Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Thu Nov 11, 2021 12:06 am

Le Baron wrote:
luke wrote:This afternoon the hardcover Vivir para contarlo showed up on the porch.

A visit from the Spanish book fairy?

Yes, they've got that diversity thing going at Amazon.

BTW, another great Diego Ruzzarin video. This one on creativity. Starts with this gem:

1. I had no idea what I was doing until I did it.

2 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Thu Nov 11, 2021 1:55 am

more walk thoughts
I brought both Living to tell the Tale and Todos los cuentos along today. That's too many books, ;) but I did use both of them. Los Cuentos seemed more challenging than the autobiography. I also listened a good bit to another recording I have of Cien años de soledad. That was very pleasant and I was understanding chapter 4 very well.

Putting a few ideas together: some Arguelles sequentiality, some Dr. Steven Stuve pursuing excellence, enjoying the process, the convenience and durability of my paperback One Hundred Years of Solitude, with all its annotations and duct tape reinforcement, and continued curiosity concerning considerable clauses, with the desire to complete another pass before the next road trip, has me thinking of utilizing that Audible recording of Cien años de soledad as accompaniment during the walk with the original translation available when curiosity about the current passage strikes, may be my method for the near term.

This afternoon the hardcover Vivir para contarlo showed up on the porch.
4 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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luke
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Hugo Sanchez inspires Hugo Spanish

Postby luke » Fri Nov 12, 2021 11:48 pm

Hugo Sanchez inspires Hugo Spanish

In another thread, we were talking about how an Assimil course can come up short getting you fully prepared for an exotic language, such as Greek. That got me re-watching a couple Professor Alexander Arguelles videos and making some notes.

Spanish isn't an exotic language for a native English speaker, but the Professor's notion of course typologies and suggestions for their use for various learning styles got me incentivized to look into Hugo Spanish in 3 Months. Hugo 3 Month courses are classified as "Birds-eye overview grammar" methods.

The "learn by doing" type, which I consider myself to be, has an "overview grammar", like Hugo, come after the FSI course. The thing is, the FSI courses I'm familiar with are enormous (Spanish and French). That implies they'll take a lot more time than, say, "being able to understand, shadow, and write" 2 hours of audio in an Assimil course, for example. Or, to complete a Hugo in 3 Months course (which also has about 2 hours of audio). FSI is like 5-10x the time commitment as an Assimil or Hugo.

But it seems I might can go through Hugo fairly quickly, pick up a few things in new ways, and thereby support my FSI journey and overall learning.

Oh, by the way, Hugo Sanchez is a character in Club de cuevos, the NetFlix drama series I've been watching for a couple weeks. That's the tie-in in the title. It's really really the Arguelles, @AllSubsNoDubs, and nerdy Hugo Sanchez that came together on this one. By the way, @Speakeasy did a fantastic thread on Hugo courses, so he/she deserves credit too.

I like to experiment and have a bit stoicism. Definitely fit in the American part of the standard distribution that @einzelne brought to our attention.

Capturing several progress bars for posterity. I've changed my signature to reflect more closely what I want to focus on in the near future, but not giving up on these other things. They're just on the back burner or deemphasized and will be circled back to at some point:

: 8 / 20 Cien años de soledad (6x)
: 337 / 415 el_quijote tarjetas no nuevas
: 33 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish
: 2 / 13 Hugo Spanish in 3 Months
: 3154 / 3500 3500 pages - started counting June 14, 2021
: 28 / 45 Club de Cuervos
: 164 / 415 Anki el_quijote - mature cards - from the Anaya books
: 3648 / 9790 Anki 5000 - mature cards
: 1434 / 7245 Anki FSI mature cards
: 4 / 43 Todos los cuentos
: 1 / 18 Vivir para contarla (2x)
: 51 / 55 FSI Dialogs (2x)
: 39 / 55 FSI PoP (Illustrations)
: 25 / 49 FSI Replacements
: 8 / 42 FSI Variations
: 96 / 96 Quijote del siglo XXI (4x)
5 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

jimmy
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby jimmy » Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:43 am

.....
Last edited by jimmy on Sun Nov 14, 2021 3:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
0 x
Self Taught - Autodidactic

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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:29 am

jimmy wrote:
luke wrote:I took about 15 years off of Spanish.

you had taken 15 years off of spanish and you are still intermediate in this language.

I'm sorry. I think there was a misunderstanding. In another thread, I was trying to support you. Sorry if my attempt failed and went the other way.

On 15 years off and still intermediate... Yes. I've been studying again for over a year and I would consider myself intermediate.

But maybe you mean I should have never stopped. That's valid. I'd probably be better if I'd continued and not done other things.

Just so it's clear. "15 years off" means 15 years without caring about Spanish at all. Not studying. Not listening. Not reading. Not caring about it.
6 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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AllSubNoDub
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:12 pm

luke wrote:But maybe you mean I should have never stopped. That's valid. I'd probably be better if I'd continued and not done other things.

Yup, hindsight is 20/20. I, too, really wish I would have continued to read in German and Spanish while I was in college. No use crying over spilled horchata (well, you're not, but I still am, haha). The minimal amount of effort that Arguelles seems to put in his maintenance piqued my curiosity though, so, at the very least, you and I never need to let that happen again (who doesn't have a paltry few minutes a day?).
4 x

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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby SpanishInput » Sun Nov 14, 2021 9:46 pm

luke wrote:
luke wrote:Las FiccionesTlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius


Hi, Luke! Very interesting log! I just wanted to congratulate you on reading Borges, my favorite author!
Tlön, in my opinion, is a story that foretold current fandoms. The Star Wars fandom in particular. In Tlön the entire planet becomes obsessed with the fictional world and there's a group of people who even wrote an entire encyclopædia about this world, and the same has happened with Star Wars.

«El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan», «Las ruinas circulares» and «La biblioteca de babel» are also very good. Borges should be better known world wide.

BTW, you've also inspired me to continue getting input in Mandarin, and maybe even resurrect my Japanese.
4 x

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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:28 am

SpanishInput wrote:
luke wrote:Las FiccionesTlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, in my opinion, is a story that foretold current fandoms. The Star Wars fandom in particular. In Tlön the entire planet becomes obsessed with the fictional world and there's a group of people who even wrote an entire encyclopædia about this world, and the same has happened with Star Wars.

«El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan», «Las ruinas circulares» and «La biblioteca de babel» are also very good. Borges should be better known world wide.

BTW, you've also inspired me to continue getting input in Mandarin, and maybe even resurrect my Japanese.

There's plenty of inspiration around here.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of the 5 n-gram solutions. I copy/pasted them into google translate, which didn't produce any surprises, but the real interesting part there would be somehow incorporating them into some sort of more coherent learning framework.

The naysayers who say there's more to it than just n-grams are of course right, but I don't think you were saying the lack of n-gram understanding was the ONLY obstacle to comprehending NetFlix, just an important component of the whole thing.

I just finished up the FSI unit 34 written exercises this evening. Unit 35 is already underway.
6 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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luke
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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby luke » Thu Nov 18, 2021 5:06 pm

I finished the NetFlex 4 season, 45 episode Club de Cuervos last night. Last night I was thinking, fue excelente (it was excellent).

: 45 / 45 Club de Cuervos

There are a few spin-offs and I started watching the Balado de Hugo Sanchez this morning. This is about colloquial, Mexico-centric speech.



2666
BeaP got me into the Roberto Bolaño novel 2666 a few days ago. I'm around page 83 or so. The book is actually 5 books, 1125 pages. So far, so good. I also have the audiobook and have been listening to that on walks and switching back and forth. Easier to understand when I can read, but often very comprehensible just listening. When the story gets complex, reading is helpful.

Made another dent in the FSI dialogs:
: 52 / 55 FSI Dialogs (2x)

Also was able to move all the Anaya El Quijote vocabulary in my Anki deck out of "new" status. Added a few short phrases from Don Quixote for the words that are tricky.

: 413 / 413 el_quijote tarjetas no nuevas

So not sure if I'll be doing 2666 or El Quijote during my little vacation. Probably both. El Quijote should be getting easier this next time through. (think this will be the 4th time over several months).
7 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

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Re: Luke's very confused Spanish Learning Log

Postby BeaP » Fri Nov 19, 2021 8:06 am

I've read through your log, and needed extreme self-discipline to only bookmark RTVE's Don Quijote, and not start to listen to it right away. (Not making pizza also required extreme self-discipline. I've brought home 10 kilos of flour from Italy. ) I've also refrained from buying the version by Andrés Trapiello. At least for now. Enjoy your vacation, libro amigo.
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