Little by little (TUR, DUT, ITA, FRE)

[Raconteur]

Seems like this is the only currently active log for Turkish. I'm going to follow along. Kolay gelsin!

[tastyonions]

Oh, I also have a question for English native speakers: I seem to have noticed that suddenly everybody refers to actresses as “actors”. Is this related to being politically correct (gender-neutral?) in some way or does it have other reasons?

No, you've always been able to do that. An actor could be all actors, an actress only a lady.

That's true, but the practice of preferring the term "actor" even in cases where a woman is being referenced is relatively new, and is due to considerations of sensitivity or "political correctness" or however you want to call it.

[Le Baron]

Oh, I also have a question for English native speakers: I seem to have noticed that suddenly everybody refers to actresses as “actors”. Is this related to being politically correct (gender-neutral?) in some way or does it have other reasons?

No, you've always been able to do that. An actor could be all actors, an actress only a lady.

That's true, but the practice of preferring the term "actor" even in cases where a woman is being referenced is relatively new, and is due to considerations of sensitivity or "political correctness" or however you want to call it.

And I always found it odd, because it took preference for the male noun and moved it to cover both men and women. Whereas names specifically containing the word 'man' like e.g. policeMAN, chairMAN brought about the balance of: chairwoman and policewoman (which already existed) then 'chairperson' which was thought clunky, then the derided 'chair' which was considered absurd, but still persistently used.

The error is clearly in assuming the male reference is not just the dominant reference, but the standard reference. To my mind when a woman is called an 'actor' it's hardly different to that old practise of referring to a woman by her husband's name e.g. Mrs William Gladstone or 'Mr & Mrs William Gladstone.' I thought the point was to give equal weight to same, but different? With English people seem to have just become confused because of the loss of specific gender markers as a grammatical rule.

[tastyonions]

In order to attain maximum sensitivity and ensure that everyone is equally annoyed we can all adopt the bland and clunky phrase "acting person" from now on. "Best Acting Person" at the Oscars it is!

[rdearman]

Actually an Americanism for waiters and waitresses is to be a "server". This isn't an actual server, which is a thing with a hard drive and random access memory but a person who servers food!! Now I have always maintained that if we were to follow this example with actor or actress they should not be called an actor, but a "pretender". Since this is the function they perform. This can be used for lots of things:
headmistress = education server
hostess = personal server
Stewardess = cloud server
Princess = proxy server
Bride = mail server <<== A JOKE !!!

[sfuqua]

I'm from California, so server seems like the standard word for it by now.

I refuse to use Latinx, unless somebody tells me that they want to be called that.

I sometimes mess up pronouns when referring to or speaking to my daughter's friends, who are a variety of sexual orientations, and gender identities, but I try.

For a lot of these things, I just try to use whatever word, pronoun or whatever people want me to use to refer to them.
I often refer to my daughter as, "Babe." which makes some people flinch. I have been calling her that since she was in diapers; she is my daughter, I have asked her about it, and she is not offended. I try to tone it down around strangers, but that is my default name for her. I have asked her repeatedly.
It is nobody's business what I call my daughter, as long as it doesn't offend her.

Years ago, early in the year, a lovely brown 11-year-old girl in my class told me that her nickname was, "Baby." This is not an impossible nickname in the Philippines. It's not even an uncommon nickname. I followed her request and began to use Baby as her name.
A couple of weeks later, it was back-to-school night. I was speaking to parents, and "Baby" was in the room, helping me.
I said, "Baby, could you pass those papers out?" I noticed a large brown woman flinch ... As the parents left, the large woman, a Latina came up to me and said, "How dare you refer to my daughter that way!"
I replied, smoothly I'm sure, "But, but, but, she told me that was her name..."

The woman turned to her daughter and said, "Honey, did you tell this man to call you Baby?"
She replied, "Yes, Mommy.'

The woman the asked her, "Why would you tell this man to call you, Baby?"

The girl ansered, "I just love to hear him call me Baby."

The Mother left with her daughter deep in conversation.

I dropped Baby as a nickname for her.

[Sonjaconjota]

Weekly update for the 2023 365 Day Challenge

2023/04/24
Turkish 30 min
- I started unit 12, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish

Dutch
- listening: about 30 min Boy 7

Italian
- 3 mini-topics Hueber Italienisch Übungsbuch Grammatik A1-A2
- watching: 2 episodes Vatican Girl (Engl. & Ital.)


2023/04/25
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 12, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish: I finished the explanation part and started with the exercises.
- watching: I’ve decided that I’m going to watch the Spanish series Un asunto privado in Turkish (with English subtitles). I had once started to watch it, and it didn’t interest me enough to watch it in Spanish. But I saw that it was dubbed into Turkish, and I think it will be good enough for some language practice. Today I watched 1 episode.

Dutch
- listening: about 30 min Boy 7
- Someone in the Dutch study group was talking about het-words, which inspired me to find a list with the most common ones online and copy it by hand.
- 2 puzzles in Nederlands oefenen - Taalpuzzles met 1000 basiswoorden

French
- listening: 1 episode Chroniques Criminelles


2023/04/26
Turkish 30 min
- working on the exercises of unit 12, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish
- I also reviewed one of the topics of this unit (the past tense with -miş) in PONS Grammatik kurz und bündig Türkisch
- listening: Rumpelstiltskin (about 10 min)
- watching: 1 episode Un asunto privado

Dutch
- listening: about 30 min Boy 7

French
- 1 little topic Communication progressive du français A2 B1

Italian
- 2 episodes Vatican Girl


2023/04/27
Turkish 30 min
- I finished the exercises of unit 12, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish, and started with unit 12 in the workbook.
- 1 episode Un asunto privado

Dutch
- I started with unit 3, PONS Power-Sprachkurs Niederländisch für Fortgeschrittene A2-B1
- listening: 1h Boy 7


2023/04/28
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 12, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish
- listening: The Steadfast Tin Soldier (about 10 min)


2023/04/29
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 12, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish


2023/04/30
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 12, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish

[Sonjaconjota]

End of month reflections:
Still a lot of work, still only little language learning, still grateful for the structure the challenge provides.
Today I've handed in the first of the two translation projects I've foolishly accepted at the same time.
I only have a month to finish the second one that's not nearly as far advanced as it should be. Wish me luck!
I have actually planned a holiday in Amsterdam for the end of May, (again) foolishly booked when I hadn't yet realized how difficult things would get with work.
I still have some days to cancel the accomodation, if I want to. Ideally I would just like to shorten my stay. There's a swing dance festival going on from the 24th to the 28, which I have a party pass for. If I would stay there less days, it might be all doable.
I will see how the project advances during the next days and make a decision, maybe on Friday or so.

I’m slowly running out of stories in Turkish to listen to. I really had hoped to find something else in Turkish that was short, easy and related to things I already know, so I would at least understand a tiny little bit. I was thinking about a youtube channel for kids with short videos about historical figures or historical events, or maybe countries or animals or something like that. Because I couldn't find one single channel, I'm now collecting videos from different places by searching for things like "Life of Louis Armstrong" or "Who was Frida Kahlo?" in Turkish.

I didn't have as much time as I wanted to go on watching Un asunto privado in Turkish. In the end, I'm enjoying it more than I thought. Often, when you have a story about a bold upper-class woman rebelling against conventions of her time, the character turns out arrogant and insufferable, like Phryne Fisher or Lidia Poët. They managed to make Marina Quiroga a bit more likeable and relatable.

And something curious I came across the other day while looking for music to listen to in Italian.
I had Dromen zijn bedrog by Marco Borsato in my playlist for Dutch:



It turns out that it's a cover of the Italian song Storie di tutti i giorni by Riccardo Fogli:

[Sonjaconjota]

Weekly update for the 2023 365 Day Challenge

2023/05/01
Turkish 30 min
- I finished unit 12, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish. Among other things, this unit talked about prepositions of place. I’ve always found this topic tricky, not so much for the complex structure, but more because I struggled with memorizing all the different words as vocabulary. But reviewing them here has shown me that I’m now at least better at recognizing them.
- I started unit 13, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish.
It’s presenting conditional verb tenses and other ways of talking about hypothetical situations, something completely new for me.
- listening: The Country Mouse and the City Mouse (about 10 min)


2023/05/02
Turkish 30 min
- vocabulary
- Working on unit 13, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish
This unit is much too long, piling on information about information regarding verb forms expressing conditions and wishes.
- I also looked up the forms of the conditional in PONS Grammatik kurz und bündig Türkisch
- listening: The Nightingale (about 15 min)
- watching: 2 episodes Un asunto privado

Dutch
- working on unit 3, PONS Power-Sprachkurs Niederländisch für Fortgeschrittene A2-B1
- listening: 1 h Boy 7


