Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, bits of French)

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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Mon Nov 21, 2016 10:34 am

I had some surprise Spanish practice at the weekend! I was out for a friend's birthday and then on the way home I bumped into a few Spanish people I know and went for a drink with them. I had a couple of decent one-to-one conversations but the group ones were tougher, especially once we were inside the noisy bar. Noisy environments are a killer at intermediate level. I didn't suffer too much from the other killer, tiredness, but this late night didn't help: there's a reason I was on the way home...

For Spanish, the key thing for progress at this point just seems to be consistent contact with the (spoken) language: as long as I get that, things keep moving. Whether that be input or study or conversation isn't really important. I'm still far from the intermediate plateau. For now Narcos is doing the job, and once I have time for FSI again that should speed it up.

Started reading Bianca come il latte, rossa come il sangue by Alessandro D'Avenia. It's a "young adult" novel that seemed to make a big splash when it came out and has gotten extremely mixed reviews. So far it just seems like a fairly standard story of an angsty teenage boy in love. Suits me fine since I've been there and done that so I can relate, and the language is very everyday which is exactly what I was hoping for. Regularly reading modern books like this should help my Italian; again it's a case of keeping up the contact and choosing appropriate input to support all the speaking. For TV, now that I've finished È arrivata la felicità I'm mostly focusing on unscripted or semi-unscripted stuff like Che tempo che fa (lots of interviews, and the comedy/satire parts keep me on my toes) and my various YouTube subscriptions.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Mon Nov 28, 2016 11:35 am

I did half an FSI unit yesterday! Sadly this has become such a rare occurrence that I feel the need to mention it here... Maybe I'll even manage the other half next weekend. Fortunately FSI is the kind of course that you can leave for a few weeks and then easily pick up again. I try to work on Spanish but I just keep getting dragged back to Italian because I simply have much more contact with Italian speakers. Opportunities to use Italian are right here right now, while ones for Spanish are mostly just vague future possibilities and those aren't quite as motivating. Bit of the classic paradox of "once I'm better the opportunities will come, but I need the opportunities to get better", even if it's just for motivation since I've already recognised that conversation practice isn't too important at this stage. On the Italian side I've been speaking it more with my flatmate again and that's making me realise how many gaps there still are in my knowledge, which also encourages me to keep working on that rather than Spanish.

Reading: Two thirds through Bianca come il latte... so far and it's alright, I don't have very strong feelings about it, although I'm curious about how the story will end and that will probably determine my opinion. I'm really just reading it for the sake of input. On the opposite end of the scale, reading out of pure literary interest rather than linguistic, I started Huysmans's À Rebours in French: I had been curious about it ever since reading Houellebecq's Soumission, and then I recently read The Picture of Dorian Gray which also references it and that pushed me. It's nineteenth century literature so not exactly easy; I found the preface ("Notice") hard-going but once it gets into the normal chapters it's a little easier. Still, a lot of descriptive language and some old words that I can't find in a dictionary. But I like it so far.

Watching: Continuing with unscripted stuff in Italian but it can be hard to find interesting things. Talk shows and interviews tend to be either too inane or too intellectual and political, not much middle ground. YouTube is probably a better bet than proper TV, but again finding good material amongst all that is available is hard since I don't know exactly what I'm looking for other than vague terms like "interviews". Might just go back to series and films: there's still plenty of crime and comedy stuff I've not checked out. I find that radio and podcasts are much better for talk and interviews than TV and YouTube, at least in terms of the good stuff being easier to find.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Tue Nov 29, 2016 3:21 pm

A few things interesting enough to merit two entries in two days:

- Went to a French beer tasting last night, which I found out about through Meetup. Good beer and a good opportunity to get the rust off my French. All things considered I still speak it pretty well, even if I'm not at my peak any more: much of it feels automatic, like muscle memory. There was a good number of French people there as well as learners. I believe that's one of the secrets of Meetup: go for the events based an activity other than just conversation. Cinema, food, drink, etc. They attract more native speakers. Unfortunately they're not as frequent.

- Finished Bianca come il latte, rossa come il sangue. I stick by my opinion, it was okay, just about interesting enough to keep me reading. Overall it reminded me of these Hollywood romantic comedies where the plots seem different on the surface but they all follow the same predictable storyline, and are in a grey area of being neither realistic nor proper fantasy.

