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

[garyb]

Last day at work! In language learning terms this will mean some changes, but nothing I've not already alluded to in the past weeks: less reading and radio, more TV and film, more proper study like FSI, more conversation hopefully, more language time in general and less time spent on the forum.

The prospect of Spanish tutoring has motivated me as expected: I've gotten though a bit more of FSI now. I'm on unit 29 which is over halfway, but it's taken half a year... I hope to blast through the rest with this extra free time. The friend of friend says she teaches at all levels and even prefers intermediate and advanced students to beginners, and she'd be happy to do a conversational lesson or two per week and point out the things I need to focus on. All sounding good.

Maybe it's "the grass is greener on the other side" again but I do think that the Spanish tutoring situation should be better than the French or Italian one: advanced learners are much less rare so in theory there should be more tutors to cater to them. Of course right now I'm surely still in the beginner-to-intermediate comfort zone of most tutors, but looking to the future. I know that Leosmith recently started a thread about a negative experience with a Spanish tutor, but that might have just been an unlucky choice.

Started a couple of books: I'm still in the mood for French reading so I finally opened my copy of Lanzarote et autres textes by Houellebecq (quick side note, I always thought that using "autres" in this way without "d'" or "des" was incorrect, but if it's in a book title it can't be; I guess my French knowledge still has plenty gaps!). In Italian I started another book by Chiara Gamberale, Quattro etti d'amore grazie, which I'm quite aware is pure trashy chick-lit... but "Per dieci minuti" did make me curious to check out her fiction and this one sounded like the most bearable. The story idea is silly but a little more original than the others about contacting past lovers. Not read enough yet to form an opinion, but if it's awful I'll just drop it. I'm making good progress with conversational Italian so I'm keen to keep attacking it from all sides, including books like this.

For series I've started watching Fuoriclasse. Similar idea, not the most interesting thing ever but good for everyday language. I'll try a couple of episodes then decide whether to continue.

[garyb]

As I thought might happen I've pretty much disappeared from the forum after finishing work... Even without work I've still felt like I've not had much free time, but I've been spending a lot of it on catching up on sleep and of course all the family and social commitments of the holidays.

Recent stuff:

Spanish: Still working on FSI, and taken a few lessons. As hoped they've been good for putting my knowledge into practice and discovering some weak points, although at my current level it still kinda feels like everything is my weak point. Spanish progress is still feeling frustratingly slow: reading is still hard, my listening is still at the point where radio and podcasts are too easy but TV and film are too difficult without subtitles, and my speaking is still a mess of Italian-influenced mistakes, verb guesswork, and gaping vocabulary holes. Nothing I can do other than just keep up the work! I've finished watching Narcos and am now enjoying Vis a vis.

Italian: Just keeping it up. Not much real-life interaction as my Italian friends are mostly back in Italy for the holidays, but some writing and Skyping. Quattro etti d'amore, grazie is one of the strangest things I've ever read, I don't even know what to make of it but it's not exactly the simplistic love story I was expecting. I've caught up on a few recent films: La pazza gioia, Perfetti Sconosciuti (I didn't really rate either, but the latter is very modern and basically 90 minutes of social conversation about relationships and friendships so it's interesting for learners) and finally Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot. I investigated a series, Medici, which sounded very interesting but it turned out to be in English rather than Italian...

End of the year

There's not much I can say for a wrap-up without repeating myself. I've kept up the consistency with Italian and been speaking and writing it very regularly. With this I've seen gradual improvements, which is the best I can hope for given my level and situation. My pronunciation is definitely better, and the acting classes have helped there, but there's still a long way to go. My trip to Italy was great and helped me understand what my level is and what to work on. Spanish has been very on-and-off; a bit more consistent recently but still slow progress as I say. I've mostly kept my French alive.

I still have no idea what I'll do and where I'll end up over the next year so I can't do much planning, but for the moment it looks like Italian and Spanish are here to stay. I'm not sure if I'll start a new log or just continue this one and change or remove the year from the title; I'm leaning towards the latter since not much is really changing and I'm probably going to be posting less anyway. Once I have more solid plans I might reconsider, especially if they involve travel, but for now my plan is really just to keep up the good work and put more time into my languages while I can! I'll happily keep slowly taking my Italian towards that elusive C1, Spanish from "getting by" to "getting by well", and keep my French decent. In terms of travel, Spain and/or Latin America are still on my mind and Sardinia is looking more and more appealing.

