Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:21 pm

Just learned from Assimil Perfectionnement Russe that French has the word canaille, an exact cognate of Portuguese "canalha".

As people who follow this log might now, Georgian has a very complicated verbal system. I've been through nearly all the existing grammar references, but I always felt the lack of background on the language prevented me from actually understanding how to form and use the verbal tenses. Now, after my vocabulary has improved, I noticed that I've started to conjugate some verbs in my head, and to get a feeling for what feels right. I can see a verb in the aorist and think about the present and the past perfect. Usually the aorist is the form I'm most familiar with, since it's the one most used in narrations and, thus, novels. Well, then maybe it's time to hit the books again, for some reviewing. I'm lucky that the book by Aronson has been digitized and put online with proper typewriting, here (I can't acces it now, but it worked at home).

Some coincidences strike me. I'm reading a book by Arthur C. Clarke in Estonian, and the main characters just met an weird, ancient creature through telepathy. The name of that creature is Vanamonde. "Monde" is world in French, while Vana means old in...Estonian. I doubt the author thought of Estonian when naming the character, but the fact I'm reading the book in Estonian and they met that old creature in another 'monde' is quite remarkable.

I'm a bit impatient with German. I was hoping to be able to read freely in the language, but some key words prevent me. I'm reading fiction now, so maybe I'm at that stage where I was in Norwegian, where most of my unknowns are long, abstract nouns. But then those are usually Norwegian cognates, and I should be able to decode them by now. I am going to give the language a few more weeks. I'm ok with reading subtitles and I get the gist from novels, but I need a more precise level of comprehension for the non-fiction I'm planning to read next, like the book on language learning advised at the forum.

The learning curve for Méthode de Grec Moderne is still smooth. I wonder how long it will last: I'm on lesson 5 out of 26 and they say by the end of it one will be able to access excerpts from native materials on the second volume.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Feb 03, 2017 8:02 pm

Sooner or later, I will have to start a rotating schedule (day-through-day rotation) if I want to add new languages and to keep maintaining my stronger ones while enjoying the native materials I'm dying for - after all, that's why I learned the languages. I don't have much time for enjoying French TV series, or listening to Italian audiobooks, or reading novels in German. I want to start Spanish but first I want to go through the existing Assimils to make sure I have an output-oriented view of the language. I want to (re)start Esperanto, and start my 2nd Slavic language, and Romanian...all these are perspectives of going through a few textbooks and then mostly native material, which is the most enjoyable aspect of learning, but for this to happen effectively I need to be better organized.

On top of that, I need more input for my originally opaque languages. It's not easy. I can't even read aloud for pronunciation, because I study in a public place. For some languages I could be chatting all day long, but for others even the perspective of having a paragraph corrected is distant. I don't have free time at the weekend for any set routine of Skype classes or exchanges, and the occasions where I managed to use any of my TLs in conversation remain scarce.

Trips are also an unrealistic dream at the moment. I can't put money on that and I can't leave my family for longer periods. I might have more vacation days now but I'm not even looking forward to book these days because I don't really have a place to go. Sometimes I have trouble seeing the point in all this I'm doing.

Haitian Creole for English speakers started on Duolingo. So far no reports on anything having been done. Let's see how it evolves.

Es klingt mit Deutsch nicht schlecht. I'm increasing my reading speed by leaps and bounds, at least in fiction. Moreover, I'm using transcripts for Türkisch für Anfänger. Thumbs up! Those transcripts here have the description of the scenes, not only the dialogues. Imagine how much new vocabulary I've learned just from reading them. It's a bit like Bakunin's idea of learning from pictures, just that I already have those.

Russian listening is becoming a reality. I'm understanding longer sentences from Kuxnya. I wonder how that is possible, as my vocabulary is still quite low. Most longer nouns and verbs sound the same to me.

I'm started to get a feeling for gender in Greek. It's not straightforward as in the Romance languages, but I'm better off than in German, since the endings do mean something. I'm starting to perceive and learn gender as grammatical information in the words I meet.Something that demands a lot of mental energy is the fact there is gender distinction also in the plural, something from which Russian had spared me. And there are more genders in numbers, though the concept isn't alien to me from Portuguese and Russian.

It's too early to celebrate, but maybe I finally solved the issue gamma X r grasseyé in my mind. It helps to always read new descriptions on the same sound. Méthode de grec moderne says that gamma is just a fricative g, and now it's pretty obvious to me why that it's further back in the mouth than the Parisian R; I hope not to mix them up again. I can hear them cleary as different, but pronouncing either or both of them consistently at their correct place of articulation remains a tongue-twist for me.

