Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

What Expug is doing in 2015 (TAC n more)

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
364 messages over 46 pages: 1 2 3 4 57 ... 6 ... 45 46 Next >>
daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4499 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 41 of 364
21 January 2015 at 5:02pm | IP Logged 
Thanks, it makes a lot more sense now.

Having a look at Bokmålsordboka and Den danske ordbog again, I see that this verb can have
2 different meanings. All your examples are from one meaning (Expug's use too), while my
German dictionary gave only the other.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5144 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 42 of 364
21 January 2015 at 9:32pm | IP Logged 
@daegga and @Iversen: 'ti' was a typo, I did get ty til from Google. A quick Google search left the impression that ty til would be more common in Danish than in Norwegian, but then at italki I wasn't corrected at this specific expression. (Btw, I recommend other learners to check the correction above, as it was quite useful).

@Ogrim, thank you again, I had the same results. I was wondering if it would come in daily conversation.

Here is what Haugen's Norwegian-English dictionary has on the matter:



And here's Engelby's Engelsk-Norsk ordbok:



=========================

I also got feedback on my Chinese text, and it turned out it got less corrections than the Norwegian one. The French one also got corrected at lang-8, small details. Still waiting for the Georgian one at italki. I believe it is important to review all my corrections at this point, since I plan to do it regularly and I want to incorporate the feedback I've received. I'm really happy abotu yesterday's experience, I'm certain this is the way to go.

Got the textbook Naljaga pooleks. Only the texts themselves. Will use them as a preparation for entering native materials, of which I'm in high need. Today I figured out the Estonian Language Mind dialogues are clickable. When you can't associate the Estonian word to its translation, all you have to do is click on it. So simple, and I was kept in doubt through 8 videos. Therefore, I decided to review all videos again. The glossary isn't a plain translation but contains additional explanations. So, I decided to start over at video 1 and I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot intensively!

I really like the quality of the texts and audio in Linguaphone Russian. Today's dialogues were a bit harder, so maybe it's time I start OCR'in everything.

Learn Norwegian - Lesson 13
Du må ha varme klær for å beskytte deg mot kulden om vinteren. For eksempel, du må ha varmt undertøy, en varm jakke eller genser, ent tykk ullbukse eller et tykk skjørt. Så er det viktig å ha gode hansker eller votter på hændene. På bena må du likeledes ha varme, fôrete sko eller støvletter. Denne genseren er god og varm, men dette skjørtet er altfor tynt til vinterbruk. Disse støvlettene er derimot både komfortable og varme. Vinterklær er ikke så fargerike som sommerklær. Ialfall er ikke fargene så friske og lyse. En typisk vinterfrakk vil være sort, grå eller mørkebrun. Et sommerantrekk er gjerne hvitt, gult, beige, lysegrønt eller lyseblått.

This exercise was difficult. I have trouble with genders and with the vocabulary itself, and I thought it wasn't worth the trouble flipping back and forth to the beginning of the lesson to find out the vocabulary, so I started by doing only what I knew. It was a comprehensive lesson on clothes, parts of the body and adjectival declension. It turns out I know most of the vocabulary, which demonstrates my level. A beginner would be clearly overwhelmed - I know from my past experience with similar vocabulary-killer wordlists.

From today's Le chinois par boules de neige: 满足 (man2zu1) is the verb for 'to satisfy'. I only knew 满意 (man2yi4) which is the adjective, but I could easily understand the verb in context. That means I'm starting to guess based on my previous knowledge. Evidence of progress, I guess =D

One of the best days in Georgian Reading. It started out a bit difficult, because I'm still at a part of the book with less dialogues, but towards the end of today's excerpt I started to notice some patterns and associate words and their translations. Some words used more often are starting to make sense. Not a bad day for the series either, but I need to find time in order to watch Кухня again; I assume I learn more from it, but I need to pay attention next time to how is that; after all, the audio in შუა ქალაქში is clearer than in the dubbed Кухня. Usually it's the other way round, but when the dubbed one is voiced-over, the entirely native one does sound clearer.

Finally a better day with German reading, and whole paragraphs just skimmed from the French original. As for video, I started watching Bella Martha. It is a nice film, finally something that is not learning material and isn't that dense either. I'm learning wonders from my double subtitles, though sometimes I have the feeling I don't need any subtitles at all. Will keep working on that. I'm still having trouble gathering TV series in German, so maybe a sequence of good, contemporary, light films will enhance my comprehension.

I would like to read something from Michael Pollan, but all I found from him was in English, apart from three books in German (not the one I was willing to read, In Defense of Food, though). I really need to be able to read as fast in German as in French or English, so German absorbs part of my non language-related studies, like French does.

Learned the phrasing Lei non ama se stessa today on Duolingo. Based on my portañais i'd have said "Lei non si ama".

