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The German Journey... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6173 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 17 of 119 23 March 2008 at 6:48pm | IP Logged |
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LR of Metamorphosis:
First I'd like to mention that I definitely welcome any comments from anyone, particularly those who have developed some skill at LRing unfamiliar languages. Today I spent 2 hr 39 minutes - LRing the parallel text I have focusing almost entirely on the German side of the text... I wanted to ensure I could break part German speech sufficiently enough... I learned a few German/english cognates in the process, although I don't feel more of this exercise will be necessary, at least with this particular text. 1 hr 36 minutes - Listening to the German while reading the English... I'm quite uncertain about how effective this is being... keeping myself at the correct place in reading to correspond with the audio seems exceptionally difficult much of the time. I am struggling to get in a habit of starting to read the English just before the German, and in anything more than a sentence or two which decent amounts of space on either side of them I get lost extremely easily and I don't particularly feel like I can connect the two sides, when I finish reading the English part first I then am sort of waiting for the German paragraph to subsequently finish. How it at least feels to me now (and I am of course very early into this experiment) is that my comprehension of German isn't actually good enough for this method to actually help me... it seems like the difference in word order just leaves me lost too easily. Particularly to those who have listen-read to the point of feeling it has been successful for you with languages you previously had less then intermediate knowledge of, any tips, insights, or suggestions? Edited by blindsheep on 14 April 2008 at 10:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6252 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 18 of 119 24 March 2008 at 8:09am | IP Logged |
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I find a few things help in the earliest stage of L-R. I'd say that the single most important is a good narrator. Someone who speaks quite clearly, and leaves a noticeable (not exaggerated, but fairly unmistakable) pause between sentences makes it fairly easy to stay on the right sentence.
Beyond that, it gets easier with time. The first few hours always involve more grasping at straws than later hours do. I don't find it that difficult not to get lost, but my guideposts are the proper nouns (names of people and places), clear cognates, and the intonation and pauses of the narrator; during the first few hours, I only map 'this clause goes with that clause', rather than individual words, other than my guideposts. It can definitely feel like you're not picking up anything at the beginning - but if you come back to the same text after, say, 20 hours of L-R, you'll be shocked at how much easier and clearer it is, and probably recognize almost all the words. Longer paragraphs are harder. If they're too long, consider breaking them into 2 or 3 chunks. It might be worth looking at a hyper-literal translation of German into English; when English in that form feels natural, German tends to also feel more natural. If you do this, say how it goes! I suspect that internalizing even a handful of sentences this way would be a fairly big boon. A number of language materials I respect, such as Michel Thomas and "The Loom of Languages", use this technique, and atamagaii recommended using it for the first 3 or so hours, if my memory doesn't fail. I haven't used it for Polish, but I've found it extremely useful in general. For what it's worth, I haven't found differences in word order to be too problematic - but I'm extremely used to different word orders (try doing a bit of Japanese some time, perhaps after this experiment - every Indo-European language will feel -much- easier in terms of word order afterward, including quirky ones like Dutch and German, with rigid word orders different from English, and Slavic languages, with very flexible word order, albeit with some rigid differences from English as well). German's word order is actually quite like English's, albeit not identical, except for quirks like the placement of verbs. One annoying thing, though, is that word order is different in principle and secondary clauses; it might be worth trying to find works in relatively simple German to start with. I hope some of this helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6173 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 19 of 119 24 March 2008 at 9:50pm | IP Logged |
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Your first point about a good narrator is actually far more important than I had initially realized... not necessarily for holding your interest, but for allowing my brain to divide sentences and paragraphs between because the narrator has a better sense of timing. So yah, point noted... I suppose you could do texts with non-pro narrators later on, but for starting with a new language definitely not recommended... The audio for Metamorphosis I had was decent but not fantastic, I am trying to acquire a more professional recording. I have switched from Metamorphosis to the first Harry Potter book for time time being since for that I DID have a professionally read book.
The style of writing of HP is about a billion times easier than the Kafka book, far fewer long confusing sentences for me to get lost in. Your ideal about a hyperliteral translation sounds interesting. If I dumped a text in Bablefish or Google Translate and then LRed with it... how would that work...? I just tested it for a minute or two using HP and Bablefish and it seems plausible. Would like to experiment with that later... although Bablefish is actually too smart with the verbs at the end of sentences... it seems to flip them forward ahead of the nouns. Anyways, thanks for your helpful response to my LR SOS. Put in 3hr32 min today... I did pickup quite a lot although most of it is thus far primarily just frequent nouns, some cognates, really common verbs that always follow quotes... the middles of sentences get quite soupy although I can at least delimit sentences part of the time now, but unlike yesterday I at least now feel like I am making progress in a positive direction. Thanks again for the help! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6173 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 20 of 119 24 March 2008 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
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On a non-LR note, I worked through passively and rather roughly Assimil 17-20 while walking around the city today. Perhaps 45 min on this. Edited by blindsheep on 24 March 2008 at 10:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6173 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 21 of 119 25 March 2008 at 10:59am | IP Logged |
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2 hours thus far today, will continue later tonight with LRing HP1.
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| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6173 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 22 of 119 26 March 2008 at 7:20am | IP Logged |
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Didn't manage to get my full four hours yesterday. I've done about 3 chapters today (1.5 hours) so far. Some times I understand quite a lot and other times I'm still quite lost... am slowly getting better and the word ordering and stuff though.
Totals thus far: Listenreading-> 9 hours 9 min (started with listening/reading both in German for word differentiation. Listening in German while reading in Spanish->6 39 Only on HP1-> 5 36 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6173 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 23 of 119 26 March 2008 at 12:50pm | IP Logged |
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Another 2hr35 on HP1... which was enough to finish my first time through the book. At this point (having LRed to the book for 7hr11 (and 8hr14 including Metamorphosis)) I can understand many of the words... I still can get lost occasionally, but I have so many ways of refinding my place now due to all the words I've learned (at least passively &/or partially) that I'm much more consistent than when I started. Will attempt to do more LRing today to bring me up to four hours a day average (I still need 2 hrs 16 minutes)... we'll see though might not get to all of it. Edited by blindsheep on 26 March 2008 at 12:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6173 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 24 of 119 26 March 2008 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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Another 2hr01... 11min left... getting there... definitely still learning words in the beginnings of my second sweep... slowly now starting to get some verbs that I've been just thinking of as vaguely familiar... the word for 'pat' or 'tap' being an example. For some reason, to my non-atunned ears many verbs sound very similar and they also just tend to stick out to me considerably less than the nouns which have definitely been coming quickest. Starting to understand quite a lot of some select passages in the book... others still just fly by in crazy flurries of words more often than I'd like.
*Update* last 12 minutes completed... I've now returned my average to 4 hours a day... although I can feel at this point my brain and concentration are starting to drift far too much for it to be profitable to continue tonight. Totals 16 hrs 01 minute thus far. Edited by blindsheep on 26 March 2008 at 4:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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