- I've got a last-minute week off work from tomorrow, in exchange for finishing for good a week later than planned because of a project. So I've got a little chunk of free time and I'll of course use some of it for languages. I should be able to fit in a few FSI units, a bunch of TV and film, some Skyping, and some pronunciation work.
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Tomás
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Tomás » Tue Nov 29, 2016 3:33 pm

garyb wrote:- Finished Bianca come il latte, rossa come il sangue. I stick by my opinion, it was okay, just about interesting enough to keep me reading. Overall it reminded me of these Hollywood romantic comedies where the plots seem different on the surface but they all follow the same predictable storyline, and are in a grey area of being neither realistic nor proper fantasy.


An Italian romantic comedy that totally violates the storyline conventions: "Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto".
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Wed Dec 07, 2016 5:29 pm

Thanks for the recommendation, Tomás. I admit that Italian romantic comedies can be a guilty pleasure of mine.

Apparently the forum was down, but I barely noticed because I was off work. To be blunt, this site is mostly a distraction from the day job for me and when I'm not working I have better things to do with my time, like actually studying and using my languages. But I do like reading and posting on here so once I finish work I'll try to fit it into my new routine, even if not as frequently.

As usual I overestimated what I'd get done during the week off work and it wasn't as productive as I had hoped. I ate something dodgy and was ill all weekend, which didn't help, and a lot of time was spent trying and mostly failing to catch up on sleep. But what I did do:

Italian: Several conversations, Skype and face-to-face. I still feel like my speaking is progressing. My flatmate almost always speaks Italian with me now, which is great even though we don't actually see each other very often these days. Even a few minutes a day is helpful. I'm also having plenty written conversations on Skype with an exchange partner who is great at correcting me, so I'm learning a lot from that.

I took a lesson, and had a think about whether and how to continue with them. I've concluded that my teacher tries to cover too much in each lesson, and I'd benefit more from working more thoroughly on fewer materials. It's really just the usual problem that tutors don't know how to teach advanced students. Even if they claim so, "advanced" by teaching standards is very different from "advanced" by learning standards (think of "advanced" courses by MT and Teach Yourself etc. which really just mean "beyond the basics"). The most helpful parts are the corrections and the discussions, but it feels like she rushes through these between one exercise and the next. I'll try to communicate this and see if we can work together better, and if not, time to look for another or just drop the lessons.

I'm still doing the theatre classes and they're going quite well. In particular I'm finally noticing my pronunciation improving! I had to read out a text I had never seen before and I mostly nailed the pronunciation and my accent was okay. So there is hope for pronunciation improvement if you're willing to accept that it's slow and takes many months. Going forward, I might try to carve out some time to look at Francesco Ventura's book (mentioned on Spoonary's log) sometime in the coming months. It's aimed at native speakers who want to fine-tune their pronunciation, but it seems like learners can get something out of it too and it might cover some things like intonation that materials for learners neglect.

Spanish: Some more Narcos episodes and two-thirds of an FSI unit, which to be fair was one of the long three-tape ones.
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Spoonary
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Spoonary » Wed Dec 07, 2016 8:29 pm

Congratulations on all your successes. It sounds like you're doing great as usual with Italian, so keep that up as I love reading about it. :P

I hope you're feeling better now too!
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Mon Dec 12, 2016 12:48 pm

Beginning my last week at work!

I went to the International Meetup at the weekend, for the first time since June or July I think, to see some friends. Plenty Italian conversation with the friends and some new people, and a bit of Spanish with a Basque and a Chilean. It was good in a "proving a point" way: I can go out and meet Italians and speak with them just fine. My feelings about that event are still the same, however: it's a bit fake, it's just a bunch of people with very little in common pretending to be friends, and it's more aimed at socialising than language practice even if one of its selling points is language exchange.

I had a pleasant chat with people but it was obvious enough that we weren't fussed about seeing each other again. Which is fine if you take it for what it is, and better than other times when I've felt unwelcome and encountered hostility. It's the kind of event that's fine occasionally but going regularly is, to quote one of my friends, a vicious circle. Most Friday nights I'd rather go out with just real friends or have a quiet one at home, especially now that I'm hardly desperate for language practice. It's great being able to have the oft-talked-about "abundance mindset" where I have enough opportunities already that I don't feel a need to put myself in situations I don't enjoy just for the chance of a little practice, but it's taken me a long time to get to this point.