Finally I got time for one more lesson from Le turc tout de suite! It 's cool how possessed words get 'conjugated'. I'm used to all obliquous constructions denoting possession, from Russian, Georgian and Estonian, but it is the first time affixes are added to the noun accorded to person. Well, just because I haven't dabbled enough in Arabic or Hebrew before. Interesting how when you ask for goods you don't add the possessive suffix of 'you', you just asked if there is or there is not that good. We also use an impersonal construction with the verb 'ter' replacing 'haver': Tem pão? Tem recarga de celular? though it is debatable if it is always meant as an impersonal use or just the verb conjugated for 'você'.

Edited by Expugnator on 21 January 2015 at 9:33pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5144 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 43 of 364
22 January 2015 at 9:27pm | IP Logged 
At the blog today I came across an online conjugator and declinator for Estonian, Eesti keele süntesaator . I wonder if Chung has seen it before. It is quite useful, you can choose all cases and numbers for the nouns as well as conjugate verbs.

I OCR'ed also the dialogue from LInguaphone Russian today, and I found both pretty stright-forward. OCR'ing helps with the thematic vocabulary of each lesson.

Learn Norwegian - Lesson 14
Du trenger varme klær hvis du drar til Norge om vinteren, for eksempel: en tykk frakk, gode hansker eller votter og et varmt skjerf. Det er ikke bare kaldt om vinteren, men dagene er kortere også, og mørkere. Jo lenger nord du drar, jo mørkere er det, inntil sola ikke er over horisonten i det hele tatt. Men etter jul begynner dagene å bli litt lengre og lysere igjen, og livet blir lettere for alle. Så, etter en stund, blir alt veldig lyst og veldig hvitt når sola begynner å skinne på snøen. Da er alt fint.

This exercise was easier than yesterday's, surprisingly. It is the first but last one. The dialogue was pretty nice. Like I usually say, long dialogues sound a lot more natural and practically start a flow, and you don't have to cram some many different words in each line almost as if you were doing a wordlist. This one was about shopping for fruits, cheese etc.

I'm done with the main lessons of Le chinois par boules de neige, and now there is a supplementary text with audio. I decided to take the first page today to see what expects me tomorrow, since the text is 5 pages long and I want to finish the book tomorrow anyway. So, my conclusion is that I won't be reading these pages intensively as I did with the previous lessons, but I know enough to play the audio and follow the text comfortably while figuring out what's going on and associating the most important words with sound. I'm mainly missing out some adverbs and adjectives, that is, descriptions.

ANother good day of reading Georgian. I should look up some words that appear too often and I still can't associate with translation. I think I'm reaching the same level as with Russian, that is, getting the gist when reading in L2 first, and following the story.

Watching Le Trône de Fer has become so easy that I can even browse other tabs and still follow the story. Much more fun doing so than with SRS tools. (To be fair to subs2srs users, my current level of French means I wouldn't learn much from this technique, at least not from dubbed series. My main improvement would be on listening, and by using authentic French films). I've added almost 10 extra hours to the Super Challenge after I realized I was lagging behind too critically.

Italian Duolingo is going all fine. I have the impression I'm activating skills efficiently. Unfortunately, my connection is slower at the moment, so I have to press "Continue" then browse other tabs and wait for the confirmation sound. It can be pretty annoying. Word of the day: lo schermo (the screen).

Now for some practice. I wrote one paragraph in German yesterday, but I hadn't added German to my italki profile yet, so I can't get it corrected. Here it is:

Es regnete endlich. Es ist sehr kalt hier am Sommer, und wir haben keine Klimaanlage zu Hause. Heute bin ich wieder zum Fitnessraum gewesen, weil mein rechtes Knie besser ist. Gestern tat es mir weh. Ich laufte ein bisschen auf dem Laufband und hatte kein Problem. Danach ging ich zur Arbeit. Jetzt muss ich zurück nach Hause, es wird Zeit.

I finished reading all my posts from italki and lang-8. There were posts in Norwegian, Georgian, Mandarin and even Malay from a time I was dabbling in it. Most posts were in French, of course. I saw some mistakes I'm still repeating and I saw some islands I worked on, but which I still don't "master" (that is, I could write all of it again and it would be as if I were doing it the first time). That only reinforces the importance of practing writing, and why not repeating writing in order to memorize? After all, we hear/read the same word 10 times or more before we memorize it, why would it be different with activating this word? Three times the same 'island' would still be quite few for the sake of memorization and would even allow for new doubts and mistakes to come up, as you end up using new words and sentences for the very same basic conversation. I did see some progress, particularly in French. Also in Norwegian and even in Georgian and Chinese (especially regarding Chinese grammar), but the point is there are still some words I've used at those texts I wrote which are practically 'unknown' to me, and which I only employed because I used a dictionary. which confirms my impression that repetition is important even for building up those conversational islands.

