Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

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tangleweeds
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby tangleweeds » Fri Sep 04, 2020 6:49 pm

thevagrant88 wrote:BLast night I was reading some Spanish bed time stories to my daughter and found that when I was done, Spanish I was flowing out of me much more easily. So that’s something.

It’s just a pain because obviously I’d like to speak better, but I so rarely have the opportunity to practice, which means when I do have the opportunity I don’t speak because I never practice, and on and on like that. It’s a viscous cycle. Maybe reading out loud is something I’ll try doing more of to get into speaking mode, so to speak. .
This actually seems like a very promising hack to exploit!
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby PfifltriggPi » Fri Sep 04, 2020 10:53 pm

I would strongly second the utility of reading aloud. We often underestimate before learning a language the number of different mechanical skills required to actually use said language : that is to say, in this case, speaking Spanish is more than just knowing words, one has to know the words, understand their sounds, properly produce those sounds, string them together correctly and then connect each word into the sentence with proper tone, inflection and prosody. Doing this is often harder than it might seem at first glance. When reading aloud one does not have to think about what one is saying, nor worry about the rectitude of one's speech, but one can still get good practice in the mechanical act of forming the words and thus become better accustomed to the phonology and phonotactics of the language in question, in this case Spanish.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Sun Sep 13, 2020 9:54 pm

Thanks for the input!

So for some reason, this past week I decided to dive into German. To be honest though, I’m kinda meh about it. I didn’t have a super strong reason for wanting to learn German other than curiosity. I don’t think it’s enough to keep me studying. When I was studying Japanese or even the little bit of Chinese I’ve done, I was very enthusiastic and excited about what I wanted to do with the languages and really fell in love with them. That isn’t really happening with German. The novelty of making a ridiculous amount of progress comparatively quickly is a neat novelty, but I don’t think it’s enough to keep me studying. I still have plenty of room for improvement with my Spanish.

So some take aways from the week:

1. Learning a language because it’s easy/easier isn’t a great reason to learn a language.

2. I’d rather be Christoph Waltz and have mastery of just one or two other languages than have a B1 in 10.

3. I miss Japanese, but I’m going to wait until I’m happy with my Spanish.
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Thu Sep 24, 2020 10:16 pm

I'm about halfway through a book I bought recently called, "Cuando Era Puertorriqueña". It's a definite challenge increase over some of the previous books I've read, but the story is very engaging. I'm making more of an effort to memorize unknown words, certainly more than before. I'm getting to the point where I really need to expand my vocabulary outside of the most common words. Hoping to start "Ficciones" after.

La Doña is fucking bananas. I am normally not a TV person, let alone soap operas, but things keep happening that make my jaw drop. Telenovels are, like, the Bugattis of soap operas. High production values, surprisingly good acting and writing, just all around really enjoyable. Despite watching with subtitles, my listening comprehension in general has absolutely gone up.

I'm still putzing around with German here and there and am now absolutely convinced that genetic closeness is a drastically overrated category in assessing language difficulty. After the first couple dozen lessons, the common vocabulary with English plummets. Trying to infer meaning from German syntax has actually caused me to feel nauseous. This is not an exaggeration. Why am I doing this to myself?
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thevagrant88
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Fri Sep 25, 2020 11:36 am

I really, really wish Assimil included word-for-word literal translations in addition to the regular ones. After poking around a bit, I now realize that the majority of my issues with German would be remedied if this were included. Ugh.
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Thu Dec 17, 2020 6:42 pm

I just had an interesting milestone. For the first time, I laughed out loud at something in my target language. Like, gut-busting, side-splitting, dying of laughter kind of laughing. It didn't even occur to me that it was the first time something like that has happened either.

If anybody is curious, here's a link to the skit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp3PeNsaWnU
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Wed Dec 30, 2020 3:28 pm

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I've been messing around with the Pimsleur and Linguaphone Arabic courses (MSA) to get a feel for the language. So I've barely done anything yet, only having done about three or four lessons per course, but so far--and I can't believe I'm saying this--Arabic feels so much easier than Japanese to my brain. It's almost refreshing. The logic behind the language feels so much closer to what I'm used to with English and Spanish that I'm almost surprised that Arabic isn't Indo-European. The word order, verb conjugation paradigms, the subjunctive construction, the definite article, and so on have so many more direct parallels with what I know and am comfortable with already compared to Japanese. I may not stick with it, but I want to do more to see if my early impressions hold true. Something a little odd though is that I regularly see Arabic listed as a VSO language but so far I have not witnessed this. Perhaps this phenomenon holds true in Classical Arabic more? Next week I'm moving to Philadelphia, PA which has a pretty robust Chinatown so I may substitute Arabic for Mandarin/Cantonese as I really want to make meaningful human connections again as the quarantine ends. No offense to the wife and kids of course lol

I'm devoting my Japanese studying energy to adopt a more "theoretical" approach. I've been reading more on the grammar using Tae Kim's Grammar guide (in Spanish) and have been putting the example sentences in my flashcard app. Instead of memorizing Kanji, I'm focusing more on memorizing entire words within the context of entire sentences/phrases and have found this to be far more useful. I want to focus on the written language as reading in Japanese is more of a priority for me. It's uncomfortable learning Japanese in this modular sort of approach, but I feel like it's one of the few ways that helps me make meaningful progress.

Spanish is Spanish. I know what works for me at this point and am happy with the progress I've made and continue to make. Telenovels are insane and fantastic and I can't believe they don't have the same rabid following as K-Dramas.
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Sun Jul 18, 2021 3:49 am

Super long time without posting. Won’t go into details, but to say my life kinda got flipped upside down would be an understatement.

Spanish - I just have Spanish now. Like, it’s there and not going anywhere. I don’t generally have much trouble communicating with strangers unless they have a really challenging accent. I read novels, listen to podcasts, play video games, and generally just use it. I’ve been thinking about getting involved in some kind of online gaming to meet people. It’s also humbling because even with my more advanced level, there is still droves of room for improvement.

Japanese - I think I really don’t care about Japanese anymore. I’ve been a false beginner for so long now and I get frustrated jumping between material that is horribly dull to stuff that’s completely incomprehensible. I just don’t ever really look forward to studying Japanese whenever the opportunity presents itself. I just feel burnt out and don’t really care anymore. Maybe I just need to walk away and seek out some novelty before coming back. I’ll probably keep doing the core 2000 deck i have because it’s not much a time investment. Gives me reading exposure and learn 5 new words a day, just keep it lower pressure.

The only other serious interests (with languages) for me right now are Hindi and Arabic. I’ve always loved Arabic so that’s no surprise, but Hindi is very new. I really like the script and the history and culture of India is one of the big blank spots in my readings of world history. It’s pretty easy to find speakers as well.
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby thevagrant88 » Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:51 am

Also want to vent and say that it reeeeeaaally would be nice if there were some more quality audio programs that went further than the basics. I'm generally a fan of Pimsleur, but it doesn't take you too far and there is a lot of repetition. Maybe doing Glossika for my Japanese--where the target language and translation are both presented audibly--would be a good idea.
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Re: Vagrant - Spanish Log and and Introduction

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:09 am

thevagrant88 wrote:Also want to vent and say that it reeeeeaaally would be nice if there were some more quality audio programs that went further than the basics. I'm generally a fan of Pimsleur, but it doesn't take you too far and there is a lot of repetition. Maybe doing Glossika for my Japanese--where the target language and translation are both presented audibly--would be a good idea.
Would there perhaps be courses designed for radio available?
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