Cèid Donn's French and Gaelic SC thread

[brilliantyears]

I'm glad to hear the 6WC has been beneficial for you! Sounds like you progressed a lot like I did last year. Slow Russian podcast was super beneficial for my listening practice back then. Sure, the endgame is to be able to understand Russian at normal speed, but it helps immensely with the sounds and the first step to proper listening comprehension

If you want, I can also address the rotating issue with Memrise? Sometimes they need to hear it from multiple people

[Cèid Donn]

If you want, I can also address the rotating issue with Memrise? Sometimes they need to hear it from multiple people

Feel free to do so if you have the time. I know when I posted my compliant about it in the forum, I was actually commenting in someone else's thread asking them to fix it, so I know I'm not alone in my dislike for this "feature." I searched my previous posts on the Memrise forum and wasn't able to find that post and thread, so I wonder if it has been deleted.

I also mentioned this problem in my comment when I cancelled my Pro subscription, although I kind of doubt anyone actually reads those comments.

[brilliantyears]

Was this on iOS by the way? I must say I haven't tried it myself yet, but will do so tonight But that helps with filing (another) complaint

[Cèid Donn]

No, not iOS. I use an Android tablet.

[Cèid Donn]

When does the next 6WC begin? I just realized my plans to do Breton next might conflict with my yearly Native American language practice for Native American Heritage month. Fudge cakes. Plus November is always a horrible month for me between trying to work as much as I can before the winter break and dealing with holiday nonsense...ugh. I want to do too much, as always.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Do you have a Native American language you focus on every year? Or does it rotate?

[IronMike]

...with my yearly Native American language practice for Native American Heritage month.

Hmmm...

[Cèid Donn]

Do you have a Native American language you focus on every year? Or does it rotate?

Well, most years in the past I just did Navajo. That is the NA indigenous language that I have done the most work with and have the most resources for. Last year I did Ojibwe for the first time and it was fun. I may do that again this year, although I'm strongly leaning toward Navajo. Many years ago I did M'ikmaq, which is a super cool but difficult language and there's sadly not much in the way of resources for people outside of the M'ikmaq nation. But I still remember (mostly) how to sing O Canada in M'ikmaq.

[Cèid Donn]

I've read 2 of the 4 Spanish books I checked out of the library (the 2 shortest ones, of course!). I went to renew the other 2 online, as they are due at the end of this week and I didn't want to forget to do that, and one of them has a hold on it. Ugh, people! Guess I'm spending this week reading that particular book, La quinta estación by NK Jemisin. It's a contemporary fantasy novel, so that makes it kind of challenging, but I read it in English last year so I am familiar with the story, at least

For this week I had planned to finish my current Gaelic book, Caogad san Fhàsach, which is a collection 50 short stories that I'm plodding through at a slower-than-average pace than I usually do with my Gaelic reading, but oh well. My Gaelic Book SC will have to wait, for They Who Put A Hold On My Book wants to read some NK Jemisin en español. OK. Vale. Fine.

I honestly haven't been in the mood to do a lot of studying this weekend so it was hard to get myself motivated to work on anything. Last week I got an unhappy update on my ongoing legal matters, and on Friday I had to send more stuff to my lawyer, but it was Friday, so I didn't hear back from her until this morning. As result I spent the weekend stressed out about that (on top of all the stress from my job, which in our community's post-mass shooting atmosphere, is a constant, absolutely soul-crushing matter of an entirely other nature). Anyhow, thankfully, the issue wasn't as big of a problem as I had feared and for now, everything's back on track. With my legal issues at least.

I did get a few things done this weekend in additional to my usual SC and 365 Day-related work: I added 17 more sentences to my Cloze-Collection for Gaelic, bringing the total to 80. I re-watched all 4 new episodes of Ros na Rún. I read 3 news articles in Welsh and 2 more in Irish, and I read another short story in my beginner Russian book. And I got a real, albeit kind of tepid, start to reviewing Breton with reviewing mutations, verb conjugations and conjugated prepositions. Fun with tables!

[Cèid Donn]

I finished La quinta estación by US author JK Jemisin and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It's a fantasy novel so there are a lot words unique to the author's world building, and those kinds of words can really trip me up with a TL like Spanish where my vocabulary is still wanting and so I don't readily recognize an author-fabricated word (or translation of one) like comopiedra or orogén. But I had read this series in English and that helped immensely, as did the appendices in the back (yes, it's that kind of fantasy novel). Anyhow, when books 2 and 3 for this series come available at my library I'll read them too. It's not my favoritest of recent fantasy series but it is interesting enough for a second reading. What I would love to see in Spanish (or French) would be JY Yang's silkpunk Tensorate series, although I have yet to see any news about it being translated into other languages yet.

I'm currently reading Zoro by Isabel Allende, and so far, I find it pretty easy to follow. Allende's writing style is very flowing, and even though she likes to use long sentences, there's a nice clarity to her prose that, like with Dumas in the original French, makes is really easy to figure out or just read around unfamiliar words from the context.

After this Allende novel, I'll be reading El tunél by Ernesto Sábato.

The other day I lost my streak in a couple of my Clozemaster courses due to a bug, but since it was two lesser priority course (It<En and Fr<Es) I didn't bother to ask them to reset my streak. I'm just using it as an excuse to cut back on the amount of Clozemaster I'm doing. But I did get an acknoweldge today on Twitter from Clozemaster that they are working on the issue. So it seems it's not just me who's lost streaks. I noticed that I lost those streaks on the day I was trying out the Android app, and those were the first two courses I worked on with the app that day. So I suspect it's something to do with the app syncing with the website. So for now, I'll just stick to the website.

As for my Breton review, it's trudging along. I'm working on Colloquial Breton, which I never have properly worked though before. I have an approved unofficial pdf that was intended for a study group years back that never materialized, but I'd love to get a physical copy because these Colloquial books in pdf are a serious headache to use. But right now, with having to pay for lawyers and such, I will have to wait on that and make do with this annoying pdf copy. The other thing with Breton I worked on this week is I've gone back and began reviewing traditional songs I previously learned. These are the ones I've been working on this week--polar opposites in topic and mood: