Eternal Sunshine of the Italian Mind

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
lingua
Blue Belt
Posts: 951
Joined: Sun Mar 13, 2016 11:23 pm
Languages: English (N)
Maintaining: italiano (B2/C1ish)
Studying: português, Latina
Dabbling: siciliano, Deutsch, français, piemontèis
Abandoned: ไทย, español
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12257
x 2024

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby lingua » Sun Dec 05, 2021 7:13 pm

I'm with you on chic lit but I'm currently reading a 700 page one in Portuguese. It has a lot of dialog and I'm finding it really helpful. I have a copy of the English as well so I can easily compare sentences when they make no sense in Portuguese. I never tried that in Italian as I primarily read non-fiction and gialli. In retrospect I believe it would have been beneficial because there is so much everyday conversation that you don't get in other genres. Non-fiction books in your areas of interest are another excellent way to build vocabulary in my experience.

I think what you're doing with the articles is optimum. You're lucky to have a willing native speaker in-house. Some mates aren't up to the task. I agree that the three edX courses are excellent. Lots of audio and exercises. I think I got through the first two but never did finish the advanced. I found it very useful to find those pesky grammar holes. For verb conjugation you might try https://www.linguno.com. You can customize which tense you want to practice. Someone here just mentioned it for French the other day but I've been using it for Portuguese the last couple of days.
4 x
Super Challenge 2022-23:
DE: books: 0 / 2500 film: 1654 / 4500
IT: books: 3065 / 5000 film: 5031 / 9000
PT: books: 2921 / 5000 film: 5010 / 9000

Output Challenge 2023:
IT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 84 / 3000
PT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 0 / 3000

PT: Read 100 books: 28 / 100

StringerBell
Brown Belt
Posts: 1035
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:30 am
Languages: English (n)
Italian
x 3289

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Sun Dec 05, 2021 7:55 pm

rdearman wrote:Just put a limit on the Anki cards to 10 a day max or something and 5 new cards max. You can make a million but it will only show you 15.


Excellent suggestion. I keep forgetting that I have the ability to control how Anki behaves if I don't like what it's doing by default.


lingua wrote:I'm with you on chic lit but I'm currently reading a 700 page one in Portuguese. It has a lot of dialog and I'm finding it really helpful. I have a copy of the English as well so I can easily compare sentences when they make no sense in Portuguese. I never tried that in Italian as I primarily read non-fiction and gialli. In retrospect I believe it would have been beneficial because there is so much everyday conversation that you don't get in other genres. Non-fiction books in your areas of interest are another excellent way to build vocabulary in my experience.


Wow! 700 pages is massive for that genre. Was it an English book translated into Portuguese or a Portuguese original? I'm mostly choosing books that were originally written in English and translated into Italian because it guarantees that there is an English edition available to use as a comparison. But I ran into an issue where the translator of my currently book translated something literally even though it didn't make sense to do that. So, in English when someone gets screwed over by someone we say that they got burned. The Italian translator used "scottarsi" (to get burned/sunburned) but I was told that it's only ever used in the context of something literally getting burned, not in the way it's used in English and it was an incorrect translation. So that has me doubting some of the other colloquial expressions and now I'm not sure if this was such a great idea. Hopefully, it's an anomaly.

lingua wrote:For verb conjugation you might try https://www.linguno.com. You can customize which tense you want to practice.


Thanks for that suggestions! I will check it out - maybe it's a better option than making 8 million Anki cards. :lol:
0 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

User avatar
lingua
Blue Belt
Posts: 951
Joined: Sun Mar 13, 2016 11:23 pm
Languages: English (N)
Maintaining: italiano (B2/C1ish)
Studying: português, Latina
Dabbling: siciliano, Deutsch, français, piemontèis
Abandoned: ไทย, español
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12257
x 2024

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby lingua » Tue Dec 07, 2021 5:25 pm

The 700 page book was originally written in English by an Irish author and translated into (Brazilian) Portuguese. The English is only around 500 pages. That's a big difference which indicates Portuguese is wordy. Overall I find the grammar slightly easier than Italian. But I don't know if it's because it really is or because the Italian background gives me a lift.