Happy New Year everyone!

[garyb]

I've gone for keeping and renaming the same log for now.

Spanish:

I feel like it's starting to click a bit more: FSI is feeling easier (and I'm managing half a unit most days), my last couple of conversations went more smoothly, and I'm following Vis a vis more easily although my brain's still inclined to focus on the English subtitles. Shame I can't find it with Spanish ones.

I'm reading El coronel no tiene quien le escriba by García Marquez, at the recommendation of my teacher. It's shorter and easier than some of his other works, and it's been compared to every French learner's second book, L'étranger, philosophically and linguistically. It's also culturally interesting as it's set during the period of civil wars in Colombia. I read about half of it, then my teacher gave me a comprehension exercise that made me realise that I had rushed and not paid much attention! So I've started again, this time trying to practise what I preach about quality over quantity of input.

Italian:

More pronunciation work. I've started working through La voce che tocca, and I like it. It's aimed at native speakers who want to improve their speaking and standardise their pronunciation, rather than at learners, but many of the principles are the same. One interesting piece of advice is to imitate the voice actors who dub films, as they're considered the standard-bearers. The exercises can also be applied to the scripts from my theatre class, which is a nice overlap.

My speaking's slowly getting more fluent, but I'm still making more basic mistakes with gender and number agreement than I really should by this point. Not sure if the solution is just more practice (it's not like I haven't had enough by now!) or specific drilling or just slowing down and thinking more while speaking.

[Spoonary]

Ooh, I'm glad you're enjoying La voce che tocca as I thought you would. I didn't really do any of the exercises after the first half of the book, but I'll be sure to return to it when I need to fine-tune my Italian diction.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I, too, tend to make many more mistakes when I try to speak quickly and should take more time to think while I'm speaking. I guess my brain just wants to prove it's good at the language by making me speak as fast as possible. We just need to remember that not all native speakers rattle off at 200mph. There are some who take things con un poco de calma.

[garyb]

Ooh, I'm glad you're enjoying La voce che tocca as I thought you would. I didn't really do any of the exercises after the first half of the book, but I'll be sure to return to it when I need to fine-tune my Italian diction.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I, too, tend to make many more mistakes when I try to speak quickly and should take more time to think while I'm speaking. I guess my brain just wants to prove it's good at the language by making me speak as fast as possible. We just need to remember that not all native speakers rattle off at 200mph. There are some who take things con un poco de calma.

Indeed, I always try to remind myself of Italians I know who speak nice and slowly and remember that it's not a race. I sometimes feel a pressure to speak fast to "prove myself", but it doesn't really work like that and accuracy is more important. Especially since going too fast usually means losing accuracy in pronunciation as well as grammar.

I'm still in the first part of La voce..., on using the diaphragm and the vowel sounds, I'm just taking it slowly. One bit of feedback I get fairly often is that some of my vowels don't sound quite right so I want to focus on these for a bit. But I'm hoping for some good material on intonation later on in the book, since it's another big weak point for me.

[lingua]

You two just convinced me to buy La voce che tocca. I try to speak well with a minimal accent but I notice too that the faster I talk the worse my pronunciation is especially for those letter combinations that don't roll off the tongue very easily.

[garyb]

Hope you enjoy it lingua, you'll probably overtake me quickly enough! It's the best resource on Italian pronunciation that I've found so far, by virtue of being the only one worth even considering! Other than my acting teacher, that is, and much of the book's advice so far seems similar to his.

Not much progress in the last week, I've been a bit busy and unwell even without work. But I've organised a little week in London for a week, going this Wednesday, and sorting that out has taken time. I'm going to see some friends there including some Italians so I'll no doubt get plenty practice.

Finished the first series of Vis a Vis. It's definitely gripping, even if overly dramatic as Spanish shows tend to be, enough to make me want to continue with the second series which doesn't have any subtitles. I'll see how that goes... I've also come back to Aquí no hay quien viva for when I want something lighter (a crime thriller isn't the best for relaxing) and easier (it's by far the easiest "real" TV series I've found).

