Soffía's Icelandic log

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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Sun Nov 13, 2016 9:00 pm

Still don't get how there can be times when I'm just enjoying reading Icelandic novels for entertainment, and times when I'm convinced that I haven't really learned Icelandic at all, only gained a vague sense of what some of the words mean.

I know the mood passes but these periods of stoppage seem impossible to avoid.
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DaveBee
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby DaveBee » Sun Nov 13, 2016 9:08 pm

Soffía wrote:Pronunciation is going to have to be a priority for me when studying French. I can easily imagine learning to read French pretty well while still not having much of a clue how to pronounce it, to say nothing of being able to speak it fluently. And I'm motivated enough by reading comprehension that I need to make certain it doesn't get too much in the way.

Obviously there are particular issues when it comes to French pronunciation but I had a similar problem, to a lesser extent, with Icelandic. By the time I took that one week summer course for beginners, I was distinctly a false beginner, yet wasn't all that great at making myself understood by Icelanders. Some drilling in phonology by our singing teacher and by an Icelandic actress who was teaching us recitation (great 'enrichment' activities, best part of the course) really made the difference for me. Maybe this time, now that I know what needs doing, I can (mostly) do it for myself.
This past week I've been 'reading along' with french audio from Litterature Audio, with pronunciation in mind. I've also ordered, but not yet received, 500 exercises phonetique.
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Sat Nov 19, 2016 8:19 pm

Have discovered a new Icelandic TV series on Netflix (UK): Hraunið/The Lava Field . I don't think it's as good as Trapped but it's still super exciting to have some Icelandic content to watch.
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Sat Nov 26, 2016 3:19 pm

Finished Hraunið, albeit watching with subtitles. I may watch it again without; I could hear and understand almost all of it but I might have been a good bit more lost without the prompt.

Also I'm watching Occupied, which is Norwegian and excellent. I'm always pleased when I catch a few words here and there. This is reawakening my desire to learn Norwegian, which I think proves something about the way that language learning starts to feel urgent(for me) when there's an immediate need to understand or communicate.

I've discovered that I actually get two French news channels on TV: France 24 and BFM TV (the latter via red button on something called Worldbox, which has quite a random mix of international stations). Maybe if I start watching these, French will start to seem more urgent. We shall see.

Finally I'm continuing to re-read Jon Gnarr's first book. Quite fond of it but it's really time for a few new Icelandic books. In the new year!
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Sat Apr 15, 2017 8:04 pm

I'm still here!

After reading nearly 4000 pages in Icelandic in 2016, I decided to give myself a little bit of a break. Partly this was because I'd been reading pretty hard, but mostly because I wanted to devote some time to writing short stories in English. Now I've finally surfaced, having written over 50,000 words over the past four months (phew!), and am turning my attention back to language learning.

For a while I was thinking that Russian was the language that I was going to pick up next, because I'm going to Russia with my parents this August. It would definitely be useful to have tourist Russian, at least, given that apparently only 5% of the country speaks English. So far I've managed the Cyrillic alphabet and a few words. Every little helps?

And then I was in Lille last weekend to see Paris-Roubaix, which has completely revived my enthusiasm for learning French. Lille has, miraculously, one of the biggest bookstores in Europe (with a whole floor devoted to manga and BDs, if you can imagine), and there is just so much that I want to read in French. Given that reading is one of my main motivations for language learning, this is a powerful incentive. I seem to have acquired, in a fit of optimism, at least half a dozen books in French already. Although we do have a lot of French books in the charity shops around here, so most of them were about £2 each. I met one of my neighbours in the local Oxfam this afternoon and was having to justify to him why I was buying French book despite not being able to read French! ("You'll be fine," he said. He's a classics lecturer, which may be relevant.)

But just being in a French-speaking environment makes the language feel so *relevant* all of a sudden. Almost all the people I spoke to in Lille had English that was shaky enough that they would lapse back into French despite my clear lack of facility, and I would attempt to catch what I could. (That never happens in Iceland!). I would read the signs on the Metro and try to puzzle out the verbs. In the evening I had French television on in the background and fell asleep with my rhythms of French echoing in my head.

Anyway, I'm going to pitch in again with some Assimil and Lingvist, and hope that it sticks this time. I'll be in Brussels at the end of May so maybe that will help. It's funny, because you would think that learning the third language would be easier, and it probably is, but this time around I'm actually aware what a long road I have ahead of me. I went into Icelandic with a sort of blithe, ignorant enthusiasm and... it worked. Now I'm just impatient to get to the good stuff, I don't want to have to hammer "to be," "to do," "to want" into my head all over again. But I'm going to have to.
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Wed Apr 26, 2017 8:46 am

So I've been getting on well with Lingvist! When I picked it up again, let's say on the 15th, I had 330 words learned. Today I've got 720. I seem to have got past the difficulties of the early verbs and am now hitting a lot of words that are relatively easy to guess from English, which has made life much smoother.

