Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

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jeffers
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Languages: Speaks: English (N), Hindi (A2-B1)

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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby jeffers » Thu Dec 12, 2024 11:33 am

tastyonions wrote:Blé is also slang in French for money. Beurre as well.

Might be interesting to do a cross-linguistic inventory of food terms used to mean “money.”

English has dough, bread, cheese…


Don't leave out "cent patates" in French, which is older slang for a million francs.
1 x
"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)
"Chi va piano, va sano e va lontano."

Nuovissimo progetto italiano 1a: 10 / 100 10/100%
Nuovissimo progetto italiano 1b: 4 / 100 4/100%

fromaalborg
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Languages: Danish (native), English (fluent), French (learning)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby fromaalborg » Thu Dec 12, 2024 12:42 pm

Sonjaconjota wrote:Thanks, but the problem isn't the "what", it's the "how".
With Anki, nothing's obvious or intuitive, everything has to be looked up.
I've never used anything like that and it makes me angry all the time.
If I just look up and maybe even figure out one little thing, I'm already so fed up that I don't want to deal with it for a day or two.
So every new step is very slow, but I'll get there in the end, I guess.

I understand :D I had to install it a couple of times, before I figure out that the premade decks did not work for me. I also saw a bunch of videos, but I don't think anyone used Anki in the exact same way, I ended up using it.
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Sonjaconjota
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Location: Barcelona, Spain
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Greek, Turkish (beginner)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby Sonjaconjota » Sun Dec 15, 2024 6:36 pm

2024/12/09
Dutch
- listening: podcast Het bewijs, epis. 18

French
- listening: podcast La Fabrique à Polyglottes, epis. 33

Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook
- listening: podcast Türkçe Çocuk haber, epis. 6
- watching: youtube channel Daire: Kumburgaz'da Geniş Ailenin Dönüştürdüğü 8+2 Yazlık


2024/12/10
Italian
- listening: podcast Un pasto alla volta, epis. 6

Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook


2024/12/11
Italian
- listening: podcast Elisa True Crime, epis. 84

Dutch
- listening: podcast Het bewijs, epis. 19

Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook


2024/12/12
Dutch
- listening: podcast Het bewijs, epis. 20

Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook
This is just a never-ending story. As ever so often with language learning, I’m now running on pure stubbornness.


2024/12/13
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook
- watching: Daire Turu: Eylül'ün Feneryolu'ndaki 3+1 Özgün Evi


2024/12/14
Turkish 30 min
- I finally finished the review of lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook.


2024/12/15
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, workbook


Today I would like to recommend something to people interested in Spanish content. My boyfriend started to watch a youtube channel that I got interested in as well, although it's not what I'm usually into.
I’m talking about a youtuber who goes by Buck Fernández. He seems to have several channels, mainly about genre films, but also about things like gaming and retrogaming.
We watch his channel Video Buck, in which he does funny reviews of very bad old low budget thrillers, horror and action movies.
He’s from Málaga and speaks with an obvious Andalusian accent, but it seems to me that he speaks quite clearly. I often have difficulties understanding Andalusians, but none with him. I adore his way of speaking, it’s a very cool cadence, very different from what I’m used to hearing here in Catalonia.
The genres he presents are not my cup of tea usually, but those films are just hilariously bad, and I find him very, very funny.
Maybe it’s something that could appeal to others as well.
10 x

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Sonjaconjota
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Location: Barcelona, Spain
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Greek, Turkish (beginner)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby Sonjaconjota » Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:04 pm

Things got crazy here, as they always do right before Christmas.
I had to hand in something before flying to Germany to visit my parents, canceled some plans and was still running out of time ...
Generally, I didn’t do much language-wise, but I had a bit more time on my travel day on Thursday.

2024/12/16
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, workbook


2024/12/17
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, workbook


2024/12/18
Italian
- listening: podcast Elisa True Crime, epis. 85

Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, workbook


2024/12/19
Travel day
French
- listening podcast La Fabrique à Polyglottes, epis. 34

Turkish 30 min
- I finished my review of lesson 13, The Delights of Learning Turkish, workbook and started the review of lesson 14, coursebook.
- listening: podcast Türkçe Çocuk haber, epis. 06
- watching: film Bihter


2024/12/20
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook


2024/12/21
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook


2024/12/22
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook
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Sonjaconjota
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Location: Barcelona, Spain
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Greek, Turkish (beginner)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby Sonjaconjota » Sun Dec 29, 2024 9:13 pm

2024/12/23
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook

Dutch
- listening: I started a new audio book, the novel DNA by Yrsa Sigurdadóttir, translated from Icelandic to Dutch (about 1h30).
I’ve read several of her novels translated into German and really liked them, so I was happy to discover some books of hers on Podimo. The monthly transcription includes unlimited access to both podcasts and audio books. It’s much better value than the subscription with Kobo Rakuten I’ve tried in the past. And I think even with audible it was just one audio book per month, although I’m not completely sure anymore.


2024/12/24
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook
- watching: I started the film Aaahh Belinda
It’s a comedy from the 80s that mothercondor mentioned in their Turkish log, and I was very happy when I found it on youtube with English subtitles.
The 80s nostalgia makes it really appealing to me.

Dutch
- listening: audio book DNA, (about 1 h)


2024/12/25
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook
- watching: I finished watching Aaahh Belinda. I liked it and I also think that it was rather easy language-wise. With the help of the subtitles, I understood a lot.
I also found out something rather cool:
The main character in the film is an actress (played by Müjde Ar) preparing for her role in the play Asiye nasıl kurtulur. It turns out that this play really exists, and that there’s a film from 1986, from the same year as Aahhh Belinda. And one of the main actresses is … Müjde Ar. Another actress, Füsun Demirel, is in both films as well. A weird, fun coincidence. I was thinking about my university studies but couldn’t really say how you would academically describe all these entanglements.


2024/12/26
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, coursebook
- I started watching Asiye nasıl kurtulur. I like the film, although I’m not very sure if it would be considered politically correct nowadays. It’s about two women from an antiprostitution organisation visiting an brothel after having received a letter from a young woman working there and wanting to leave this kind of life behind. They try to find out which of the ladies there is the writer who signed as Asiye. The film features musical numbers and a bunch of happy prostitutes. Unusual, to say the least.
Oh, and I’ve found the reason for all the “coincidences” mentioned yesterday - both films are by the same director, Atıf Yılmaz.


2024/12/27
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, workbook

I’ve realized that facebook has kicked me out of a polyglot group that I was quite active in, supposedly because I attached a malicious link to a post.
It sure wasn’t malicious back in June when I posted it. I tried to contest the decision, but I’m not sure if it will work. I wasted too much time in this group anyway, and there were often lots of negative vibes, so maybe it’s for the best, but I’m sad.


2024/12/28
Turkish 30 min
- review lesson 14, The Delights of Learning Turkish, workbook


2024/12/29
Italian 30 min
- working with Nuova grammatica pratica della lingual italiana, A1/B2
- listening: podcast Elisa True Crime, epis. 86
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Sonjaconjota
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Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Greek, Turkish (beginner)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby Sonjaconjota » Wed Jan 01, 2025 6:14 pm

End of Year Wrap Up

So, that was 2024 ... It was a good year for me, although I didn’t have as much work as I would have liked.
How did it go language-wise?
Let’s have a look at my 2024 goals / resolutions:

- at least 5 minutes per day working on French conjugation
-> No, didn’t happen.

- write 15 texts in French
-> Nope. I wrote a grand total of two.

- start learning Modern Greek
-> Yes! And Greek is going to be one of the languages I want to concentrate on in 2025.

- start the daily 30 min challenge in the category “generic”, but giving myself more freedom and the option to stop if I see that it just stresses me
-> The challenge didn’t happen officially, because the forum was down at the start of the year, but I did it just for me and managed to do it consistently for the whole year.

- 35 half-hour conversation classes in Turkish on italki
-> I didn’t take 35 classes, but 21, which I’m very happy with. I just had a look at my old log entries and found that I needed about 10 classes to feel no longer blocked and out of my depth. I’m still not very good, but I can fumble my way through a conversation in Turkish if necessary, and I guess that’s more than I was able to do a year ago.


