading through both my Swedish books at a slower rate, although my reading has been mostly extensive. My plan for Låt den rätta komma in is to finish reading the first part extensively before I go back, read intensively and then read all over again. Once I have finished a first, extensive reading of it, I will be allowed to buy the sequel, which I already own in English. The anthology, Kvinnotankar is strange. The texts are very short, and I find that sometimes I understand them easily, and at other times I am completely lost. Interestingly enough, the times when I understand Kvinnotankar easily are the times when Låt den rätta komma in becomes impenetrable. I guess my brain isn't ready for that kind of gear change. I also did some reading work with German today. A strange thing I find when reading both German and Swedish is that I understand a fair amount without having to translate. My reading pace is naturally a lot slower than it is in English, and I do not understand as much as I would when reading French, but I can read German and Swedish in exactly the same way as I do these other two languages. In fact, I find that when I try to translate, I sometimes get confused and find myself unable to consciously keep all that information in mind. It took me ages to be able to read French like this. It makes more sense with Swedish, as most of my learning has been based on reading literary texts (as well as the occasional Tweet or short message). But I can't quite understand how I've managed to reach such a similar level of ease with German. Oh well, I hope this doesn't change. In both French and German studies, I helped a friend understand the nuances of an English text which he had to translate into German for a class. He sent me the German text on my request, and I went through the first half of it and translated it into French using the German as a guideline and trying not to rely on what I remembered of the English original. The text I've produced is probably on the lower end of the comprehensibility scale, but I don't mind. I found it to be a useful exercise. Finally, I've been feeling some serious wanderlust. I have an friend currently staying with me, and although her English is at pretty much native fluency, her mother tongue is Afrikaans. She has been playing a lot of Afrikaans music, and showing me heartbreakingly beautiful pictures of South Africa and now I want to pick up the language! I have wanted to for a while anyway, although Dutch is definitely next on my list. But I'd love to be able to talk to my friend in English and Afrikaans! Although maybe if I learn Dutch we can both practice that 'mutual intelligibility' thing I've heard about... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 18 of 129 25 July 2014 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
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I've been reading manga in French and German recently, which is a nice way to up my
exposure. For German, I have only been reading mangas that I know well in English. This, coupled with the fairly simple and repetitious language and subject matter of most mangas, means that I am understanding what I am understanding without necessarily understanding the words. I don't know how productive this will prove to be, but I'm enjoying it so I'll continue on. I've also worked more on the Studio D and the FSI audios that I have. Going through these courses 'thoroughly' is kind of giving me an excuse to be lazy with them, so I've not progressed much through them. However, both of them are really giving me some lovely audio to listen to, which is nice. I rewatched a Swedish stand-up routine that I last watched a month ago. For the most part, there was little improvement in my overall comprehension, although I did pick out more words here and there. I managed to pleasantly surprise myself by understanding part of the routine that had gone over my head before - although perhaps this isn't so surprising as the skit was about thought and language. Still, nice to see progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 19 of 129 01 August 2014 at 1:01pm | IP Logged |
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Has it ever happened to any of you that you wake up one morning and suddenly remember
that thing that you did the night before? Because that just happened to me. I woke up late this morning, to the dulcet tones of three teenaged boys rampaging around my house, and, as is my wont, checked up on the language logs I follow here at HTLAL. And, as I was scrolling through emk's log, it hit me that last night, right before I went to sleep, I signed up for the 6 Week Challenge. It came as quite a shock to me, but I rallied myself marvellously (or so I like to think). I'd been wanting to sign up anyway, but I wasn't sure whether to choose Swedish or German. I want to get both of these languages to a decent point by september as that is when my Swedish boyfriend and a very close German friend will be coming to England. My German friend will be here for the academic year, and so that meant I had lots of time to practice on her. However, I'd already told her my goal is to be able to speak a little bit with her in German when she arrives. And, as I've said before, my Swedish goal right now isn't to speak, but to understand. However, my boyfriend has said he would like to hear me speak Swedish, and that's just not a request that I can easily ignore. So language would have been an excellent choice for the challenge, but the Elenia of 2.30 am went with Swedish. Here's to hoping I don't regret it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 20 of 129 02 August 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
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So far, so good.
