Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

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philomath
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Fri Nov 11, 2022 4:31 am

09Nov22–10Nov22

French
09Nov22: During my commute, I read Chapters 2 and 3 of L’étranger. I also had a short conversation in French, as I mentioned in a previous post. :D

10Nov22: I continued reading L’étranger.

Esperanto
09Nov22: I started Unit 1 of Teach Yourself Esperanto.

10Nov22: More Teach Yourself Esperanto. I also looked at Duolingo's course and Lernu.net. I might continue with Duolingo. I don't want to use too many resources at once, so I'm going to ignore Lernu for now.

Writing
09Nov22: I wrote 387 words. I really like having such a small word count goal. For my next writing project, I'd like to try setting a similar goal for weekdays.

10Nov22: Tonight I sat down to write and didn't want to do it at all. :( I think the novella took some wrong turns and I want to fix them before I continue. I was wondering what to do and suddenly decided that there's no point forcing myself to write at a certain pace just to meet this arbitrary deadline of November 30. I had picked that date to go along with NaNoWriMo, but I'm not even aiming for the full 50,000 words anyway. My favorite writing project so far (the sci-fi thriller novel) was completed by writing 375 words per day on average. So maybe that's the writing pace that works for me.

Anyway, I'm not giving up on the project. I just need to think about how to fix it. Then I'm going to continue writing with a more reasonable deadline.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Mon Nov 14, 2022 3:05 am

11Nov22–13Nov22

French
12Nov22: I had a lesson with a new teacher, Kevin. It was fun! He gave me a lot more corrections than other teachers have, which I really appreciated. I also learned a lot of new words. The most embarrassing part of the lesson was that I accidentally mispronounced "beaucoup" and said "beau cul". :lol: Lately I've been trying to make sure I pronounce /y/ correctly, so I'm not surprised I swapped that sound with /u/ by mistake. We just laughed it off though.

13Nov22: I had a lesson with one of my regular teachers, Marylène. We talked about my plans for the day, which involved going to a mushroom store (not the psychedelic kind!) and studying for the master's course I'm taking. It was a good lesson, but she didn't give me many corrections and I was worried I made a lot of mistakes.

Esperanto
11Nov22: I finished Unit 1 of Teach Yourself Esperanto and officially signed up for the "Fastest C1 Ever" Challenge. So far, my two biggest struggles are:

  • Pronouncing the two Cs in "sciencisto". (I've got to be able to pronounce my own career! I'm just going to call myself an "ingeniero" instead, which is also true. :lol:)
  • Remembering the different question words. They all sound so similar! Luckily I found some advice on Reddit for remembering them, which helped a lot.

13Nov22: Duolingo has a new design, and there is now more of a "curriculum" to follow. They've broken it into short units which each have goals. I like the new organization. I completed Unit 1, which went over basic words and how to introduce yourself. So far, Esperanto is fun!

Writing
13Nov22: Now that I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, it's too easy to go back to neglecting my writing projects. I made a rule for myself that I need to sit down and work on a writing project for at least 15 minutes every day. Today I ended up working for 45 minutes. I took some notes on the main character and wrote down a change I want to make to the first draft.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby IronMike » Thu Nov 17, 2022 1:57 am

philomath wrote:Esperanto
11Nov22: I finished Unit 1 of Teach Yourself Esperanto and officially signed up for the "Fastest C1 Ever" Challenge. So far, my two biggest struggles are:

[list][*] Pronouncing the two Cs in "sciencisto". (I've got to be able to pronounce my own career! I'm just going to call myself an "ingeniero" instead, which is also true. :lol:)

Just make sure you pronounce it correctly. It is inĝeniero, not ingeniero. ))

As for the /sc/ or simply the /c/ sounds, I've heard Esperantists pronounce /sc/ like (simply) /c/ and everyone understood what was being said.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Fri Nov 18, 2022 4:36 am

14Nov22–17Nov22

French
14Nov22: During my commute, I wrote a paragraph about riding the train and posted it on iTalki. I've been slacking on Édito, so later I did three pages. The first page was about digital nomads, a fun topic to talk about. I practiced speaking out loud and felt very frustrated with my pronunciation. My teachers tell me that my pronunciation is good, but I wonder if they're just used to students with bad accents.

15Nov22: I listened to two episodes of Amies (1 hour total). They were discussing the show Friends, which I’ve actually never watched. While I listened, I made flashcards for a few words that I didn’t know.

16Nov22: I wrote a couple of paragraphs and posted them on iTalki. Later I went to one of my favorite bookstores near Boston, The Brookline Booksmith. They have a pretty good selection of Spanish, French, and Japanese books. I ended up buying three in French: L'événement and Les années by Annie Ernaux, and L'inconnue de la Seine by Guillaume Musso. It's so odd: I've always considered myself an ebook person, but I'm really enjoying reading physical books in French! Though I still dislike the paperbacks with teeny tiny pages and print.

Esperanto
17Nov22: I started Unit 2 of Teach Yourself Esperanto. I also did some lessons on Duolingo.

Next week I’m going to California for a road trip! I’m not sure how much language-learning or writing I’ll be able to get done. (If only my boyfriend wanted to listen to French podcasts in the car. :lol:) I'm going to bring a bunch of French books to read on the plane ride though.

Writing
14Nov22: I worked on the novella for 40 minutes and decided to introduce a new character who will help the main character.

15Nov22: I worked on the novella for more than an hour and ended up getting very frustrated about a part I couldn't figure out. So much that I got into bed and went to sleep for the night. :lol:

16Nov22: 30 minutes, not as frustrated but still stuck.

