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 Apr 25, 2017 11:46 am

Spanish

I watched one episode of El internado and there were also two episodes of Ruta misteriosa (I won't mention the nickname we gave this series, since you can easily guess it :lol: ). There was also some GdUdE, which is boring me with numbers right now, and I made good progress with El entenado by Saer. I think I might even finish it today!

Spanish hours: 3.67h

French

I mainly spent my time reading Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund, which I find very interesting. I have no problems understanding the book and since it's a sort of historical study I get lots of practice with years, something that keeps rushing by when I listen to radio documentaries.

French hours: 1.85h

Total: 5.52h

General

This week won't be too heavy on language learning, since I have to get in the mood for travelling, copy some audiobooks, finish some books I'm reading and so on. This trip falls in the first week of the 6WC, so I'll make an effort to spend some time reading in Russian every day, but there probably won't be much language learning in general. I still don't know whether I should be taking GdUdE with me. I guess some GdUdE for Spanish, some LWT for Russian and French audiobooks / podcasts would sort of help to keep the language learning momentum for all my languages, even while most of my time will be spent with museums, family obligations and picture taking.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Wed Apr 26, 2017 10:20 am

Spanish

Yesterday I finished Saer's El entenado. Definitely a very good book which is just as vividly imaginative as the other Saer book I read - La Pesquisa. I would definitely recommend both, since they are beautifully written and have a rather broad vocabulary too. After looking through my archived texts in LWT I also realised that I barely started Osvaldo Soriano's Cuarteles de Invierno before abandoning it. I was probably not in the right mood for it, because Soriano writes in part about some very harsh stuff relating to the last Argentinian dictatorship. I will give it another try next.

We also finished the series Ruta misteriosa which was mildly entertaining. It's the kind of writing style that creates the mystery by only telling half the story. Not bad though, and short, just 8 episodes of 25 min. I also watched a couple of episodes of El internado and did some GdUdE. More numbers, boooooring :roll:

Spanish hours: 6.47h

French

I listened to a 3 part Transfert episode which was interesting but also awful because it was a story about how this person ruined someone's life. Urgh. The last few episodes that I listened to were definitely all a little too harsh. I will try to finish listening to all the remaining episodes on our trip instead of audiobooks.

I also finished Photographie et societé by Gisèle Freund, which I found really interesting. Although I already knew quite a bit about the history of photography this filled in some of the gaps from a European perspective - most of my theoretical photography education has been from an American perspective. It's also really good to know that I can read scholarly works without any problems and can therefore stop buying academic books in translation. When I started learning French I thought that I'd just about be able to read a few pages with a dictionary before running out of language learning steam. Instead I'm getting closer and closer to reaching all my French goals.

French hours: 3.21h

Reached goals:
French comics
Les Rivières pourpres - i.e. French crime fiction
Camus
Scholarly books in French
French dubs
France culture and Arte in French

Still to do:
French Science Fiction
French movies *without excessive strain*
Céline, Foucault and Derrida in the original

General

I should be excited about travelling, but I'm simply stressed and worried. Going to my hometown is always weird even under normal circumstances, flying tends to mess up my health and I need to worry about the film rolls not getting x-rayed this time because I'll be trying to shoot off a few more important rolls at night in Berlin for a couple of projects. Part of that project was supposed to be shot also in my hometown at night, but I was warned by several people that going out at night there is now way too dangerous. My hometown was never safe and I've lived in some pretty dangerous neighbourhoods over the years - murder in the local supermarket and stuff like that - so normally I'd laugh about this kind of advice. However, this particular piece of advice actually comes from locals who don't get scared easily, so for once I'll actually follow it! When I start to follow security advice in Germany of all places you can be sure that we live in seriously messed up times ...! I'm still looking forward to using all my 5 languages during our stay though! Normally I only get to speak German once a week if at all, so I tend to be on a 3-4 language schedule.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri Apr 28, 2017 10:58 am

So, instead of travelling and getting some photography done I'll be in bed due to shoddy health. Thank you, universe :cry: Not the first time I had to cancel a trip, probably not the last time either. I guess the next few days I'll be playing computer games in French so as not to feel too bad about this.