I've spent a fair amount of time with Swedish today, including moving onto FSI lesson three (yay!). I've also written down the lyrics to a new song: Bakom den svarta masken, also by Loke Nyberg. It took my more than twenty minutes to write the lyrics out by hand! But I was listening to the song as I did so, and I found the parts I had written out easier to understand then the parts I hadn't, which shows that the very act of hand-writing has its benefits. Later, I will go through the lyrics with a fine toothed comb - google translate. And all the while, I'll be learning to sing it! I'm not completely finished with learning Rött och guld, but I do know most of it, and seem to do better when I record myself. And I also did some more work with my studio d textbook, which was very nice. I spent a while utterly confused, and I think I'm still a little confused. I'll have to look up the concept online, and then go back over the textbook. Hopefully, I'll have the stamina to go through some exercises, also. I skyped my German friend last night. We conducted the call in English, as her English is excellent, and we were watching an English show, but I tried out a few appropriate phrases on her, and apparently my accent isn't too terrible. This is nice to know, as accent is something I worry about. I don't really want to sound English, if I'm not speaking it. Sadly, I always do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 21 of 129 04 August 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged |
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Today, I read an article in dagens nyheter about the book Sen farväl, a book by
Ia Genberg. The book doesn't seems to be something that would usually interest me, but from what I understood of it's plot it seems plays about with perspective, and also deals with the consequences of our choices and actions on a wider and more long term scale. I think I'd perhaps like to look into getting a copy of it. I also watched a documentary on SVT play, and I have to say I was quite deceived. The documentary, Franska trädgårdar, was actually in English! However, I treated it like an L-R exercise (I think?) so it was not purposeless. In fact, I think paying attention to the subtitles is even harder to do when the audio is English, for some reason, probably because I had to force myself to read and understand each word. It got a little easier as I went on, but I found the parts with French audio incredibly difficult to follow, because my brain simply refused to understand both Swedish and French at the same time. I plan on going back and rewatching the documentary, pausing with each unknown word and translating it. Maybe after I've done that I'll watch it one more time, just to see what has stuck, who knows? I found that documentary especially interesting as one of the gardens visited was in the Loire Valley, the region of France where I was staying. I'll have to visit the chateau Villandry when I go back. -- This six week challenge has barely started, and it's already highlighting how much of my learning is reading based. Almost thirty per cent of my time has been spent on pure reading. This does not include the reading of subtitles, nor does it include the reading and translating of song lyrics, or the reading of FSI dialogues. It also doesn't include translation. In fact, the only oral practice I get is singing. Imbalanced, certainly, but I'm okay with this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 22 of 129 07 August 2014 at 4:58am | IP Logged |
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Over the past two days (ish), I have watched the documentary 'Mitt i naturen' on
SVTplay. I'm realising more and more that I really like documentaries - usually they'd be on the list of things I avoid, along with anything else that can be said to be about 'real life'. But nature documentaries are something else entirely, it would seem. It's also fun when I recognise a word from one source elsewhere. I've already talked about a nine minute children's television program helped me recognise words in a 30 minute long adults sitcom. Today, the overlap was between the documentary and my book. It felt very serendipitous - the word in question had not come up at all before today, and it just to happened to be a word I wrote down and looked up from my watching. I have an article to read - I believe it is about teenagers internet usage - but as it is so very late here at the moment, it'll have to wait for tomorrow. I realise now my time would have been more productively spent in reading a few articles and more pages of my book then getting up to date on some interesting learning logs here on HTLAL, but what's done is done. -- Also! I've bought my first German book. I'm really excited about it. It's another Pratchett translation, as Pratchett and Austen are easily the two authors I know best. I've decided to read my way through the Death, or 'Tod', series, as I'm reading through the witches books in French. I found the second book on Abe books for £0.61. With shipping, that turns out to be little more than three pounds. It is also one of my preferred 'death' books, so I'm looking forward to rereading it. Otherwise, I've not much to report. I'm eleventh place for the 6 Week Challenge, but I'll probably slip lower before I next do any more study. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 23 of 129 29 August 2014 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
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Hoooo, it feels like a long time since I last did any proper language study!
