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

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

Postby Teango » Thu Apr 06, 2017 8:07 pm

As a fellow pilgrim on the unholy road to Russian illumination, I empathize with the snowcapped mountainous trek across the Caucasus with all its perilous twists and turns. People often cite various languages as being more difficult than others, but after a decade of reading and listening to people's experiences and talking to language learners all over the world, and with the exception of those who already know a Slavic language (and Hungarians of course ;) ), Russian seems to be a particular stumbling block for even some of the most adept polyglots and master travellers. I have the utmost respect for anyone who can push through to an advanced level in this devilishly beautiful tongue (as several members of our forum have already achieved successfully), and given all the hard graft you're putting in, I'm sure you'll reach Russian Shangri La sooner than you think. In the meantime, let me leave you with the intro and outro of a fun series I used to love as a kid called "Monkey Magic", along with some reassuring words from its wise and benevolent narrator: "When what is indestructible meets what is irresistible, the female all too often wins." :)
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Ingaræð
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Ingaræð » Thu Apr 06, 2017 8:52 pm

Teango wrote:In the meantime, let me leave you with the intro and outro of a fun series I used to love as a kid called "Monkey Magic", along with some reassuring words from its wise and benevolent narrator: "When what is indestructible meets what is irresistible, the female all too often wins." :)

I want to give that an extra 'like' just for the Monkey reference! :D
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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri Apr 07, 2017 7:11 am

Teango wrote:As a fellow pilgrim on the unholy road to Russian illumination, I empathize with the snowcapped mountainous trek across the Caucasus with all its perilous twists and turns.


Thank you for your encouragement Teango! I appreciate it! Also ... "unholy road" :lol: Perfect description!
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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri Apr 07, 2017 8:07 am

Spanish

Another day with doctor's appointments, so I didn't have too much time. The Spanish part of my schedule didn't suffer though: I watched a couple of episodes of El internado and with this finished Season 4. I also did another lesson of Gramática de uso del Español A - 10min, 0 mistakes. And I even read a short opinion article from Pagina 12. I've been avoiding Argentinian news lately, but my husband said that this one was worth reading.

Spanish hours: 2.48h

French

I only managed about half of a France culture program and then finally couldn't resist The Expanse in French translation after watching the latest episode. It seems like it could be quite a page turner and I wouldn't mind ripping through 1800 pages in a short time - the 3 books that are already translated into French. I know, I know, I really shouldn't be reading translations at this point, but this story intrigues me and it should be good vocabulary preparation for some properly French SciFi. I haven't given up on Les Rivières pourpres by the way, but I'm haunted by insomnia these days and I'm not sure it helps to read particularly brutal books before going to sleep. So, the Expanse will become bedtime reading and the Crimson Rivers will be more of a morning thing. The Crimson Rivers is a page turner as well by the way. In any case, I might just have my next 2200 pages of fun scheduled already.

French hours: 1.97h

Russian

I managed Clozemaster and about an hour of intensive reading yesterday. Still slow progress, but at least the level of torture is at a minimum this week. My bout of bad health really sabotaged my schedule quite a bit. My plan was to start with PhD relevant reading again after my 12 week Russian challange is over - April 15th is the cutoff -, but now I've got 2 weeks of way too low intensity to count as Russian challenge weeks! I'm not sure whether I should do a couple of weeks more to make up for it or whether I should just stay at lower intensity and wait for the next 6WC for more intense Russian. In any case, if I do any PhD relevant reading it will be either in French or in Spanish, possibly both, since I'm not even near attempting to read such high brow stuff in Russian.

Russian hours: 1.28h

Total: 5.73h
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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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Fortheo
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Fortheo » Fri Apr 07, 2017 8:38 am

Definitely try to take Russian at a more convenient pace if you feel like you might burn out soon! I'm sure you know it, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. You're already making amazing progress, so don't beat yourself up over it ;) Oh, and I had a question—which assimil did you use for Russian? I've done the first 5 lessons out of the 1973 edition, and also the first 5 lessons out of the 2011 edition, and I'm finding that the 1973 edition is far superior thus far.

Back to French, though: Have you ever read any Enki Bilal comics? I haven't, but his comics seem like they might be right up your alley. Oh, and I agree that in terms of language content, manga usually offers more content than French comics, but the art work in a lot of these french comics is just too good to pass up.
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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri Apr 07, 2017 10:04 am

Fortheo wrote:I'm sure you know it, but this is a marathon, not a sprint.


Totally! Unless of course it's a romance language, then I just pick it up in 3 months by accident :D I shouldn't really expect similar miracles with Russian though ... :?

Fortheo wrote:Oh, and I had a question—which assimil did you use for Russian? I've done the first 5 lessons out of the 1973 edition, and also the first 5 lessons out of the 2011 edition, and I'm finding that the 1973 edition is far superior thus far.


I've done half of the 2008 French edition and I enjoyed it. The reason why I picked this one is that Russian has changed a lot in the last 50 years and I wanted to have at least one up to date source. Also, Russian gets super difficult super fast and I think the older editions might be a little tough going. If you can keep up, you'll probably get more out of the 1973 edition, but you will probably have to watch a lot of TV to get more up to date language usage.

Fortheo wrote:Have you ever read any Enki Bilal comics? I haven't, but his comics seem like they might be right up your alley. Oh, and I agree that in terms of language content, manga usually offers more content than French comics, but the art work in a lot of these french comics is just too good to pass up.