In other news: I finished watching El internado. Oh boy, such bad writing throughout! If you want to watch something good, look somewhere else. Also, they should have just resolved the whole mess after 3 seasons, the rest was just a prolongation of an unsustainable story. So, did I learn something? Sure, the whole show is 86h long and full of local slang. I now understand people on the street much better. As for the slang: In my case that's merely of receptive use, since my husband would laugh about me if I said such silly things. He already rolls his eyes when someone says "enhorabuena", so I tend to use vocabulary and expressions from here only ironically if at all. We were also discussing the lack of force of local insults and remembered this little talk about "las malas palabras".



Very funny video and it always makes me try and practice the word "mierda", since I have problems with rolling Rs in the middle of the word. Since I simply can't pronounce it properly I normally add a touch of irony by pronouncing it exactly like Fontanarrosa when he imitates the Cuban pronunciation. One day I will have to see a speech therapist so that I can swear properly in Spanish ;) By the way, I tend to swear in English, since swearing in German usually leads to wide-eyed fear in most places other than German speaking countries :D My husband who doesn't actually speak German sometimes shouts "Achtung" when someone is in his way. Sure way to make people jump is to shout at them in German :lol:

But let's get back to Spanish slang. Here is some Argentinian humour about the slang of young people:



In general watching Capusotto is a good way to pick up lots of Argentinian swear words and slang. Over the top hilarious too.

So, how are my Spanish listening SCs going then after I finished this big chunk of bad Iberian TV? 110 of 150h Iberian Spanish SC done, 30 of 150 Argentinian done. Still a bit to go!
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby DaveBee » Fri Apr 28, 2017 11:31 pm

blaurebell wrote:So, instead of travelling and getting some photography done I'll be in bed due to shoddy health. Thank you, universe :cry: Not the first time I had to cancel a trip, probably not the last time either. I guess the next few days I'll be playing computer games in French so as not to feel too bad about this.
Sorry to hear that. Wrap up warm and get well soon!
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sat Apr 29, 2017 10:50 am

DaveBee wrote:Sorry to hear that. Wrap up warm and get well soon!


Thank you :)
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sat Apr 29, 2017 2:08 pm

I'm still recovering so yesterday wasn't extremely productive. However, since most of my fun activities involve my B2+ languages, I never really spend a day without language learning, even when I'm sick. Yesterday I ran into a silly problem - I wanted to watch En terapia - the Argentinian version of In treatment and stupidly the official version of the first season on Youtube is location blocked. And since it's on Youtube nobody bothers to share it elsewhere. There is a version on Dailymotion, but it's too low quality to watch on the big screen. I ended up messing about with VPN for a while and could sometimes get it to work, but not reliably. In the end I only managed to watch one episode and my husband didn't have any more luck with getting it to work either. In the end we actually gave up and decided to watch Germán, últimas viñetas instead, which is a series about the last stories told by Héctor Germán Oesterheld who wrote the legendary Argentinian comic El Eternauta. If you're into comics and don't know about this one, you should definitely try to get your hands on it, it's fantastic. As far as I know there is a French translation, and since last year there are also English and German translations. And if you know the comic already, then you should try and get your hands on the series I mentioned above. We watched 3 episodes so far and it's really very good.

As for French: I continued reading a bit of the French translation of The Expanse - 25% done of the first book - and played Broken Sword 2 in French. I already played Broken Sword 1 in French a few months ago and found it very enjoyable. While waiting for Broken Sword 2 to download I had a look around on Steam for other games to play and found a bunch I could play in Spanish or French. I'm a big fan of point and click adventures and they tend to have lots of dialogue, perfect for language learning!
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sun Apr 30, 2017 12:15 pm

French

It's been a while since I hit a day with more French than Spanish. How did that happen? Well, a couple of hours of playing Broken Sword 2 in French and some more of the French translation of The Expanse did the trick. The Expanse is a real page turner and it probably won't take me long to finish the first book. I will have to make an effort to find the third book in French too, since it seems that I might get hooked on it. I have all of them in English, but don't really have the time for this kind of reading in English.

