The Language Pad

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri May 26, 2017 5:01 pm

Jinx wrote:Someone remind me to never make any more promises or predictions regarding how active I plan to be on this forum, because it seems that I have developed a shameful and nigh-on unbreakable habit of only popping up here once a year or so.


It's good to see that you're back!
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Jinx
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby Jinx » Fri Jun 02, 2017 2:32 am

Thanks to jeff_lindqvist, and to everyone who gave my last post a welcoming “like”!

***

GERMAN

I've had a German epiphany. It’s been far too long (years and years) that I’ve been lazily sitting around in the vicinity of C1 without bothering to improve any further, and all of a sudden, I got sick of the stagnation. Why NOT reach for the stars? I may never make a convincing native, but I might as well keep heading onward and upward! Why let this marriage of mine to good ol’ German get stale just because we’re comfortable with each other? Why not push the envelope and bring some excitement back into the relationship instead?

Therefore, I have now set myself a someday-goal of passing the C2 exam in German. I’ve never done any CEFR exam and am not particularly interested in them as a rule, but this seems to be the most tangible goal I can shoot for right now. And by someday-goal I mean I have no specific timeframe, but it’s great to have my eyes on a prize in any case.

So I’ll kick off this (probably very long, again) update post by quoting something I just wrote to a friend (the kind of friend you can say stuff this rude to – I’m hoping he’ll take it as a challenge and prove me wrong!):

Weißt du, was dein Problem ist? Du bist so klug geworden, dass du keine alberne Dinge mehr sagen willst. Deswegen wirst du niemals eine fremde Sprache richtig gut lernen. Denn beim Sprachenlernen muss man viele alberne Dinge sagen, bevor man irgendwann auch kluge Dinge sagen kann. Nur durch das Tal der Ahnungslosen gelangt man zum Berg der Weisheit.


(…yes, that was a DDR joke at the end there. Some days I feel like my whole soul is built out of bad DDR jokes.)

I’ve also started (finally) reading Die unendliche Geschichte. And I’m trying to start a routine of close-reading one article per day from Die Zeit, using ReadLang to look up and/or save all unknown words.

Let me crowdsource some advice here: one of my biggest problems in German has always been those persnickety N-endings, for example on plural nouns and the adjectives modifying them. Especially in the accusative case. For example, ich mag… rote Häuser? komische Geschichten? schlechten Entscheidungen? Were any of those endings even right? I don’t know! So what I would love to find is some sort of website where you can drill word endings, over and over and over until they FINALLY soak into my stubborn brain once and for all. Any advice is most welcome!

Das hätte ich doch alles gerade auf Deutsch schreiben sollen. Zur Übung. Uuuups. Vielleicht nächstes Mal.

***

FRENCH

I’m working hard on French. Immersing myself as much as possible. Well, that’s a lie; not as much as possible, but a lot more than I ever willingly have before. And it’s starting to work, I can feel it!

I’m still skipping around between resources probably too much, though. First off I tried to watch some English-language Netflix shows dubbed into French. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Sense-8… I couldn’t stand it. I hate dubbing. So I switched to “VO” shows. That isn’t working terribly well so far either. As I wrote to blaurebell in her log:

Last night I had to stop watching a French show called Les témoins halfway through the second episode because the sexist stereotypes were simply too much for me to take – if I see one more male character who is considered "fascinating" and "brilliant" because he doesn't tell anyone what he's thinking and doesn't follow the rules and treats everybody else like shit, I'll SCREAM!


So I decided to give dubbing one more try, this time with the redoubtable Buffy contre les vampires. I’ve made it through half of one episode so far – reading the transcript of every scene first, then watching the scene in question with no subtitles, then pausing it and reading the transcript of the next scene, etc. I know I wouldn’t be able to put up with this show in English, but hopefully the quality of the French version (dubbing + almost-exact transcripts) will be able to hold my interest? We shall see.

Listening and speaking are definitely my weakest skills in French, so besides my repeated attempts to enjoy television, I have also finally started listening to audiobooks. I downloaded Le journal d’une femme de chambre and listened to a good chunk of the first chapter during my commute today. If I’m understanding correctly that this is an amateur recording (I got it from http://www.litteratureaudio.com/ – looks like an absolute treasure trove), it’s surprisingly good! I was exceeding pleased to discover how much I could understand just by listening to the narrator’s lovely clear voice, not having any transcripts or any idea of the story at all. Can’t wait to continue it tomorrow!

