Crooked logs make straight fires. (Polish, Italian, Latin)

[cjareck]

Polish vocabulary help greatly appreciated!!!
I came across this sentence: Miałem strasznego pietra. According to the parallel text it should mean something like: I was psyched/I was really excited/I was really looking forward to it. I wonder if "Miałem pietra" means the same thing, or if the "strasznego" is required for emphasis. I tried looking up "pietra" but I just found that "Mam pietra" means "I have cold feet" (as in: I'm nervous), so maybe it requires the "strasznego" to avoid turning it into a completely different expression?

"mieć pietra" simply means "to fear". "Straszny" is "big" in this context and stresses the feeling of fear. The whole phrase would simply mean something like "I feared a lot", "I was scared a lot". It is rather seldom used in contemporary Polish. Hope this helps

[StringerBell]

Yes, that helps a lot! That is not at all what I'd assumed it meant using the parallel text, so clearly they took some liberties in the translation!

***********

POLISH:

I reread the same book today while listening to the audiobook. I could understand it well enough to follow the story, but there were just so many unknown words flying by that it didn't really feel productive, so now I'm rereading it a third time but intensively this time - it's taking a really long time to look up all the unknown words and write them in pencil in the book, but I can already tell that I'm getting much more out of it. There are a few things that keep getting repeated like "doszedłem do wniosku" (I figured) that were driving me crazy because I kept seeing them in print and could not figure them out.

[cjareck]

That is not at all what I'd assumed it meant using the parallel text, so clearly they took some liberties in the translation!

Every translation is an interpretation, so that is why we are struggling to read the originals

doszedłem do wniosku" (I figured)

I think that there is a phrase in English that translates it perfectly: "I came to a conclusion".

[StringerBell]

I tried (successfully) a new fun thing during today's language exchange. Inspired by an Italian podcast series called "100 Cose Belle" (100 Good Things) where they take turns coming up with 10 negative things (like losing your job, getting into a car accident) and the others have to come up with 10 good things about that bad thing.

So during my LE today, I proposed we play "3 cose belle". We each took turns thinking of a negative thing, and the other person had to say 3 good things that could come from that negative thing. It ended up being really fun; usually we came up with really ridiculous ways of seeing the bright side of things. An example:

Bad thing:
Getting lost in a jungle

Good things about getting lost in a jungle:
1) You expand your horizons by eating lots of new foods (various insects and plants) in your search to find something edible.
2) There's plenty of water, as opposed to getting lost in a desert.
3) If you survive, you'll be admired and can go on to write a book about the experience, bringing you fame and money.

Some other "bad things":
-Losing money in a pyramid scheme
-Getting sick on vacation
-having someone steal your wallet
-breaking your glasses
-a blackout (having a day without electricity)
-running out of toilet paper
-losing your hair

I'm planning to put this into the rotation of things to talk about during LE when we don't have anything else particularly interesting to talk about.

[StringerBell]

I'm posting this quite early, so I may revise some numbers if I manage to fit in more Polish/Italian later in the day.

Week #5: Jan 29-Feb 4

ITALIAN:

Cumulative Italian pages read: 1,210
Goal: 500 pages

Books Completed:
1) 50 pgs: Un Diario di una Schiappa (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) #1 - reread
2) 50 pgs: Un Diario di una Schiappa (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) #3 Ora Basta!
3) 257 pgs: Noi Siamo Infinito (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) - reread
4) 296 pgs: La Ragazza Del Treno (The Girl on the Train) - R-L w/ audiobook+parallel text
5) 297 pgs: Cercando Alaska (Looking for Alaska) - w/ parallel text
6) 234 pgs: Molto Forte Incredibilmente Vicino (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) - reread w/audiobook

Books in Progress:
-Lo Strano Caso Del Cane Ucciso a Mezzanotte (read 26 pages)

Written: 5,050 Words
Goal: 5,000 Words

I'm not yet noticing any improvement in my ability to read novels, but it's too early to expect results. The one thing I do notice is that when I'm spending a considerable time reading (which may or may not include listening to the audiobook) I am more likely to spontaneously think in Italian. In these past weeks, it's been a fairly common occurrence that as I'm falling asleep at night, I'll start effortlessly thinking in Italian. I'm not detecting an improvement in my speaking, but I'm not really expecting miracles in that area.

I banged out about 2,000 words of spontaneous writing this week, and almost all of it was done in the course of 2 days. I continue to feel surprised at how easy writing feels now compared to how it felt in the past. I've not gotten much of it corrected, and I'm sure there are plenty of grammar mistakes, but I'm going to just assume that the mistakes will be fewer over time and see what I end up with at the end of the year. I'm trying to occasionally use a few words and phrases that I come across in my books, especially alternate ways of saying things I know. For example, instead of just saying "è preoccupato" I'm now also using "è in pensiero". I should probably be a little more systematic in doing this because it's useful.

