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

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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:16 am

DaveBee wrote:I came across a mention of Les Rivières Pourpres, in a customer review of a book by a spanish author, The Shadow of the Wind. It's set in Barcelona, so it might be one for you to consider in your spanish reading challenge.


And another amazing recommendation from you, thank you! I'm currently focusing on Argentinian literature because I've been skipping around between regions too much, but this is definitely going on the list for later!

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Again, Lilly, you have written a much better guide to LWT than I could ever do. I'm just standing on the sidelines yelling go, team, go.


Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed my LWT post. I'll keep collecting data and post it properly once I've got some more numbers for Spanish and Russian! Reading poetry with LWT is a great idea! I'll definitely do that at some point!

Teango wrote:Haha...ach, du lieber Himmel...where would you be without your "осиновый кол" (aspen stake) on a Friday night?!


Definitely not in Sunnydale, that's for sure :twisted:
3 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:47 am

Spanish

I watched another episode of El internado and finished season 5. Two more seasons to go :roll: We also watched a few episodes of Las huellas del secretario, which has been rather enjoyable and we have only 4 more episodes left. While I can't wait to finally be done with the silly internado, I wish there were more episodes of Las huellas del secretario. There was also another hour reading El entenado by Saer and I also did another lesson of GdUdE without mistakes. I'm also starting a list of mexican things that are worth watching. If you guys have recommendations, I'd be all ears! Finding good Mexican content is difficult in general, because they have such an extended history of really bad TV! My husband showed me an old telenovela that he always uses as an example for the worst of the worst - La usurpadora - and it was indeed just horrific! I'm not averse to "so bad that it's good again" - like Buffy -, but I have my limits too!

Spanish hours: 4.66h

French

I listened to an episode of Transfert and finished reading La trilogie Nikopol, which I enjoyed a lot. Such a weird, surreal and hypnotic sort of story, very cool! There are more comics on the way now and we're planning to start a collection! I also continued with Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund and I'm enjoying it very much.

French hours: 2.22h

Total hours: 6.88h

It seems I'm taking an Easter break from Russian. Tomorrow I'll get back to it though for sure!
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: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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

Postby blaurebell » Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:31 am

Spanish

Another day with lots of Spanish. I read more of El entenado, which I find really interesting, and I did another lesson of GdUdE. Later we went to the cinema to see Nieve negra, which was a mixed bag of clichés that was entirely predictable and it was decidedly one of the worst performances of Darín I've ever seen. He must have been pissed off about the weak script or something. In any case, it's not a movie where you want to tear your eyes out or swear about the time wasted, but it's still an example of how to tank a movie with two good actors in the main roles. It was also very clear why there was a not that great Spanish actress in there - they clearly needed Spanish film funding. Oh well. At least it was good Spanish practice because Darín was mumbling like crazy again. I did rather well though and only missed 2 or 3 words.

And I think I've finally managed to get my husband in a mood to watch Argentinian stuff with me without constant resistance and complaining. We watched another 2 episodes of Las huellas del secretario and one episode of Ruta misteriosa. I even watched one more episode of El internado, although they already reached the realm of unbearable extreme silliness already a couple of seasons back. Oh, the torture! 2 more seasons to suffer through. I simply need more exposure to Iberian Spanish, so I keep going despite all the :roll: Yeah, there are plenty of good Spanish movies, but I'm actually keeping those to watch with my husband. Now that we're already watching Argentinian stuff regularly, I think I can throw in a Spanish movie here or there too.

Spanish hours: 5.72h

French

I continued reading Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund and the French translation of The Expanse. My husband actually gave me all the books in English for my birthday, but I will only read the ones in English that were not yet translated. I want to get into properly French Science Fiction next, so the vocabulary from the translation will help. I also listened to one episode of Transfert. Not all of the episodes are super interesting, but most of them are at least mildly entertaining.

French hours: 2.19h

Total: 7.91h

General

It's really strange that my Spanish and my French both have an imbalance of time spent reading vs. time spent listening, but that the imbalance is different. 40% listening vs 60% reading in French - 264h vs 6888 pages. With Spanish I don't have any numbers for time spent reading, but I'm at 610h listening at least - probably more - vs 4597 pages read. I guess it's noticeable that after my immersion course listening was always more comfortable for me, because my reading comprehension in Spanish isn't very precise. With French I don't have that problem at all, since I started with intensive reading. In general I find that reading is easier to integrate into my schedule than listening, at least short term, but that I tend to keep watching over longer periods when I can't concentrate on reading. I might keep going with a series over months where I would lose interest with a book that I'm reading too slowly.

