Lilly's log - French, Russian, Spanish and Italian

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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:29 pm

Spanish

Still feeling rough so no "work" allowed. What do I do? 9.5h of silly continental Spanish TV :D Some 6 episodes of El internado, 2 episodes of Ministerio del tiempo. I think when binge watching I have more tolerance for bad acting and stereotypes. There will probably be more binge watching happening the next few days until I feel well enough to return to Russian.

By the way, I found another reason why watching continental Spanish series is a bad idea: Leísmo That's one way of sounding totally uneducated to Argentinian ears! During Ministerio del Tiempo my husband sat next to me correcting the Spanish of the actors :lol: No wonder that I still get confused over direct and indirect objects when I hear grammatically wrong Spanish half the time :roll:

22 of 150h continental Spanish series done.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby outcast » Tue Mar 28, 2017 9:48 pm

Interesting you say this, because I personally don't find Leismo uneducated when I hear it. My ears simply find it hyper-snobbish, like putting on some serious, unnecessary airs. But the end result is the same: I don't like it either.

The one that I find completely uneducated sounding is the inverse "loismo" for indirect objects.

BUT THAT SAID, I don't think it is wrong nor would I ever berate those people that use either of the above. This is in fact why we have language diversity in the first place, and there is no wrong way of saying things if people in the society using that language accept the usage. As the cliche goes, all Romance languages today are nothing but uneducated, corrupted Latin...
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Wed Mar 29, 2017 7:10 am

outcast wrote:Interesting you say this, because I personally don't find Leismo uneducated when I hear it. My ears simply find it hyper-snobbish, like putting on some serious, unnecessary airs. But the end result is the same: I don't like it either.

The one that I find completely uneducated sounding is the inverse "loismo" for indirect objects.


Interesting how the perception of this is different among people from different regions! In any case, since it sounds uneducated to my husband I better make sure I don't speak like that myself!

outcast wrote:As the cliche goes, all Romance languages today are nothing but uneducated, corrupted Latin...


The other day I read that Norwegian lost bits of its grammar through the black plague, because it wiped out the part of the population that could read and write. Personally I find this explanation a bit hard to believe because of Icelandic. The latter is very old Norwegian which still has all the peculiarities of old Germanic languages - it kept more than German even. The black plague wiped out half of the Icelandic population too and still, Icelandic kept pretty much all of its grammar. It generally hasn't changed much in the last 500 years, because Iceland is very isolated. I don't think it has anything to do with being "uneducated", it's the contact with other cultures and languages that gets rid of the grammar. I would suppose that Spanish has the simplest grammar of the Romance languages also for that reason.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby DaveBee » Wed Mar 29, 2017 8:05 am

blaurebell wrote:...it's the contact with other cultures and languages that gets rid of the grammar. I would suppose that Spanish has the simplest grammar of the Romance languages also for that reason.
Southern Spain was governed by non-spanish speaking muslims for many years. Perhaps that had an impact on the language?
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Wed Mar 29, 2017 8:27 am

DaveBee wrote:Southern Spain was governed by non-spanish speaking muslims for many years. Perhaps that had an impact on the language?


Definitely! Also all the migration to and from the colonies, and trade of course. English is kinda similar in that way with even less grammar left.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Wed Mar 29, 2017 8:43 am

Phew, it will be another one of those days. Tried a little Russian just now and I'm dealing with major brain fog. I doubt I'll get any Modern Russian done today, but maybe I can try some reading later on. I didn't have any problems reading in French last night - I finished my Kundera translation and now I'm starting with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de nuit. Bits of unknown aviation vocabulary so far, which doesn't really bother me much. I'm not interested in that kind of vocabulary so I will probably pick some up along the way or not. I bet the brain fog will be a little more annoying with Russian though - reading Russian still needs much more concentration than French or Spanish. For now I'll just continue binge-watching continental Spanish series.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Thu Mar 30, 2017 8:38 am

Feeling slightly better, still battling brain fog though.

Spanish

Still binge-watching continental Spanish TV. Yesterday 6 episodes of El internado and 2 episodes of Ministerio del Tiempo, which is about 9.5h in total. Binge-watching is what I usually do when I feel really ill and this time I picked Spanish because that's the one I've been avoiding lately. The second season of Ministerio del Tiempo is much better so far. The new guy is a reasonably good actor and gets his character across decently. They've also made Amelia's character less whiney and improved the jokes. As for El internado: Just because it's addictive doesn't mean it's good. Stereotypical non-sense, bad acting and plot holes the size of moon craters abound. How this stuff can win awards is a mystery to me. Well, maybe they need to give awards to people who manage to make a series that is at least not too unbearable :roll: 31 of 150h Continental Spanish done.

Russian

Managed to get through parts of my daily routine - 5min of Duolingo, 20min of Clozemaster - and I read 1 page. I was feeling so foggy with the reading that it was pointless to continue though.

French

Just half an hour reading before bed. I also got some new comics in the mail, specifically tome 1 and 3 of a series. Tome 2 is still missing and I will wait until I have them all before I start reading.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri Mar 31, 2017 2:16 pm

Russian

Brain still seems to be 10 miles under water, so no Russian yesterday. Today I tried to finish the second to last row of the Duolingo tree. One lesson of one skill didn't want to load for me, so I had to test out to get past it in the end. The nothing skill wasn't really anything super new for me, I've seen this construct before while reading. One more skill left to finish the Duolingo tree. Probably won't do any other Russian today because it felt inefficient while my brain is not working. And my Russian is still hugely inefficient even on a good day :roll:

French

Halfway through Vol de nuit now and I'm enjoying it. It's ever so slightly above my level, so just about perfect for learning. Tempted to start reading The Expanse in French translation. I feel tempted by it in general, but don't really have any time to spend on anything like this right now. Only problem is that it's a translation and I should really be reading proper native material now. It's a page turner though, so maybe I should just ignore what I should and shouldn't do, and use it for Sci Fi relevant French vocabulary.

Spanish

Another 9.5h of Spanish TV yesterday. I'm getting kinda sick of all the stupid stereotypes and weak plot lines in El internado, but well, maybe I can manage to keep going for a while longer. Ministerio del tiempo - we anticipated the whole episode after the first 2 minutes and spent the rest of the episode complaining about the weak plot. Today I was outside for the first time since I started binge-watching and I noticed an improvement with understanding ambient level continental Spanish in the supermarket and on the street. Up to previous levels already after about 40h of silly series, reactivation is always more efficient than activation. I immediately regretted embarking on this though because every single thing I understood was completely stupid :roll: :lol: This is not a local phenomenon by the way, people say equally stupid things out on the street everywhere. This will probably drive me nuts for a while until I get used to it again.

This reminds me: There are plenty of situations where it's preferable not to share/understand a language. My German grandparents and my Russian grandparents didn't understand each other at all. It was probably better that way, since nobody could bring up WW2 and start a shouting match / fist fight or worse. And plenty of times my dad said to me that he sometimes wished he'd understand less Russian than he does - especially when sharing a bus ride with particularly vulgar Russian teenagers :roll:
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby DaveBee » Fri Mar 31, 2017 2:47 pm

blaurebell wrote:French

Halfway through Vol de nuit now and I'm enjoying it. It's ever so slightly above my level, so just about perfect for learning. Tempted to start reading The Expanse in French translation. I feel tempted by it in general, but don't really have any time to spend on anything like this right now. Only problem is that it's a translation and I should really be reading proper native material now. It's a page turner though, so maybe I should just ignore what I should and shouldn't do, and use it for Sci Fi relevant French vocabulary.
I had resolved to do my reading in French if possible, so when Babylon's Ashes came out in english I was a bit deflated to discover that the french publisher had only released the first three books. :(
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Ingaræð » Fri Mar 31, 2017 4:11 pm

Bravo for persevering! :)

blaurebell wrote:This reminds me: There are plenty of situations where it's preferable not to share/understand a language. My German grandparents and my Russian grandparents didn't understand each other at all. It was probably better that way, since nobody could bring up WW2 and start a shouting match / fist fight or worse. And plenty of times my dad said to me that he sometimes wished he'd understand less Russian than he does - especially when sharing a bus ride with particularly vulgar Russian teenagers :roll:

Definitely! As my Oma and her siblings have all died, I don't have to worry about triggering some sort of PTSD if I mention to the rest of my Familie that I'm interested in Russian...
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