Lisa's Language Log

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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Wed Feb 01, 2023 3:41 am

End of the month. My goal with French was (optimistic) 500 words (realistic) 300 words and I'm at 415, so that's good. Most very easy words so I can sail through EXCEPT I'm just not prepared for peau/peu marché/marcher court/cou tôt/tout prêt/près where the sound is the same (to my ears), but spelling and meaning different. All those hours of spanish and german anki have not prepared me for this! Although I suppose it happens in english so I shouldn't be so resentful.

Pronunciation is coming along, too soon to say how far IPA will take me and what the next step will be. Considering how to reengage grammar (I really need some conjugations). Not sure if I should subscribe to kwiziq, it's a bit overkill. I have a paper book (Barrons) which I like fairly well (not big on word search or acrostics), but paper books only work when I have a sense of desperation in needing some grammar.

I did a dialang and it put me at B1 reading which is completely ridiculous, but the A1 texts on lingua are are pretty easy to read. Linguno french listening at A1 is hopeless. (the other part of that problem is that if you understand the word, that doesn't mean you have any memory of how it is spelled). First I just need a lot more words. I'm good at guessing based on the printed form of French but so much information is lost when spoken.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:42 am

Last time I was in beaverton I got a library book on the history of the french language... in french. It's been too hard... but then yesterday I picked it up and... I could read it. Not 100% but I understood it almost entirely, 2-5 words per page that I didn't know. And mostly these were too-simple-to-mention words like selon, vers, dont, tel, car. Of course, it's a topic that's not unfamiliar (I have heard of romans and gauls) but still! I'm thrilled, and I felt informed (e.g. gaulish is the reason why french sounds so different than spanish/italian, and French got biere from German while Spanish got cerveza from latin). This book had an introduction in english saying for intermediate to advanced high school or college students.

Last week when I sneakily ordered yet more agatha christies in German (I suspect I'm influencing the US supply of these :-)) and I happened to notice one in French from the same vendor and I happened to put it in my cart while having no intention of getting to the point I could read it. But perhaps this wasn't the frivolous action I thought it was. Although reading a 3rd-year high school french book is not quite the same as a translation designed for french adults. But you gotta be optimistic about languages or you'd give up...

I continue to read in German, but so far basically zero problem with german (or spanish) interference. I onetime got fleur when I wanted blume (thinking to myself), and monde sounds so much like mond that I expect only context will save me. The IPA is different but clearly I have a long way to go to hear the distinction.

Vocab is my main focus, but I'm starting to feel like I need more grammar (I have been reading my grammar books but with a sense of how do they come up with this stuff?). Satisfied with my pronunciation. Listening is very weak and I keep having trouble distinguishing words. I just can't hear some of the differences! I listen to both back and forth but it doesn't seem to stick. Fluent Forever talked about minimal pair exercises... which this might be what I'm trying to do, but not sure how I'd find out its working. And I don't have really good audio, which doesn't help, I think I'm sometimes using volume and sound quality to tell them apart.
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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2113
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Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Feb 07, 2023 6:28 pm

Lisa wrote:Vocab is my main focus, but I'm starting to feel like I need more grammar (I have been reading my grammar books but with a sense of how do they come up with this stuff?)

I LOL when I read this. :D
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Fri Feb 10, 2023 8:51 am

I went looking for some minimal pair exercises. The one I found, well, I could NOT tell any of them apart! I picked randomly a pair, oui and huis, to see if I could determine the technical difference so I could listen more carefully.
oui /wi/ w - voiced labial-velar approximant -as in boire, ouest
huis /ɥi/ ɥ - voiced labial-palatal approximant - as in nuit, fruit
Neither a consonant nor a vowel! and the descriptions are quite opaque. I believe the w is further back in the mouth, but they still come out sounding the same to me. Picking random words in my set that contain these IPA symbols, they do sound different.. but then it's not the minimal pair. I think French and I are going to have to agree to disagree here....

The good news is that as I was trying out these sounds in different ways I somehow got out roi correctly (trois, droit) - I can't do it reliably but moving the sounds forward and backward somehow made space for the transition from r to wa.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Thu Feb 23, 2023 4:21 am

Continuing to add french vocabulary; fairly easy, though I can only go so fast. Hope to hit 800 by end of month but we'll see. It's kind of cheating to learn too many cognates.