Todat at Grammaire Progressive perfectionnement I read about present participle and verbal adjective in French. They are tricky in French, but for those who know Portuguese and Spanish it's just the gerund (-ando) and the -ante forms that have somewhat merged in sound. I wonder how much of this ant/ent mess in French has spread into English? Probably it has to do with cross-atlantic spelling norms as well.

The Georgian word for monkey is a Greek cognate. μαϊμού (maimu) in Greek and მაიმუნი (maimuni) in georgiano. Turkish and Persian are alike. I wonder what the main source is.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Feb 06, 2017 8:13 pm

The weekend was all about children moments and no hidden moments. I didn't watch any fun TV series in my TLs as I had hoped. No chance for Clozemaster either. I read 4 pages from "Che la festa comminci" (really looking forward to finishing it) while ordering a pizza at the bakery on Saturday evening.

I could barely browse for new audiobooks in Russian. After trying to find anything suitable (lots of corporative self-help in the business section), I ended up finding the two sequels to the book I'm currently reading, so that will be it. I was hoping to read the second book in Romanian, but Romanian can wait. I'm sure there will be cool stuff in that language when I eventually get down to studying it.

I did make it to the Polyglot Meetup. Not many people, but there was a Russian guy there. It was my first conversation in Russian ever, and a total disaster. When I say here that my spoken Russian is below A0, I am not exaggerating. I could barely utter some words, I had no control of my islands at all. I forgot how to say 'next year' and 'letters' and 'words'. I got some cases right but most off. Numbers were a disaster, even in the nominative. I could understand what the guy said, but he said it too slow. All that shows how wide and unthinkable is the gap between active and passive skills for me in Russian. No other language has that (well, maybe Estonian, which also has a challenging noun morphology, but then my passive skills are A2 while Russian is almost B2). I really must do something about that if I want to go to Russia profissionally next year.

Maybe I should start by setting myself a short challenge at the new thread at the Challenges forum. It was another good idea that came up at the weekend, thanks gsbod! All in all, I'm worried but at the same time it was good that it happened that way, that I could see my limitations and how a zero-output approach is keeping me away from my goals. I don't advise a zero-output approach and it has happened more circunstancially than intendedly, at least from B1- level on, as I wrote last Friday. What happened on Saturday was a reality shock. I'm sure all other languages have this receptive x productive gap, and I could be speaking prioritary languages such as French and German better. I'm sure my spoken Georgian or Mandarin are lightyears ahead - I could have carried on the conversation of last Saturday on either language successfully,so there is something about Russian and the case system that really puts me off from even researching islands in my head.

An additional problem with building islands through the method of writing and asking for corrections is that you have to disclose too much personal information permanentely online, as Cavesa also pointed out at her log. Well, maybe I should just send my Russian islands to Serpent instead of posting them anywhere. That could be a goal, a sort of a personal output challenge.

The weekend's highlight was the first word from either of my daughters: papá, not mamá. I was really cool about that, because either way I'd be the one granted: had she said "mama", I could have just claimed she was actually saying 'father' in Georgian.

At an architecture forum, I saw the recommendation of the book "Cities for People", by Jan Gehl. Unfortunately I could only find it in English, but it's a book i'd love to read. It's more than half its price at the German Kindle edition (I see a trend here), but then my German still isn't good enough. It won't be the first time I buy a book in a TL despite having it in English or Portuguese (I just bought a long-to-read book by Jostein Gaarder in its audiobook version, for which I already have the Portuguese text). There was a deal that included Gehl's first book, but I clicked for the "Cities for People" offer only :/ Now I'll have to read only that one. Maybe if I like it so much I'll buy other books separately later. Anyway, with the Kindle Cloud reader, I can do parallel reading on the desktop, but no pop-up dictionary. So it's either reading on the phone with pop-up or in parallel at the PC (browser window to the left, pdf in English to the right).

I've chatted quite a bit in Norwegian. This has become a habit. I did look up a few words which I hadn't used in Norwegian before. Since I'm chatting with people I'm friends with, I'm able to build my personal islands.

Anyone using the TV Showtime app? I wonder if it wouldn't be more effective for tracking what I've been watching and whatnot, at least more than email drafts that keep being replaced by older versions out of my control. But then how many of these foreign series i'm watching are represented there?