Only a few more episodes of Narcos to go. I'm enjoying it but also looking forward to finishing and moving onto something more productive. To be honest it's way above my level between the subject matter, the colloquial language, and the Latin American Spanish; I'd struggle without subtitles. I'm sure the exposure is still helpful though. I'm watching with Italian subtitles and I think it's benefiting my Italian more than my Spanish. Next I'll move onto a 100%-Spanish series, maybe Vis a vis.

On the subject of Netflix: they're onto me. I tried watching with an Italian proxy, but they've cracked down as promised. I'm not missing loads but there were a few modern comedy and drama films in the Italian catalogue that I was wanting to try. Plus the US service apparently has a better foreign selection than the UK's lacklustre one so I was intending to try that sooner or later. I've read that for now there are still some ways around the restrictions, but this is the beginning of the end. For now there's still some value to get out of my subscription with the original series like Narcos.

Overall I hope to give myself easy access to target-language media so I have no excuses for not consuming lots of it once I have more free time. I'm thinking along the lines of Emk's log about "native media at my fingertips". But it can be a struggle to find out what's out there and where to find it; services like Netflix and Kindle make it much easier than ordering books and DVDs or hunting around for safe and working pirate sources. Might be best just to buy/download a bunch of stuff soon so I have a stash to dig into, and have readily-available sources like radio, podcasts, and YouTube subscriptions for background listening or filling in spare moments.

I'm getting back on track with FSI, and finding it useful to do it with my headphones and mic setup to check my pronunciation.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Tue Dec 13, 2016 10:32 am

Couple more things:

I might have a Spanish tutor: I just found out that a friend of a friend is beginning online teaching and is offering good rates, which coincides nicely with my finishing work. Thing is, at this stage I don't really feel a need for a tutor, but I'm sure it wouldn't do any harm. I don't know how her teaching ability is, but we get on well which is a start. Maybe just a lesson or two per week to put what I'm learning into practice with some conversation. I suppose I might as well find out more (what exactly these "good rates" are, whether she caters to non-beginners, availability) but it does seem like a good coincidence: I believe in the saying "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear", and this time it's perhaps true in the literal sense!

If nothing else, it's a motivation to make my Spanish study more consistent, as I don't see the point in taking lessons unless it's to complement plenty of self-study.

Finished reading "À rebours" yesterday. It wasn't bad, it was one of these classic works of literature that spends a lot of time referencing other classic works of literature, which did make me more curious about other 18th-19th century French stuff as well as earlier Latin works for my "maybe sometime in the very distant future" list.

Also forgot to mention that I did my first proper singing performance at the weekend, with one piece in French by Halévy and one in Italian by Verdi. Maybe my growing interest in classical music will help to legitimise my interest in Italian, as another item on the list of answers to the usual "why are you learning our language?!" question from confused native speakers.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Ogrim » Tue Dec 13, 2016 10:50 am

garyb wrote:Finished reading "À rebours" yesterday. It wasn't bad, it was one of these classic works of literature that spends a lot of time referencing other classic works of literature, which did make me more curious about other 18th-19th century French stuff as well as earlier Latin works for my "maybe sometime in the very distant future" list.


I really like the novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans, although I don't think it is the most accessible work in French literature. À rebours is considered a symbol of "decadent" literature, and apparently it inspired Oscar Wilde to write The Picture of Dorian Gray. At least there are some thinly hidden references to it in Wilde's book.

If you want to read more of Huysmans, you should try Là-Bas, which is about Satanism in France at the end of the 19th century. It was quite controversial when published, but today it is considered a real classic.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Tue Dec 13, 2016 12:56 pm

Ogrim wrote:I really like the novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans, although I don't think it is the most accessible work in French literature. À rebours is considered a symbol of "decadent" literature, and apparently it inspired Oscar Wilde to write The Picture of Dorian Gray. At least there are some thinly hidden references to it in Wilde's book.

If you want to read more of Huysmans, you should try Là-Bas, which is about Satanism in France at the end of the 19th century. It was quite controversial when published, but today it is considered a real classic.

Thanks for the recommendation, Là-bas sounds very interesting and I'll get around to it sometime. Yes, I recently read The Picture of Dorian Gray and that was what encouraged me to finally pick up À Rebours, although it had already been on my list since I read Houellebecq's Soumission which also heavily references it.


I've just done a wee update to my log title to reflect that there's still a little French in my life and I mention it on here: some books, occasional conversations, and once I have more free time I might well fit in a little TV and film. I don't see myself going back to actively studying it, but for now I've made peace with it and am happily keeping it alive and using it when the opportunity is there. Who knows for the future.
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