I just had a click-click-oops moment with Amazon: Bought La Trilogie Nikopol and Mémoires d'outre-espace, because they looked amazing :oops: My husband has read the first one when it came out serialised in Argentina and he said that he liked it a lot. And you're right about the artwork in French comics, it's so beautiful! By the way, I enjoyed La guerre des amants, glad I bought those too. I think French comics and I will have a splendid future, even if manga might have more content language wise!
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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

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

Postby Atinkoriko » Fri Apr 07, 2017 10:43 am

You know, reading this log, I'm somewhat tempted to drop everything and study Russian :D
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: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Sat Apr 08, 2017 3:13 pm

French

Yesterday was one of those days where I woke up at 5am and couldn't fall asleep again. 3h of reading first thing in the morning. I finished La guerre des amants and I'm really very pleased with this comic series. Of the 3 tomes I enjoyed the 2nd and the 3rd the most, although it was the 1st one that won an award. The interesting part is that this is a comic that I only found through a recommendation on France culture. I love that high brow French radio will talk about BDs! All in all it was very interesting, educational and the artwork was lovely too. Other than that I read some more Les Rivières pourpres in the morning and more of The Expanse in French translation before going to sleep.

French hours: 4.16h

Spanish

I watched one episode of El internado, which is getting sillier and sillier. I mean, seriously, it's not as if it wasn't silly before! I really thought it couldn't get any worse. I guess Spanish TV always has the potential to surprise me. And not in a good way! I also did one lesson of GdUdE A - 0 mistakes again - and a few pages in the Saer book that I'm reading intensively.

Spanish hours: 1.97h

Russian

I finally felt that I had enough concentration for Modern Russian and went through one audio file. It felt good to get back into the game. I also read a couple more pages intensively which was getting annoying since I'm in a chapter with lots of pages of 30% new words. I find 20% and below pretty doable, but when it goes above it gets really annoying to keep all the new vocabulary straight while figuring out the sentences. As always the crazy amounts of Russian vocabulary are making things difficult. There was also Clozemaster, which feels like it's helping in at least a minute way.

Russian hours: 1.83h

Total: 7.96h
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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 » Sat Apr 08, 2017 4:20 pm

Weekly Update

French

: 6428 / 10000 French Pages
: 21 / 150 French native audio

This last week I listened to a couple of France culture documentaries, read the three tomes of La guerre des amants, tome 1 of Ghost in the Shell and a bit more than half of Les Rivières pourpres. We also watched a few episodes of Un village français and the movie Le dîner de Cons. Definitely not a bad week for French with 24h on the clock.

Spanish

: 67 / 150 peninsular Spanish audio
: 4 / 107 Gramática de Uso del Español A

We finished watching Ministerio del tiempo and I also finished season 4 of El internado. Spanish TV isn't getting any better, but my listening comprehension for peninsular Spanish is at least improving with all this input. I'm now at 68 of 150h peninsular Spanish. With the quality of these shows it's been a lot of torture, but oh well. At least I can complain about something!

I also started with Gramática de Uso del Español which will stay with me for quite a while since I have vowed to finish all 3 levels. The lessons have the perfect length to do one a day and there are 329 lessons in total in all 3 levels. The plan is to do levels A and B, then automatise it further with FSI and finally do level C. The plan is to finish this whole grammar tour de force by the end of 2018.

I also continued a little with my intensive reading challenge. Since I'm still in the middle of my second French SC, it's not a priority right now, but ideally I would like to read 5000 pages in Argentinian Spanish intensively by the end of 2017. 23h of Spanish.

Russian

: 9 / 45 Modern Russian 1
: 55 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - Обретение чуда
: 5271 / 35000 LWT Known

done
Russian World 1 on Youtube
Duolingo
Assimil :twisted:
a bunch of Red Kalinka graded readers

Minute progress: I finally finished Duolingo last week and read about 10 pages of the David Eddings book. I also did 1 file of Modern Russian and kept Clozemaster up. I have decided not to push myself too hard and wait until the next 6WC for more intensive Russian. Until then I will just continue with as much Russian as I feel like, making intensive reading the main activity. 6h of Russian only.

In total I spent 53h on language learning last week. All of my French time was enjoyable, Spanish and Russian weren't super enjoyable but necessary.
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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Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
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 09, 2017 7:25 am

French

Yesterday I concentrated on reading Les Rivières pourpres. It's rather gripping and I would also like to finish it soon. In general I don't like it to follow too many stories at once and right now I'm reading one book in Russian, one in Spanish and two in French, while also following several series. At some point it just becomes too much. Since I'm already at 71% of the book I might as well try to finish it quickly so that I can concentrate properly on the French translation of The Expanse. We also watched Le dîner de Cons, which is a comedy that is funny in a really uncomfortable way. It's like laughing at funny video shows where you know that the people in the clips probably broke bones or worse. From a language learning perspective the only problem is that my husband needs French subtitles when watching French native series and movies, so I really need to concentrate and try not to look at them.

French hours: 3.25h

Spanish

I watched one episode of El internado and was so bored that I started folding laundry. The plot holes are also so big that an elephant could fit through them. We also watched the first episode of Estocolmo on a whim and I have to say that there wasn't a single character in there that I found interesting. At least it wasn't cringeworthy and unbearable though, that's a step up from El internado and Ministerio del Tiempo which lead to a lot of facepalms and head shaking. I wish there was at least one amazing Spanish language TV show that I could watch and re-watch without thinking that I'm seriously hurting my brain :? We also had a quick look at some stills from Ingobernable and laughed a little about the story concept. It's just so damn hard to suspend disbelief with Spanish language content! There was of course also another lesson of GdUdE with 0 mistakes. The exercises are of course still super easy.

Spanish hours: 2.24h

Russian

On the weekend I get to spend more time with my husband, so I just managed to do Clozemaster and nothing else.

Russian hours: 0.33h

Total: 5.82h
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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