POLISH:

Cumulative Polish pages read: 159

Books Completed:
1) 50 pgs: Dziennik Cwaniaczka (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) #1 - R-L with audiobook + w/parallel text (3x)

The first day of this week, I reread and relistened to this book. It felt like too many unknown words were zipping by, so afterward I reread it a 3rd time extensively. I looked up everything unknown and wrote a definition in pencil over the words in the book. Even though it's a short book, it took 5 days to do it. It felt very labor intensive, but also much more useful than just extensive reading. I started noticing patterns of certain words and expressions repeating and toward the end of the book, it felt like I was looking up fewer things but that might just be wishful thinking.

I'm going to reread this book at some point, but first I'm going to move on to a new one to avoid making myself sick of this one and then never being able to look at it again. There's a ton a colloquial language in this series, which in my mind makes it really useful as a way to prepare me to watch Polish TV shows in the future.

I noticed that the word czadowy was used a lot, and from the context it seems to mean "cool". I'm wondering if this is interchangeable with fajny?

I learned the expressions: kopnęła w kalendarz (lit: kicked the calendar?) which seems to mean "kicked the bucket" (a way to say that someone died), and idzie mi jak po maśle (lit: it's going for me like butter?) meaning something is really easy, "smooth sailing".

This week I started noticing some Polish interference when speaking/thinking in Italian. I haven't had that in a long time, hopefully it's a good sign!

LATIN:

Cambridge 2 has rekindled my love for Latin! The stories are so engrossing that I started reading them totally forgetting that I was planning to do Scriptorium, so I went back and did sentence copying and reading aloud afterward, which was very useful in really focusing on the details of what was happening with the grammar and the new vocab. It feels that about 75% of the vocabulary (and even some of the grammar structures) I recognize from Italian, which I really appreciate. I am close to finishing the first chapter of Unit 2 and I can't wait to continue!

In Unit 1, I was caught off guard to find a character named "Anthrax". In Unit 2, I've met two identical twins named "Loquax" and "Anti-Loquax". I can't wait to see what other names will pop up.

[cjareck]

I noticed that the word czadowny was used a lot, and from the context it seems to mean "cool". I'm wondering if this is interchangeable with fajnie?

You probably mean "czadowy" - it is much more colloquial than "fajny" (adjective or "czadowo" -> "fajnie" adverb) and also more powerful - "bardzo fajny", "świetny". Only teenagers say that.

I learned the expressions: kopnęła w kalendarz (lit: kicked the calendar?) which seems to mean "kicked the bucket" (a way to say that someone died)

exactly that. Rather you don't show respect to the dead person saying that

and idzie mi jak po maśle (lit: it's going for me like butter?) meaning something is really easy, "smooth sailing".

Yes

This week I started noticing some Polish interference when speaking/thinking in Italian. I haven't had that in a long time, hopefully it's a good sign!

I remember that shortly before reaching fluency in German I had problems when I was trying to speak English since German words popped up as first ones. But after a short period, I could could use both languages in the same conversation without any interference. I still hope for such an effect for me with Hebrew and Arabic

[StringerBell]

You probably mean "czadowy"

You're right, I did mean czadowy - I fixed it.

Only teenagers say that.

So adults would use fajny but teenagers would use either fajny or czadowy?

[cjareck]

So adults would use fajny but teenagers would use either fajny or czadowy?

More or less, but "fajny" is not high register of speech. My wife don't like when I use it. It is a general adjective with positive meaning, but it is much better to say why it is "fajne" - for example: "interesujący", "ciekawy", "zabawny" - compare how much information these adjectives provide in comparison with "fajny"!

Teenagers use both but "czadowy" is more powerful - like "super fajny".

And also variants of "czadowy" - "czaderski" or say "ale czad!". It is interesting that "czad" (besides being Polish name for a country in Africa) is carbon monoxide and I can't understand why it got such a positive meaning

Teenagers also use the word "niefajnie" or "niefajny", which seems to be incorrect or just too modern for me I don't think that adults would say that. It would be probably "To nie jest fajne"

[StringerBell]

Week #6: Feb 5-11

ITALIAN:

Cumulative Italian pages read: 1,398
Goal: 600 pages

Books Completed:
1) 50 pgs: Un Diario di una Schiappa (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) #1 - reread
2) 50 pgs: Un Diario di una Schiappa (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) #3 Ora Basta!
3) 257 pgs: Noi Siamo Infinito (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) - reread
4) 296 pgs: La Ragazza Del Treno (The Girl on the Train) - R-L w/ audiobook+parallel text
5) 297 pgs: Cercando Alaska (Looking for Alaska) - w/ parallel text
6) 234 pgs: Molto Forte Incredibilmente Vicino (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) - reread w/audiobook
7) 188 pgs: Un Italiano in America - w/parallel text

Books in Progress:
-Lo Strano Caso Del Cane Ucciso a Mezzanotte (read 26 pages)

Written: 6,080 Words
Goal: 6,000 Words

This week's book was the first native Italian book I've read and unfortunately the worst one yet. Unlike other books that I didn't like because I thought characters were poorly developed or the plot was uninspiring, in this case the whole thing was a dumpster fire of nonsense. The premise is an Italian writer spends a year living in America and the book is a comparison of how America and Americans are different from Italy and Italians. There was a lot of potential, but sadly it seems to be a mixture of: 1) something happened to him one time and he assumes that this is how it is in all of America. For example, he assumes that the quirks of his weird rental apartment are representative of every single house in the whole country. 2) He goes out of his way to highlight differences where there aren't any and ignores really obvious differences that could have been interesting. For example: apparently Americans are terrible to encounter at parties because when we ask someone a question we actually want to listen to the answer. Parties with Italians are so much better because they don't care about what the other person is saying. I spent the entire book thinking, "WTF is this guy talking about?" The book was written in 1995 and at one point he says that grunge music is only for European tourists, Americans don't care about it at all. And supposedly shirts in America only come in sizes X or XL because every single one of us (without exception) is so fat that why would we try to stuff ourselves into smaller shirts? He makes this claim after having gone to the mall to buy clothes for himself and his wife, so obviously he would have seen this isn't true. This is the first book I'm planning to put directly into the garbage because it doesn't deserve shelf space at a thrift store.

In other news, I forgot to cancel my audible subscription, so I ended up with another credit. I now have way more audiobooks than I know what to do with, so I think I should get back to R-L.

I'm getting worried that extensive reading is not going to address the main problem I having with reading: not knowing enough low frequency vocabulary. The problem is mostly in the form of unknown verbs. I decided to work on the 501 Italian Verbs Memrise course. I'm suspending all the verbs I know, which will probably whittle it down to 50-100 verbs that I actually need to work on. I don't have a ton of confidence in this intervention, but I hoping it will be better than nothing.

POLISH:

Cumulative Polish pages read: 159

Books Completed:
1) 50 pgs: Dziennik Cwaniaczka (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) #1 - R-L with audiobook + w/parallel text (3x)

I had a bit of a hold up this week with Polish reading due to resources. I'm waiting for the next English versions of the books I have to become available via the library. I was conflicted about how to proceed. I came up with some workarounds, none of which were great, so I decided to wait until the English versions were available (probably next week) and in the meantime I'm focusing on Polish with John podcasts w/ transcriptions (reading/listening 5-6 times each) and reviewing vocabulary starting with the Polish 2 Memrise course. I'm still struggling to shed the rust and get back to where I was before my hiatus.

I decided that since my abilities in Polish are so far below Italian, I'm going to still keep track of reading progress but I'm not going to aim for a target amount. I might change that later, but for right now my level just isn't high enough to profit from lots of extensive reading. Intensive reading seems to give me a better bang for the buck.

LATIN:

I finished Chapter 13 of Cambridge Unit 2 with scriptorium, and have read through most of Chapter 14 (though I haven't yet done scriptorium yet). It feels like there are too many words I'm not remembering from earlier chapters that are starting to catch up to me, so I decided to go back to the Cambridge Latin Memrise course for some review. I'm about 1/2 done with it, and I haven't decided if I'll continue with Memrise after I finish or not. I can really appreciate the gamification aspect of Memrise and various apps, but I'm never really sure if they are just a time suck or if they actually are worth the time spent.

[StringerBell]

I caught the bug going around and decided to test my Italian vocab using the Leipzeig receptive test.

1) It's killing me that I can't know which words I missed. Did I miss a word from the 1,000 most common list because of a careless mistake or is there actually a really common word that after all this time I still don't know???

2) I would love to go on to test my vocabulary knowledge with less common words - I wish it didn't stop at 5,000 words. I'm not really sure what is the takeaway from this test, other than knowing at least 5,000 words is enough for everyday conversation and watching TV but not enough to comfortably read novels, which is where I am.

This, in a nutshell, is my issue:

Low-frequency words, taken together, are very frequent.

3) While I think the design of the receptive vocabulary test is decent, I think that the active vocabulary test is terrible and not a valid way to measure active vocabulary. Unlike the receptive test, the active test is basically a cloze-deletion sentence where they give you the first letter of the missing word. I HATE cloze-deletion. I'm not good at them in my native language. Here is a snap shot of a really easy sentence that I couldn't answer:

Tonight _________ was full. Probably I'll sleep poorly and I'll have strange dreams.

I kept wondering what the hell could make someone sleep poorly and cause strange dreams. I think I've heard of people saying that sleeping on a full stomach or eating weird things could cause strange dreams, but that didn't fit because the missing word had to start with the letter "L".

I kept racking my brain but couldn't figure out what would make someone not sleep well if it were full. Hours later I looked back at the sentence and all of a sudden I realized, "la luna"... I think they are trying to say that due to the full moon I won't sleep well and have strange dreams. Clearly I know the word for "moon" but I would never in a million years think that the word "moon" would fit in that context. This is why I HATE cloze-deletion and why I don't think cloze-deletion is a valid method to test active vocabulary.