Carpe Coffeam

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gzt
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby gzt » Fri Oct 07, 2022 4:28 pm

Cavesa wrote:-The breakfast=the main opportunity to see speakers of various languages. Oh, and the food was so good! The most interesting crowd (really a large group!) were speakers of a Sign Language. I assumed the Italian Sign Language. A much quieter crowd, than the one old man just playing random youtube videos very loudly on his phone there, sure :-D. But still, not as quiet as people may expect. The Sign Languages, on top of all the other "mysteries" around them, have a specific non verbal part. I would have to learn one, to start distinguishing normal hand gestures from speaking. It is also interesting to notice how differently the speakers position themselves in conversation (to see each other. Even between tables 8 metres away), or how they need to get attention etc. But also how do they sound. For example, laughter of a person without the experience of how laughing "should" sound, who has never felt self-conscious about it, and who doesn't realize how loud or quiet they are. It was a bit unusual at first. Or one or two people were sort of half-vocalising while signing, or perhaps also letting someone read lips. I am not sure I'll ever get to learning a sign language. Yes, I feel I should, as a doctor. But with my moving around Europe, it would be hard to pick one. But in general, people should learn them much more often.

Sign languages have always been very interesting to me but I've never had an opportunity to study -- it's wild how the anglophone world is divided between two different families, so a user of American Sign Language will get by much better with a French user than an English one, though I don't know how mutually intelligible ASL and LSF are, just that they're in the same family.
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 09, 2022 7:44 pm

I got finally unstuck in Italian!!!! YAY! After the long break, it was hard to get back into studying it. And the 7th Unit in the workbook is rather long, a lot of stuff at once (al the past tenses, prepositions, etc). I was procrastinating from Italian, what a weird thing. But I have managed to complete it in the last two days.

Yes, i have a lot of a delay. I am unlikely to make it to the C1 exam. But I need to try. I will sign up for it. To take my own advice, I need to streamline a few things.

-rewriting stuff by hand is extremely useful and helps. but takes a lot of time and energy. And joy away. So, I need to hold myself and not rewrite everything, not the too easy stuff now. If I rewrite like 75% of stuff from the coursebooks and similar sources, it will still write everything worthwhile into my brain, but it will slow me down much less.

-Streamlining stuff.
1.The priority is finishing the damn Progetto 1, continuing with Progetto 2 (I think really learning the content of 1 will help) and Progetto 3
2.I need to do fewer grammar books, but still cannot avoid some. So, to stick to what seems to be the best series for now: Una grammatica Italiana per tutti, finish 1 and do 2, and hopefully continue with Grammavanzata from the same publisher, which looks really useful
-I am really torn whether to "waste time" on a special preposition workbook, but given my problem with this hard topic in Italian, and the high value of knowing it well, I am seriously considering it.
3.One PLIDA C1 preparatory book. Well, there is not more on the market than that one. I was also pleasantly surprised with the official info on the website, including sample completed writing tasks etc. It gives me a better idea on the preparation.

If I sign up for this (90% yes right now), this will be the plan approximately:
10-16/10:finish Progetto Italiano 1:8-11, and Grammatica italiana per tutti 1 18-30, Progetto 2 unit 0
17-23/10 Progetto 2: Units 1,2,3,4 , GrIt1 31-50
24-30/10 Progetto 2: Units 5,6,7,8, GrIt 51-67
31-6/11 Progetto 2: Units 9,10,11 Progetto 3:Units 1-3, GrIt2 1-20
7-13/11Progetto 3: Units 4-15 GrIt2 21-45
14-20/11 Progetto 3: Units 16-25, GrIt2 45-55
21-27/11 Progetto 3 Units 26-30, PLIDA first half
half week 28-30/11 PLIDA second half
1.12 exam

This is the bare minimum. I'd really need to be in advance, to do other stuff.
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Oct 10, 2022 2:47 pm

Cavesa wrote:I got finally unstuck in Italian!!!! YAY! After the long break, it was hard to get back into studying it. And the 7th Unit in the workbook is rather long, a lot of stuff at once (al the past tenses, prepositions, etc). I was procrastinating from Italian, what a weird thing. But I have managed to complete it in the last two days.


Impressive and inspiring!
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:54 pm

Last weekend was very work heavy, now I had three days to recuperate. A weekend. With two German classes. Again individual (I'm really lucky!), and with good teachers. Out of the five I've had so far, these two are the best and one (yesterday's teacher) is top. The rest is ok, and fortunately held together by the very precisely defined curriculum. I think I am improving a bit. The self study part is good, but not intensive enough, as I am partially relearning it. But it's ok, it leaves me space for Italian.

One thing I love about the Switzerland: it is multilingual, but in a really european way. That was in Belgium only in Bruxelles and not even everywhere in the city. I love it. Various european languages, with an occassional non-european language heard. And in a Starbucks, I heard something great yesterday: a group of speakers, who were using French and Italian as if it were Czech and Slovak. It was marvellous, it really shows how used to both the people were. I get to hear all my target languages, even Spanish is not that rare (even though much rarer than Portuguese). I love that. I had been growing very frustrated with the mostly non european environment in Belgium.

But today, we were practicing some wish sentences. And the austrian teacher and I agreed that the city needed many more cafés and overall fun. It's true, it's not just me having a totally biased impression! :-D And the trains should be much cheaper. Really, it is a luxury to use the train. It is comfortable, no need to look for parking, but significantly more expensive for short trips, than gas + parking.

Btw German is funny, as I discover the loadwords in Czech. Der Rahmen is rám. Ok. But yesterday, I finally learnt why people say "jít do lochu". Loch means hole. So, the colloquial Czech expression means "go in a hole".

The Italian plan is going ok for now.
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Thu Oct 13, 2022 12:28 pm

Let me complain a bit about my Italian resources. Don't get me wrong, I overall love Il Nuovissimo Progetto Italiano. It is well done, it goes rather fast, it often tests several things at once (which is very realistic), and so on. Doing it very actively is sometimes even a bit of a challenge. The Unit 8 really was one. Unit 9 is starting very easy compared to that :-D

But the overall very nice digital version has the typical problem. Not all the correct answers are considered correct. Like this sentence in an exercise on all the tenses. Yes, all of them. Some sentences were in future, some past, etc,and I was to put in the right form of the verb.
This is the official correct answer
I miei genitori volevano andare in vacanza, ma mio padre ha lavorato tutto il mese di agosto.
Am I wrong to think thi is also correct, just talking about the next summer?
I miei genitori vogliono andare in vacanza, ma mio padre lavora tutto il mese di agosto.

Another complaint: vocab learning. I am considering SRS, to really get the course vocab in my head. So, let's see my options. No NPG deck on anki or Memrise (not a complete and good one). How about the official stuff? Trash. This is exactly one of the main reasons, why so many people opt for low quality content in well looking apps, instead of good content. Why? The official apps are horrible, half baked, and look extremely amateurish. Amateurish design, no SRS, no progress saving. Ok, not every flashcard app has SRS, but for example Speexx makes you confirm right comprehension 5 or 6 times before considering it learnt. And it shows you your progress in that effort. Worse than SRS, but still at least something.

The official NPG apps (separate for book 1 and for book 2, not sure book 3 has any) offer two way translation and several base languages, which is nice, but absolutely no good method to reviewing. It is as dumb as rereading wordlists, which is what I had been doing ages ago back in highschool. You can save words and review just "favourites", but isn't current language learning a bit further than that?

Really, the apps are trash. So, I thought about the next logical step: I will just put it into anki. But I definitely don't have the time (nor the will) to just extract every word from the book, paper or digital, and they don't have in book glossaries. But there are official glossaries for download, yay! Nope, not yay. I hoped to make one consistent deck for books 1-3, but I cannot.

I cannot make a fully Czech based one, because there is no Czech glossary for book 2 (there is one for book 1, not sure I like it much though) and there is only a monolingual glossary for book 3. I cannot make a fully French based one either, because there is no simple glossary for book 1 in French, only a paid study guide, where I don't need at all the parts making it a paid tool instead of just a free glossary.

So, I will just make an easy ctrl C and ctrl V deck with Czech to Italian NPG 1, French to Italian NPG 2, and monolingual Italian NPG 3 (no clue how that will work out). Or I may not have time for that, who knows.

My husband also went through the cave and found the right box with my Vocabulaire Italien by Nathan et Robert. A wonderful book, but no time for that right now :-(

Time to go to work. Or perhaps I can get at least a bit of unit 9 done before going, I still can spare ten minutes.
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby tractor » Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:53 pm

Cavesa wrote:This is the official correct answer
I miei genitori volevano andare in vacanza, ma mio padre ha lavorato tutto il mese di agosto.
Am I wrong to think thi is also correct, just talking about the next summer?
I miei genitori vogliono andare in vacanza, ma mio padre lavora tutto il mese di agosto.

I don't know, but my intuition tells me that the future lavorerà would be better if you talk about August next year.
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garyb
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby garyb » Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:40 pm

My somewhat-educated non-native-speaker guess would be that present or future works, but present conveys more of a sense of certainty. The simple future tense tends to be used to convey shades of meaning like that, rather than just to talk about what will happen in the future, for which the present is usually just fine (or future perfect if you want to talk about after the fact).

I might well be wrong though. Definitely a question for a native. Or as is often required with Italian, ask several natives and try to take the consensus of their varying answers...
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Iversen » Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:59 pm

2½ cents from another non-native:

I miei genitori volevano andare in vacanza, ma mio padre ha lavorato tutto il mese di agosto.
: they wanted to take a holiday, but because my pop worked all August they didn't get anywhere

I miei genitori vogliono andare in vacanza, ma mio padre lavora tutto il mese di agosto.
: they really want to take a holiday, but since my pop is occupied all August they'll have to do it after that month

In this last one the present tense reflects that the working-all-August is part of a logical argument rather than a discussion about holiday plans.

I miei genitori vogliono andare in vacanza, ma mio padre ciò nonostante lavorerà tutto il mese

:WIth a future tense both parents may wish to take a holiday, but somebody's father has nevertheless decided to work the whole of August, leaving the rest of the family frustrated and grumpy
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Fri Oct 21, 2022 6:57 pm

Thanks for very good input on the issue!

My Italian progress is horrible. I am really behind the plan. It is very different to keep up, when you work 8 (9 with overtime) or 12 (14 with overtime) hours. I need to catch up. Not giving up yet. The next few weeks will be much lighter in workload!

German: I had two lessons this week. The first one: I was speaking horribly. My brain was simply not working properly. I was told I was doing fine, but I felt it was not up to my standard by far. After 52 hours (so really more like 58) hours of work in five days, following with an intensive German lesson was a challenge. But on my defence, it is really hard to practice indirect speech by reporting what my teacher had sad about indirect speech a few days before that, using indirect speech. But talking about the watch industry was nice. Yesterday's lesson went much better. I was speaking at my normal level. I still want much more, but I was not underperforming due to fatigue and that was nice. The topic was skiing, which was awesome. And there was another exercise, to talk a bit about a political question, this time the Switzerland's neutrality, and I did quite ok (even though I sounded much dumber than in my stronger languages of course). And grammar in the lesson was ok. I just need much more practice, especially to not mess up the word order, when I am focusing on the content of my speech.

And I am soooo far behind on my writing assignments!!!

But a good thing: I have taken 9 lessons so far, and they were all individual! If I keep that way, it will make the high price tag much less bitter :-D

I am getting near the end of the structured B2 course. And faster than the school had expected, it seems :-D (they are more used to people doing one unit per week and taking weeks off in spite of the price. Or some people even show up to the lessons without having done the obligatory preparation, like having done just 40%, while 90 or 95 are the minimum to pass. Are they millionaires?). My favourite teacher has already accepted to continue to C1 with me. Just the school needs to fit this into the schedule, and I want to ask in time about the strategy, resources, etc. I want to continue in a similar style. Ideally the same coursebook series, just the C1 level (it is a wonderful coursebook series. oh, and the second colour of the book is a beautiful violet, not the ugly B2green!), my grammar workbooks, and hopefully some exam preparation material. We will no longer have the Speex, it goes only up to B2. So, hopefully well defined self study for each speaking heavy lesson.

I've been noticing a very unsettling thing in my pronunciation. Since I've been regularly speaking German, I happen to "whistle" from time to time, especially when doing the "sch" sound. But even when I do it in French. It is highly annoying. I really hope nobody notices, I have no clue how obvious or not obvious it is. It is not too often, but it has happened more than a handful times so far. No clue how is it even possible. Normally, I cannot whistle! I have never managed to learn that skill, the top of my ability has always been a weaker version of the boiling kettle sound! What a stupid problem! Has it happened to anyone else? I don't want my German "sch" and French "ch" to ever sound like a boiling kettle!!! :-D :-D :-D
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Mon Oct 24, 2022 5:46 pm

FINALLY FINISHED THE NUUOVISSIMO PROGETTO ITALIANO 1 COURSEBOOK!!!!!!
Better late than never. And yeah, I still have a few units of the workbook left.

I am counting on this being one of the cases of good basics making the follow up levels much easier. I really liked this book. In spite of being classroom aimed, it is very self study friendly. And even though I hate their choice of putting most grammar explanations in one huge chapter at the end of the book, they are still there. The lessons count with quite a fast progress, they don't chop stuff into needlessly small parts, which is often my complaint (I prefer books that introduce stuff together in meaningful larger bits, and then let me practice and practice and learn details of the stuff). A few imperfections in the digital version (a few mistakes, sometimes not all good answers accepted, such as the female version of the sentence, etc), no SRS for vocab (the official app is trash, as I've already said), but overall a very enjoyable product, that really could satisfy many of the people, who simply prefer digial tools (even far too much) but still want to really learn a language and not just play a game.

Now I finish the workbook and dive into the very nice NPI 2!!!! It has a nicer "theme colour", red! Yeah, I know it's not important, but it is a tiny pleasure to see.

Btw I had a nice online YKYAALLN moment today. Someone on the language learning subreddit tried to offend me by calling me a nerd :-D :-D :-D :-D How foolish! :-D I am proud of being one.

I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE 6WC!!!!!!!!

Oh, and I had another German lesson today. I was worse prepared than usual (another weekend at work, and Speex maintenance came at the worst time), but still did well enough. We are still expanding on grammar from the previous one. And with this teacher, we talk a lot and not just follow the structure (even though it is well present and we cover all we need and I like that!). I have just 6 classes left to this B2, then we move on to C1.

And I got inspired by this forum and finally found a good looking tracking app for my medicine reviewing and studying, there is so much to learn and I really need to dive into it, now that I've finally settled all the excuses real life obstacles further complicating my already full schedule. I really really need progress bars in my life :-D It should go much smoother now, with colourful progress bars to motivate me.
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