Soffía's Icelandic log

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Elsa Maria
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Elsa Maria » Thu Apr 27, 2017 1:10 pm

I can relate to much of what you have recently posted :) I am now in a position of not wanting my Danish to rust, but I am eager to work on a language that has fewer fluent English speakers.

For all my efforts at Danish, the average 12 year old Dane is more bilingual than I am. Now that I have started Russian, I can at least daydream about the chance to find myself in situations where the other person does not have the option of switching to fluent English.

Lingvist looks interesting.
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norgeka
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby norgeka » Sun Apr 30, 2017 5:45 am

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Last edited by norgeka on Thu May 11, 2017 8:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Sun Apr 30, 2017 8:15 am

Elsa Maria wrote:I can relate to much of what you have recently posted :) I am now in a position of not wanting my Danish to rust, but I am eager to work on a language that has fewer fluent English speakers.


It's a good motivation! I wish I could do Russian simultaneously, as I'm going to Russia in August and I know having a bit of the language will be useful. But keeping three languages going at once is definitely beyond my power at the moment, so I'll have to leave it with Cyrillic. Even keeping two languages on the go is going to be a learning experience for me.

norgeka wrote:Is there a particular order to things you would recommend to someone starting Icelandic? You've used Alaric Hall's course, IOL, and some in-person intensive classes in Iceland. It also seems you started reading early on. And how much did Memrise and/or Anki play a role in your progress? Oh, and also Lingvist, though I may be mixed up about whether that was/is used for Icelandic or French (reading the whole log in one go was probably not the best way to remember details like that!).


Thank you, I'm glad it's been of interest to you! What you do should really depend on which resources speak to you, I think. Personally I started with Alaric Hall and went on to IOL, and I don't think I would change that if I were to do it again. But the summer courses were invaluable to improve my pronunciation and my comprehension.

IOL gets you started with reading very quickly, which I think is good. I also spent time trying to puzzle out online news articles. I was probably on IOL4 when I started trying to read novels – the first one was really hard, but it was worth persevering!

I did have my own Anki deck at some point and IIRC I put around 800 words into it, not absolute-beginner but fairly basic. Then I got bored with having to create the cards and did some work with a "5000 Icelandic words" collection on Memrise. This was definitely some help, but I only got about 500 words in and I had trouble learning them out of context. When I started doing quasi-extensive reading, I just started keeping a notebook where I wrote down the words that I looked up (only those that seemed essential to understanding the text). That seems to have worked really well and I'm still doing it.

Lingvist won't be available for Icelandic for a while, I think!

I hope that was some use! As said, really everyone does it their own way...
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Sun Apr 30, 2017 11:49 am

French

Up to nearly 900 words on Lingvist. I skipped one solitary day after a really busy Friday, and the result was shockingly painful. Moral: don't stop, push on.

I bought another French book at Oxfam, a young adult novel by Sara Farizan (translated from English) about an Iranian girl in love with another girl. Having a glance at it reminded me how useful simple romances were when I started out with Icelandic novels. And this looks like it will actually have a bit of content to it, given the subject matter.

If I do end up learning French, it will be driven by my burning desire to read my rapidly expanding book collection, perhaps with a side of wanting to follow the political news. I've been spending a lot of time with BFMTV on in the background, and naturally it's wall-to-wall Presidential election coverage at the moment. I'm terrified at the prospect of a Marine Le Pen victory and the implications of the return of nationalism and (at a stretch) fascism to Europe. So I'm motivated to be able to follow the analysis...

Icelandic

Think I'm going to get back into my Icelandic reading by re-reading Timakistan, not that I've really done anything about that yet.
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby norgeka » Mon May 01, 2017 5:53 am

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Last edited by norgeka on Thu May 11, 2017 8:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Mon May 01, 2017 6:34 pm

norgeka wrote: Those Westfjords courses sound rather integral to your advancing in the language, I'll have to give them some serious thought. Good luck getting back into the reading!


I found them really helpful, but then I totally need to be forced into speaking... :)
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Mon May 01, 2017 6:43 pm

French

Nearly hit 1000 words on Lingvist! If I get to 2500 words by the time I go to Brussels, I will let myself buy a French book. Honestly I'll probably buy a book anyway; I'd be happy with 2000 words.

I'm trying out Coffee Break French, because I'm too cheap to buy Michel Thomas. It starts really slowly; I literally had to skip the first seven lessons straight off the bat. But it's pretty good! I'm doing the responses out loud and everything. I think I'll try one episode a day alongside the 15 minutes of Lingvist, since I don't seem to be doing anything with Assimil despite my best intentions.