Since my last post, I recieved the book I bought, and read a few pages of it aloud for a German friend. My confidence was so bolstered up by that experience that I decided to do something similar for Swedish, and asked my boyfriend to pick a Swedish text for me to read aloud to him... which was probably a terrible idea. I think I fudged up every aspect of the pronunciation and almost died of embarrassment a few times, but I guess he enjoyed it, possibly because he understood me, so that's sort of progress? Either way, he came to visit which, ironically, made my studies come to a grinding halt. We spoke a very minimal amount of Swedish and French, but our language skills are at such completely different levels that I actually had to ask him for help with English on several occasions. A couple of days ago, a group of Swedish tourists got on our train, speaking quite loudly about where they wanted to go. I was picking up a few words here and there, but not much, and so I tuned them out. Suddenly, my boyfriend said 'hej, vi'. The couple opposite us gave him a weird look, but I wrote off the incident. When we got off the train, he explained that one of them had said to the other 'who is a cuter couple, us or them?' and he had answered them to prevent them from talking more about us and also to 'defend our honour'. They also happened to get off at the same stop, and I heard them talking about the incident as they passed us. Two things I learnt from this incident: 1. What the Swedish word for 'cute' sounds like, and 2. You are NEVER safe on the London Underground. Consider this a friendly warning to all future tourists :D Edited by Elenia on 29 August 2014 at 1:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3641 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 24 of 129 30 August 2014 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
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I've been knitting a lot recently, which is quite nice to do when watching
documentaries as it is a semi-automatic activity for me, and I can knit without looking at the needles. It also stops me feeling like I am not making good use of my time, as that is how I [I[always feel when watching TV. I also knit during my weekly skype conversation with my German friend. Maybe I should learn some German knitting vocab, so that we can talk about that. However, knitting also eats up a LOT of reading time. I knit when travelling to and from places, which means that I'm not reading my book. This is less good. I was really happy when the verb 'to knit' came up in my Swedish Verbs deck on anki, however I can't remember what it is :/ Speaking of anki, after my time away from learning, I came back to about 160 reps! This is quite a lot for me, as I do anki reps on my computer. Spending about ten minutes on anki reps eats up a lot of time, because I tend to spend the time in between repetitions catching up on HTLAL discussion rather than learning. It also gets very boring, very quickly. However, I found that after my time away, my recall was higher and more automatic. YAY! I'd cite Leosmith's Bow Wave effect here as a reason for this, but I feel that only a few days away wouldn't reap such great returns if that was the case. -- Yesterdays documentary was Djuren i vår närhet about insects and microorganisms that live in our gardens and our surroundings. It was quite interesting, and I'll definitely watch it again while I still can. It also had Hans Berggren, a very interesting documentarist. I will have to look up some of his stuff and see if there is more available online. Otherwise, I'm still trying to figure out a way to optimise my watching for learning. I think I probably gain a lot more from music in terms of listening comprehension, but watching exposes me to a wide variety of new vocabulary while also helping to train my ear. I see the most improvement from watching things intensively, but that can get boring. Subs2srs won't run on my computer, and so the only way I've managed to intensively watch documentaries and TV series is by watching them, noting down all unknown vocabulary then inputting it into anki, then watching again. This does help but it takes a VERY long time, and it gets tedious. Now I only note down interesting words, which are usually words that I somewhat recognise, or words that seem particularly important to whatever I'm watching, but I'm still holding out on a hope that I can find plain transcripts for Solsidan or some other enjoyable series. Being able to read the episode before hand would be super helpful. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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