French hours: 4.54h

Spanish

I've decided to stick to Iberian Spanish for watching on my own and tried to find another series that isn't too unbearable. I tried Aquí No Hay Quien Viva and found that not only boring but also idiotic. I could only bear 17 minutes of it and then had to turn it off because it was simply too idiotic. Since this is the third Iberian comedy that I found too idiotic I probably have to assume that Iberian Spanish Humour doesn't agree with me. I then decided to look for a period drama instead and went with El tiempo entre costuras. It starts promising but then the first episode was somewhat predictable and cliché. Judging from the overall plot that I skimmed it's bound to get better though. It's definitely watchable, the production is high quality and since it's a period drama set in the 30s it's rather nice to look at all the old cars, the typewriters, the exotic locations and so on. The acting so far is actually not bad, although I found all the happy scenes in the first episode somewhat overdone. No comparison to El internado though, miles ahead actually. Another good thing is that this series is rather short - just some 10-15h as it looks like and since I only need another 40h to finish my Iberian Audio SC, I don't want to get invested in another long series.

The other series that I'm watching with my husband is Gérman, últimas viñetas. Again, really well produced, superb atmosphere, great acting and really funny in bits. There was one episode that was all about innuendo and censorship which made us laugh quite a lot. In one scene there is a whole collection of sentences with double entendres, most of which would probably be impossible to understand for anyone not familiar with Argentinian slang. I was happy to have understood a bit more than half of them! Very cool. I guess some prior knowledge with regards to Argentinian history might help too with this one. So far definitely the best properly Argentinian series I've seen. Of course En terapia is also great, but that's not originally Argentinian. By the way, it's not surprising at all that they made an effort to adapt En terapia to Argentina, since Argentinians are just mad about psychoanalysis and therapy. Therapists are omnipresent in Buenos Aires, we even have one in the family! Great series, great writing, great adaptation. If only they would get rid of the location block of the official versions on Youtube!

Spanish hours: 3.65h

Total hours: 8.19h

General

My most recent bout of bad health made me take a long hard look at my goals again. For a bit more than the last 10 years I've been working on my education - I obtained a Bachelor degree and a Masters in a different field and now I'm working on an ambitious PhD that requires 4-5 languages as a basis. I used to do this with the lofty goal of finally working at a university, but with the current state of affairs that's just idiotic, so I'm simply doing it for myself now and because I think that the project that I'm working on is really important. With my health I've been going back and forth between doing a PhD, not doing a PhD and it has also affected the topic I chose. My original plan was to stick with the field of my Masters, but for that work I need a lab and most labs in the field have always some sort of incompatibility with my lifestyle, pesky things like not being able to survive with the pay or being required to work in an office from 8am, which my health would not allow, or maybe having to work with incompetent people. In the end I decided to go back to my original field, which meant that with two different topics I was not able to secure any funding at all thanks to all the neoliberal cuts to university funding. Although this is frustrating I have to say that it's probably even a good thing for me, because it gives me all sorts of freedom to do what I want and without any pressure about finishing in time.

The freedom of this decision is why I chose an ambitious topic that will definitely take longer than the usual 3 years. I always loved learning languages and was always proud that my Dad speaks English, Russian and Spanish. He also worked in Italy for a while when I was 14 and spoke Italian too, although he forgot most of it now. So, learning several languages was something I wanted since I was a child and picking a PhD subject that required several languages was logical and also an excuse to pick up one language more. I probably should have been a little more sensible and picked an easier language than Russian which requires a lot of time. In fact I already abandoned the Russian part of my PhD once before, but I'm stubborn and always push myself a little too hard. With my stupid health I probably shouldn't make my life even more difficult, but well, I am who I am and there is just no way around it. I'm already 300h invested into Russian and it's now only a matter of time. I suppose that learning Russian actually adds a whole year to my PhD, but I think it will be worth it.

You know what's really motivating though? By the end of my PhD I will be able to understand 5 languages and I will finally have my Spanish at C1. I will also have a method to pick up more languages whenever I want and systematically bring those to C levels. That's pretty cool and worth all the effort I think! My health sometimes makes me doubt whether I can really reach my goals, but frankly giving up is not who I am. I'm already halfway there since I can read Russian with a dictionary now, but I would also like to be able to read extensively. Making some progress with that will be the goal of the 6WC which starts tomorrow. I will aim to read at least 2h a day. Originally I also planned to continue with Modern Russian, but I think reading should be my priority right now. I will continue with Modern Russian after the 6WC.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby outcast » Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:07 pm

blaurebell wrote: For a bit more than the last 10 years I've been working on my education - I obtained a Bachelor degree and a Masters in a different field and now I'm working on an ambitious PhD that requires 4-5 languages as a basis.


