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

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Dagane
Orange Belt
Posts: 172
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 6:08 pm
Location: London, UK
Languages: I regularly use:
Spanish (N)
English (C2)
German (C1+)
Hungarian (A2?)

I formerly studied:
Galician (B2?)
Dutch (A1)
Czech (A0)
Portuguese (A2?)
French (A1?)
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby Dagane » Sun May 16, 2021 8:13 pm

gsbod wrote:I've started watching a Krimi series on All 4 called Nordic Murders which is quite entertaining. Because it's streaming on All 4

Thank you. I didn't know what German series to watch next. The last one was Deutschland 83 / 86 / 89 (also in All 4) :D.
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gsbod
Blue Belt
Posts: 839
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:22 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native)
German (advanced)
French (intermediate)
Japanese (intermediate)
Spanish (learning)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1152
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Sat May 29, 2021 6:55 pm

Bars and restaurants have now reopened and we finally have some fine May weather. May is usually the best month here, weather-wise, but this year the fine weather was a little late showing up. Anyway, it feels like the city has finally woken up from a long hibernation, and I can feel myself waking up along with it.

I also had my first COVID jab today, so altogether I am in a pretty good mood right now.

Now I no longer have to study maths all the time, I am thinking about doing something with the Romance languages, but I'd like to take a different approach. Normally I'd start out a new language project being quite goal oriented, and I'd set myself up a plan around some core course materials and tools like Anki. I also tend to stick to one language at a time, since if I want to meet a specific language goal using specific materials, I generally only have enough mental bandwidth to deal with one at a time.

The reason for taking a different approach now is mainly because I can't decide which Romance language I'd really want to focus on, out of French, Italian and Spanish. I don't have any immediate need to use any of these languages, the only one which is ready for native materials is French, but I'm also looking ahead to being able to go abroad again hopefully in 2022 and can't make up my mind whether I'd prefer to go to Spain or Italy (love them both for different reasons). Also, I'm not that enthusiastic about the Romance languages in and of themselves, but from a practical standpoint they are probably the most useful for me (along with German), so it's worth knowing something of them, even if the studying isn't that exciting.

But also, I'd like to try and challenge some of my beliefs and expectations about language learning in general. I'm a huge fan of lifelong learning, but I've been thinking a lot about what it is I really need from it. This maths course has been fantastic in terms of giving me tools to solve problems that I would have thought impossible 12 months ago, and I've got much greater confidence now dealing with certain aspects of maths, but I am finding the assessment side of the course stressful and oddly dissatisfying. If you need a qualification, the stress and emptiness of formal assessments are of course worth it. But what if you don't...?

So for now, I'm thinking about really following my nose with French, Spanish and Italian, not commiting to anything much for any of those languages, but seeing if I can derive some pleasure from the act of studying them, rather than the anticipation of the achievement of some arbitrary goal in the future. I'll try in the main to stick to course materials that I already own (or are freely available) and will try not to spend too much time or money expanding my library at this stage. If I do really need something later on, it should become obvious. I'm not going to set out here now what I plan to use, or to study, as that sounds too much like goal setting, but I may log about study after it's happened, or if I notice anything interesting. We'll see.

Edit: first interesting thing - having updated the list of languages on my log title, based on what the languages call themselves, rather than spelling out FIGS, I have ended up with something close to défi, which is not what I am aiming at here at all!
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Caromarlyse
Green Belt
Posts: 387
Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:31 pm
Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
(All levels estimates and given as a guide only)
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sun May 30, 2021 7:23 pm

If I'm allowed to ask some non-language-related questions... Are you carrying on with the maths in the autumn then? How big a time commitment has it been?

Interesting what you said about assessments. I've found doing homework for online tutors, who obviously don't need to - and don't - give grades has been good because it completely removes the pressure to get something right first time. You have room not to understand something, and demonstrate that, and then to learn from it and move on, with no bad feelings. If you get pretty much everything wrong (which I have done with some Russian), it is just an indication that you need more teaching on that area, and doesn't impact on you in any other way. The flip side for me though has been I do miss the fuzzy feelings you get from doing really well! I should probably learn to be less dependent on external praise...