Arthur C. Clarke wrote:Kui me iseenese vastu ausad oleme, siis peame tunnistama, et Sissetungijad oleksid võinud meie maailma juba väga ammu hävitada.


A complex and different syntax for a simple sentence in terms of content. Syntax is a hybrid of Finnic and Germanic, I suppose.

If we ourselves against honest are, then we must admit, that the Invaders would have been able to our world already long ago destroyed.

In Portuguese, it reads "Se formos honestos, teremos de admitir que os Invasores poderiam ter destruído nosso mundo há muitas eras."

Greek
I'm suprised as to how this Méthode de Grec Moderne, with audio, resembles more the Language Transfer audiocourse than a grammar-translation course. It has features of both, and would be better if it weren't so slow, at least for me now. The grammar explanations are very detailed, though, so it is better at this respect. It doesn't go too much in detail for grammar, it only explains what is relevant to the context. I'd definitely recommend it. The repetition of most of the vocabulary in the following lessons help save mental energy for understanding and processing the new grammar. I hope the Indonesian, Turkish etc. ones are that good, because I skipped the Chinese and the Russian ones as they tried to take care of too much at once.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby reineke » Tue Feb 07, 2017 1:45 am

Expugnator wrote:Just learned from Assimil Perfectionnement Russe that French has the word canaille, an exact cognate of Portuguese "canalha".


Spanish = canalla
From Italian canaglia

http://etimologias.dechile.net/?canalla
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Feb 07, 2017 8:00 pm

@reineke, the surprise is the French cognate. It did have an Italian flavor, but sometimes these more slangy words don't make their way to French, only to Spanish and Portuguese.



The day started with a boost in comprehension of the Norwegian audiobook. The earphones got discharged at the first track I was playing, so I had to use my phone's loud speakers. I noticed that I could place the phone further from my ears, not closed to it as if I were talking on it and also the way I had been doing for audiobook listening. This means that I don't need full volume anymore to be able to catch some phrases here and there, I can actually follow the story even at normal, environment volume. I believe what happened is that my listening skills were lagging behind my reading ones, and now they've almost evened out. I've learned to decode the sounds. Now most of what I don't understand is due to lack of vocabulary, so what I read or watch with subtitles will mostly revert and improve my listening skills as well. I'm happy about it. Next step is writing with less mistakes, and trying to record something. My intonation might also have improved, but my pronunciation might have remained atrocious.

Now I'm listening to Jostein Gaarder's Maya, while reading the Portuguese translation. It's a really good exercise, especially now that I'm about to reach a higher listening fluency. The translation is idiomatic and that is actually helping at this stage. I only check it when I miss a word here or there. The book itself is good, not as childish as Anna.

Today I was a bit ahead of time and so i payed attention to the Georgian soap opera. When I'm actually watching it instead of just listening on the background, my comprehension is high enough. Small talk is crystal clear, for instance.

I was comfortably ahead of schedule, but in the middle of the afternoon I started to chat in Chinese. The guy was very interested in my learning methods, and so I explained them briefly to him in Chinese. It seems I already have some islands down for Chinese and I'm perfecting them now. Quite productive.

Just did the audiobook test with German. I could transcribe the sounds if I wanted to, German pronunciaton is clear. I can follow complete sentences, but I can't process the audio quickly enough to be able to follow the plot . I miss out especially in the beginning, when the context is described. So I'm going to wait a bit more.

I'll probably keep French as my commute-back audiobook slot. I've started watching the film "Les yeux jaunes des crocodiles", because I'm planning to listen to the second audiobook in the trilogy. Meanwhile, I'll stick to Brazilian books that happen to have French audiobooks for.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:55 pm

Yesterday I finished Steve Kaufmann's book, as a French audiobook. It was a good listening, insightful at moments, but mostly inspiring.

It's well-known that the better the story, the more we are interested and the more attentively we tend to read in our TLs, and thus the more we understand. What I noticed while reading Narnia today is that within the same story I understand the good parts better. When the bad people are winning, I tend to want to skim through the story asap and I don't make an effort to intensively read all those sorrowful events. Then when the good people have a chance again I pay more attention and I understand much more.

Checked the Estonian podcasts at SBS. Unfortunately there are no transcripts, only an explanation about the issue's theme. I can pick some words here and there, and I guess if I keep listening further I will start having a clear perception of the word boundaries. On the other hand, the speed isn't absurdly fast, so I guess that once I can read Estonian I will probably be able to use those podcasts for intensive reading. I have yet to find a native podcast, and both the TV series and the audiobooks I found are still too fast.

