tiia's log (FIN, SPA, SWE, EUS)

[DaveAgain]

So the reasons to take that course would be:
- keeping a rhythm and leaving the house
- and therefore taking care of my mental health
- social contact (even though I expect the other students to be rather eldery people?)
- maybe motivation to get some excercise

- and as a bonus I'd learn some French, which may be useful for travelling by train to Spain.
(I like learning languages in general and I don't think I would slow down the course or so.)

Costs would be ~50€ for the course plus another ~50€ for the book if I don't find it in the library.

I think you make a good case for it, I vote Oui!

[tiia]

I did decide in favour of the French course. I noticed that my motivation to start French is actually surprisingly similar to my motivation to start Swedish back in the days: I had too much time and it was not certain if I would continue after one course. Now see how far I made it with Swedish: got B2 last year in all skills. But no pressure yet, no expectations. We'll see where I'll end up.

So far the whole thing looks quite good. The teacher tried to speak almost entirely in French during the first lesson. We were only four (plus the teacher), but I know not everyone was there, because there was a strike of the public transport on that day. That meant the location was already paying off for me: I could walk to the class. Took me over an hour with all the icy roads, but I just made it on time.

The French book did cost me slightly more than expected, because I didn't want to buy it online just to get it at some point to a post box. It would have been possible to get it faster with delivery to the shop, but due to the strike on thursday and friday that option wasn't available.
At least the book shop that I bought it from instead, had some other fictional books reduced in price as well, so that kinda made it up. Got two books of a trilogy, that I could not finish before moving here. Unfortunately they only had the second and third book, but I think the library has the first one. (And only the first one.)

Walking_to_French_class.jpg

And talking about books, that shop had also a Basque textbook (Hippocrenes beginner's series), which I then didn't buy,because I wasn't sure how much I would actually still learn from that book. The most interesting part would have been reading the dialogues. But there's audio available online for free.
I also bought some books when I was in Spain, because we visited second-hand bookstores in Bilbao and Pamplona. I got two books in German and two in Spanish: a humorous guide to the Basque people/culture, which my friend knew from other Spanish learners, and one Basque grammar.
Btw. I'm still doing Memrise with the Basque. I finally accept that this is indeed an activity that is best done on my phone as it is indeed just a replacement for endless scrolling of the News, when I do it. I would still not like to rely on my phone for learning, or even make it an essential part for learning, but it's ok now. I do get that it makes sense as a complimentary activity and I can still access everything from my computer as well.
Once I have learned the words of the first 7-8 chapters relatively well, I can hopefully use the text book again without being lost, just because of the amount of unknown words. I already noticed an improvement with the previous chapters.

Oh and when thinking about my vacation, I did buy a pair of shoes in Spain. This is in so far noticable as buying clothes is one of the most generic situations one can find in a book for beginners. (At least it was in my Spanish book quite in the beginning.) Seems like it took me almost 10 years until I actually had this kind of conversation.
So the second photo is taken close to the place, where I bought the shoes. (Indeed you'll get two photos today. )

Estella-Lizarra.jpg

Otherwise there is still one thing I haven't been writing about yet: I'm participating in some kind of citizen science project about the attitude towards languages. For those wanting to know more about it: here's an explanation about the project in Finnish. I thought it sounded interesting and could be a way to actually give researchers some more ideas. Because you know, we all have our opinions and experiences and so on, but some of theses things may remain unseen. So I thought I could actually contribute in a useful way as I have quite a lot of thoughts in this regard.
The whole thing is not only about learning foreign languages, but languages in general, so also natives would be absolutely welcome. E.g. dialects will also be discussed. In case you live here, have a high command of Finnish (or you're native) and are interested, it is still possible to join (free of charge).

[DaveAgain]

I also bought some books when I was in Spain, because we visited second-hand bookstores in Bilbao and Pamplona. I got two books in German and two in Spanish: a humorous guide to the Basque people/culture, which my friend knew from other Spanish learners, and one Basque grammar.

I'm reading Kurt Tucholsky's Ein Pyrenäenbuch at the moment, there's a chapter on the Basques, La Pelote seems to have played a large role in Basque life in his time.

-----
I've found radio very helpful for French:

Radio plays for children
Finlande, difficile independance

[tiia]

I also bought some books when I was in Spain, because we visited second-hand bookstores in Bilbao and Pamplona. I got two books in German and two in Spanish: a humorous guide to the Basque people/culture, which my friend knew from other Spanish learners, and one Basque grammar.

I'm reading Kurt Tucholsky's Ein Pyrenäenbuch at the moment, there's a chapter on the Basques, La Pelote seems to have played a large role in Basque life in his time.

-----
I've found radio very helpful for French:

Radio plays for children
Finlande, difficile independance

It was an interesting read and I did notice somehow he was writing more about the French side of the Basque country. And the game... yes those places to play it (called fronton) can be found everywhere. Really everywhere around there.