I have not been very careful with pronunciation lately, partly since I've been too busy and that takes focus. I continue to be flummoxed in relating audio to written words. It's like learning two separate languages. It's simply not possible to learn audio for identically-pronounced words without some context, and written context will allow me to avoid learning the audio. I'm hoping this will work out somehow anyway.

Since vocab is pretty easy overall, it's grammar that has actually been somewhat limiting. So I've been looking stuff up. And. Words fail me. I had not previously counted up the number of tenses in french, and it was a rude shock that they gender and number the past participles. It makes me feel like german grammar isn't so bad. Yeah there are those declensions and I admit separable verbs are a challenge but it feels at least somewhat organized; something has to be at the end of the sentence and the verb/separable prefix is one option. Those French conjugation tables make me feel like I had it good with only 48 adjective endings. Not that I can justify English pronunciation, but at least if there are silent bits, you don't suddenly start sounding them if a word starting with a vowel follows. Anyway, I'm not sure I believe in my goals for listening comprehension. Still, I have been so busy and stressed that perhaps I just don't have the patience I need.

While I'm not done with wanting to get somewhere with French, and I feel like it's not solid enough to pause... still I'm kind of wishing to get back to German. I'm still reading, and listening a little, but I'm not progressing.
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Iversen
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Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Iversen » Thu Feb 23, 2023 8:52 am

Lisa wrote: gaulish is the reason why french sounds so different than spanish/italian, and French got biere from German while Spanish got cerveza from latin).

Maybe Frankish was an even more important influence and - well, I don't know much about Breton, but if Irish is anything like a muster then you should be happy that the Gaulish language didn't leave more traces. Else you would have seen sound changes at the beginning of your words too, not only endings at the other end. Frankish was a Germanic language, and it was somewhat related to the forerunners of for instance Dutch, and even though the Franks adopted the local variant of late Vulgar Latin they may have spoken it in a weird way. And besides, both the kingdoms/empires of Chlodowech and later on Charlemagne combined areas in presentday France and Germany.

By the way, beer is "birra" in Italian so those Latin influences can be overruled..
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Sat Feb 25, 2023 8:13 pm

Iversen wrote:Maybe Frankish was an even more important influence and - well, I don't know much about Breton, but if Irish is anything like a muster then you should be happy that the Gaulish language didn't leave more traces. Else you would have seen sound changes at the beginning of your words too, not only endings at the other end. Frankish was a Germanic language, and it was somewhat related to the forerunners of for


I triangulate between German and Spanish and whatever is completely unlike either I'm throwing in the Gaulish bucket, which is very unscientific :-) I suspect I would find Chinese more manageable than Irish.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Tue Feb 28, 2023 11:10 pm

I did hit my word goal of 800. Slacked off a little on sentences and conjugations.

Reading: I need more grammar, to be able to read. The advantage of being a false beginner (or possibly the advantage of spanish and german over french) is that you sort of recognize what a verb, noun, preposition even looks like. Sometimes these bits of sentences don't even resolve into word tokens. I "read" (using the term very loosely) a few pages of my my agatha christie but massive amounts were not understandable. When I see a few days of non-overscheduled time I'll rejoin kwiziq for a month.

Listening: quazel french audio was too hard to understand (too fast, and rather too generated sounding). I did better on the linguno transcription than my previous attempt, but they are still mostly beyond me. I am thinking to get Lingua for graded audio with transcripts; reading doesn't have nearly the compelling quality that it does in spanish or german. I also found http://www.learner.org which might help... although I am not sure how much of it I will be able to tolerate. Dated is a mild term.

Speaking: this isn't much of a priority for me, but I think quazel might help with pronunciation, and I do want to avoid embedding anything too awful.

Writing: including for completeness but given my complete inability to remember how to spell cuillère I'm going to not worry about this.

I also spent a little time looking for german audio of exactly the right level, as the audiobooks don't stretch me but most native material is just a little to fast and unclear for me. I do feel an itch to work on German grammar and vocab... but I don't think I can abandon french yet.