Besides the audiobook, I found two great playlists on Spotify, one of French literature and another of French poetry being read aloud. I listened to a couple of Voltaire excerpts the other night while folding laundry and really enjoyed them, despite not understanding every word.

I also want to keep reading to continue increasing my vocabulary, though, so I’ve been reading some articles with ReadLang and doing the corresponding flash cards (although it’s easy to fall behind with those – I don’t really enjoy the artificiality of studying flash cards), and I just re-commenced reading Les misérables, the first section of which (starring the delightful M. Myriel) I enjoyed so much both previous times I started reading it that I never got any further into the book! Maybe the third time’s the charm.

Now for some writing practice, corrections much appreciated (especially because I don’t have time to look anything up in a dictionary right now, seeing as I should have been in bed half an hour ago, so there will probably be tons of mistakes!):

Cette semaine j’ai aussi eu ma première “vraie” conversation en français! C’est-à-dire, une conversation sur un thème compliqué, pas seulement du “small talk” comme j’ai fait déjà souvent aux Meetups etc. Il s’agitait cette fois du livre Lolita de Nabokov – j’ai expliqué à un ami les raisons qui me font croire que je ne vais jamais aimer ce livre. En ce moment-là j’ai pu m’expliquer vraiment bien, bien que je disais des choses assez complexes et socio-philosophiques. Je ne veux pas trop préciser ici, parce que les raisons que j’ai mentionnées abordent des sujets très désagréables (bon, liés avec ce livre, aucune surprise), mais malgré le fait que l’on discutait un livre qui ne me plaît pas beaucoup, je me suis sentie pleine de joie parce que je pouvais parler comme ça, presque sans hésitations, en faisant références à des graphiques statistiques que j’ai vus, la psychologie de les pubs de beauté qui se dirigent vers les femmes, etc. etc.

***

CROATIAN

I’m still plugging away at Assimil, not daily but every couple of days, and really enjoying it. I’m reaching the point where Croatian is starting to feel comfortable and familiar when I see it on a page. I read several more pages of Harry Potter i kamen mudraca the other day, and watched the first episode of a Croatian show called Bitange i princeze (haven’t been able to find a good translation for that first word yet, can anyone help?) on YouTube with no subtitles or transcripts or anything, just to let it wash over me. I love you, Croatian.

Oh, and this evening I spent a few minutes playing the word-matching translation game on the home page of the dict.cc German-Croatian dictionary website (my current go-to HR dictionary: http://dehr.dict.cc/). That game is surprisingly fun and effective for expanding your vocabulary, and I recommend it to anyone who is learning German, or who knows German and is learning another language (just go to dict.cc and look at the list of language codes along the top of the page to pick a language).

Screen Shot 2017-06-01 at 8.05.37 PM.png

(the number on the right shows you how many questions in a row you answered correctly)

***

THINGS I FEEL LIKE STRAYING TO, RIGHT NOW

French in Action videos (I never made it through all of them! I kind of want to!)
Destinos (I started watching that and actually quite enjoyed it…)
FSI for Serbo-Croatian (gotta have that hardcore Croatian experience)

***

GENERAL NOTES

In my current offline, real-paper, personal notebook, I like to write journal entries in my various languages. The other day I tallied up the number of pages I had written in each language, and it’s about one-third one-third one-third (let’s see if anyone catches THAT literary reference) English, French, and German. I think I'm increasingly moving away from English, though. I pick the language I want to write in based on my mood and the topic I want to write about, because it feels like I can be different people in the different languages. (Cannot WAIT until I can journal in Croatian!)

Also: ReadMOD begins today! I got off to a rather slow start with only my Zeit article read this evening, but I’m hoping to fit in some more “unendliche Geschichte” before bed, despite the fact that I have to go to work an hour early tomorrow.
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Last edited by Jinx on Fri Jun 02, 2017 1:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Radioclare
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby Radioclare » Fri Jun 02, 2017 8:22 am

Jinx wrote: I read several more pages of Harry Potter i kamen mudraca the other day, and watched the first episode of a Croatian show called Bitange i princeze (haven’t been able to find a good translation for that first word yet, can anyone help?) on YouTube with no subtitles or transcripts or anything, just to let it wash over me. I love you, Croatian.


I love that show :) Although I have to say they speak so fast that sometimes whole sentences go by without me being able to understand a single word :lol: I think 'bitange' can mean tramps/vagrants or lazy good-for-nothings.

Oh, and this evening I spent a few minutes playing the word-matching translation game on the home page of the dict.cc German-Croatian dictionary website (my current go-to HR dictionary: http://dehr.dict.cc/). That game is surprisingly fun and effective for expanding your vocabulary, and I recommend it to anyone who is learning German, or who knows German and is learning another language (just go to dict.cc and look at the list of language codes along the top of the page to pick a language).


Looks cool :) Have you tried the CroVoc website? That's another good site for practising Croatian via German. There are some multiple choice games for vocabulary and also some exercises to practice declinations/conjugations.
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby blaurebell » Fri Jun 02, 2017 9:33 am

Jinx wrote:As I wrote to blaurebell in her log:

Last night I had to stop watching a French show called Les témoins halfway through the second episode because the sexist stereotypes were simply too much for me to take – if I see one more male character who is considered "fascinating" and "brilliant" because he doesn't tell anyone what he's thinking and doesn't follow the rules and treats everybody else like shit, I'll SCREAM!


Oh, I totally forgot to reply to that, my bad! I haven't seen that show, but I've noticed that kind of thing in many different movies and shows. Gender stuff is a lot more pronounced in France than in other places and I also tend to grind my teeth about certain things. Most of the time I can just ignore it though. The series that I found most promising was Un village français actually, not with regard to being less prone to such stuff, but because I found the story engaging. I would have continued watching, but my husband said he found it too depressing and we started it together. It's harsh, but good!
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Jinx
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby Jinx » Sun Jun 18, 2017 3:37 am

Update time! There’s already quite a bit to report since my last post, so forgive me if I do so rather telegraphically – I know I tend towards verbosity, which is something of a liability in my forum posts, as any evening spent writing a forum post then becomes an evening with no time left to actually study languages. I'm trying to work on that. We'll see how it goes in this post.

But first, responses:

Radioclare: Hvala puno for the recommendation of CroVoc (https://crovoc.de/). I hadn’t known that site, but at first glance it looks like it will be very useful – I bookmarked it. And thank you also for the translations of “Bitange”! That was along the lines of what I was suspecting, but it’s good to have it confirmed. :)

blaurebell: No apologies necessary for the delayed reply – as you can see, mine is even more delayed! :lol: And in any case, it was rather rude of me to come vent in your log about the show I was annoyed by, anyway – it was simply “at the front of my mind” at that moment, haha. I just looked up Un village français (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1288631/?ref_=nv_sr_1) and I must say it sounds quite interesting – I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for that!

And a general note before I dive in here: as always, corrections to my language-practice sections are much appreciated! Okay, here we go…

GERMAN

Since making my decision to actively work on bringing my German up to the next level, the main step I’ve taken to approach this goal is returning to heavy reading, starting off with Die unendliche Geschichte (I finished it today). I also finished, after a long time away from it, Mutterzunge by Emine Özdamar. That’s a fascinating book because it’s written in German, but German the way many Turks speak it, not necessarily “grammatically correct” but full of flavor and cultural meaning. A very interesting book, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t already reached a very solid level of German (including cultural knowledge, not just linguistic).

My preferred way to read is in Bliu Bliu, because it keeps track of the number of word forms I know with almost no effort on my part, and although this is actually not a very meaningful statistic, it’s wonderful for motivation. I am currently at just over 26,000 word forms marked as “known” in BB for German, and am eagerly pushing it toward 30,000.

I do what I think of as “extensive-intensive reading”, because I try to move through texts as quickly and effortlessly as possible without spending any real time on each word, but I do feel compelled to look up (at least quickly) every single word I don’t know, every time I see it and can’t define it to myself without peeking. BB also works great for this technique.

Die unendliche Geschichte turned out to be a surprisingly dark and psychological story for something that I had always mentally filed under “children’s books”. It was a real page-turner all the way through, and I’m so glad I finally got around to tackling this monster of German literature, even if I feel that it would have been a more powerful experience to read it as a pre-teen. (And just to pre-emptively fend off any suggestions to watch the movie version – I’m not interested in the slightest, thanks anyway!)

DE:
Was ich besonders an dieses Buch schön gefunden habe, ist die etwas altmodische Sprache. Viele Leute meinen, man sollte beim Lesen von älteren fremdsprachlichen Büchern vorsichtig sein, weil die heutige Sprache “nicht mehr so klingt, wie vorher”. Na schon, offensichtlich, aber ich habe das wirklich nie als Problem empfunden und zwar aus zwei Gründen: erstens, ich spreche auch auf Englisch manchmal sehr altmodisch, mit Absicht, und es freut mich, so zu reden (zum Beispiel, wenn ich aufs Klo gehe, sage ich oft “I shall return anon”), und deswegen lerne ich sehr gerne, wie man auch auf anderen Sprachen entsprechend redet; und zweitens, weil ich eigentlich fast niemals Schwierigkeiten dabei habe, den eher altmodischen Sprechweisen von den eher modernen zu unterscheiden.

Besonders bei der unendlichen Geschichte aber auch im Allgemeinen, verwende ich immer öfter Google Images als Wörterbuch. Das ist eine so gute Herangehensweise, ich verstehe nicht, warum ich es bis jetzt nur ab und zu gemacht habe. Natürlich funktioniert es nicht für alle Wörter, aber meistens erkennt man ziemlich schnell vom Kontext her ob es sich bei dem jeweiligen Wort um ein theoretisches Konzept (besser gesucht bei http://www.dict.cc/) oder eher einen physischen Gegenstand (funktioniert herrlich mit Google Images) handelt. Aber es muss in der Tat eigentlich kein richtiger Gegenstand sein – zum Beispiel, tippt man in Google Images “sich verbeugen” rein, bekommt man sofort genügend bildlichen Darstellungen davon, dass man den Ausdruck problemlos verstehen kann.

Fast 98% von dem, was ich bisher für Tadoku gelesen habe, war DuG. Mein Dank gilt Herrn Ende. Besonders weil ich den Fehler machte, ein ziemlich großes Buch auf Englisch während dieser Tadoku zu lesen (Cloud Atlas von David Mitchell – Gott sei Dank, dieser Müllhaufen ist jetzt erledigt, obwohl ich die Stunden, die ich damit verschwendet habe, nie zurück kriegen werde – das Buch war eine persönliche Empfehlung eines Freundes, sonst hätte ich mich damit nicht so lange gequält) und dann danach anderthalb Bücher auf Esperanto gelesen bevor ich bemerkt habe, dass ich mich bei Tadoku mit Eo gar nicht angemeldet hatte. D’oh!

FRENCH

My temporary French surge has been put on pause for the past few weeks while I threw myself with renewed vigor into German and Esperanto (more on the latter below), but I’m still slowly making my way through the audiobook of Le journal d’une femme de chambre and regularly journaling in French as well. Both of those activities are very enjoyable. It’s almost silly how many years it took me to realize and accept that I simply don’t want to practice all the skills with all my languages – e.g. speaking French (and Esperanto) is not something I’m interested in, but writing and reading in these languages is still great fun!

I was continuing to read Le langage, cet inconnu (by Julia Kristeva – have I already mentioned that book in this log? I thought I had, but now I can’t find the reference) at a local café today when, as so often unfortunately happens, the gentleman sitting at the next table decided to initiate a conversation with me. He pointed to it and said “What book is that?” and I said “It’s a book on linguistics – complex but really good so far.” He replied “Linguistics… so it’s about languages?” Me: “…Yes, in a way.” Him, staring at the cover where the title can easily be seen: “So is that French?” Me: “…Yes.” Him: “You can read French?” Me: “…Yes.” After this, he had apparently exhausted his wellspring of conversational material, because silence ensued and I continued reading. You wouldn't believe how many times this scene has played out in my life. It seems that whenever I’m reading a book in public – especially one that’s not in English – that’s apparently interpreted as being a secret code for “I’m dreadfully bored of pointing my eyes at this confusing text and wish some gallant fellow would rescue me from this tiresome charade!” Strange, how these things work.

My written French continues to be rather reckless because I rarely have the patience to look things up in the dictionary anymore, which is not a good sign, haha. But I did write a whole letter in French to a friend a couple of a weeks ago! And here’s an excerpt copied in from my offline notebook, May 29.

FR:
Je suis restée chez moi toute la journée, desintéressée par le temps ensoleillé, mais dans le moment que j’ai entendu le tonnerre du dehors, j’ai éprouvé – comme chaque fois – le désir irrésistible d’être dehors. Alors je me suis habillée super-vite en téléfonant à tous les cafés locaux pour découvrir lequel est ouvert. J’ai réussi avec Chrome Yellow, j’y suis arrivée juste avant que la pluie a commencé, et maintenant je m’assois à la fenêtre et je regarde tranquillement un spectacle plus intéressant que tous les films et tous les séries du monde : Le Temps. Mais pendant les quelques minutes qu’il me fallait pour écrire ça, la pluie est presque disparue. Les belles choses de la vie durent toujours si courtes. Raison de plus à les apprécier dans ces moments !