There's something very simple and streamlined about Lingvist that I find oddly addictive; it doesn't have the busyness and patronising air of Duolingo. At the moment I'm hitting around 90% correct, which means that devoting c. 15 minutes a day allows me to add 50+ new words. Today I did 15 minutes 45 seconds, and 71 new words. Which is really gratifying! If I keep rolling along at this pace, I'll have 2500 or so under my belt by the time that I go to Brussels at the end of next month.

I'm under no illusions that finishing Lingvist (I think they have around 5000 words now?) will mean that I've "learned" French. It probably won't even mean that I've learned those words, as there's something surprisingly difficult about recognising words you've encountered in a flashcard context when you meet them in some other context. But I'm thinking of this as a sort of preparatory exercise, a bit like doing RTK1 if you're learning Japanese. It should give me a corpus of words it's possible to recognise, and give me some exposure to the pronunciation and grammar, making it easier to go on and do other things. Maybe it will even give me a foothold on simple native content, which would be the dream.

Assimil I've been less successful with. I'm stuck at 5 lessons in. I don't know why, but I just find it a bit... flat. I should press on, though, because so many other people seem so enthusiastic about it. If I could do 15 minutes a day of Assimil along 15 minutes a day of Lingvist, I would be golden.
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kaffesugen get
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby kaffesugen get » Wed Apr 26, 2017 3:29 pm

Soffía wrote:I'm still here!


I am delighted to see that! It'll be interesting to read about your French studies, there really is a lot of good literature to read there. I do hope though, that you will write a bit about Icelandic too! I wish to restart my studies, (which never got very far before I got distracted by life) and your posts are very inspiring. Maybe I should aim for some really simple fiction to have as something to work towards.
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Ani
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Ani » Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:27 pm

Soffía wrote:Assimil I've been less successful with. I'm stuck at 5 lessons in. I don't know why, but I just find it a bit... flat. I should press on, though, because so many other people seem so enthusiastic about it. If I could do 15 minutes a day of Assimil along 15 minutes a day of Lingvist, I would be golden.


I only ever made it to lesson 30 in Assimil and although I tried to convince myself to "take my vitamins" and complete Assimil for a couple years, I am finally willing to admit that I hate it. It just isn't for me. When I was starting French, I did about 2500 words on Memrise while watching a whole bunch of cartoons for 2 year olds (lots of vocabulary and sentence structure gained there!). After this and reading briefly about grammar I was able to start reading novels semi-intensively with the kindle pop up dictionary. If your start with an electronic aid, it shouldn't take you too long to be able to read in French.
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Wed Apr 26, 2017 8:10 pm

kaffesugen get wrote: I do hope though, that you will write a bit about Icelandic too! I wish to restart my studies, (which never got very far before I got distracted by life) and your posts are very inspiring. Maybe I should aim for some really simple fiction to have as something to work towards.


I definitely don't want to let my Icelandic rust, given how hard I've worked at getting it to this (admittedly not very impressive) level! I needed a bit of a break from it, but I have Icelandic books on my bedside table and I intend to pick them up soon. If I don't, I hope someone gives me a nudge.

Really glad to hear that you're enjoying my posts. The prospect of being able to read books was/is something that inspires me a lot, but as always, mileage varies, and so it's always a question of what makes you personally want to stick with it.
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Soffía
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Re: Soffía's Icelandic and French log

Postby Soffía » Wed Apr 26, 2017 8:13 pm

Ani wrote:I only ever made it to lesson 30 in Assimil and although I tried to convince myself to "take my vitamins" and complete Assimil for a couple years, I am finally willing to admit that I hate it. It just isn't for me. When I was starting French, I did about 2500 words on Memrise while watching a whole bunch of cartoons for 2 year olds (lots of vocabulary and sentence structure gained there!). After this and reading briefly about grammar I was able to start reading novels semi-intensively with the kindle pop up dictionary. If your start with an electronic aid, it shouldn't take you too long to be able to read in French.


Glad to know that it's not just me who fails to get along with Assimil. I'm going to keep at it for a little while, in case there's some sort of initial hump that I have to get over, but there's definitely a point where you have to recognise that if it's not working, it's not working.

For me, yeah, I'm hoping that Lingvist and a bit of grammar gets me within reach of the books that I long to read. If I do manage to learn French, and people ask me what motivated me, I'm going to say "pure pique at standing in an eight-floor bookstore and realising that I couldn't read any of the books in it!"
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