Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, Italian, and Ancient Greek

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philomath
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Mon Aug 09, 2021 2:18 am

Lately I don't feel that I'm making enough progress in my target languages. To fix this, I'm going to do the following:

  • Alternate between Spanish and French every two weeks, while studying German constantly.
  • Incorporate more intensive listening and reading activities.
  • Start speaking and writing more often.

Therefore from August 9 to August 22 I will be studying Spanish and German, but not French. We'll see how this goes!
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:11 am

Spanish
09Aug21: I listened to the Niñas Bien podcast for 1 hour and 20 minutes, and I made a list of interesting words, many of which were Mexican slang. I also read an article from El País and continued reading Cien años de soledad. Finally, I made 12 Anki flashcards based on words from Niñas Bien and El País.

10Aug21: I listened to Niñas Bien and read Cien años de soledad during my commute. I finished Chapter 3! My favorite word from this chapter was “el trotamundos”.

11Aug21: I listened to Niñas Bien and read an article from El País during my commute. Later, I practiced speaking for 10 minutes. My pronunciation has definitely gotten worse over the past year and a half. I decided to upgrade to Pimsleur's new "all access" subscription, so I might do a few Pimsleur Spanish lessons sometime.

Finally, I spent some time looking for Spanish teachers on iTalki. I found a few who look promising, but I think I want to practice more on my own before booking a lesson.

German
09Aug21: I did Pimsleur German Lesson 5 for a second time while cooking dinner. This time I felt a little better about my pronunciation.

10Aug21: I did Pimsleur German Lesson 6. This lesson was full of sentences like "Wann möchten Sie etwas essen?" I still need to work on my voiceless palatal fricative. If I try to speak at a normal pace, I think I pronounce it as a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative [ɕ] instead.

11Aug21: I did FSI German Unit 5, but only until I reached the "Application" section. I'm using FSI primarily for the pronunciation practice, and the speaking drills at the end of each lesson are just too tedious. As for my pronunciation: I felt very good about my pronunciation of "ich" today, but I had a lot of trouble with "rechts".
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Sun Aug 15, 2021 3:38 am

Spanish
12Aug21: I listened to another episode of Niñas Bien during my commute and read an article from El País. Later, I wrote a paragraph in Spanish and posted it on iTalki. (The text correction feature is back, yay!) I immediately received a bunch of messages from teachers offering their services, in addition to a few messages from people looking for English-Spanish exchanges. I'm far too introverted to make small talk with a stranger in English over Skype, but I'm willing to do a language exchange via messaging. I've never had much success with those though.

I also practiced speaking Spanish for ~10 minutes that night. I paid a lot of attention to my mouth posture as I spoke, and I thought my pronunciation was pretty decent (though I was speaking slowly).

14Aug21: I made 15 Anki flashcards from words I found in Cien años de soledad, Niñas Bien, or El País. I'm experimenting with flashcard formats to see what works the best. Today the cards had the Spanish word and an example sentence on one side, with the English translation on the other side.

German
14Aug21: I did Pimsleur Lesson 7. I still can't pronounce "möchte" and it's driving me crazy! My tongue keeps ending up too close to the front of my mouth. I'm sure I'll get it eventually (at least I'm aware that I'm pronouncing it wrong?), but it's so frustrating.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:40 am

Spanish
16Aug21:During my morning commute, I read an article from El País and made a list of words I either didn't know or wanted to know better: 17 words in total. On my way home that evening, I listened to another episode of Niñas Bien. I also watched two episodes of the Netflix show Valeria when I got home.

17Aug21: I listened to an episode of Martha Debayle’s podcast, which was about COVID and education in Mexico. Lately, all of my listening practice is with content from Mexico or Spain, but I want to be able to understand other varieties of Spanish. So during my lunch break I looked for more podcasts. I found one called Quémese después de escuchar, which is from Argentina. I ended up listening to two and a half episodes! Finally, I did Pimsleur Spanish II Lesson 1, just to brush up on my pronunciation.

German
15Aug21: I spent 15 minutes trying to pronounce möchte, really focusing on my tongue position, and I thought I finally got it! Then I did Pimsleur Lesson 8 and could still hear that my pronunciation was off. I think I’m pronouncing the voiceless palatal fricative too far back now? Or voicing it by accident? Ugh, I don't know why I'm worrying about this sound so much; I'm sure Germans will understand me even if my pronunciation isn't 100% correct.

16Aug21: I woke up feeling more at peace with my pronunciation of the voiceless palatal fricative. Who cares if it's absolutely perfect? I'll be taking iTalki lessons eventually anyway, and my tutor can tell me if I sound atrocious. :lol:

I haven't been studying German as intensely as I should. I just have so much fun studying Spanish and French! Maybe I should set some more specific goals for myself... more on that soon.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Fri Aug 20, 2021 2:40 am

Spanish
18Aug21: I listened to another episode of Quémese después de escuchar. In each episode the hosts discuss a movie, and this episode was about Nomadland, which I’ve seen twice. As a result, it was easy to follow their conversation. I also read more of Cien años de soledad, made 22 flashcards, and reviewed the writing corrections I received on iTalki the other day.

19Aug21: I watched an episode of Valeria.

20Aug21: I watched another episode of Valeria, the last one of Season 1. This time I turned off the Spanish subtitles and watched without any subtitles at all. I think I should continue doing that in order to improve my listening comprehension, because TV shows are a lot harder to understand than podcasts (for me, at least).

German
18Aug21: I did Pimsleur Lesson 9. I think I need to repeat this lesson because I had trouble with sentences like "Um acht Uhr oder um neun Uhr?" I couldn't come up with them as quickly as I was supposed to.