By the way, with French listening actually isn't a weakness, it's constantly getting better and better, so that imbalance doesn't actually reflect a problem I need to address. If I just keep going with what I'm doing, I'll be progressing nicely on all fronts. With Spanish on the other hand I still need to fill in some gaps with my reading comprehension and get out of my comfort zone a little. I really need to make an effort to read more, especially intensively. I'm also systematically addressing other weak areas, grammar, certain accents, so for the first time in years I feel that I'm on track with my Spanish. It will take a while, but I'm slowly moving in the right direction. It also seems sustainable over time as long as I manage to have the right balance between torture activities - Iberian series, grammar - and fun stuff - Argentinian content of all kinds.
2 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Wed Apr 19, 2017 11:50 am

Spanish

Yesterday we finished watching Las huellas del secretario, very enjoyable, and we watched the movie El ciudadano ilustre, which was simply hilarious! I also watched an episode of El internado, did a lesson of GdUdE and read more of my Saer book. A good day for Spanish.

Spanish hours: 6.11h

French

One episode of Transfert, a bit more of Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund and another chapter of The Expanse in French translation.

French hours: 1.82h

Russian

I read a couple of pages of my book and they had way too much boat crap. :roll: I should have picked a different book, I suppose, but now I'm already invested and won't turn back. I'm sure it will get better with time. Didn't do much, but it's a start.

Russian hours: 0.98h

Total: 8.91h
1 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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

Postby blaurebell » Fri Apr 21, 2017 8:55 pm

Spanish

Yesterday we watched the Argentinian movie Kóblic. Tough topic, but this movie somehow avoids to be the usual downer. Not bad! I also watched the usual episode of El internado, which is still only enjoyable when I'm ill or spaced out on medication. As soon as my brain starts working again properly, this is basically torture.

I continued reading El entenado by Saer with LWT. I now have about 13500 known words in my LWT and still keep adding about 200-300 words a day. It's the first time I'm using LWT on a language where I can read extensively already. I'm curious to see what effect it will have on my reading comprehension.

There was also the usual lesson of GdUdE. The lessons are short so it's not much of a chore to go through one a day. It seems mostly a tool to identify gaps, since there are only few exercises for each concept.

Spanish hours: 4.27h

French

During my Russian challenge I didn't do some of my chores, especially editing and dust-spotting pictures. It's basically a mindless activity, so this is perfect for listening to podcasts and radio. My first round of editing was accompanied by two episodes of Transfert. I also listened to one France culture documentary on the bus, continued reading Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund and read a new comic: Curiosity Shop - tome 1. The story is a bit convoluted - too many characters - but apart from that I liked it. The artwork is definitely worth seeing!

French hours: 3.99h

Russian

I struggled through a few pages of 30% new words in all shades of red and orange. Pages with dialogue are usually not so bad, but long descriptive passages drive me nuts with Russian. I might be mistaken, but it seems to me that Russian has an excessive amount of synonyms.

Russian hours: 1.3h

Total: 9.56h
1 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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

Postby blaurebell » Sat Apr 22, 2017 6:59 am

Spanish

I was really feeling spaced out yesterday, so I couldn't concentrate much. That's always the best time to watch silly series, so I watched a few episodes of El internado. By the way, when killing off one of the main "good guys" becomes a reason for cheering they are clearly doing something wrong :lol: 85 of 150h Iberian Spanish done.

We also watched an episode of Ruta misteriosa, which still has me a little puzzled, but is vaguely enjoyable. It's a rather short series - 8 episodes of 25min, so not a huge investment in any case.

I also did one more lesson of GdUdE, as always, and read a bit. I'm now getting closer and closer to finishing Saer's El entenado.

Spanish hours: 5.55h

French

I read a bit more of Photographie et societé and a bit more of the French translation of The Expanse. I also finished the second tome of Curiosity shop, which I found a little less confusing and more enjoyable. There was also one more episode of Transfert.