One note of optimism: my main concerns in the beginning of this blog are being solved: I'm finding time for Italian, for keeping up with the French Super Challenge, for practicing active skills and even for Turkish - the last two activities not as much as I'd like to, but I'm improving. So, I am happy with the outcoming so far!
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7134 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 44 of 364
23 January 2015 at 3:00am | IP Logged 
Yes, I do know about süntesaator, however I found out about it and after I had finished studying Estonian. It is useful, and I have used it a few times when checking inflection for the example sentences in Estonian for the guide to Uralic languages.

I hope to see more news about Turkish from you as the winter goes on.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5144 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 45 of 364
23 January 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged 
have paid more attention to. Overall, I'm happy with the result. I should keep working. First of all, I should write on different topics at each long, so that I don't sound so boring to the natives.

Hier il y a eu une autre rencontre francophone! Ça faisait plusieurs mois qu'il n'y en avait plus, et je suis ravi de pouvoir participer hier. Il y avait tellement de monde comme il n'y a jamais eu. J'ai connu quatre nouveaux français, y compris une femme et son fils. Il habite ici à Belo Horizonte et il a un magasin de vin. Elle reste toujours là à Bordeaux et fait la selection des vins de meilleur marché et qualité pour envoyer ici au Brésil. Il y avait du bruit parce qu'il y avait un autre évènement au musée où les gens parlaient avec le microphone. J'ai eu du mal à comprendre cette femme quelquefois (elle parlait bas, à propos), mais nous avons parlé beaucoup quand même. J'ai trouvé si facile de comprendre les autres français. J'espère qu'il y aura des nouvelles rencontres bientôt. Malheureusement qu'il n'y a plus un jour de la semaine fixée, comme c'était le cas auparavant et comme c'est le cas pour l'allemand, mais je suis content de pouvoir parler français à nouveau - maintenant sans trop d'effort pour chercher les mots - et de pouvoir comprendre bien ce que les gens disent en français, même parmi le bruit. L'organisateur des rencontres a l'intention de faire une fête française en mars et il m'a demandé de l'aider avec l'organisation, ce que je ferai volontiers.

Writing a little each day is the way to go. It didn't take me long to write the paragraph above. I pasted it at Lang-8 for some corrections and now it's hanging on lang-8.

Learn Norwegian - Lesson 15

An easier lesson so far. I listened to the text on family relationships and barely missed a word. The there was a nice poem for which there was a glossary, so, no big deal. 4 more pages for the Super Challenge, as well.



With the final text, I finished the book Le chinois par boules de neige. It is a very good book, with texts that make it easier for you to learn the language through the repetition of the most important words in context. Only the final text is a stretch, and I read it mostly extensively. My suggestion is to gather as many of such textbooks as possible, because they are a really fun way to learn. Now I have no other option than Practical Chinese for Official Functions. Lessons will be longer, and I have to pay attention at several screens at once - text, pinyin and translation, as well as at the audio. I hope my current level will allow me for an easier and more productive time, though. Not in the mood for cramming in vocabulary.

I've also finished 数字城堡 - Digital Fortress, and with that a boost for the Chinese Super Challenge. I think my half-SCs for Chinese, Norwegian and German are guaranteed, as I have over 1500 pages for each and my goal is 2500 - 5000 would be the normal challenge. Now for Angels and Demons. I'm afraid this copy I have is not only abridged but also lacks content, but I will know with time. The most important now is that I realized I can follow the story just fine with Pera-pera, only missing some details. I expect to learn a lot with the upcoming books and maybe soon I will be reading native Chinese texts.

Now, a burnout principle. I had to do everything in a rush because I wanted to finish Digital Fortress today, but also the first season of Le Trône de Fer and two chapters of Duolingo and read the forum. Mission accomplished, but I don't think I can take a Turkish lesson today. I mean, I have time, but I don't think I will retain anything. I still have a meeting to attend in the evening so I better keep part of my mental energy.

To Chung: I may not be retaining much vocabulary but I am paying attention to the uniqueness of the Turkic constructions so the amount I will study until March 31st will quite likely serve the purpose of comparison with other Turkic languages.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5144 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 46 of 364
26 January 2015 at 9:35pm | IP Logged 
It was a productive weekend in terms of studies, as we stayed home most of the time. I managed to watch the film Les Tuches, which I liked. It was perhaps the original French film I understood the most from so far. That proves I need the Super Challenge for French, it is not just a matter of obsession with completion, and that I'm on the right track. I also resumed reading from a Brazilian book in Russian I hadn't read for ages. Now it seems easier to read; I can tackle 1 page of Russian pretty fast. I still hasn't reached a flow level similar to the one with Divergent. Besides, this book describes emotional states quite often and has less 'action', which makes it naturally harder despite being a translation. I also read an article in German about the draught in Southeastern Brazil. The article demonstrated my reading level of German is way behind that of Norwegian. Then I read more from Piketty's book. I'm going to finish it this week and then start something more relaxing.