[garyb]

I'm back from my week in London. I didn't manage to see all the friends I wanted to; notably, I was hoping to meet up with a couple who've lived in Bolivia for a while and have a chat about South America but it didn't work out. But I did see others, including some Italians, so I had some practice. Especially in the last two days, when I hung out and stayed with an Italian friend who decided to speak Italian with me the whole time and introduce me to some other Italians... Overall I'm still seeing good progress in fluency and usage.

I didn't use my other languages much, but I did hear them a lot: London was full of French speakers as usual, and I heard plenty Spanish too, at times with Latin American accents as well as the usual Peninsular ones. At the end I was in an airport and a woman started speaking Spanish to me like it was the most normal thing. Fortunately I was able to answer her question about the flight to Valencia, which unfortunately I wasn't due to board...

I've got a breakthrough to report for my Spanish understanding: today I watched the first episode of the second season of Vis a Vis without subtitles and I hardly had any problems! I didn't catch a few fast parts, and at times I had to pause to look up words (but even the fact that I could pick out the unknown word in order to look it up was good!) but I'd confidently say that I understood most of it and I followed the story easily. This is great since I've been saying for a while that most TV is too difficult, and a prison thriller isn't exactly the easiest thing to understand. I suppose part of it is becoming used to the language and actors of this particular series, but I'm sure that it's also due to general improvement in listening.

I can't say yet whether this improvement has transferred to my speaking, but I'll hopefully find out tomorrow on Skype.

[garyb]

I've had a couple of lessons since the last post and based on these I'd confirm that the improvement has indeed transferred to my speaking!

My teacher has decided that I'm too familiar with Spanish Spanish and has started making me work with Argentinian videos... It's a tough accent!

Italian is still going well too, including the pronunciation work. Some of that work, like avoiding a nasal voice, using the diaphragm properly, and pronouncing syllables fully, is general and is also having positive effects on my Spanish and probably even English. The material on the using the diaphragm in particular is great, and this is coming from somebody who's already read plenty and had plenty instruction on the subject. This actually teaches how to apply it to normal speech, rather than just to singing or specific exercises.

Even without work I'm still having similar feelings about never having quite enough time for my linguistic and musical endeavours, but I'm beginning to just accept that that's how life is and to some extent I'm always going to have to choose a few things to prioritise. Having put some thought into this, I'm now seeing good progress on the things I have decided to focus on. Both languages are still a high priority, but in music I've had to think a bit harder and make some sacrifices.

I'm also still thinking about travel plans. My current idea is to spend a bunch of time in Europe this year, travelling slowly and perhaps spending a few months in each place. Spain and Italy are of course top destinations, and I also have Portugal and Greece in mind and might well pass through other countries. South America is still on my list, but for now I'm favouring Europe for various reasons: closer, more familiar, safer, smaller distances to travel, various events and possible plans this year in the continent, more reliable internet access (important as I'm considering working part-time online while travelling), making the most of it while I'm still an EU citizen, and simply having much clearer idea of which destinations attract me. The Workaway idea is still on my mind too; it sounds like a lot of hassle from Serpent's experiences in the thread, but could be worth it to get some real immersion.

[garyb]

Things have been a bit quieter in this last week, and I was away in the mountains at the weekend then needed to have a nice day of doing nothing and resting which is very rare for me. From today I'm trying to get everything back on track.

Finished a couple of books: El coronel no tiene quien le escriba and Michela Murgia's Viaggio in Sardegna, a fascinating book about places and culture in Sardinia. Picked up La casa de los espíritus again; it's still not an easy read but it's going much more smoothly than before. Still watching Vis a vis, although I'm finding the second series more over-the-top and less engaging than the first.

Got through a few more FSI units, including the infamous one about a character's gran dying. I like how much attention the course gives to the subjunctive. In French and Italian the subjunctive is mostly just a case of plug it in where necessary, but in Spanish it's a bit more involved and there are places where subjunctive or indicative can be used and each gives the phrase a slightly different meaning.

Another negative point I'd give FSI is that it would be a bad course for perfectionists. I could easily see my past self spending hours on each unit trying to learn every detail, but fortunately after having already learned a couple of other languages I have a better sense for what is important and what I don't need to worry about too much since I'll pick it up sooner or later anyway with more exposure and practice.