French hours: 3h

Russian

Just a little bit of intensive reading. It was very hard to concentrate, so slow going.

Russian hours: 0.83h

Total: 9.38h
1 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sun Apr 23, 2017 12:52 pm

Weekly update

Spanish

: 90 / 150 peninsular Spanish audio
: 27 / 150 Argentinian audio
: 4597 / 10000 Spanish Pages
: 19 / 107 GdUdE

It was a really good week for Spanish. We watched the movies Nieve negra, El mural, Kóblic and Al final del túnel and also finished the series Las huellas del secretario. Of all these only Nieve negra made us complain properly and El mural had maybe a tad too many unnecessary sex scenes. I also watched quite a number of El internado so that I finally get closer to finishing this torture. Steady progress on Gramática de Uso del Español and I'm now 75% through El entenado by Saer. Good progress, definitely.

Spanish hours: 36.86h

French

: 6919 / 10000 French Pages
: 29 / 150 French native audio

I finished the BDs La trilogie Nikopol by Enki Bilal and Curiosity Shop by Teresa Valero. I also continued reading Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund and the French translation of The Expanse. I also continued listening to Transfert and listened to a couple of France culture documentaries.

French hours: 16.09h

Russian

: 13 / 45 Modern Russian 1
: 64 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - Обретение чуда
: 5787 / 35000 LWT Known

I'm trying to slowly get back into the game with Russian, but haven't made much progress. Just a couple of hundred new known words in LWT is nothing much to brag about. I guess Russian hasn't been a priority this week.

Russian hours: 3.56h

Total: 56.51h
2 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:31 pm

Spanish

I watched several episodes of El internado, followed by a long discussion with my husband about how watching shit like that might actually contribute to my increasingly bad mood these days. Clearly I'm having another moment of "Why am still I in the wrong country?!" Another observation came up: my issues with local people and their communication with me are in his opinion due to a general cultural inferiority complex on their side, because I look like I'm from a country that is better off economically. Speaking to foreigners with the same tone with which they speak to 5 year olds - the same tone that is ever present in El internado, hence my bad mood - is in his opinion an overcompensation for this inferiority complex and matches precisely the self-deprecating humour in "Ministerio del Tiempo". And since nobody speaks like that with me in Argentina he's probably right that this has nothing to do with my language skills at all :evil: All this is fine and probably correct, but it doesn't change that I'm simply sick of it and continue to be stranded in this country! He suggested that I should probably stop watching El internado but frankly, why? Quitting it won't change that people will continue to speak like that with me and I'll just feel more annoyed about letting "these people" distract me from the actual purpose of watching the series - namely improving my listening comprehension for Iberian Spanish. This series wouldn't be enjoyable even without all the children in it, simply because the writing is so bad. Let's be honest here, this whole exercise is torture for me in general, I dislike the accent and the writing is impossibly bad. That condescending tone of dealing with little children (and foreigners) is the least of the problem here! I'm almost through with it now, just 13 more episodes, I might as well finish it. For the next series I will avoid content with children like the plague though, since I don't have to go out of my way to make this exercise worse than it already is :?

My bad mood will probably already subside because we will be travelling to my hometown in a week and this is a place that is so horrifically awful that I moved away from there as early as possible. According to my parents and my brother right now it's actually worse than ever due to German politics. I'll probably be happy to be back here again afterwards! Basically a bit of shock therapy to sort out my internal compass again should work wonders. And besides, it's not as if I left Germany without reason. It was never really my home either due to ... politics.

I simply have some days when this eternal homelessness gets to me more than on other days, especially since I didn't have much choice in the matter of where I got stranded this time. And whose fault is it that I'm still stuck here? Well, answering that would be to talk about recent Argentinian politics and how it messed up my life. We don't want that here either! So, should I be mentioning any of this? I don't know ... occasionally language learning is super affected by cultural and political problems, especially when it's triggered by somewhat forced migrations and similar circumstances. In any case, no matter where I look, right now politics just makes me sick everywhere and being stranded here is probably just as bad as being stranded anywhere else on this messed up planet. Maybe I should be learning Klingon.

