What next? (learning Spanish, maintaining German, random dabbling...)

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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Thu Jun 03, 2021 8:12 pm

Still mostly doing Spanish. Gut feeling is I maybe should wait until my Spanish is a little warmer before I plough on with beginners Italian. If I just watch a few episodes of Montalbano, does that count?

I have however been listening to France Inter, the news mainly, and I'm pleased to report I can understand rather a lot more than I expected. I've traditionally found French listening particularly hard, so this is an unexpected surprise. There are still significant gaps here and there, of course, but this feels more like a vocabulary problem than a listening problem.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:34 am

gsbod wrote:
I have however been listening to France Inter, the news mainly, and I'm pleased to report I can understand rather a lot more than I expected. I've traditionally found French listening particularly hard, so this is an unexpected surprise. There are still significant gaps here and there, of course, but this feels more like a vocabulary problem than a listening problem.
For a while I watched rtl.fr 's evening program while making dinner. They have a web stream from the radio studio, and the way the participants interacted with one another somehow seemed terribly french to me. A bit like a webcam to a zoo. :-)
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Wed Jun 16, 2021 9:45 pm

My maths exam has been and gone and I've definitely made up my mind - I won't be doing any more formal maths courses next year. It ended up a pretty rubbish experience and although I'm fairly sure that I've passed, I'm also fairly sure that the mark I get will not be a fair reflection of what I am usually capable of. And it's left a sour taste that, for the time being, overshadows the sheer joy I felt as I was learning and finally understanding the material through the course. I'm sure that taste will wear off in time. Maths is still cool. But from now on, I think I'll only be doing an exam if it turns out to be professionally necessary (unlikely) or I unexpectedly have to emigrate and need a proper language certificate (also unlikely).

I've now taken on the task of having a good old clear out of my books. In addition to all the books I've read and am not interested in reading again, or haven't read but am no longer interested in reading, I'm also now thinking about how many of the language exam oriented textbooks I really want to hold on to. And at the end of the day, those are the kind of books you want to set free so that someone who really needs them can pick them up at a reasonable price.

Also, genuine question, how many intermediate level German grammar books with exercises does anyone actually need?
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Sat Jun 19, 2021 4:53 pm

The other day I listened to one of the Sein und Streit podcasts, which was titled "Jorge Luis Borges als Philosoph - Lesen lernen für postfaktische Zeiten". I'd always instinctively thought that Borges was unlikely to be a writer to appeal to me, however the discussion in the podcast got me interested so I ordered myself a copy of Labyrinths, which is an English translation of a number of his short stories. I've just read The Library of Babel and it's pretty much blown my mind. And now I am sat here at the computer surrounded by piles of books I am sorting out to either go to the charity shop or resell, and the irony is not lost on me.

Incidentally, I don't think my instinct was entirely wrong. It's a case of the right book at the right time, and the right time is most definitely now.

Also, no aspirations to read it in the original Spanish.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Sun Jun 20, 2021 8:50 pm

Sorting out my German books was surprisingly easy. Pretty much everything which is within easy access on the bookshelf can stay (it's there for a reason), pretty much everything else is superfluous. I don't need the exam prep books for B2 or C1, or the beginner level grammar workbooks and vocabulary workbooks, or the books that are basically just lists of things (without being comprehensive enough to qualify as a useful reference book). I'm keeping my set of Begegnungen and Erkundungen textbooks for sentimental reasons mainly (but also nobody wants to buy a secondhand textbook full of someone else's pencil marks). I still probably have more grammar workbooks than I need, but I can deal with that another time.

The Japanese books, on the other hand, are resisting my attempts to pear them down. Minna no nihongo chuukyuu can go, since Quartet is more than an adequate replacement, but everything else I feel I need to keep, for no good reason. The way I feel right now I couldn't imagine making the time to seriously study with any of the books I have, let alone read any of the novels languishing on my bookshelf. I think they just need to go into a box so I can deal with them later. I think part of the problem is that for most of my books, I know that if I end up missing a volume, it should be relatively easy to get hold of another copy. Japanese books are a little trickier to get hold of. Not impossible, but trickier. Which is why I'm still holding onto exam prep books for an exam I took nearly 10 years ago, and have no intention of taking again...
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Jun 21, 2021 1:07 pm

gsbod wrote:The other day I listened to one of the Sein und Streit podcasts, which was titled "Jorge Luis Borges als Philosoph - Lesen lernen für postfaktische Zeiten". I'd always instinctively thought that Borges was unlikely to be a writer to appeal to me, however the discussion in the podcast got me interested so I ordered myself a copy of Labyrinths, which is an English translation of a number of his short stories. I've just read The Library of Babel and it's pretty much blown my mind. And now I am sat here at the computer surrounded by piles of books I am sorting out to either go to the charity shop or resell, and the irony is not lost on me.