It is true that translations can sometimes be too literal and not make sense. It's a big reason I prefer to read books in their native language. However, it is difficult to find Portuguese authors in ebook form. I'm hoping the situation will eventually improve. There was a time even 8-9 years ago where it was the same with Italian. A lot of self-published rubbish was what was available.

It's rare that I read books translated from English to Italian. I have recently read a book translated from Spanish to Italian and that one flowed much better.
2 x
Super Challenge 2022-23:
DE: books: 0 / 2500 film: 1654 / 4500
IT: books: 3065 / 5000 film: 5031 / 9000
PT: books: 2921 / 5000 film: 5010 / 9000

Output Challenge 2023:
IT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 84 / 3000
PT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 0 / 3000

PT: Read 100 books: 28 / 100

StringerBell
Brown Belt
Posts: 1035
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:30 am
Languages: English (n)
Italian
x 3289

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Thu Dec 09, 2021 10:55 pm

I had 2 LEs this week. One was great and the other one I really struggled a lot. Interestingly, the one where I was struggling was being recorded and it occurred to me afterward that by recording the session I might have subconsciously triggered some performance anxiety. So I don't think I will do that again!

I'm conflicted about whether or not to give myself a challenge in this coming year. On one hand I LOVE keeping track of data with those delicious progress bars, on the other hand it's also kind of freeing to not feel the need to count or keep track of anything. Even though my focus right now is on output, I don't really want to have a challenge that involves tracking output; I want to feel free to do as much (or little) as I want to avoid turning it into an obligation. One compromise could be doing the output challenge but only focusing on recording myself reading stuff aloud. I'd really like to be reading aloud more than what I'm currently doing.

I'm also considering doing a reading challenge (basically the Super Challenge but condensed into 1 year instead of 18 months). On one hand I'm curious to see the results of reading A LOT, on the other hand I'm enjoying being able to do a deep dive on new expressions or verb tenses which then means I get through very few pages. If I committed to doing a SC then I think I would feel the pressure to get through pages quickly to meet my quota and that might prevent me from focusing/looking up much of what I come across.

Doing a SC condensed into 1 year would be ~14 pages per day (with about 2 weeks off). That's very doable if it's extensive reading but it might be a drag if I'm doing mostly intensive reading. The obvious solution would be to do a mix of intensive and extensive reading, but in practice that might not be easy to do since extensive reading is kind of torturous for me; I really dislike skimming over words I don't know. I also have a hard time believing that ignoring words is a good strategy to learn them but somehow it seems to work for other people so there must be something to it.

Also, I'm not really sure how to measure my pacing with ebooks since there aren't page #s with kindle; it shows % complete but that often doesn't really correspond to anything - I've had instances where I get to the last page of the book but it's 82% complete or something ridiculous. Plenty of people here have done a SC with ebooks so I'm sure someone has already come up with a solution to this issue.
1 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

User avatar
lingua
Blue Belt
Posts: 951
Joined: Sun Mar 13, 2016 11:23 pm
Languages: English (N)
Maintaining: italiano (B2/C1ish)
Studying: português, Latina
Dabbling: siciliano, Deutsch, français, piemontèis
Abandoned: ไทย, español
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12257
x 2024

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby lingua » Thu Dec 09, 2021 11:36 pm

A lot of newer books do show page numbers in the Kindle. And if they don't I just use the number of pages the physical book has which can vary amongst different types (hardback vs trade paperback, etc) but it's close enough.
1 x
Super Challenge 2022-23:
DE: books: 0 / 2500 film: 1654 / 4500
IT: books: 3065 / 5000 film: 5031 / 9000
PT: books: 2921 / 5000 film: 5010 / 9000

Output Challenge 2023:
IT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 84 / 3000
PT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 0 / 3000

PT: Read 100 books: 28 / 100

StringerBell
Brown Belt
Posts: 1035
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:30 am
Languages: English (n)
Italian
x 3289

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Sat Dec 11, 2021 4:02 am

I'm starting to get more excited about doing a reading challenge, which is really not what I think I need to be doing at all right now since my current focus is talking more.

