Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

[Elenia]

The fact I only live 75 miles from France has me thinking I really should be making more of an effort to get to France and practice. The fact it would cost me £250 for a train or plane to go 75 miles seems ridiculous however. The ferry is more reasonable at only £80, and I would get the use of my car, and bring home a ton of wine and other miscellaneous tourist crap.

What luxury private jet are your hiring??

(My grasp on the English language is becoming increasingly slippery: I wondered for a good little while why 'highering' warranted a squiggly red line )

[Iversen]

In this age of cheap flights it should be possible to get to somewhere in France for less than 250 £. Then you would of course have to leave your car at home, but given how the French park their cars (plus the fact that they generally drive in the right side or the or road) it might save you some nervewrecking moments.

[rdearman]

To be fair I was looking at flights for two people which as £250 same amount as the Eurostar for two. But the ferry was only 80 so the cheapest option. The private jet I was hiring was Ryanair and I only had to share it with about a hundred others. Plus it doesn't land in Paris, it lands at some small airport about 30 miles outside and you take a bus.

I am OK with driving in on that side of the road I learned on that side.

[rdearman]

Just another quick; I haven't really done anything, post.

I have managed to level out on my Anki deck and I've listened to some French but that is about it. I've been watching a lot of "Impractical Jokers" on YouTube because I kinda got hooked on it when I was last in the States. It would be interesting to watch some comedy shows in Italian or French, so if anyone has any recommendations I would be interested.

I'm hoping to do more this week since I've got myself a new shiny Galaxy Tab tablet. I have a ton of books to read, it is just finding the time. (making the time) So I stick a load of video, books and audio on the SD card and should be rocking and rolling!

Had an interesting conversation with an Italian lady who told me one of the guys I've been watching on YouTube who speaks Italian she feels speaks poor Italian. Mostly because he has a heavy dialect accent. Which I suppose is normal but it didn't really occur to me some Italians would struggle to understand the Italian of another native. But given the difficulty I have understanding Scottish people, it now seems obvious.

[reineke]

Many of these "dialects" are really languages.

Friulian

[rdearman]

Many of these "dialects" are really languages.
Friulian

I know, although I think Brescia is considered a dialect.

[reineke]

Many of these "dialects" are really languages.
Friulian

I know, although I think Brescia is considered, dialect.

..of Lombard



Just say the word and I'll remove this from your log.

[rdearman]

[rdearman]

--- Super Challenge Update ---
Target: Double Challenge in French & Italian; Quarter Challenge in Esperanto, Mandarin and Finnish

--- SC Statistics ---
French : 51.2 books : 89.4 films
Italian : 52.1 books : 46.0 films
--- On-Hold ---
Chinese: 0 books : 4.0 films
Esperanto: 0.2 books : 0.5 films
Finnish: 0.0 books : 7.2 films
--------------------------------------
Haven't done a SC update in a long long long time. I parked Esperanto, Mandarin and Finnish because I couldn't really whip up enough enthusiasm to complete them. I'm on track to complete a full challenge in French & Italian (although films will need attention). I will struggle with the double challenge in anything except French films (according to the SC-bot calculations). I'm running behind. Reminds me of the lyrics of a song by Alabama.

I'm in a hurry to get things done
Oh I rush and rush until life's no fun
All I really gotta do is live and die
But I'm in a hurry and don't know why.

For some strange reason Netflix seems to have taken off all the series I was watching with Italian audio, this is very frustrating. But I might just go back to watching re-runs of Carabineri.

I've been trying to spend more time listening and the majority of that time has been French. I've been watching "Trollhunter" which is a cartoon on Netflix with French audio. It is a struggle, and I really need to get more focus.

-- Unstructured ramblings --

OK, that is all I've done for the SC, but still have stuff to say, so I'm labelling it under ramblings. I'm toying with the idea of going back to basics and re-reading all the grammar books I have for French, as well as Italian and completing the Italian verb drill book I have. I'm been told I have a real problem with passato prossimo and I should spend some time focusing on it, and imperfetto. This is where my off-the-cuff comment about memorisation originated which Carmody picked up on for his thread. This is because I never really memorised the verb forms, and I certainly haven't "internalised" them. I have this problem in both French and Italian, and I'm now regretting not spending more time doing the boring stuff. I am frustrated because basically the answer to; Can you speak French & Italian? is actually I can READ French and Italian which to be honest isn't a very useful skill in an English speaking country.

I'm thinking FSI drills in French are a good idea. I have a printed copy of the Basic course sitting beside my desk as I type this. The Italian FSI probably isn't so helpful for output, but speaking drills in French might be. However, I know this is another timesink which I probably cannot commit to.

Now I've mostly been successful with Anki. I know a lot of people don't like flashcards, but for me they are OK, because I can dip in and out of them during the day. This is good because my day is pretty unstructured normally and I don't have a specific time I can assign to study. I use driving for audiobooks (hence the ease of hitting SC targets for film), and train travel and weekends for books. If I can figure out a good way to use anki for drilling passato prossimo and imperfetto tenses in Italian then I'm sure I'll be able to internalise it properly.

I need to up my immersion in Italian, I've been too focused on French and Italian isn't getting a fair share of the limited time available.

On another note I've been using HelloTalk a lot, but I'm probably going to scale back on that too. The problem is although it suits my lifestyle, because it is short choppy conversations which can be responded to on an irregular basis, I mostly use English because I don't have time to think and construct proper sentences. Also the keyboard on my phone is a pain in the proverbial to switch between EN, FR, IT, ZH keyboards. So, all this is sub-optimal and I've been thinking what I really need is something similar, but in French or Italian only.

If I could try to commit to an hour, I could pay for a tutor on skype, but it is the lack of consistency in my life which would mean the only time I could commit to a regular meeting would be midnight!

Ah well, 1st world problems eh?

[DaveBee]

I've been trying to spend more time listening and the majority of that time has been French. I've been watching "Trollhunter" which is a cartoon on Netflix with French audio. It is a struggle, and I really need to get more focus.

France Culture's 'Samedi Noir' programme seems to be 1 hour radio dramas, my fave so far is Grand hôtel Babylon.