I'll be following with interest your Romance languages journey!
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gsbod
Blue Belt
Posts: 839
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:22 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native)
German (advanced)
French (intermediate)
Japanese (intermediate)
Spanish (learning)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1152
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Sun May 30, 2021 8:09 pm

Caromarlyse wrote:If I'm allowed to ask some non-language-related questions... Are you carrying on with the maths in the autumn then? How big a time commitment has it been?


I haven't made a decision yet about whether to continue in the autumn, but at the moment I am leaning towards no. I've actually bought myself a couple of textbooks to follow up some areas of maths I am personally most interested in, and I'm inclined to see how far I can get with self study alone. I've also recently been reading Mathematics: A very short introduction by Timothy Gowers, which, like most books in that series is a nice little introduction to the kind of things mathematicians in universities are interested in, but it keeps the actual maths at a very accessible level. It's useful because it has given me a better understanding of the extent of my own interest in maths - that is, I am interested in having reasonable facility using mathematical methods which can help me solve real world problems, but not so interested in rigorous proofs.

In terms of time commitment, it has been much bigger than I expected. I had to study a couple of hours a day most days to not get behind. Once I did get behind, it was then quite an effort to catch up. I think it would be possible to pass the module maybe making less effort than I have done, if you're willing to accept a lower grade and less thorough understanding of the materials.

Caromarlyse wrote:Interesting what you said about assessments. I've found doing homework for online tutors, who obviously don't need to - and don't - give grades has been good because it completely removes the pressure to get something right first time. You have room not to understand something, and demonstrate that, and then to learn from it and move on, with no bad feelings. If you get pretty much everything wrong (which I have done with some Russian), it is just an indication that you need more teaching on that area, and doesn't impact on you in any other way. The flip side for me though has been I do miss the fuzzy feelings you get from doing really well! I should probably learn to be less dependent on external praise...


I think useful feedback is always really valuable, wherever it comes from. The problem with formal assessments, especially examinations, is that by their very nature, they're not the best way of generating useful feedback. I've also noticed that I seem to have solved the more general problem of how to give examiners what they want (regardless of the subject), which gives my results a boost without necessarily reflecting my abilities and the pattern of strengths and weaknesses unique to me. I don't want to jump on the bandwagon of people griping about kids these days only studying for the test (which often seems to come from people who never tested that well themselves), but it is still fair to say that studying to pass a test and studying to develop a deep and meaningful understanding of a subject are two different problems, although there's a lot of overlap between the two. As for the fuzzy feelings, nothing beats a compliment from someone who knows you well, has high standards, and really means it.
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gsbod
Blue Belt
Posts: 839
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:22 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native)
German (advanced)
French (intermediate)
Japanese (intermediate)
Spanish (learning)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1152
x 2900

Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Mon May 31, 2021 5:23 pm

So far I am mostly learning Spanish. I've been using Gramática de uso del español A1-A2 as a revision aid, concentrating mainly on the verbs as this seemed the best place to start. So far, I've revised ser, estar and tener in the present. I also drew up a few tables of articles and pronouns, just to jog my memory of where any sticking points might be (there aren't many). The stuff I've covered so far is coming back to me very rapidly, much in the same way French does each time I pick that up again, which again is a good sign that I learned it reasonably thoroughly in the first place. It leaves me worrying that this time around I won't learn anything thoroughly enough unless I plan better, plug in Anki, and work hard, but I just need to set that worry to one side for now.

One nice thing, among many, about GdUdE, is that it comes with a thorough dictionary of vocabulary used in the book at the back, with translations in English, French and German. So I've been able to take the book outside and work through it in the garden, making the most of the sunshine, without having to bring out any electronic devices (or my thorough but somewhat unwieldy paper dictionary) to look things up.
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gsbod
Blue Belt
Posts: 839
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:22 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native)
German (advanced)
French (intermediate)
Japanese (intermediate)
Spanish (learning)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1152
x 2900

Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Tue Jun 01, 2021 9:42 pm

After giving myself a quick reminder of reflexive verbs and the perfect tense in GdUdE today, I decided I might as well get stuck back into Nos vemos, picking up where I left off at the start of the A2 section. Usefully it includes things like "hey, do you remember how to use me gusta...?" and "remember what the regular form of the indefinido looks like?". Also the issue of instructions being translated from German into unsimplified Spanish appears to be minimised relative to the A1 part of the book (I suspect the original edition includes from now on much more instruction in simple Spanish, so no need to translate, thank goodness).

