Sgt Schultz knows nothing!

[tastyonions]

I started learning French because I liked French movies and I was simply curious to see how good I could get at a language by learning it independently.

[Sgt Schultz]

I had the same experience about 10 years ago. I started watching a lot of Audrey Tautou movies and later discovered Francis Veber movies. I started thinking it would be great to not need subtitles.

That was long before I knew about HTLAL (or Assimil, MT, Paul Nobel, etc) so I failed rather miserably

[Sgt Schultz]

A quick midweek update before I start work...

---Spanish---

I finished season 2 of Gran Hotel. I'm loving this show. The Spain accent is growing on me.

Read/listened to 5 more chapters of "Eres Tu, Maria?".

---German---

I missed a day with Assimil but will do lesson 12 today.

---Random---
I've had a bit of wanderlust this week. In the car I've been listening to Paul Noble Italian. I know I should fight that urge but I like it and it's so close to Spanish that it's super easy to learn.

For the history nerd in me, I started reading a new historical fiction book called Dictator by Robert Harris. It's centered around Cicero's exile and return to Rome. I'm about 3 chapters in and so far so good. The book has a little bit of Latin in it, which is making me want to learn Latin. Maybe I'll give it a go one day down the road after German and Italian.

[Sgt Schultz]

Weekend update...

---Spanish---
I've watched 15 more episodes of Gran Hotel and I'm nearing the end of the series. I think in the next week I'll finish it and need to find another Spanish series to start watching.

I read 7 more chapters of "Eres tu, Maria?" and am on chapter 21. I'm about 60% through the book.

---German---

I haven't done a thing in German this week. At first I thought it was because I was more interested in my Spanish activities but it's not. I've realized that my interest in learning German has lessened. I don't see that changing for a while. I'm going to shelf this project until some later time in the future.

---Italian---

I've been very motivated with Italian this week. I've finished the first level of Paul Noble Italian and have moved on to the second level. I'm roughly 1/4 of the way through level 2. Since I've discovered that I'm motivated and interested in Italian, I'll continue with my studies of it. We are planning to go to Italy in the near future so that should be a great end goal for my studies.

[Sgt Schultz]

Time for another mid-week update. These weeks are just flying by.

---Spanish---

I finished watching Gran Hotel. If anyone is looking for a good series, I'd wholeheartedly recommend this one. I also finished the book I was reading/listening to. I didn't care for it but did manage to complete it last night.

I haven't decided on what is next. I'm considering reading/listening to El Hobbit. Amazon has the book but I haven't found the audio yet. I also need another show to watch. Later today I'll look around on Netflix, RTVE and Antenna 3 for something interesting. If anyone has recommendations that would be great too

---Italian---

I finished level 2 of Paul Noble Italian. I've enjoyed both levels so far and will start the final level today. I'm not sure what I will do after I finish. I'll need to decide if I'm going to continue or not since this was just a bit of wanderlust. Since these courses are so cheap on Audible, I could do a run through Paul Noble French too. Who knows but I do enjoy my wanderlust time.

[Brun Ugle]

If you haven't yet watched El Ministerio del tiempo, I loved it. It's a Spanish series about a government ministry in charge of making sure history doesn't get changed, and they have time portals they use to travel to different times to fix it any time someone changes history.

[Sgt Schultz]

If you haven't yet watched El Ministerio del tiempo, I loved it. It's a Spanish series about a government ministry in charge of making sure history doesn't get changed, and they have time portals they use to travel to different times to fix it any time someone changes history.

Thanks for the recommendation. I looked at that one briefly a few weeks ago. It seemed interesting and I may start watching it. It sounds similar to a new show that started this week on NBC called Timeless.

[James29]

I'm considering reading/listening to El Hobbit. Amazon has the book but I haven't found the audio yet.

Last time I checked ivoox.com had the audio book of El Hobbit. I have sometimes thought of reading and/or listening to it.

[whatiftheblog]

If you haven't yet seen it, I would highly recommend Relatos Salvajes (you should be able to get it on Netflix as "Wild Tales"). It's about 2 hours long, and it's just a fantastic film, pretty dark but really funny. My Spanish is significantly weaker than yours and I didn't have too much trouble understanding it, but Spanish subs are always a good backup. All of my native speaker friends have thoroughly enjoyed it as well.

I also wanted to respond to your question about why learners of French chose French - I ended up in a new school in 6th grade and my foreign language options were French or German. We've always kind of been a francophile family from a cultural perspective, so French it was. I didn't really enjoy it very much at all until I was 14-15 or so, and then I started getting really into French history (specifically WWII and the postwar period), and it sort of snowballed from there. Fortunately for me, there's a ton of great (free!) material online in my specific fields of interest (French politics, history, etc), and it's been a constant struggle to keep myself from ordering hundreds of books off of Amazon.fr. I don't bother with material that isn't immediately interesting to me, but luckily, there's plenty that is

[Sgt Schultz]

Last time I checked ivoox.com had the audio book of El Hobbit. I have sometimes thought of reading and/or listening to it.

Thanks James, I'll check that out today.

I also wanted to respond to your question about why learners of French chose French - I ended up in a new school in 6th grade and my foreign language options were French or German. We've always kind of been a francophile family from a cultural perspective, so French it was. I didn't really enjoy it very much at all until I was 14-15 or so, and then I started getting really into French history (specifically WWII and the postwar period), and it sort of snowballed from there. Fortunately for me, there's a ton of great (free!) material online in my specific fields of interest (French politics, history, etc), and it's been a constant struggle to keep myself from ordering hundreds of books off of Amazon.fr. I don't bother with material that isn't immediately interesting to me, but luckily, there's plenty that is

That's a great point. I also enjoy reading about history, especially the WW2 era. French has some interest for me and maybe I'll do a short wanderlust project with it next and see where it takes me. I'm finding Italian too close to Spanish so I end up mixing in Spanish words while doing the Paul Noble course (sono and soy are especially troublesome). Maybe French is just different enough that it won't cause any issues.

I have some negative associations with French. In particular, a QA girl that used to QA my code here at work. She was a French major at Uni and she's a bit annoying and difficult. Also a bit pretentious. It got to the point that I didn't even want to be around her. She would occasional drop in a French word or phrase and then be like, oh, you don't understand that? As you can imagine, it was annoying. But that's something I should probably just get over