Let's see when I'm starting with French media. So far I'll just go to class and do homework. Last week we learned quite a bit in those 90min, so that I was honestly surprised. This week's off, because of the annual skiing holidays.
Fortunately I can see this as a relaxing and fun side project for now, nothing too serious yet.

I'm continuing learning Basque. Started the vocabulary of chaper 8 on Memrise. Skimmed through grammar points in the Letamendia book today. Looked at the Hippocrene book as well. They teach the grammar in a different order, but they, too, are delaying the introduction of the normal presens tense as much as possible. So far only the presens of 3-5 sythetic verbs was introduced. Learned several other tenses instead, that I now have to learn and also learn to tell them apart. So many tenses while I can hardly say anything at all.
Read also an explanation in the grammar book, that made the sythetic verbforms a bit clearer.

The dialogues in the Hippocrene book sometimes hardly make any sense, but are way easier to follow than the texts in the Letamendia book. Hippocrene uses only dialogues, while Letamendia doesn't. There are only small bits of speech in the texts. So the sentence structure in the Letamedia-book is more complicated and uses more fillers and connectors.
I noticed also that I wrote down a lot of grammar points already from watching the videos last year. Many of those just appear later in the books, so I'm somehow hopeful, it will become less confusing at some point. Finnish grammar is still helping me to understand some concepts more easily.

[tiia]

Time for another update:

A bit of French: classes and swimming still works out as a nice combination. The last days I spontaneously had a visitor over and so we decided to try out the underground swimming hall.
The teacher also recommended already gave us a hint,that there's a French series at yle areena. Tried watching two episodes and also listening to the first Harry Potter audiobook. The series was fine with the subtitles, but I only understood very little spoken French. Mainly greetings and such.
The audiobook however, is faaaar beyond my level. But it's interesting to see how much I can follow a story that I know very well. Seems I can more or less get what happens, because some key words are very clear,but in reality I hardly understand anything. I wonder how people really try listening to native material from day one without some "real" studies. I still may continue with the whole audiobook, since it's only about 8 h and I only listened 2 h. Shouldn't be too hard to use it for some more dish washing.

More Basque: Interestingly enough I'm doing more Basque now that I have too much time.
I may have listened a few times to audio files for the books, but mainly more memrise. I finished the vocabulary of chapter 8 of the Letamendia book. Re-read some other chapter's texts, which indeed have gotten easier now with more vocabulary.
Had a discussion about the present tense with my friend after the last post and it turned out that all my confusion last time resolved quite a bit.
But instead of working more with the Hippocrene and Letamendia books, I found my old login data for the online ikasten course again. Went there and did some excercises. Didn't do the leveling test yet and after looking into the A1 tasks, I noticed that the grammar should mostly be known already (??), but again they use a different set of words, which would make a levelling test probably quite difficult. So I try now to continue doing some tasks there, partly as learning something new, partly as repition. And I tried to copy all the words from the A1 section (though I know now that I didn't catch all), elmiminated the known and easy ones and put the rest into memrise. So another 89 words for memrise. I already did more than half of them.

Language research course: Interesting lectures and discussions again. More about dialects and statistical research. Next time the topic will be multilingualism.
The course is also quite a good language practise, as the discussions are a bit more advanced than the typical stuff you do every day. The other participants have also made quite interesting experiences in life, but I probably would have never run into them otherwise.

Btw. yesterday this log turned eight years. And at the beginning of April my profil picture turns 10.

[tiia]

French: I should do more in addition to the classes, though there are not many classes left. The last two times I somehow didn't know too many words, I would have needed in class. So after the complete fail of using the audio material of the book at home, I even opend Duolingo again. I jumped several chapters ahead and I probably just have to do that as long as it seems to easy to do with only two or three unknown words, that I then have to translate to avoid unnecessary mistakes.
Going back to "already learned" lessons looks like a more useful approach maybe? So I don't have to do all those endless repetitions. And I maybe found what people described es "stories" before by jumping back to those lessons that have a book as a symbol? Never noticed those before though. The stories actually looked like a nice feature.

And now what I mean by "complete fail" using the audio material of my textbook. They use an app. And only an app. In order to access the audio you have to scan the pages of the physical book in front of you, it should then recognise the page and show some symbol to play the audio file for that page.
Not only do I not like that they force you to use a phone for that. Page scanning is also highly impractical. Oh, and it doesn't work. My camera just showed a blurry image and could not focus. The app never recognised any page. Seeing I'm by far not the only person with this problem (I never installed an app with such bad reviews!) I deleted the app again after a very short time. Considerd trying to get the audio of the previous version of the book through the library... Maybe some texts are still the same...

Continued watching the series that the teacher recommended in the third class or so. It's somehow fun to watch, though I mainly rely on subtitles.

Basque: I had the feeling that I should be closely to A1 -level soon. Then looked at my green book again and noticed that on the back it indeed claims to go up to A2, though the Spanish original was written before the invention of the CEFR. I'm still somewhere in the middle/second half, but so the feeling of maybe A1 would make sense.
I finished the A1 section of the ikasten course yesterday! Even though they explicitly state in the beginning, that the levels are not exact etc, I'm thinking whether I should now claim A1 skills or not. I mean I still cannot use it for anything. But isn't that normal for A1 anyways? I for sure know at least something.
(Lets just forget, that I first started in June/July 2022. )

Additionally I found another resource for A1, that should be developed to C1 until 2028. It has small fun videos nad also a lot of other content, so I it could actually be a good addition to the mix. So maybe I could use it to review already learned content while progressing with ikasten towards A2.

Finnish: Currently working on the final task for the language research/study course I took this spring. They should publish the text on friday as part of a longer text about the whole thing. As far as I know they will still have quite some work to do to actually go through all the material from the course etc. It was definitely super interesting to participate. Lots of discussion about language, life and everything.


Last time I wrote I had a visitor over here. So here's still a photo from that visit. The snow is mostly gone now. I'm finally getting back on my bike.

foggy_Suomenlinna.jpg

[DaveAgain]

French:
Continued whatching the series that the teacher recommended in the third class or so. It's somehow fun to watch, though I mainly rely on subtitles.

What's the series called?

Last time I wrote I had a visitor over here. So here's still a photo from that visit. The snow is mostly gone now. I'm finally getting back on my bike.

That looks cold! I used to have a pair of studded bicycle tyres that I think had been developed for cycling in Baltic winters.

[tiia]

French:
Continued watching the series that the teacher recommended in the third class or so. It's somehow fun to watch, though I mainly rely on subtitles.

What's the series called?

In French Dix pour cent, in Finnish Agentit (lit. the agents), it's available on yle.areena for those being in Finland. Seems the name in English is Call My Agent!. I guess I prefer the French or Finnish name.

Last time I wrote I had a visitor over here. So here's still a photo from that visit. The snow is mostly gone now. I'm finally getting back on my bike.

That looks cold! I used to have a pair of studded bicycle tyres that I think had been developed for cycling in Baltic winters.

This calls out for another photo from the beginning of March:

Cycling_on_ice.jpg

Guess what kind of tyres you need for that. However, I somehow didn't dare to try them out, though I had changed the tyres already in November... You can get those easily in the bigger supermarkets here. The years before I was every time just thinking, whether I should get them or not.
February was so icy this year, that I also used put-on studs for my shoes. (Basically some kind of rubber or similar material with studs, that you put over your normal shoes.) I had not felt the need for those in the years before, but this year it was really bad. It's indeed also one of the reasons for the photo - knowing the hill in front of me might be too steep to cycle, but that without spikes I would not be able to walk up either. I had to prepare myself before the hill. The other reason to get of the bike at that point was a crack in the ice, due to the flowing water from one side of the path to the other.

I should now change the tyres back to normal. Should have done that already.

[DaveAgain]

French:
Continued watching the series that the teacher recommended in the third class or so. It's somehow fun to watch, though I mainly rely on subtitles.

What's the series called?

In French Dix pour cent, in Finnish Agentit (lit. the agents), it's available on yle.areena for those being in Finland. Seems the name in English is Call My Agent!. I guess I prefer the French or Finnish name.

I watched the first series of that. Difficult to follow without subtitles as I recall!

I think TinTin cartoons on YouTube and Arte.tv documentaries were the first French TV I watched. Some of the Arte documentaries even had French subtitles, a very rare find for me at the time.

[tiia]

Wanted to start with the A2 section of the ikasten course and then I noticed that I had not yet picked out all the new words yet. So I did another memrise deck for words for the A2 part. Unfortunately I think there are even more words missing in the new-vocabulary-list of each subsection as before. I didn't mind having a few words here and there in addition to the list but it seems to me that there are now more words not in the list. (They are then most of the times already introduced in the grammar section and thus more difficult to pick out, if you want to open as few parts of the sections in advance as possible.)

Anyway, I did a list, kicked out pretty much all the words I already should know due to the other decks, then split it into three parts, to create the different levels in memrise. So each level consists of the vocab of several sections from ikasten. The words for each level are then then shuffled around (using some free number generator online) to avoid similar words coming directly after each other.
I already shuffled the vocab of the Letamendia units, because I would have otherwise had an alphabetical list of vocab for each unit. Also at the end of the ikasten A1 vocab I shuffled the words a bit, but by hand, to avoid having first 6-8 different shop types and then 5-6 different fruits... I think mixing the words was actually quite a good idea.
The new A2 deck consists of 150 entries for now. We'll see whether I will have to add some more.

Oh and because I use ikasten in the language combination Basque-Spanish those lists also include an additional translation to German. So one side of the card is Basque, the other side Spanish (German).