The second exercise is a reading passage which is obviously intended to force you to revise numbers, so I have now discovered my weak point is numbers over 11. I think numbers are the one part of any language which really feels like learning to read Japanese. Once you're confident with the general meaning of the symbols which represent numbers, you know instinctively what, say, 510.000 means. But are you sure you can pronounce it correctly? If you encounter numbers like this mainly in written text rather than listening (which is pretty normal), how can you be sure you are pronouncing it correctly? And Spanish seems to have its fair share of quirks when it comes to the pronunciation of numbers. So you have to make the effort to memorise the numbers, which is fine if you want to speak good Spanish, but it's not particularly interesting.
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Lawyer&Mom
Blue Belt
Posts: 980
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2018 6:08 am
Languages: English (N), German (B2), French (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7786
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue Jun 01, 2021 11:11 pm

If you are truly following your nose, and not seeking assessment, do what I do: Ignore numbers. They are hard, and not terribly useful for mere enjoyment of a language. You will pick up the first 10 through exposure. The rest? Overrated.
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Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

Dagane
Orange Belt
Posts: 172
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 6:08 pm
Location: London, UK
Languages: I regularly use:
Spanish (N)
English (C2)
German (C1+)
Hungarian (A2?)

I formerly studied:
Galician (B2?)
Dutch (A1)
Czech (A0)
Portuguese (A2?)
French (A1?)
x 263

Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby Dagane » Wed Jun 02, 2021 8:02 am

Spanish numbers are fun! Cardinal numbers are easy, but we natives also have problems saying ordinal numbers.
1 x

gsbod
Blue Belt
Posts: 839
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:22 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native)
German (advanced)
French (intermediate)
Japanese (intermediate)
Spanish (learning)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1152
x 2900

Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby gsbod » Wed Jun 02, 2021 11:56 am

Lawyer&Mom wrote:If you are truly following your nose, and not seeking assessment, do what I do: Ignore numbers. They are hard, and not terribly useful for mere enjoyment of a language. You will pick up the first 10 through exposure. The rest? Overrated.


Interesting perspective. I'm not worried about numbers in terms of trying to get top marks on a numbers quiz, however I do want to be able to pick out key factual information in podcasts and news reports, and one day I will go back to Spain and need to talk prices. I do think that numbers are often overemphasised in beginners courses, but I do still think they are important!

Dagane wrote:Spanish numbers are fun! Cardinal numbers are easy, but we natives also have problems saying ordinal numbers.


Having given the numbers a review last night and then slept on it, it certainly feels like less of a sticking point than it did yesterday evening. Everything up to 100 is pretty much plain sailing, but then we have a few quirks:

500 is pronounced quinientos
Hundreds in general behave like adjectives
Millions behave like nouns

So I thought I had a vocabulary problem, but turns out it's mostly a grammar problem instead! Still, I don't think I'll worry too much about the ordinal numbers for now...
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Dagane
Orange Belt
Posts: 172
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 6:08 pm
Location: London, UK
Languages: I regularly use:
Spanish (N)
English (C2)
German (C1+)
Hungarian (A2?)

I formerly studied:
Galician (B2?)
Dutch (A1)
Czech (A0)
Portuguese (A2?)
French (A1?)
x 263

Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR|IT)

Postby Dagane » Wed Jun 02, 2021 3:34 pm

gsbod wrote:500 is pronounced quinientos
Hundreds in general behave like adjectives
Millions behave like nouns

That's an interesting statement. Thinking about it, the millions behave slightly different. But all of them can behave as nouns too.

You could say (as numbers):

Hay cien pájaros
Hay mil pájaros
Hay un millón de pájaros
- True, "un" makes "millón" a noun

But also (as nouns):

Hay cientos de pájaros
Hay miles de pájaros
Hay millones de pájaros
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