2023/05/03
Turkish 30 min
- vocabulary
- I had a look at the conditional tenses in Turkish Grammar in Practice, which made things so much clearer. I wrote 1 grammar flashcard.
- intensive reading: I started reading the third and last story, Konstantin'in Kayıp Heykeli, in my graded reader by Circon.
- listening: Sweet Porridge (about 10 min)
- watching: 1 episode Un asunto privado

Dutch
- listening: 30 min Boy 7
- reading: I started a new novel, Florence by Kiki van Dijk -> 3 chapters.
- I finished unit 3, PONS Power-Sprachkurs Niederländisch für Fortgeschrittene A2-B1.
I really like this book. I like the layout, which looks nice and leaves a lot of space for notes, the topics, the vocabulary, the recordings and that it comes with solutions and transcriptions. The only thing that doesn’t convince me is the way it introduces (or rather doesn’t really introduce) grammar topics. It’s the second one of two books, so I first thought that maybe the topics it was treating were just a revision of things from the first volume. But I’m up to unit 3 now, and it is still very minimalistic with explanations and rules. I would like a bit more.
As you can see in the photo, I’ve also found some errors in the German parts, but that’s not a dealbreaker for me.


French
- 1 little topic Conjugaison progressive du français A2/B1


2023/05/04
Turkish 30 min
- I finished the topic “conditional tenses” in Turkish Grammar in Practice, and wrote another grammar flashcard about it.
- intensive reading: Konstantin'in Kayıp Heykeli
- watching: I watched the last 2 epsisodes of Un asunto privado. Things got a bit unrealistic towards the end, but overall I enjoyed the series. Now I’ll have to look for new content in Turkish.

Italian
- 1 little topic Grammatica pratica della lingua italiana


2023/05/05
Turkish 30 min
- Working on unit 13, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish: I finished the explanation part and started with the exercise part. But I was completely lost with the exercises about conditional tenses. In the end, I decided I would do these exercises passively instead of actively. So I copied the first exercise by hand, including the verb forms from the answer key, translate them with google translate and started to analyse everything by going back to the explanations and identifying the forms. I haven’t finished that yet.
I just hated the whole thing so much that I was constantly stopping the clock and needed over an hour for the 30 minutes.
- Luckily my search for new content was more satisfying. I looked for series dubbed to Turkish on Amazon Prime, and one of the first ones shown was A League of Their Own. So, that’s what I’m going for.

Dutch
- reading: 2 chapters Florence

French
- 3 little topics Grammaire progressive du français

Italian
- 2 little topics Hueber Italienisch Übungsbuch Grammatik A1-A2


2023/05/06
Turkish 40 min
- I went through my little vocabulary stack, and then I managed to go through exactly one of the exercises about the conditional the way I described yesterday.


2023/05/07
Turkish 40 min
- vocabulary
- working on the exercise part, unit 13, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish
- I am still confused. According to Turkish Grammar in Practice, conditional forms like “temizlerseniz” and “kazanırsak”, that include the aorist-marker, are possible and more probable than forms like “temizleseniz” and “kazansak”, which are used for improbable possibilities.
But the example sentences in The Delights of Learning Turkish make it sound just the other way round.
Could anybody weigh in and give me their opinion?
I think I’ll work through the corresponding unit in the workbook and then just move on without worrying about it too much. In my experience, these things tend to resolve themselves later on during the learning process.

Dutch
- listening: 1 h Boy 7
- 2 puzzles in Nederlands oefenen - Taalpuzzles met 1000 basiswoorden


I managed to change my booking for Amsterdam for the end of May to not only less days, but a nicer accommodation where I can definitely stay in and work all day, if necessary. I hope it won’t be. I mean, of course it’s not a good idea to go on a trip only a couple of days before the submission date of my project, but I’m committed to it now.
I’ll go dancing in the evenings, and I hope that I might manage to even see a bit of Amsterdam and speak some Dutch.
If anybody has any recommendations, I would like to visit a big nice bookshop, and I’m also interested in shops with retro/repro clothing (with brands like Collectif or Emmy design).
I am also up to meeting for a coffee, if anybody happened to be there (24th to 29th of May).

[Sonjaconjota]

Weekly update for the 2023 365 Day Challenge

2023/05/08
Turkish 30 min
- I started unit 13, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish.
- I finally managed to watch the first two episodes of A League of Their Own. Of course I know it’s an idealized version of 1940s USA, but everything looks so pretty! And I adore the fact that these characters are wearing casual, sporty clothes, things that were usually only acceptable in public for teenagers. I love the aesthetics of vintage and retro clothing, but I’ve always been more drawn to these styles, not so much to the ladylike things grown women were generally expected to wear.

Dutch
- Hugo - Taking Dutch further, lesson 4, text 1
- Listening: I finished Boy 7 (30 min). Yes, it’s a book for young readers, but I enjoyed it.

Italian
- 2 little topics Hueber Italienisch Übungsgrammatik A1-A2


2023/05/09
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 13, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish
- I listened to the last story of the Turkish Fairy Tales Youtube channel that interested me, The Wild Swans (about 10 min).

French
- listening: 1 episode Chroniques Criminelles

Italian
- 2 little topics Hueber Italienisch Übungsgrammatik A1-A2


2023/05/10
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 13, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish
- watching: 2 episodes A League of Their Own

Dutch
- Hugo - Taking Dutch further, lesson 4, text 1

Italian
- I started, but didn’t finish 1 topic in Nuova grammatica pratica della lingua italiana


2023/05/11
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 13, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish

I think I might have finally found a mnemonic for the most confusing aspect of the conditional tenses.

So we have two forms for the simple present tense:
gelirsem - If I come (possible)
gelsem - If I came (improbable)

And two forms for the past:
geldiysem - If I came (possible)
gelseydim - If I would have come (improbable)

I don’t know if this would apply to any conditional tense. But according to these four forms, I could say: The closer the conditional marker (sa / se) to the verb stem, the less probable the action.

Italian
- I finished yesterday’s topic in Nuova grammatica pratica della lingua italiana.
- 1 mini-topic Italienisch Übungsbuch Grammatik A1-A2
- listening: I started a new audio book, Maurizio de Giovanni: Il senso del dolore (about 30 min)

I have bought new headphones.
I do most of my listening practice while I’m either cooking or out and about (walking, metro, bus).
For years I had just used any old pair of cheap earbuds, but the cable always got caught on my cross-body bag.
A friend gave me a big wireless headset he had lying around. That was a great change, but it was a bit bulky, and I didn’t like how it flattened my hair when it was recently styled. (I’m always in a hurry when I go dancing and run out of the door with still-wet hair.)
I had never considered wireless in-ear headphones, because I was afraid of losing them. But the other day I thought: There must be an option with loops for sports, and yes, I found a pair on Amazon.
I’m superhappy with these, I think they are going to be a game changer.


2023/05/12
Turkish 30 min
- I started to review some older vocabulary flashcards.
- I finished unit 13, workbook, The Delights of Learning Turkish.
Usually I would now take a little break from the course, because I’m a bit frustrated. But there are only 4 units left and I would like to finish soon, so I think I’ll keep going.
- watching: 1 episode A League of Their Own

Italian
- 1 mini-topic Italienisch Übungsbuch Grammatik A1-A2
- listening: Il senso del dolore (about 30 min)


2023/05/13
Turkish 30 min
- I managed to start and finish the explanation part of unit 14, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish, in one sitting, because I was already familiar with most of the topics.
- watching: 1 episode A League of Their Own

French
- 3 topics Vocabulaire progressif du français
- listening: 1 episode Chroniques Criminelles

Italian
- 2 mini-topics Italienisch Übungsbuch Grammatik A1-A2
I think I might concentrate on this during the next weeks, because I’ve advanced a lot with this book and could finish it soon.
- listening: Il senso del dolore (about 30 min)


2023/05/14
Turkish 30 min
- working on unit 14, coursebook, The Delights of Learning Turkish, exercise part
- I watched the last episode of A League of Their Own. This series is not what I expected it to be. I thought it would about baseball, and it turned out to be about how the LGBTQ-community navigated life in early 1940s USA. Oh, and some of the characters happen to play baseball. Still a good show, I enjoyed it.

Italian
- 2 little topics Hueber Italienisch Übungsgrammatik A1-A2


I have a cold - again. I think it might be the tenth since October, I’m so fed up. On the one hand I’m really angry at my body, on the other hand I probably know the reason. I’m leading a rather healthy life, but one aspect is problematic: I’m not able to relax. I’m always busy either physically or mentally, I never wind down, and that’s taking a toll on my immune system.
I’m superhappy with the effects of the 365 days challenge for Turkish, it’s teaching me how to be disciplined and consistent and it’s really showing results.
I think, once I’m actually willing to work on the relaxation-thing, I might do something similar.