17Nov22: Just 15 minutes.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby cito » Fri Nov 18, 2022 5:28 pm

philomath wrote:Later I went to one of my favorite bookstores near Boston, The Brookline Booksmith. They have a pretty good selection of Spanish, French, and Japanese books. I ended up buying three in French: L'événement and Les années by Annie Ernaux, and L'inconnue de la Seine by Guillaume Musso.

I'm so jealous! I couldn't find those books by Ernaux when I went to Montréal recently... maybe I'll have to drive to Boston next week since I'll be off school (it's only 2 hours from chez moi!).
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:46 am

18Nov22

Esperanto
18Nov22: I flew to California and finished Unit 2 of Duolingo Esperanto.

Writing
18Nov22: I spent an hour brainstorming and came up with some more ideas for the main character's backstory. I don't want to get stuck on brainstorming for too long, so I've set a tentative goal to start writing again on December 1. I really just want to flesh out the characters some more and figure out one of the side plots, so that should be doable.

I've also been reading a writing craft book: Getting into Character by Brandilyn Collins. I'm pretty skeptical of craft books written by writers I've never heard of, but this book discusses techniques from method acting and applies them to writing, which I thought was interesting. I've read the first chapter so far and thought it was helpful, though not revolutionary.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Fri Nov 25, 2022 3:24 pm

19Nov22–24Nov22

No language updates! We spent the week in San Francisco and Santa Barbara. The drive between them is amazing: lots of winding roads with the ocean on one side and mountains on the other.

The one language-related activity was that I visited a bookstore in Santa Barbara called Book Den, which had a surprisingly good foreign language section. They had a bunch of books in the Colloquial and Teach Yourself series, including a really old edition of Teach Yourself Arabic. I also found an English-French-Spanish dictionary of terms related to the petroleum industry. I ended up buying three books: two Berlitz phrase books in German and Greek, and a book called Théories du langage, Théories de l’apprentissage : Le débat entre Jean Piaget et Noam Chomsky.

It was nice to go on vacation, but now I’ve fallen so behind on languages and writing. I have a Spanish lesson this weekend and it feels like it’s been months since I even thought about Spanish. I also need to catch up on Esperanto, since I was supposed to study Unit 2 of Teach Yourself Esperanto this week.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby Kullman » Fri Nov 25, 2022 4:24 pm

Ánimo con el español!
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:45 am

25Nov22

Spanish
I wrote a bit about my trip to California and posted it on iTalki. I wasn't feeling confident about my use of the preterite vs. the imperfect in some sentences, which is something I should probably be better at by now. I know how to use the two in general, but for example, I had to think about which to use for "poder" in this sentence: "Estaba tan oscuro que pudimos ver la Vía Láctea." I opted for the preterite since I was just talking about seeing the Milky Way on one specific night of the trip. (Is that right? And what if I had been talking about throughout the trip, not just one night?)

Anyway, it felt good to dust off my Spanish a bit! Hopefully my lesson on Sunday doesn't go too badly. :lol:

Esperanto
During my flight from San Francisco to Boston, I did Unit 2 of Teach Yourself Esperanto. It only took an hour or so, even though I made a lot of Anki flashcards. It helped that I had already completed the Duolingo weather unit.

I also did some more lessons on Duolingo, but I started to get annoyed by how repetitive they are. Later, I switched to the desktop version, which is much less frustrating than the mobile app. Still, I wish they would let you skip lessons if they're too easy.

I also wrote up a little paragraph:
Saluton! Mi nomigxas Amanda kaj mi estas ingxeniero. Mi logxas en Bostono sed hodiaux mi estas en Kalifornio. La vetero en Bostono estas malvarma kaj venta. En Kalifornio, estas pli varme kaj la suno brilas. Mi estas felicxa cxar la vetero estas bona, kvankan mi estas ankaux laceta.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Mon Nov 28, 2022 1:00 am

27Nov22

Spanish
I had a 45-minute lesson with my old iTalki teacher, Meliana. It was my first lesson with her since April and my first Spanish lesson in two months. I kept mixing up definite articles and adjective genders, which was frustrating. For example, I said things like "la calle ancho". I knew it should be "ancha", but the wrong word popped out anyway. I tried to correct myself whenever that happened. Overall, though, I did a better job at speaking than I expected.

I really need to find a schedule for maintaining my speaking skills that works for me. I was excited that Meliana was back from vacation, which motivated me to schedule the lesson, but otherwise it's difficult to justify taking Spanish lessons when I want to focus on French. However, I found a Spanish conversation group that meets near my workplace. I think I'll try going after work sometime.

Esperanto
I spoke Esperanto with some other members of the Fastest C1 Ever Challenge study group. It was fun and I learned a lot of new words. :) I really want to learn more now. After the meetup, I finished Unit 3 of Duolingo.

Thoughts
I've been working on a lot of different hobbies lately: not just languages and writing, but also baking, photography, and I'd like to start a new knitting project. I thought it would be helpful to write down my list of priorities. I've also included a target "frequency" for each one.
  1. Writing: At least 15 minutes/day
  2. French: Ideally every day
  3. Strength training: 3X/week
  4. Esperanto: Enough to keep on track with the study group (i.e., one unit/week)
  5. Spanish: Once per week
  6. Baking, knitting, photography

Maybe I'm trying to do too much. :/ In theory, this list should help me avoid decision fatigue, because I'll decide what to do by moving down the list. In practice, I'm not sure how it will work.
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