Other than a brief moment wondering where to start when I have to launch a (mental) sentence, I am having remarkably little interference - rien, mal, mond got incorrect lookups, and onetime fleur rather than blume. I was watching something in french, from a german compan (the subtitles were in german...) and then the speaker switches from french to german and it just went smoothly from babble to understandable. I had so much trouble with german coming out when I was working on spanish. But I might not be at the french level where I can relax enough that the german will pop out accidentally. And then my level of german (reading and listening) is so much higher than when I was working on spanish, that might have jiggled out some of that automatic bad german. I feel like I have a lower speaking ability in german - its less easy and comfortable - than when I started all this, which could be an illusion since it's not like I have a recording.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Mon Mar 06, 2023 7:09 am

Started back on kwiziq as of yesterday. As tired as I am this evening, I can't believe I somehow thought studying french pronouns would be a good way to relax, but they have been driving me fairly crazy. I think I've got them herded into neat rows and have a hope of distinguishing them from other sneaky small words. I realize that I'm attempting to read a book suitable for native speakers with my A1/A2 reading abilities... if I can sort out the pronouns and question-words it might be less hopeless, though I'm aware that I'm seeing some quite advanced conjugations.

Was spending some time on lingua. Reading is fine, even A2, but all the audio is just too fast to understand, even after a few tries I'm not getting it all. I suppose I need to just keep at it. I bopped over to the german and the B2 is not hard, but I think it would be helpful. Except there's only so much time available. I did manage to switch back and forth between german and french a number of times the other day and it was no problem at all. I have been eyeing esperanto but not til I can set French aside; that would be a problem. I did dig track down an agatha chistie in esperanto; unfortunately a PDF not a printed book, but perhaps reading the printout would be OK.

I overdid the vocab last week, I think; I've been not feeling much enthusiasm the last few days. I am a bit ahead vs. grammar and audio, so more vocab doesn't help all that much. Where I really notice not being a false beginner is grammar; one forgets the conjugations, but the bits look sort of familiar and once you get the vocab back, they are easy to understand in reading, if not write or use correctly. At least for me.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: Lisa's Language Log

Postby Lisa » Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:49 am

After some recent posts, I got to thinking about hobbies and how I don't like having "hobbies" that you just dabble at for fun. Possibly I am too type A but it seems like if you're going to spend the time you should go all in. And this leads me (in the context of this forum, particularly) to ask myself, not needing anything beside english, what are my real goals and if I'm really doing what I intend and want to do or just... well, having a hobby.

My goal was "fluency" in some language; which means I have to define fluency, but whatever that is, I'm not there yet with my strongest language (german). Reading yes, but in the other areas it's just not good enough. Reading and audiobooks are easy and fun so that's what I do. Put this together and it is adding up to hobby.

I'm working hard on french - grammar progressing quickly, everything I learn I can immediately use as I attempt to read, and it's feels great to crack the nut of pronouns and I appreciate passé compose very much (finally something nice to say about french!), and I keep coming up with ways to work on sounds. But all the time attempting to get to a some level of french... and I'm not using those hours on german. I can't believe I'm saying that figuring out french grammar or pronunciation is fun, but, well, I think it must somehow fit that definition. I can learn something in german and I don't see that immediate benefit, the way I do with french, or I think any new language.

I'm not exactly what approach to use if I want to get serious with german. I really need to work on production; writing and being more careful about speaking, and for that I would need accountability of some kind. I'm not good at "push" goals, setting myself tasks; I need "pull" goals, like an exam or deadline. If I got into a good grove with an italki tutor it might push me in the right direction. It's possible some of the tools I've started using for french would be helpful. I think I've pushed reading+anki as far as it will work for me (which is quite far)... but now any other tools would mean progress.

It is/would be/will be very hard to leave french now, when it's still just out of reach but getting closer every day. And I've got kwiziq paid up for 25 more days. And I'd have to put esperanto back on mothballs. But as I've publicly declared, you only have so many hours in a day and you have to decide what you most want or need, and focus on that. But gosh, the thrill of having those french words resolve into meaning... and I don't really need my german to be better... is there anything wrong with being a beginner in more languages...
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