As for more Spanish content: After our long discussion we watched the Chilean movie Neruda. I don't think that a story of political persecution that ends in exile was the right way to combat my blues under these circumstances, but well, at least it was fitting! As for Chilean: I have no experience with this accent, but still understood almost all of it. There was just one speaker who had 2 lines and was simply not understandable at all for me :? The rest of the movie was not difficult and relatively close to the Argentinian accent with some more elongated vowels perhaps. Maybe when I'm through with my Iberian Spanish, Argentinian and Mexican audio SCs I'll continue with a mixed Latin American SC and throw in some Chilean movies too.

French

There was a little French in Neruda and I read a little bit more of Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund.
3 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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MorkTheFiddle
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Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Apr 24, 2017 5:25 pm

blaurebell wrote:Spanish

I watched several episodes of El internado, followed by a long discussion with my husband about how watching shit like that might actually contribute to my increasingly bad mood these days. Clearly I'm having another moment of "Why am still I in the wrong country?!"

I simply have some days when this eternal homelessness gets to me more than on other days, especially since I didn't have much choice in the matter of where I got stranded this time.


Disclaimer: I have not owned a TV in at least 10 years. Yes, I am one of those people. But I have binge-watched a season or two of a TV series or two via DVD on my PC. But I have never binge-watched an entire series. Boredom sets in, or disgust. Even the fine French series Maigret began to bore me, and the cast of characters in the US series Sopranos disgusted me somewhere in Season 3. With Buffy, I watched a couple of seasons of the French version. With the original, once the affair with Spike began to look a LOT like the affair with Angel, I turned it off.

Depression was not an issue for me, but I can easily see how binge-watching a TV series that I didn't like could depress me (for me, just about any TV series). Your remarks here sent me to the Internet with an inquiry about watching TV and depression. Some results follow. BTW, I take this kind of "study" with a LARGE grain of salt.

http://www.insteadoftv.com/television-and-depression.html
\http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/binge-watching-tv-linked-to-depression-loneliness-1201418927/
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/02/04/383527370/does-binge-watching-make-us-depressed-good-question

Food for thought.
2 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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

Postby blaurebell » Mon Apr 24, 2017 7:14 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Depression was not an issue for me, but I can easily see how binge-watching a TV series that I didn't like could depress me (for me, just about any TV series). Your remarks here sent me to the Internet with an inquiry about watching TV and depression. Some results follow. BTW, I take this kind of "study" with a LARGE grain of salt.


Thank you for your words, I appreciate them!

Well, it's a correlation study, not a causation study so it doesn't actually say an awful lot. In fact, depressed people watch more TV because they have so little energy to do anything else, it's pretty obvious. Not sure what they pretend to be studying there actually! I struggled with clinical depression when I was younger - it was a physiological problem - but I'm not depressed anymore. With proper depression you don't really have a reason to feel down. Everything is shiny, your life is great and you still feel awful all the time, that's what clinical depression is like. And you can't change anything because nothing is wrong, it's terrible. Nowadays I have plenty of reasons to be unhappy - chronic illness, loneliness in a country where I don't really want to be, etc. - and I'm still a lot happier than I was when I still had that physiological problem. I simply have days when I start thinking too much about my situation, the future or whatever else is usually buried somewhere in my subconscious and of course I think about all the things I can't really change - my shoddy health for example. Years ago a friend of mine with a pretty nasty illness was in hospital and her doctor saw her crying. He said some commonplace thing about noticing a correlation between depression and this nasty illness. My friend shouted at the guy: "Of course I'm depressed, I have an awful incurable disease, I'm not gonna be laughing about it, am I?!"

So, I don't think TV is making me depressed, I have plenty of other reasons to be down and on some days it's just a little too much. I'm actually glad that I can count watching silly TV when I'm feeling down or ill as something productive by watching it in a different language! Otherwise I'd probably also be feeling bad about wasting my time with nonsense.

By the way, I haven't had a TV in 10 years, but we still watch several hours a day. We just choose what we watch ourselves. It's a nice thing to do together and there is plenty of really good content out there nowadays that is just as worthwhile as reading a good book. The Wire, True Detective, In Treatment etc. It's a shame that TL TV like El internado or Ministerio del tiempo usually has such bad writing and acting when compared with really good series.
0 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German


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