Today was the easiest day of reading Kafka at the shore in Georgian. It was mostly dialogues, but even so I could interpret some more complicated sentences. Now it's turning into a genuine parallel reading, as the Georgian doesn't overwhelm me that much for me to read a lot in it and then translation, but I rather keep reading it and get what is going on and then only check the couple missing words, the way I do in German. What keeps me from fluency is the fact the missing words still hinder comprehension of the sentence as a whole, as in German. So it's just a matter of glancing at the translation and keeping going. Later I won't need the translation anymore as the unknown words will be fewer and fewer and trying to figure them out won't pose me a problem at figuring out the meaning of the whole sentence.

Finished a German novel, now back into non-fiction. The idea is to alternate, the goal is to reach reading fluency so I can read in German also in hidden moments and as my main 20-page reading slot, for important books.

It's a bit early to get excited about Georgian audiobooks. There are mostly classics, Georgian or foreigner. Only two books by Paulo Coelho, the other one being O Alquimista, which I've already read. So my first audiobook in Georgian will be A Bruxa de Portobelo. Just bought audiobook and text in Georgian for some five bucks.

Better write here before I forget, and then edit the first page of this log. This is my path for Spanish:

- 2 Assimils
- Assimil perfectionnement
- La Pratique courante de l'espagnol
- Using Spanish (Cambridge University Press)
- Business Spanish books (including a printed one)
- Duolingo

Native materials will start after Assimil perfectionnement. If I don't manage to find good audiobooks I really want to listen to, I will get themed podcasts aimed at natives (any recommendations?). I will focus on learning written peninsular Spanish, but for TV and Series I will consume media from all the main countries.

Spanish is already a transparent language, and my focus with Assimil will be on production. I won't go through supposedly easy material just by fear of moving on or through addiction. I'll work on them with a focus on output, or at least I hope I'll manage it this time.

I could do a full Clozemaster round, which always helps. I spent some time browsing my Spanish material, watched 20 minutes more from Les yeux jaunes des crocodiles and watched a few videos from the Coursera course, so today still wasn't the day I did something new or different. Things are still pretty quiet, though, and I'm saving time from important tasks, so I hope I'll soon be able to quench my thirst for new languages.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Feb 10, 2017 7:39 pm

I started a new auduobook in French on Wednesday. The audio is extremely low, but I'm happy I can make my way through it. I'm on a level at French and Norwegian, the languages I listen most often to, where it makes sense trying to put in some real-life obstacles, and I'm glad I'm making my way through them. The better I get at understanding both audiobooks (lots of information at a short timeframe) and unsubtitled comedy (fast, clipping conversations), the more I realize I'm on the right track. Oh right, speaking is still missing from my cocktail, but for this one would have to develop a muting microphone which would completely isolate my voice from the surroundings.

This morning I was watching a video from TeleCuraçao where the young people who are going to study in Europe are greeting their family goodbye. There were a lot of interviews, more emotional language, different from the usually colder news intonation and register. I could understand their conversations in real time, even some mumbling, so there is no doubt I'm fluent in Papiamento.

i'm at the final chapter of book 2 from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I've already found audio and text for book 3 in Mandarin. One less problem.

A good thing about Yabla's videos is that I'm being exposed to news and documentary language, which resembles the written language a lot, as there is narration. So far I have only been watching series, thus dialogues, and now I'm "reading" non-fiction sentence by sentence, in an even more intensive way than it was the case when I was doing Slow Chinese. I'm forced to paying more attention to how the sentences are built that way.

Look at the sentence below:

湖水的馈赠固然养育了依水而居的人们
hú shuǐ de kuìzèng gùrán yǎngyù le yī shuǐ ér jū de rénmen

The people living by the water have undoubtedly grown up on the gifts provided by the lake.

The English translation has shifted agent/pacient and thus the word order, all making the sentence more complicated than it originally was: The lake's gifts have undoubtedly raised the people living by the water. Chinese is complicated enough with its unusual adverbial syntax, and having a direct order for the translation would have made the sentence more comprehensible, but instead the translator chose a fancier, more solemn documentary style.