Goals / resolutions for 2025
- First things first: I’m no longer going to do 30 minutes of active language study every day, and I’m definitely no longer tracking my study time. That was never really me. I started to do it for the challenge in 2023, and it was useful for creating a habit. But with language learning, I rather prefer to go with the flow. And this year, I’ve noticed that on many days, I would have preferred to do maybe 15 or 20 minutes in one language and then just something short and quick in another language. The short and quick part never happened, because I was no longer motivated after making myself spend the whole 30 minutes on one language.
- I don't know yet if I will keep up my weekly updates here. We'll see.
- I will try to level up my comprehension and vocabulary in Turkish by concentrating on input.
- I want to work on my Greek. As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t want to get it up to a high level. I just want to go through the resources that I own, be able to read and write comfortably and have a simple conversation.
- I would like to try Lingoda for French and maybe Italian, especially if I have another dry spell at work, like this year.
- I want to spend some time familiarizing myself with Anki. Maybe I’ll still hate it afterwards, but if I don’t really try, I’ll never know.
- I’m aware that one of the things that motivate me most in language learning is starting and finishing resources in book form. I’ve got a couple of books that are either thin (especially for Italian) or actually for a level a bit lower than mine. I might be able to work through those rather quickly. Maybe I can finish and give away some of them in 2025. (It would be a win-win situation, as I’m a bit of a hoarder and we want to renovate our flat this year.)

I would also like to share a personal goal that is not related to language learning:
My main goal for 2025 is to start losing my stage fright. I have lots of ideas about how to work on this, but it’s such a big scary thing that I’m struggling with so much fear and doubt.
My first step, the one that I can do alone at home, is to start practising the guitar.
If anyone can recommend any websites / apps / video courses for guitarist, I’m interested in suggestions.

Happy New Year, everybody!
12 x

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Sonjaconjota
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Location: Barcelona, Spain
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Greek, Turkish (beginner)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby Sonjaconjota » Mon Jan 06, 2025 6:45 pm

2024/12/30
Italian 30 min
- I’ve started to type a list with expressions from Hueber Italienisch alltagstauglich that I want to make into flashcards once I dare to open Anki again.


2024/12/31
Dutch
- listening: podcast Moorden in het Noorden, epis. 10
I learned the word “hechtenis”, meaning “custody”.

Italian 30 min
- working on my list with expressions from Hueber Italienisch alltagstauglich.

Turkish
- listening: podcast Türkçe Çocuk haber, epis. 07


2025/01/01
Dutch
- listening: audio book DNA (2h)
I learned the expression “er warmpjes bij zitten”, which can mean “to be comforably warm” or metaphorically “to be well off”.

French
- listening: podcast La Fabrique à Polyglottes, epis. 23

Turkish
- listening: podcast Türkçe Çocuk haber, epis. 08
- watching: youtube channel Daire: Türkiye'de Bir Mid Century Modern Efsanesi: Petek Pansiyon


2025/01/05
Dutch
- I worked a tiny bit on grammar with Precies! Lern- und Übungsgrammatik Niederländisch and did a word search puzzle.


As you can see, I stopped with my daily half hour as soon the year was over. I’m very stressed because of work right now, and not having to think about when I’ll squeeze in those thirty minutes does feel like a huge relief.
5 x

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Sonjaconjota
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Posts: 376
Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:12 am
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Greek, Turkish (beginner)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby Sonjaconjota » Mon Jan 13, 2025 5:40 am

2025/01/06
Turkish
- listening: podcast Çocuk Haber epis. 09

Italian
- I worked on my list with expressions from Hueber Italienisch alltagstauglich.


2025/01/07
Turkish
- watching: youtube channel Daire: Ankara'da Teknolojik, Konforlu ve Tasarım Odaklı Bir Aile Evi


2025/01/08
Italian
- listening: podcast Elisa True Crime, epis. 87 & 88

Turkish
- I watched about 30 min of the film Asiye.


2025/01/09
Turkish
I finished watching Asiye.
The film had subtitles in Turkish and I was able to more or less follow the story up to the last 5 minutes. I didn’t really understand the ending, though.


2025/01/10
Turkish
- listening: podcast Çocuk Haber epis. 10
- Because I had Turkish subtitles on for Asiye, youtube has shown me the next video with Turkish subtitles, and I thought it might not be such a bad idea to leave them on for some extra vocabulary review. (I mostly watch stuff in English on youtube.)