19Aug21: This morning I began drilling sentences from Clozemaster during my commute. I'm not sure how many of the words I'll remember, but I think it helped me get a better grasp on German sentence structure and verb conjugation. When I got home from work, I redid Pimsleur Lesson 9, and then I did Lesson 10 as well. Also, exciting news: I've booked my first iTalki lesson! It will be on the 28th.
Last edited by philomath on Sun Aug 22, 2021 8:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Sun Aug 22, 2021 8:34 pm

Following my new language schedule, I'll be pausing Spanish and studying French and German from August 23 to September 5. I'm a little sad to be taking a break from Spanish, but I'm excited for French! And I'm interested to see how much Spanish I'll forget during these two weeks.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:36 am

French
23Aug21: My first French day in two weeks! I began by listening to part of an episode of Transfert while I walked to the train. It was an episode I had listened to before, so it was easy to understand, but it was nice to see that my listening comprehension hadn't declined during my two-week break.

On my way home from work, I read Chapter 1 of Les fiancés de l'hiver. Unlike with Cien años de soledad, I gave myself permission to look up words. I might change that later, but it seemed important to understand the first chapter. I really like the book so far, but I'm reading it very slowly. It took me around an hour to read the first 20 pages.

24Aug21: I listened to another episode of Transfert. I also listened to the audiobook recording of Chapter 1 of Les fiancés de l'hiver. I knew what was happening since I had already read the chapter, but I was surprised to find that I wasn't able to parse all of the words. I might try listening to the chapter again, this time while reading along.

German
24Aug21: My throat was sore from talking a lot at work, so I didn't do FSI German or Pimsleur German. Instead I did the first two lessons from Mango Languages. I used to be a big fan of Mango, but I hadn't used it in a few years. I only remembered it because I saw it linked on the Boston Public Library's website. The first German lesson went over "Guten Morgen", "Guten Tag", etc. The second lesson went over how to say "Das Frühstück hier ist lecker, oder?" and variations of that. It was fun, so I think I'll do more of the lessons sometime.

So far, these are the resources I've tried for German:
  • Clozemaster: Enjoying so far
  • Coffee Break German: Got bored of it
  • FSI German: Getting a little bit tired of it, but still planning to use it for now
  • Mango Languages: Enjoying so far
  • Nicos Weg: I like the videos, but the exercises after each one are too tedious
  • Pimsleur: Love it!

I might be forgetting some.

Assorted observations and thoughts
I’m hoping this goes away as my reading ability increases, but with both Spanish and French I feel the need to mouth the words as I read. I think it’s because I worry that if I read too quickly, my “inner voice" will mess up the pronunciation. So an additional perk of wearing a mask during my commute is that I can mouth all of the words as I read without looking like a weirdo.

Also, I need to figure out a flashcard format that works better for me. Lately for Spanish I've been making flashcards using Anki's "Basic (and reversed card)" format. The front of the card has the word in Spanish and an example sentence, and the back of the card has the English translation. My rule for myself is that if I don't understand the word in Spanish without reading the example sentence, I can't mark it as correct. But sometimes I accidentally read the example sentence. In any case, I feel like I'm not learning the words well enough. I could switch back to making cloze deletion cards, but what do I do about synonyms?
Last edited by philomath on Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby cjareck » Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:48 am

My solution for synonyms is extremely simple (perhaps too simple) - I write below "not" and list synonyms. Maybe someone has a better way to deal with that problem.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Wed Aug 25, 2021 11:37 pm

cjareck wrote:My solution for synonyms is extremely simple (perhaps too simple) - I write below "not" and list synonyms. Maybe someone has a better way to deal with that problem.

The simplest solution is often the best! I think I'll try that and see how it goes.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:53 am

I'm back already with a language update! I didn't study French at all today, but I did so much German.

I had a lot of downtime in the morning and ended up listening to Episodes 6-10 of Coffee Break German Season 1, even though I said I was sick of it in my last post. These episodes discussed how to give directions and say what languages you speak. A lot of the words introduced weren't very useful to me yet, so I didn't try to remember them. However, I found the example sentences useful for learning German sentence structure, and I liked the grammar and culture lessons included in each episode.

When I got home from work, I did Pimsleur Lesson 11, and then I did more lessons from Mango Languages. The first chapter is called "Salutations and Small Talk" and consists of 13 lessons plus some review lessons. I did the first seven lessons, writing down useful phrases in my notebook. I also paused and took some notes on definite and indefinite articles. I'm loving Mango Languages so far! At the beginning of each lesson there's an example sentence, which is then broken down part by part. Then the lesson introduces variations on that sentence. For example: "Ich gehe ins Museum", "Du gehst zum Markt". I'm a bit intimidated by German noun declensions, but I think I learned a lot in these lessons!

Even after all of that German, I wanted to learn more! So I wrote up a short paragraph with a lot of help from DeepL:
Ich heiße Amanda. Ich bin 25 Jahre alt und ich komme aus den USA. Ich bin eine Ingenieurin, aber ich lerne gerne Sprachen. Ich spreche Englisch, Spanisch und ein bisschen Französisch. Ich lerne Deutsch, weil ich möchte mit meinem Freund nach Deutschland reisen. Ich möchte auch Bücher lesen. Ich lerne seit zwei Monaten Deutsch.

I wrote down all of the words and grammar I learned in my notebook, and then I made Anki flashcards. Afterward I still wanted to learn more, but sleep is important too. :lol: I have the day off from work tomorrow and I think I'll look for a grammar book; it would be helpful to do some conjugation and declension exercises.
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