Learn Norwegian - Lesson 16

Whoooa, I didn't see it coming. The grammar explanations now are in Norwegian. So far it didn't mean any trouble at all. I could understand two pages just fine, looking up some 4 words. Anyway, that means I have extra pages for the Super Challenge.

Started reading Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. It starts out easier than the previous one already. Most important, I'm more skilled with Chinese searches. I had got an abridged version, and this time I added 全文 (full text) to my searches. Well, it turned out I found a sort of "extended" version that doesn't match the book which is full of dialogues (maybe it is actually the film's plot? No idea). So, in order to remedy this, I went back to the abridged version, opened the first chapter and googled it. This time, I made sure I got a version with all the 137 chapters. It's much more comfortable to use Pera-pera in the plain short html chapters. Having shorter excerpts is more motivating as a whole, and this is another reason i recommend works by Dan Brown.

Started Practical Chinese for Official Functions. Li like it, though the fact hanzi and pinyin texts are separated by four pages and the English translation is at the back of the book and there is no OCR makes it harder for me to study. The dialogues remind me a lot of the ones from Living Language (which lacks a Chinese course with hanzi, btw). The glosary has sample sentences, which helps a lot. There are exercises and the explanations, including cultural info, are bilingual English-Chinese. Then at the end of a lesson there is a reading practice of one page, with no translation. That one I had to OCR, and was a bit troublesome, which means Practical Chinese is my new time-consuming textbook. Luckily it's only 10 lessons, i.e. 2 weeks.

I'm considering starting "Slow Chinese" podcasts, which were suggested by lorinth at his log and at another thread. The format is the one I need the most now. The only nuisance will be downloading all the mp3 files.

I'm done watching 小子当家/I'M IN CHARGE . It was a nice series, better than 'Don't stop believing'. Gonna miss it. I've checked my bookmarks and the next one will be 对对碰 It Takes Two . After that, it's 96°C 咖啡, then I have to search for more Singaporean series with double subtitles.

I had to rush with the other materials, namely the Russian (still learned a lot from Poor Nastya and understood more than usual from Divergent), Le Trône de Fer (fortunately I finished watching 1 episode) and Duolingo (17 lessons at two chapters, total). No more time for Turkish or Kuxnya, and this has become the rule, I'm afraid. I really need to catch up with the French Super Challenge.

Now for sexist Duolingo:



(Really, it isn't the case, it's just an alternate translation, but anyway...)
1 person has voted this message useful



Emme
Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 5325 days ago

980 posts - 1594 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English, German
Studies: Russian, Swedish, French

 
 Message 47 of 364
26 January 2015 at 11:26pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
[...] Something that makes me curious is the difference between il tavolo and la tavola and between la sedia and la seggiola[...]

There’s no difference between sedia and seggiola. Which one to use is only a question of personal preference and your regional origins may influence you, but both are perfect standard Italian.

On the other hand, even though tavolo and tavola are practically synonyms and no Italian would fault a foreigner for mixing them up, when you reach a certain proficiency you probably want to learn the subtle differences in their usage.

tavola vs tavolo

tavola literally means plank or board and is used on its own for the kitchen or dining table:

apparecchiare la tavola = lay the table
mettersi a tavola = sit down at the table to eat


tavolo on the other hand can be any piece of furniture in the form of a table (any shape or size).

As tavolo is a very generic term, it’s often followed by a complement to specify what kind of table we’re talking about.

tavolo da biliardo = billiard table
tavolo da disegno = drawing table
tavolo da gioco = card / pool table
tavolo da lavoro = workbench

And you can even say
il tavolo della cucina = kitchen table
il tavolo da pranzo = dining table
which are again synonyms for tavola.

Remember, though, that when you talk about restaurants it’s always tavolo:
prenotare un tavolo (per due) = book a table (for two people).


Basically, what you need to remember is that this is a tavolo:

and this is a tavola:



PS. Sorry it took me so long to answer you, but I've been under the weather and I'm still recovering.



Edited by Emme on 27 January 2015 at 1:12am

4 persons have voted this message useful



tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 4025 days ago

905 posts - 1262 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 48 of 364
27 January 2015 at 12:51am | IP Logged 
Seggiola sounds pretty weird to me. I only say sedia. I come from North Italy, no clue about in the other parts (albeit
I know the word seggiola doest exist)


2 persons have voted this message useful



This discussion contains 364 messages over 46 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 57 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3594 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.