I just went through the list of Italian books I have and realized that I have almost enough for 2 full reading SC. Also, I've already read 1/4 of those, which means I've essentially done 1/2 of a SC. I'm not sure what that means; on one hand it seems impressive but on the other hand I still have a really long way to go before reading novels isn't a pain in the ass that I dread with way too many unknown words for comfort. It seems unbelievable that reading 5,000 more pages would be enough to get me to that point but I'm very curious to see what kind of improvement is possible. I want to believe!

I'm also not sure if I should reread books I've already read in Italian a few years ago or just focus on ones I haven't read yet. I'm not actually looking forward to reading any of them so it probably doesn't really matter which option I pick in terms of motivation. Rereading has the benefit of being familiar enough with the plot that I don't need to waste a lot of time trying to figure out what's going on, so I might end up doing that if for no other reason than to compensate for the times I inevitably switch over to intensive reading and my page count starts to suffer.

lingua wrote:A lot of newer books do show page numbers in the Kindle. And if they don't I just use the number of pages the physical book has which can vary amongst different types (hardback vs trade paperback, etc) but it's close enough.


I haven't yet found page #s in any of my kindle books, unfortunately. I know I can use the total page count to track how many pages I've read once I finish the book, but how do you know how many pages you've read per day while you're in the middle of the book?
0 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

StringerBell
Brown Belt
Posts: 1035
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:30 am
Languages: English (n)
Italian
x 3289

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Sun Dec 12, 2021 7:20 pm

I ended up poking around goodreads last night to find some crappy chick lit books originally written in Italian. I found four books to put on my list even though I'm pretty sure none of them are chick lit so I didn't actually find what I was looking for. They're all available through Amazon as kindle ebooks. From skimming the excerpts available through amazon, I'm pretty sure that none of them use my arch-nemesis, passato remoto, in the narration. I'm most interested in the 1st one based on reading the synopsis.

I'm trying to figure out how to use these Italian originals to gauge whether I've made improvement in my reading comprehension. Should I read half of one as my first book to get a feel for how much I'm struggling and then read the second half of the same book toward the end of the year to see if it's easier?

-La tentazione di essere felici by Lorenzo Marone
-Un ragazzo normale by Lorenzo Marone
-Tutto chiede salvezza by Daniele Mencarelli
-L'Arminuta by Donatella di Pietrantonio

I was reading the excerpt that kindle has for "Il marito in collegio" (Giovannino Guareschi) to figure out if I wanted to add it to my list of books for my upcoming reading challenge and I came across this sentence: Io non vedo perché ci debba essere tanta fretta. (I don't see why there needs to be such a rush). I was like, "wow, that's a sentence I never would have come up with on my own (mostly because of the congiuntivo component) and I really want to memorize it and use it. So I started repeating it to myself mentally, then I said it aloud a few times, and kept repeating it to myself while I was brushing my teeth, and then used a variation of it an hour later during a brief conversation before bed.

Today I'm very happy to see that I'm able to recall the whole sentence even though I do have to really concentrate to make sure I don't leave a part out, so it's not 100% automatic. I'd like to work on using variations of the construction Non vedo perché ci debba essere... as another step toward improving the complexity of what I can say. I'm hoping I'll still be able to do this kind of thing even when my focus is extensive reading.
4 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

garyb
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1572
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:35 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: Native: English
Advanced: Italian, French
Intermediate: Spanish
Beginner: German, Japanese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1855
x 5992
Contact:

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby garyb » Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:50 pm

I read La tentazione di essere felici a few years ago and I remember it being a relatively quick and easy read. It was a bit of a clichéd story, but enjoyable and done well.