Méthode de Grec does a better job at verbs in Greek as being non-contracted X contracted verbs in Greek than what I've found in other books as being 1st X 2nd conjugation. In my opinion, it only makes sense to speak of conjugations when it's intuitively based on a striking feature (the -ar, -er, -ir in Portuguese) or a remarkable difference (the different syntactical relations for each conjugation in Georgian). Other than that, it seems too arbitrary to actually help as a learning aid/categorization/mnemonics.

Finished watching the TV show Normal Galskap, from NRK. It was great for learning non-fiction vocabulary. Now it's time to decide: I have many shows lined for watching in Norwegian, fiction ones, apart from suggestions for non-fiction ones. I am doing a lot for Norwegian each day, and I need to save room for other languages. I've been watching half an episode each day, which is 20 minutes, and maybe that's overdoing for Norwegian, since I'm also listening to the audiobook for over 20 minutes, plus the TV series for 13 minutes and the listening-reading for 18 minutes. I need to keep improving my non-fiction vocabulary. Ideally I'd find podcasts, but these lack transcripts, or books or texts, but these I haven't found yet, at least nothing that would attract me. i'll keep with Schrödingers Katt for the time being, but only 13 minutes a day, which is averagely half an episode 9I'm starting from the first one, from 1990!). I'll probably won't go through all in my lifetime, but I'll see how much I can learn in the first few weeks. The earlier ones don't have subtitles, though. I'll keep the fiction series as an incentive, for the days I have free time.
I ran into Folkeopplysningen which seems interesting, but it's not available outside Norway.

And i've just run into a forum in Norwegian. diskusjon.no . Now Norwegian has joined the group of languages I have forums for, for when I finally decide to write. Another one is https://freak.no/forum/ .

At the course I'm attending, I found some tips on proofreading, and I think they also apply to intensive reading, for making the reading as intensive as it can get:

- Place a ruler under each line and point at each letter with a pen or a pencil (or select them if you are at your computer);

- read it aloud

- start reading at the end of a sentence and work backwards;

I'm happy I could study all my tasks today. I thought I'd have to leave for a couple of hours but it wasn't necessary.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Feb 13, 2017 7:45 pm

The weekend was just about keeping consistence with Clozemaster. Not bad, really. I also finished preparing the material I'm going to use for Spanish.

'Kafka on the shore' was a calm read today. Mostly dialogues, which means I'm also more patient to interpreting the few descriptive paragraphs. I'm at that point in the book where vocabulary starts reinforcing itself, with some expressions being repeated. I'm still longing for being able to read extensively, though. I'm also thinking about my active skills in Georgian. They aren't that negligible. They are probably better than in Mandarin, leave alone Russian. I'm really privileged to having access to good resources. I've finally made up for not having a friendly start in terms of resources, and I caught up un being exposed to the colloquial language, that register I would get from Assimil for other languages.

Estonian might go through the same process, only that I don't have access to Estonian series. I really need a soap opera I could just listen to on the background the way I did with the Georgian one. The natural choice would be Õnne 13, which I can watch at the ETV app, but the series started in 1993, and the completionist me wouldn't fancy starting at the 2016 season. Besides, there are no subtitles.

I've decided not to add a fixed Norwegian series at my post-schedule. That will give me time for starting Spanish. I will still try to watch the pending series now and then on the calmer days, rotating it along with other languages.

So I started Spanish. No big deal so far. I'm doing 7 lessons of Assimil a day, just skimming through for unfamiliar vocabular, mentally doing the active exercises, reading the notes. I don't want to spend much time on this stage but I regard it as necessary as I also need exposure to the European accent.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Feb 14, 2017 7:57 pm

I'm still at lesson 38 of PErfectionnement Russe, I'm reviewing it. I'm not sure it's being productive. It's not much different from listening-reading intensively an ordinary text. What I really need is writing in order to actually use all the grammar I've just read about.

So, apparently a main shortage of material has been solved. I figured out there are a lot many episodes of the Estonian soap opera "Õnne 13" with Estonian subtitles. I can't watch them at the PC (videoblock) but I can use my phone. It loads slowly, so it will be reaaaally intensive watching after all. Starting in around 1 month, when I'm done with Jänku Juss. From the one I checked, I noticed I can get the hang of the story now that the subtitles have been added, So, I expect to learn a lot from it! Now it's just a matter of letting go of the completionist in me and accepting to start from the first one available.

Since it's a soap opera, there is a lot of dialogue. I haven't watched soap operas in other languages with subtitles and yet they were productive. With subtitles I expect to be learning even more quickly.