This is what I never quite understood about Masters and PhDs that "require 4-5 languages". First of all, why?? (unless it is something like history or linguistics itself, maybe diplomacy or hospitality?)

Second, I have heard many people in various meetings or online say their field of study has a language requirement of 4-5, always around that number. What I never seem to be clear on is what does the actual requirement entail? 4-5 languages to solid C1 level? Since that goal in itself is like a Masters on it's own... I seriously doubt that people who need to devote so much energy to getting their actual PhD or doctorate can also master 5 languages to such a level, knowing what I know about what it takes to get there (and I do know a thing or two, and so do you). Now many people are more intelligent and harder working than me, so no doubt it is possible but for the majority in such programs... forget intelligence, effort, or discipline. Just from a logistics point of view, I don't see how there are enough hours in the day.

So I always think that this "4-5 language requirement" is something like a B2 maybe C1 in reading, B1-B2 in listening and writing, and no real requirement in speaking. Based on anecdotal evidence of language majors who spoke worse than I did (but I'm sure could write BETTER), I would be hard for me to see how non-language majors could be expected to better that performance.

I should add that it may also be that I am underestimating my own level, at 'basic fluency'. I have heard it from a few people here, and from many many people out in the real world, that my speaking is fluent or at least very advanced in whatever language I am using. I just can't believe my level would be so, since I feel I can't express myself very freely in my L2s, and at times I get stuck from lack of proper phrasing structures. I still make some grammar mistakes when speaking and from time to time forget some basic words. That cannot be advanced fluency, but then watching videos of B2 and C1 test takers I also got the feeling I was underestimating my levels... so who knows. I don't want to really get hung up on levels, never did. Which is why I have never taken a language test or studied with such books, I just organically study the language. But lately as I am reaching higher levels, suddenly I do feel like I need to take stock of where I am after all these years.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:33 pm

outcast wrote:So I always think that this "4-5 language requirement" is something like a B2 maybe C1 in reading, B1-B2 in listening and writing, and no real requirement in speaking. Based on anecdotal evidence of language majors who spoke worse than I did (but I'm sure could write BETTER), I would be hard for me to see how non-language majors could be expected to better that performance.


You're perfectly right, usually even those who need 4-5 languages for their PhD usually only need passive skills in some of those. Why would one need so many languages? Reading sources of course! I thought I could get away with reading 4 languages for mine - German, English, Spanish and Russian - but the deeper I was digging the more it became obvious that I couldn't make it without French either. As for the reading level required: we're talking mostly about literature, historical sources and high brow academic texts up to philosophy, so C1 would be good, but one can get away with B2 in some cases. As for active skills: I need 3 of them actively: German, English and Spanish. My university and supervision is in German, I will write the thesis in English and at some point further towards the end I need to speak and write Spanish at a reasonable level to be taken seriously by Spanish speaking academics - there will be archive work and possibly collaborations involved.

Hardly any program will require active skills beyond B2 in more than 3 modern languages, unless it's international relations or anything intercultural. Some might additionally and implicitly require Latin or Ancient Greek - Philosophy programs usually. The most common requirement for bilingual PhDs and Master programs is C1 in two languages and depending on the home university this might not involve English. I was once considering a German French Masters program which required C1 for both, with mixed French and German students who spend one year in Germany and one year in France. It required C1 because the assigned texts were super difficult, in part German and French philosophy. Since I didn't know much French at the time and didn't want to take a year off I couldn't pass the language requirements and decided to do a different program instead. This was the second time that my future was decided by language requirements - the other time was when I wasn't allowed on the course required by my university for Erasmus in Italy. In general this is the only reason why I would do proficiency testing: University requirements.

I also prefer to study organically, but well, that's how I ended up with my kind of Spanish gaps. I can't write a simple formal letter in Spanish and always need to take my husband when I have to do any kind of paper work! Some of those boring B2 writing requirements sure come in handy when you're living in the country! I guess one day I will have to sit down with one of those boring B2 exam books.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Snow » Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:53 pm

Not sure if you already mentioned it, but may I ask what field are you in? And what's your topic? I'll forever be amazed by people who take masters and PhD! I hate writing so even if I wanted to study more, just thinking about writing requirements makes me shut down the idea forever.
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