2025/01/11
Dutch
- listening: podcast Moorden in het Noorden 12

Turkish
- listening: podcast Çocuk Haber epis. 11


I've got a question for native speakers (or connoisseurs) of American English.
Recently I re-watched Saturday Night Fever.
(By the way: It’s a distressing, harrowing film. I found an article online by a woman who remembered it as fun and light and was quite shocked when she revisited it. Same here.
https://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2019/06/12/what-we-dont-remember-about-saturday-night-fever/)
But on to the question about language: The character Stephanie is a young woman from a similarly modest background as the main character, Tony, but aspiring to constantly better herself and get somewhere in life. And she speaks ... weirdly. I can’t really describe it, her way of speaking just feels unnatural for me.
So, my question for native speakers: What do you think about her speech pattern? Is it just the way actress Karen Lynn Gorney happens to speak? Is it sounding stilted because she’s not a very good actress? Or is this the way the character, Stephanie, chooses to speak because she thinks it makes her sound more sophisticated?

4 x

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tastyonions
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby tastyonions » Mon Jan 13, 2025 8:23 am

She doesn’t sound weird to me. I noticed she corrected her own speech sometimes (“ain’t…isn’t in Manhattan”) to sound less “working class,” which I imagine is part of the character.
4 x

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Sonjaconjota
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Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:12 am
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Greek, Turkish (beginner)
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Re: Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

Postby Sonjaconjota » Mon Jan 20, 2025 10:33 am

tastyonions wrote:She doesn’t sound weird to me. I noticed she corrected her own speech sometimes (“ain’t…isn’t in Manhattan”) to sound less “working class,” which I imagine is part of the character.

Thanks for your input! That's interesting, but I guess it's like with our native language: Sometimes there's a person in our surrounding that has a peculiar way of speaking to our ears, but others might not find it weird in any way.


2025/01/13
Turkish
- watching: youtube channel Daire: Vaniköy'de Bir Yol Yalısı Dairesi


2025/01/14
Dutch
- listening: podcast Moorden in het Noorden, epis. 12

French
- listening: podcast La Fabrique à Polyglottes, epis. 35

Turkish
- listening: podcast Çocuk Haber epis. 12


2025/01/15
French
- I worked a bit with Conjugaison Progressive du Français and linguno.com.

Italian
- listening: podcast Elisa True Crime, epis. 89

Turkish
- watching: I started to watch the series Behzat Ç on youtube, with subtitles in Turkish.
I don’t really understand a lot, but the story is easy enough to follow visually. I quickly learned the word “lan” though, an interjection which means something like “pal, buddy, dude”, or also “hell”, and is used in any other scene.
Typically for Turkish series, every episode is about 1h45 long. I managed to watch about half an hour so far.


2025/01/16
Dutch
- listening: podcast Moorden in het Noorden, epis. 13

Turkish
- listening: I listened to the last available episode of the podcast Çocuk Haber.


2025/01/17
French
- I finished the part about the imparfait in Conjugaison Progressive du Français.

Turkish
Yesterday I added some Turkish podcasts to my library on Podimo. Today I listened to the first episode of one about travel called Seyahate Dair Her Şey, but it turned out there was only this single episode. It was uploaded at the start of 2020 - I guess the fact that travelling wasn’t possible for the rest of the year didn’t precisely motivate them to do more.
- reading: story I in LingoMastery - Turkish Short Stories for Beginners
In 2023, I went through this book very slowly. At that point, with intensive reading, I needed about half an hour or sometimes more per story. Because I wrote down the meaning of all unknown words with pencil, now I only needed a good ten minutes.


2025/01/18
French
- listening: podcast La Fabrique à Polyglottes, epis. 36

Italian
- listening: podcast Un pasto alla volta, epis. 7


2025/01/19
Italian
- I worked a little bit with Nuova grammatica pratica della lingua italiana

Turkish
- listening: podcast Bir Avrupa Macerasi, epis. 01
It’s about Turkish expats in Europe.
- reading: story II - IV in LingoMastery - Turkish Short Stories for Beginners


This week, reading an article, I learned a new English word, “tony”, meaning “sophisticated, posh”. I don’t remember ever having come across it before. The richness of the English language will never cease to amaze me.
I also learned how to correctly pronounce “Yosemite”. I always thought that it rhymed with “might”.

I’ve just now handed in the second big translation project I was working on since autumn 2024, and now I’ll probably have a week or two free before my next project arrives. I’ll definitely do some hiking, but maybe I’ll also find time for some studying.
5 x


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