Looks like there's more:

ETV wrote:Saated vaegkuuljatele


ETV varustab subtiitritega oma iga-nädalased poliitikasaated "Foorum", "Vabariigi kodanikud" ja "Kahekõne", samuti keskkonnasaate "Osoon" ning eakatele mõeldud saate "Prillitoos". Kõiki neid saateid saab vaadata subtiitritega ETV päevases programmis teisipäevast kuni laupäevani.

Juba varasemast on subtiitritega varustatud "Puutepunkt", "Pealtnägija", "Õnne 13" ning "Ajalik ja ajatu".

ETV2-s jätkuvad ka uuel aastal igapäevaselt kell 19.20 viipekeelsed uudised.




In the Georgian field, I started watching Flash instead of Arrow, for a change. Actually the Arrow episode I was about to watch had a crossover from The Flash and so I decided to watch the first 8 episodes from it in order to catch up.

Keeping my Clozemaster streak. I've viewed all the sentences on level 2 for Modern Greek, and so I've started doing level 3 (1000 most common sentences). I haven't bothered actually mastering all the sentences before moving up. After all, the gap isn't so wide, and level 3 lessons are equally useful and suitable. If I reach a level that is too demanding with too long sentences, I may decide sticking to reviewing the previous ones.
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
Languages: Native Brazilian Portuguese#advanced fluency English, French, Papiamento#basic fluency Italian, Norwegian#intermediate Spanish, German, Georgian and Chinese (Mandarin)#basic Russian, Estonian, Greek (Modern)#just started Indonesian, Hebrew (Modern), Guarani
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Feb 15, 2017 7:54 pm

Narnia's book 3, The Horse and his boy, has a much better audio/text correlation, so I hope it will be more helpful to my Mandarin.

Wanderlusting mood

What if I replaced all my currently learned languages by languages in my wishlist? It would go like this:

French -> Romanian
Italian -> Esperanto
Russian -> Czech
Mandarin -> Indonesian
German -> Modern Hebrew
Papiamento -> Swahili
Georgian - Turkish
Norwegian - Hindi
Estonian - Guarani

Well, that's it. I didn't get to replace ALL my studied languages because I don't have many languages in my near wishlist, and I've limited it to 1 language per subgroup or, in the case of Swahili, I'd do one African language at once. After "mastering" these, I'd probably run another round with other languages from the same families and maybe a couple of isolate ones. Lately I've been wanderlusting rather for cultural aspects and for "language reaping" than for linguistic novelty.

Language reaping is one of the most fun parts of language learning, because it involves starting with native materials earlier, and thus you have earlier access to the culture. Like I did with Italian and will do with Spanish: just a couple of months with textbooks and then I start native materials alongside, while gradually fading out the textbook usage along one year or less.

Right now I'm studying 12 languages (if we add English, which is actually taking one audiobook slot of my time), but only Estonian and Modern Greek remain at the A2 levels, plus Russian in the unlearnability level. The others are mostly a struggle to understand native materials, but still a much less serious one than starting several opaque languages at once. Mentally I think I can take more learning efforts either at 1 new opaque and 1 transparent languages or at doing more for the existing languages (did I say output?), but time is a practical constraint. It's quite likely my new language from scratch will be Hebrew and my new one from a familiar subgroup will be Romanian.

Started looking for some podcasts in Spanish. Either conspiracy or social economy. I found La rosa de los vientos, Economía Directa, Epicentro, Al Filo de la Realidade, Un idioma sin fronteras, Dame tu voz (also in Catalan). It's impressive how I can have access to a different view on the news just by doing a Google search in Spanish. I'm not adding podcasts now because I don't have time, but I think I'll start just searching for whatever subject I'm interested at in Spanish alongside with English and Portuguese. It's not a habit I have for French - more so that French people seem to live in their own world, but for Spanish, given the closer cultural environment, it's probably worth it.

Seeing some progress in German reading. The machine translation helps because I can quickly glance at it and get context instead of looking up individual words, which disrupts the reading flow.

The Georgian dubbing for The Flash has more of creaky voices, and they are also easier to understand. It's good for a change.

Things are getting serious with Greek! I finished the Upper-beginner set of lessons from Greekpod101 and now I'm going for Lower Intermediate! Well, actually, the difference is minimal, and the format of the lessons is the same, a medium-length dialogue, sentences, grammar explanations and cultural notes.
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