ESPERANTO

I suddenly got way into Esperanto. Like way. I mean, I was already, but now, way. I’ve been hardcore pushing towards the end of the tree on Duolingo this past week (re-gilding everything first, which I’ve now managed, and then learning the final new skills – I think I have about six or eight of them left), at a rate of about 30 to 100 points per day, while simultaneously reading – first Gerda malaperis!, which I’ve now finished, and then Vere aŭ fantazie (also by Claude Piron), which I’m about ten percent of the way through. Next up: Marvirinstrato by Tim Westover. (Which, incidentally, shares its name with a very good asynchronous-collab album by Woody Guthrie, Wilco, and Billy Bragg.)

The combination of returning to active Duo study plus reinforcing and expanding vocabulary through reading has FINALLY pushed me up to the edge of being able to journal comfortably in the language without a dictionary. I say “up to the edge” and not “over the edge” because it still depends on how vortkreema (“word-creative”) I’m feeling that day, but all in all it feels like a real breakthrough!

EO:
Mi jam multfoje menciis, ke mi havas aman-malaman rilaton kun Esperanto – nu, pli ĝuste, neniam estis ĝi malama. Tiu vorto estas tro ekstrema. Sed mi neniam trovis en mi veran intereson pri la lingvo – ĝis nun! Finfine mi konas E-on sufiĉe bone, ke la lingve kreemaj aspektoj ne plu ŝajnas kiel foraj sonĝoj, sed kiel atingeblaj eblecoj. Certe, restas multe, kiu plibonigendas, kaj mi scias, ke mi skribas ankoraŭ tre malbone – sed nun mi sentas veran entuziasmon, ĉar mi aliras al la parto de ĉiu lingvo, kiu estas por mi la plej amuza – la kreemo. (Kiel oni povus kombini “kreemo” kaj “-ebl-” por diri “the possibility of creativity”? Kreemeblo? Kreeblemo?)

CROATIAN

Croatian has mostly been rudely pushed aside due to my new Esperanto-Rausch, although I am up to lesson 23 in Assimil and today I randomly did FSI Serbo-Croatian Unit 1. I kind of like FSI in all its barren brusqueness. Maybe I’ll continue that. Need to get back to reading Harry Potter i kamen mudraca, though.

WRAPPING UP THIS STUPIDLY LONG POST

I can’t believe I did it AGAIN. Am I physically incapable of writing short update posts? It would appear so. Whatever happened to my hoped-for telegraphic style? That was an idealistic joke back when I started writing this post, a bajillion sentences and almost four hours ago. I won’t be a truly good writer until I can write succinctly. Must keep practicing. Gratitude to those who put up with my loquacity <3
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby blaurebell » Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:58 am

Jinx wrote:I won’t be a truly good writer until I can write succinctly. Must keep practicing.


I have a tendency to ramble too. However, I've become very good at cutting text down to the essentials. Only problem is that I take forever to write my ramblings in the first place and even longer to cut them down. Such a time sink!
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby Elenia » Sun Jun 18, 2017 6:28 pm

Well done on finishing DuG! I was defeated by it last year. The old fashioned vocabulary was a challenge for my (at the time, even more so than now) non-existent German and I got most enjoyment and use reading through it with a native-speaker friend, asking for help with hard words and then translating the sentences they were in to English (approximations only). Of course, that is time consuming for even a small book and we didn't keep the habit up. You've inspired me to return to it sooner rather than later, though.
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Re: The Language Pad

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Sep 11, 2017 6:37 pm

Pardon the interruption. And not only am I late to the party, it looks like the party might be over. I hope not, because I like what you have to say and I don't feel like your entries are too long.
For my part, a few words about Un Village Français. Overall, good, but the quality drops as the years go by, and season by season the first half seems better than the second half (first season excluded, which is uniformly excellent). And even including Saison 5, which is overall a waste of time. Here is a mini-review of that season (in spite of the title) and [Spoiler Alert!]: Critique de Un Village Français - Saison 6 - par Arlette et les mécanos at Allocine
Obviously not a feel-good series, but I liked the way it gives a feel for living in an occupied country with less than friendly occupying troops and how such an occupation spoils everything for the occupied. As well there is what "Arlette" in the review says
La force de la série résidant dans le non manichéisme, le culte du non héros, nous renvoyant toujours à nous-même et vers quelle aurait été notre attitude dans telle ou telle situation

I'll go away now.
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