Sillygoose1's Language Extraordinaire

[sillygoose1]

Thank you! I was really nervous during both interviews because I'm not used to speaking in a formal register at all. I think my passive/writing skills really sold it though because I never asked them to repeat themselves, I had to read a passage, and write a one page paper.

[sillygoose1]

Italian:

Finished the 5th episode of season 1 of Squadra Antimafia yesterday and will probably finish the finale today before I go back to college next week. I'd still like to work on my listening comprehension a bit more because I feel like I'm missing some easy words here. I'm happy that I still have a lot series left, but the bad news is that the ones I have seem to be the only real good ones which means I'll have to rely more on movies and books.

Spanish:

Finished some more La que se avecina. The 3rd season seems to have introduced some pretty funny characters so maybe I was wrong about stopping it early on. The actress that plays Lola's mom, I think she was in an Almodovar movie that I saw but I can't remember which one.

German:

Almost done Metamorphosis. I probably have like 3-4 more chapters left to go. The latest chapter I read was a bit difficult which was the third or fourth of the second part of the book. The good thing is that I'm able to notice declensions quicker and with more ease. Plurals are still tripping me up at times.

Latin:

Finished the 31st lesson today. After going through each lesson two times it's pretty much in my head at that point. The fact that I know a few Romance languages + English really help facilitate the learning. I just don't feel comfortable with grammar really. That is, learning the rules or producing it. Since I'm only learning Latin to read I'm going to content myself with just recognizing what is what.

Greek:

Finished lesson 15 of Il greco moderno senza sforzo. This is a pretty good Assimil so far I think. Considering it's the first language I've studied seriously this much that doesn't use the Roman letters, I'm surprised at how well I'm dealing with each lesson. At first I get all juked out thinking it's going to take me 30-40 minutes to get through a lesson but after reading it a few times it sort of starts to stick. Still a little shaky on the alphabet but everyday it gets a little better.

Portuguese:

Some more Stephen King reading.


Also, I had to give up on Corsican. It served its original purpose in helping me to understand some other Italian dialects better + there are absolutely zero films or books that I can find in Corsican so it'll basically be somewhat of a waste of time.

[sillygoose1]

Italiano:

Finii la prima parte de "La regina.." C'era piu vocabolario che ho imparato e anche mi sembra che abbia acquisisto delle piu profonde nozioni della grammatica e anche dei nuovi modi a mettere insieme delle frasi. Ho la sensazione che la mia comprensione orale/udita abbia migliorato, compresi i dialetti oltre alcune parole qua e la.

Visto che il semestre universitario ha cominciato, non trovo molto tempo da guardare la tv. Ci vorra' mettere a lato del tempo e trovare un bel equilibrio. Inoltre, ho deciso di fare degli studi da me per accompagnare quelli dell'universita'. Cioe', mi trovero' mettendo piu di tempo a leggere e studiare dei libri della mia facolta' e non ho ancora deciso se fargli nelle mie lingue straniere oppure in inglese.


Espanol:

Vi unos capitulos mas de La que se avecina y uno de El internado. Sigo leyendo Niebla cuyo termino no veo en vista. Me esperan muchos otros libros en mis pendientes y por lo tanto se van acumulando poco a poco.


Deutsch:

Heute Abend ich verspreche mich dass ein andere Kapitel von die Verwandlung zu lesen. Es eine weile dass die ich lese nicht.

[sillygoose1]

Greek:

Finished the 18th lesson of Assimil and boy was it a challenge! It felt like I had never even done a lesson in Greek before. There were alot more complex sentences, conjugations, and declensions that threw me off. When doing my revision, I couldn't even remember the meaning to most of the words. This is definitely one of those curves that Assimil like to throw you though. It fluctuates from easy, medium, and hard lessons in a random order.

German:

Finished Die Verwandlung. Time to move on to another book. Maybe a B2 level + a grammar book would come in handy about now. I still don't have a clear idea on when to use which declension but I can understand it when I see it used. Maybe I should rephrase that - I know how to use the nominative, accusative, and most of the time the genitive so I guess when it's not one of those I should use the dative. Yay Occam's Razor!

Italian:

Read a chapter of L'uomo in rivolta - L'homme revolte' - The rebel by Albert Camus. I'm really liking this formal, educated vocabulary that I'm learning. I can't say I'm learning much as far as what Camus is trying to convey in this book that I haven't already thought, but it's a nice read nonetheless.

Spanish:

Relearned a bunch of older literary vocab that I had previously forgotten via Niebla. Some of the sentences are worded kind of weird so I'm not always 100% sure to what it's referring to at times.

[sillygoose1]

French:

Decided to switch over what's remaining of Stieg Larsson's 3rd book over to French from Italian. The reason being is that I'm starting to feel a decrease in reading and I'm losing some vocab so I want to get that back up quick.

This will probably be a French month for me. I'm starting back up with Les Chtis a la jet set. I'm almost done, maybe 10 more episodes to go. I'm thinking about watching Koh Lanta and some other reality shows also. Although I'm not a big fan of reality shows, they do have a lot of argot to learn. I always tell myself this but then I always end up stopping a few episodes in.

I've discovered alot more French hip hop which is just great. They have a unique style compared to Americans which fits well.


Spanish:

I really need to get back into the swing of things and maybe watch some more La que se avecina or El internado. I'd like to find some Caribbean telenovelas to help me out with those accents. I'll work on that later probably.


German:

Read the first chapter of a A2-B1 reader called Todliches Testament. It's about a woman who signs over her business to the guy she's madly in love with and then she turns up missing. German companies have made graded readers in the mystery/whodunit genre which is pretty cool actually.


Because of my school work overload, I'm going to be focusing mainly on these three languages until I start doing my school work ahead of schedule so that I can have some time to go back to my old routine. I'm also going to try to learn the Cyrillic alphabet a bit more.

I'm also really excited to start learning more "foreign" languages like Greek and Russian because I feel like my log is a bit monotonous at the moment. I need to spice it up a little and start talking about problems I encounter rather than materials I find.

[sillygoose1]

Update:

Haven't had cable or anything for the past few days, but luckily I managed to download the new series Narcos before that happened. It's some nice Spanish practice, mainly Colombian.

I've also been watching some French reality shows and listening to French rap.

Hopefully I'll be getting back into the swing of things soon. I'd like to start studying Russian & Swedish again with some Hebrew. (Stieg Larsson will make you wanna do that I suppose!)

After this post I'm going to finish Narcos, read in my TLs, and like I said hopefully start some more languages.

[Expugnator]

This series has been a trendy topic in Brazil not only because of the story but also because Pablo Escobar is interpreted by the Brazilian and baiano Wagner Moura ( so the main actor has a foreign accent ).

[sillygoose1]

I think he did a great job, but as you said the accent kind of threw me off at times. Especially when he first said "plata o plomo".


Gathering some materials at the library until I get my internet back on. Dreadful move. I'm scoping out some German children's books and some language courses for Swedish & Russian.


French:

Read the 8th chapter of the 3rd book in the Larsson triology. I think I mentioned before already how I switched it over to French from Italian. But yeah I did that so I'm going to finish it up in French.

I relearned some long forgotten vocab and phrases so I think it's a good thing I made the switch. The Italian translation was more "uptight" and straightforward.

Hopefully I'll watch some FPCFPC today or a movie. I've been itching to see De l'autre cote du periph for awhile now.


Spanish:

As mentioned, I finished Narcos. I also got a lot of reading in so I'm almost done with Niebla. I'm really juked to start Expediente 64, the 4th book in the Department Q series by Jussi Adler Olsen which besides the first book, I've read them all in Spanish so it kind of feels like my default language for this author.


German:

It's been sort of hard having no internet because I rely on it for all of my dictionaries, but I'm going to give these graded readers a stab by using solely context. It's not something I like to do in the beginning, but we'll try it out. There are two pieces of material I've been wanting to save for when I get more advanced - Deutschland 83 & Fack ju goethe. But I'm probably going to cave and indulge in them with English subs. Germany has produced some cool movies from what I can see. Definitely not as bad as it's made out to be.

Besides that, the process is still a bit tough. I'm having trouble still with separable verbs and pronoun declension - especially in the plural. I need to find a book or something on it.


Portuguese:

More light reading


Greek:

Finished lesson 21 yesterday - the third review lesson. Now the vocab is getting incrreasingly harder, the grammar more complex. I was able to successfully learn the alphabet passively though which is good news in my book. I think scriptorum will help a bit with getting it down to a T actively.


Latin:

Finished lesson 38. Vocab isn't a problem for me. I can go through a lesson twice and have it internalized. My problem is the declensions. There are quite a few classes of conjugations. I'm definitely going to be investing in a grammar book here. I thought I had originally only wanted to learn Latin passively, but I figured why only go halfway? Maybe one day I'll be feeling extra pretentious and want to throw down some Latin to that hot girl at the coffee shop with a Latin phrase tattooed on her arm and explain to her why it's grammatically wrong. (Maybe.. )

[sillygoose1]

French:

Watched two episodes of Fais pas ci fais pas ca. I can still follow it well without many problems besides the odd sentence or two that I miss per conversation.

I read a chapter another chapter or La reine.. Learned some phrases and new vocab. One phrase I never heard before and same for some of the vocab but the others I relearned.

I'm going to go into maximum overdrive mode and plow through these series and start watching some movies. I have way too many on my backlist and I need hard drive room for other stuff in other languages.


Spanish;

Watched an episode of El internado and La que se avecina. I really think La que is funnier than Aqui no hay quien viva. I enjoy the characters more, especially Antonio. He manages to crack me up every time. "Hacemos la guardia civil!" haha.

I'd like to also go into maximum overdrive mode here as well. My HD is full of Spanish and French media. Since I have no internet at my house, might as well take advantage and cut out the distractions.


German:

Read two more chapters of my reader. Things are starting to get heated up in this little detective story. I'm exactly halfway through and feel my skills sharpening. Even after I read Metamorphosis in German, even this B1 reader still feels heavy at certain points. There's still a lot of vocab I need to learn.

[extralean]

Je laisse ce petit commentaire uniquement pour montrer que je m’intéresse à ce que tu fais! Je suis content à voir que t'as pas laissé tomber le français.

Pourquoi étudies-tu la corse?