Incidentally, I don't think my instinct was entirely wrong. It's a case of the right book at the right time, and the right time is most definitely now.

Also, no aspirations to read it in the original Spanish.


Thanks for the recommendation - I really enjoyed listening to this. In fact, I'm going to listen to it again and take notes, as I want a record of it. I actually have a copy of Ficciones, which I bought when doing Spanish A level; it wasn't a set text but I was planning on reading it out of my own interest. It clearly wasn't interesting enough to me then, as it remains unread, but, like you, I think the ideas seem much more compelling now.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:24 pm

I've been trying again with the TV show Babylon Berlin but I'm struggling to get into it. I enjoyed reading Der nasse Fisch, but I think there are just too many differences between the characters in the book and the characters in the TV show, including their history and the plot development. As a result, the TV show version looks good (well it should do, given the budget), but it just doesn't feel right.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und whatever

Postby gsbod » Sun Jul 04, 2021 12:29 pm

Last night I ended up spending the evening on Youtube for the first time in a long time. It started off quite innocently with bardcore covers of Iron Maiden songs, but you know how things end up once you fall down the rabbit hole.

This Ecolinguist video of English speakers trying to understand Dutch sentences was really entertaining to play along with, given that I'm a native English speaker with a good knowledge of German. My responses were very similar to to the English guy who was using his knowledge of Old English and German and came to similar conclusions and had similar questions to me. So now I have a Dutch for Beginners course bookmarked because Dutch sounds fun, as long as I can figure out the pronunciation.

I also ended up watching a number of videos aimed at Japanese learners and the Nihongo no Mori channel looks like a really useful resource of videos about JLPT grammar points. Again bookmarked, as I think it would be pretty useful if/when I want to brush up my Japanese.

Also on the Japanese theme, but I think more widely applicable, I found the suggested approach to cracking the problem of reading in Japanese in this video particularly interesting. The suggestion is basically that you have 3 books on the go at a time, spending about 20 minutes a day on each of them. The first book should be below your level (i.e. you can understand pretty much everything), the next book should be at your level (no more than 5-6 unknown words per page) and then the final book should be something really challenging (e.g. you'll be spending the whole 20 minutes on just one page). The only problem I would have in applying this right now is that the only books I have within the first category are in the よつばと!series and everything else is still in the really challenging category. But maybe after a few weeks working on just easy and super difficult, I'd level up enough to have books available in the sweet spot middle ground without having to buy any new ones. I also wonder whether there would be value in applying this approach to other languages. For example, it's obvious to me which kind of German books would fall into each of those categories and my reading does still lag a bit behind my listening, simply because I don't do enough of it.

Also, has anyone else noticed an annoying trend for longer music videos, often live performances, having adverts pop up bang in the middle of the performance? I'm never going to object to adverts on a service I'm not actually paying for, but right in the middle of a song is a step too far - basically renders the video unwatchable, as far as I'm concerned.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Tatort und whatever

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:04 pm

gsbod wrote:Also on the Japanese theme, but I think more widely applicable, I found the suggested approach to cracking the problem of reading in Japanese in this video particularly interesting. The suggestion is basically that you have 3 books on the go at a time, spending about 20 minutes a day on each of them. The first book should be below your level (i.e. you can understand pretty much everything), the next book should be at your level (no more than 5-6 unknown words per page) and then the final book should be something really challenging (e.g. you'll be spending the whole 20 minutes on just one page). The only problem I would have in applying this right now is that the only books I have within the first category are in the よつばと!series and everything else is still in the really challenging category. But maybe after a few weeks working on just easy and super difficult, I'd level up enough to have books available in the sweet spot middle ground without having to buy any new ones. I also wonder whether there would be value in applying this approach to other languages. For example, it's obvious to me which kind of German books would fall into each of those categories and my reading does still lag a bit behind my listening, simply because I don't do enough of it.
I like this suggestion. I watch a German video with subtitles most days, so I'll call that my dialogue-heavy book. An easy read, and a tough read every day. Do-able!
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und whatever

Postby gsbod » Sun Jul 04, 2021 1:19 pm

Yes, in terms of German, dialogue heavy books would definitely not fall into the super difficult category for me (but the joy of self study is adapting to your circumstances). But certain poetry or dense and worthy fiction most definitely would.
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