I don't remember if it used passato remoto, but honestly passato remoto really isn't a big obstacle: my experience with it, and as well as with its French equivalent which is even rarer in everyday speech, is you get used to it and become able to mostly recognise it pretty quickly just from reading a book or two that uses it, without even needing to study it specifically. Occassionally you'll come across a weird verb form where it's not obvious which infinitive it came from, which is where a digital dictionary can help. Learning to actually use it is a different story and takes a bit more active work (although doing enough reading gets you most of the way there!), but you don't really need to be able to use it so I've never put much time into it.
3 x

StringerBell
Brown Belt
Posts: 1035
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:30 am
Languages: English (n)
Italian
x 3289

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Mon Dec 13, 2021 2:36 pm

garyb wrote:I read La tentazione di essere felici a few years ago and I remember it being a relatively quick and easy read. It was a bit of a clichéd story, but enjoyable and done well.


Thanks - it sounds like it's worth the $6, then. I've got a lot of books on my list that I think are garbage, so I don't really mind a clichéd story at this point, especially if it's a relatively quick and easy read! (though it probably won't be quick or easy for me)

garyb wrote:I don't remember if it used passato remoto, but honestly passato remoto really isn't a big obstacle: my experience with it, and as well as with its French equivalent which is even rarer in everyday speech, is you get used to it and become able to mostly recognise it pretty quickly just from reading a book or two that uses it, without even needing to study it specifically. Occassionally you'll come across a weird verb form where it's not obvious which infinitive it came from, which is where a digital dictionary can help. Learning to actually use it is a different story and takes a bit more active work (although doing enough reading gets you most of the way there!), but you don't really need to be able to use it so I've never put much time into it.


I totally agree - I have read a few books with passato remoto in the narration and I can deal with it if I have to. I have this boiling hatred for passato remoto as a verb tense because:

-No one in the north uses it when they're speaking so it's a total waste of time to learn. Even my southern friends use it sparingly (and then only when they're talking about something that happened many years ago). Most of the people I want to interact with are northerners.
-One of my main goals in reading is to help me intuitively improve my verb tense usage, so having a bunch of nonsense passato remoto verb tenses in what I'm reading is counterproductive.
-I personally find it to be a pretentious verb tense that used to give the illusion of better writing.
-it distracts me from what I'm reading when I come across a word where I can't figure out what the infinitive is. When I see this nonsense verb tense pop up spontaneously and I don't recognize it I start wondering if it's some weird congiuntivo construction and I end up having to discard half the sentence.

If I were learning Italian for the purpose of reading classic literature or something then I would just embrace it. But I'm really only interested in reading as a means to an end. I actually think that for my purpose reading books is probably not a good use of my time at all. What would be more useful for me is to read not books but things like social media posts / Youtube comments / product & book & restaurant reviews. Now that I'm writing this I'm doubting myself pretty seriously... maybe the reading challenge idea is stupid. But I'm really curious to give it a try and just see what happens because maybe my assumptions about the usefulness of reading books is totally wrong. Plus I have 10,000 pages worth of books that I already own and the idea of never reading them is kind of bugging me.
4 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

garyb
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1572
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:35 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: Native: English
Advanced: Italian, French
Intermediate: Spanish
Beginner: German, Japanese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1855
x 5992
Contact:

Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby garyb » Wed Dec 15, 2021 12:54 pm

I've had similar thoughts regarding reading, since my main goal is also speaking and understanding. I mostly focus on spoken language and don't read many books until I'm at an intermediate level, and even after that, novels make quite a small proportion of my study activities in comparison to listening and I try to focus on books with contemporary and colloquial language. I do sometimes read classic literature too, but I very much consider that an activity for its own sake rather than as work towards learning the language since it contributes almost zero to my conversational ability and could even be counter-productive if there's a lot of old-fashioned language, including verb tenses as you say. But that proportion is low enough that I don't think a bit of passato remoto exposure is doing me any harm, especially now that I can process it quite automatically.

There do seem to be benefits to input from long-form content like books, like lots of repetition of similar language and just being able to get absorbed in the language and story, so I do think they have a place in your routine in addition to the short online posts you mention.

An Italian language exchange partner and friend did once "correct" me when I was talking about a childhood experience and used passato prossimo, saying that I should have used passato remoto. This was someone who grew up in the North, although had Southern parents. But as usual, if you ask ten different Italians about a language point you'll get ten different answers...
2 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests