Montmorency's Log (CY, DE, NO) + (Celtic {Team) Nordic} + SC 2016-7
Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:10 pm
The last time I was logging with anything like regularity on HTLAL, I had rather put German on the back-burner to concentrate on Welsh, which I learned pretty much exclusively through the Say Something in Welsh original Courses ("Course1", "Course2", and "Course3").
Since then, they have produced a second generation of these courses, which they are referring to as "Level1" and (so far) "Level 2".
I have done pretty much all they have produced of those, and much seems familiar, although some is new.
I had also started reading fairly seriously, having finished all the members of the "Nofelau Nawr" series of learner books that I could find, I've read a couple of Bethan Gwanas's books for adults, using plenty of dictionary look-up, but they didn't go too badly. And some other odds and ends of reading.
I listen to Radio Cymru and watch S4C (via the internet) reasonably frequently, talk to a small group of fellow learners via Skype on a weekly basis (we stick to an hour or less), and in April, went on my 2nd SSiW "Bootcamp", where you live with about 9 other people entirely through the medium of Welsh - challenging but fun.
Real life has got in the way a few times to knock me off course language-wise, but I have usually gradually got back on course, and I'm now slightly seriously getting back into German. I go to a conversation group with 2-3 other learners plus a native speaker/teacher, which is very good, but doesn't meet all that often. I've started listing to podcasts from WDR again (e.g. "Das Philosophische Radio"), and I was glad to notice that although rusty, I could still cope with a fair amount of the vocabulary. And just for fun, I occasionally dip into one of my collection of Erich Kästner's children's books.
One thing I hope to get back into before too long is working on another parallel text. I've done this for relatively short books before, but I want to try this from something a bit longer and perhaps more demanding: a classic(ish) text. I've got a couple in mind. The basic tool I will be using will be the freeware Aglona Reader, and because I don't have translations of these texts, I will have to use Google Translate to do the crude translation, and then refine it as I go along. That is the theory. I have actually done that kind of thing before, but not for a complete book of any size. It takes "forever", but I think it is a worthwhile effort. From previous experience, when you finish, you do know the book quite well!
What else? Well, in May we went to Cuba, and beforehand, I took the opportunity of trying out the Say Something In Spanish course. I had done Spanish reasonably intensively before, but not touched it for some years. None of the SSiS course was new (I only had time to do the Level 1), but it did help to refresh it in a way that I have found worked quite well in Welsh,so why not also in Spanish. Spanish is on the back-burner again, but I will revive it again before next January as we are going to Lanzarote.
Sadly, Danish remains on the back-burner still, but I hope to revive this soon, and I think it will be by L-R-ing some of Jussi Adler-Olsen's books. I used to enjoy doing this before, and would like to get back to it. I had most of the Department Q books in English, German, and Danish, although at least one new one has come out since then.
Since then, they have produced a second generation of these courses, which they are referring to as "Level1" and (so far) "Level 2".
I have done pretty much all they have produced of those, and much seems familiar, although some is new.
I had also started reading fairly seriously, having finished all the members of the "Nofelau Nawr" series of learner books that I could find, I've read a couple of Bethan Gwanas's books for adults, using plenty of dictionary look-up, but they didn't go too badly. And some other odds and ends of reading.
I listen to Radio Cymru and watch S4C (via the internet) reasonably frequently, talk to a small group of fellow learners via Skype on a weekly basis (we stick to an hour or less), and in April, went on my 2nd SSiW "Bootcamp", where you live with about 9 other people entirely through the medium of Welsh - challenging but fun.
Real life has got in the way a few times to knock me off course language-wise, but I have usually gradually got back on course, and I'm now slightly seriously getting back into German. I go to a conversation group with 2-3 other learners plus a native speaker/teacher, which is very good, but doesn't meet all that often. I've started listing to podcasts from WDR again (e.g. "Das Philosophische Radio"), and I was glad to notice that although rusty, I could still cope with a fair amount of the vocabulary. And just for fun, I occasionally dip into one of my collection of Erich Kästner's children's books.
One thing I hope to get back into before too long is working on another parallel text. I've done this for relatively short books before, but I want to try this from something a bit longer and perhaps more demanding: a classic(ish) text. I've got a couple in mind. The basic tool I will be using will be the freeware Aglona Reader, and because I don't have translations of these texts, I will have to use Google Translate to do the crude translation, and then refine it as I go along. That is the theory. I have actually done that kind of thing before, but not for a complete book of any size. It takes "forever", but I think it is a worthwhile effort. From previous experience, when you finish, you do know the book quite well!
What else? Well, in May we went to Cuba, and beforehand, I took the opportunity of trying out the Say Something In Spanish course. I had done Spanish reasonably intensively before, but not touched it for some years. None of the SSiS course was new (I only had time to do the Level 1), but it did help to refresh it in a way that I have found worked quite well in Welsh,so why not also in Spanish. Spanish is on the back-burner again, but I will revive it again before next January as we are going to Lanzarote.
Sadly, Danish remains on the back-burner still, but I hope to revive this soon, and I think it will be by L-R-ing some of Jussi Adler-Olsen's books. I used to enjoy doing this before, and would like to get back to it. I had most of the Department Q books in English, German, and Danish, although at least one new one has come out since then.