Icelandic

I'm fickle. Tímakistan... I got bored.

So I've gone back to Sjóveikur í München, which I'm reading for the first time. It's the story of the artist as a young man, going to study in Germany. All his culture shock and his feelings of inferiority as an Icelander (this is set distinctly before Iceland was cool... sometime around 1980 I think?). My vocabulary is not really up to the task, but I'm forging along nonetheless, since I find the book really interesting. (The story of my life as a language learner.)

I've realised that my basic test for whether my comprehension of a book is adequate – for my purposes – is whether I can take it to a cafe, read it, and enjoy myself. And that's what I did today, so it must be!
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:26 pm

So 2017 was a bit of a blank as far as language learning was concerned. I read a bit in Icelandic but didn't finish any books; I did a thousand or so French words on Lingvist but didn't keep up with my streak; I learned Cyrillic and a few words for my trip to Russia but never got further than that.

This was mainly because I was busy doing other things. I had an immensely productive year as a writer: I finished about 140,000 words, including a 77,000 word novel. This is not my day job and I don't publish professionally, but this was really an achievement for me, and I consciously avoided doing too much with languages because I wanted to keep my brain 100% focused on English composition.

Now that I've got that novel finished (phew!), I'm free to turn back to languages in 2018.

On my way home for the holidays, I spent a weekend in Reykjavik. I was surprised at how much more comprehensible I'm finding spoken Icelandic, despite my time off and my lack of listening practice. It must be that all that reading in 2016 transferred across somehow. While in Reykjavik, I stocked up on Icelandic books. If anyone is in a similar situation I highly recommend the Forlagið publishers outlet store, which offers at least 15% off full price – and has shopping trolleys in case you really get carried away! https://www.forlagid.is/bokabudin-a-fiskislod/

Sadly there aren't nearly as many used book stalls at Kolaportið (the Reykjavik flea market) as there used to be. But there are still a couple of very good ones, where you can get a Harry Potter book for 1000 isk if that's the sort of thing that strikes your fancy (and plenty of more serious literature as well). Personally I was on the hunt for Lord of the Rings, which went out of print in Icelandic before I was able to read it. Miracle of miracles, I found a like-new shrink-wrapped box set. I paid through the nose for it, but it was worth every penny and will likely keep me busy for the first quarter of 2018. Can't wait!

I was pondering whether to take another Icelandic summer course, but it looks like they may not be offering an advanced course this yeear, which will have made my decision for me. I'll have to email them and ask. https://www.uw.is/icelandic_courses/

What I'm dithering about is whether to turn next to French or Russian. I keep picking up cheap, easy French books at the local charity shops and I can't help but feel like a few months of concerted effort would be enough to have me reading them. Plus Lille is only an hour and a half from London so it would be fun to practice on a few weekends away. But Russian... Russian is the romantic choice. My visit this summer was amazing – it's such an underrated cultural destination, Moscow is right up there with London and Paris – and I've been reading a lot more about Russian history and culture since then. The language has a lot of allure for me, though it would be a lot harder to get anywhere useful with it. We'll see!
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MamaPata
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby MamaPata » Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:56 pm

Soffía wrote:So 2017 was a bit of a blank as far as language learning was concerned. I read a bit in Icelandic but didn't finish any books; I did a thousand or so French words on Lingvist but didn't keep up with my streak; I learned Cyrillic and a few words for my trip to Russia but never got further than that.

This was mainly because I was busy doing other things. I had an immensely productive year as a writer: I finished about 140,000 words, including a 77,000 word novel. This is not my day job and I don't publish professionally, but this was really an achievement for me, and I consciously avoided doing too much with languages because I wanted to keep my brain 100% focused on English composition.


Congratulations! That's incredible - you should be really proud! To have done any language work on top of that and the rest of your life is an achievement. What sort of things do you write?
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Sat Dec 30, 2017 1:46 pm

MamaPata wrote:Congratulations! That's incredible - you should be really proud! To have done any language work on top of that and the rest of your life is an achievement. What sort of things do you write?


Thank you! I mainly write fanfiction, with all sorts of themes. For instance, I wrote a novella about the captain of a British armed trawler during WWII, and the novel I just finished is a coming-of-age story about a teenage Russian figure skater. (It's been great to have the excuse to dig into a few Russian phrases...)
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