PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

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PeterMollenburg
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PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby PeterMollenburg » Tue May 17, 2022 7:00 am

Previous logs:

https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16398

----------------------------
The following links are to the same log, but at various stages:
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=784&start=1880

After a brief foray into Arabic and Dutch, and still realising I’ve not reached C1, a renewed course mission begins on P147:
2019 course revival mission

PM's 1000 hours of French in 254 days to C1 (and maybe C2) exam in November 2018 begins on page 111

2018 officially begins here on page 105

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Here's my new log. I'll return to edit later.

In the meantime throw a bat over another bat while the first bat is holding a cricket bat and the second bat a baseball bat. That's where I'm at. Like for realio. Eat a burger before you eat it an' that.

Edit: Where's my face at?
Last edited by PeterMollenburg on Wed Aug 31, 2022 5:27 am, edited 5 times in total.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue May 17, 2022 5:07 pm

Exactly what I was thinking! :)
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Le Baron
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 17, 2022 5:09 pm

You know what they say about using Twitter when drunk.
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PeterMollenburg
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby PeterMollenburg » Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:54 am

May 2022 Summary

I took this month rather casually and it shows. I was too unwell in the beginning and then I just plodded along. Being very busy in general if I don't push to study it doesn't happen and the time is filled with other activities.

Norwegian
23 hours, 14 minutes

There were many days I simply didn't study. Other times I'd pick up some Norwegian course books I'd stopped using and revised the material I'd covered in order to not forget what I'd already learned previously.

I'm not losing motivation, I just needed a reset month after April was too intense. My physical exercise has dropped right off as well. I'm working towards a balance (again). Norwegian learning time included a small amount of TV, otherwise it was Pimsleur at times in the car or working with courses at home at my desk (once or twice at work too). I finished Pimsleur for the second time as I'd already done so a couple years back. I only have Level 1 - lessons 1 through 30 and after completing it all I redid the last 5 lessons, then the last 10. I'm still yet to do the reading lessons as I want to refer to the reading booklet while doing so (and this probably isn't advisable while driving!). I've recently added some more audio courses to my phone in preparation for new content.

For courses at home I've been using Le norvégien en 20 leçons which really hasn't captured my interest that much yet, and Learn Norwegian by Sverre Klouman which I find quite good. While I miss doing 7 courses simultaneously (yes, really) I don't want to return to the intensity of April.

On the other hand, my copy of The Story of Nils in French arrived (L'histoire de Nils). I'm considering returning to this course, but using the French version predominantly, either instead of the two above or in place of Le norvégien en 20 leçons. We'll see.

I started watching the second season of Beforeigners,



but had playback issues and was too tired to persevere on more than one occasion. Watching such shows really isn't going to do that much to help my Norwegian at this stage. Still, it's good to hear some 'real Norwegian' as it's spoken at normal pace etc as opposed to none of the kind.

I actually switched over to a series in Faeroese set in the Faeroe Islands called Trom. An average sort of murder mystery with really dramatic scenery. This place has intrigued me for a while, being so cold and isolated and with dramatic island scenery against a cold, wild sea. It was worth watching just for the scenery. I did hear a number of Norwegian cognates too.



Spanish
5 hours, 55 minutes

This was all reading aloud with my kids.

Dutch
10 hours, 59 minutes.

This included 8 hours, 36 min of reading with the kids. The rest was a little TV. I don't think I studied anything, but I'm not certain as I don't do the breakdown as thoroughly with languages other than French. I don't need to know that information.

As well as a little of the Dutch news I watched a couple of episodes of two different series in which Dutch families move abroad for a new life in another country. One of the episodes I chose was over ten years old but it was set in Norway. Still, as much as Norway intrigues me, it's not France. If I had my choice of countries to live in based on language, food, scenery and climate France would be first, the Netherlands or Spain second and Norway fourth. If politics enters the picture then France loses ground pretty rapidly... I'll say no more. ;) If you can understand Dutch, here's a little clip of perhaps the very first episode of Droomhuis Gezocht



French
19 hours, 28 minutes

Breaking it down this included just over 9 hours of reading aloud with the kids and 9 hours of TV watching myself, plus a little reading and a little listening to podcasts.

I've had a couple of recent conversations with Francophones. One was with someone I've met before. Not a native speaker either but married to a Moroccan. The conversation went okay I guess, but I found it disjointed. It was likely her Czech accent (I don't have an accent! - see below) coupled with the both of us watching and interacting with our kids while trying to hold a conversation.

Another conversation with real life genuine born in France French woman. I noticed the contrast in accents between hers and myself perhaps more than I've ever noticed with another native French speaker before. My wife even noticed it this time. The woman had a very nasal accent which emphasised the contrast of accents, but no more than many a French person (but not all) would have. She could not pick I was Australian born but was wondering where my accent was from (in the Francophone sphere). I was slightly disappointed that an accent was noticed, but just moved forward with the idea to try and improve on it but also being okay with where I am at.

I recognise that my accent has drifted somewhat in recent years I think to become less French to a certain degree (mainly the nasal sound that often carries I feel beyond nasal vowels for many natives and surrounds other components/syllables of speech - it's like the French uvula is often constantly lowered, like their constantly in nasal mode given how often nasal vowels feature). I think my prosody is a bit off at times too being more anglo and used to placing stress on/within each word. I think I could do better at running my sentences smoothly together and place less stress (although I think I've done well to diminish it a good deal, but not always, as it's still there on more words than it should be).

I've been thinking about how I manage French progress when focusing on more than one language, with one of the other languages being the main focus. This time that's Norwegian. I was thinking after reaching 1000hrs of Norwegian perhaps I could do 500 hours of French with a particular focus. Areas of focus could be extensive reading, watching (series/films), podcast listening, translation work and working with music (songs) to decipher and learn lyrics.

On the music thing there have been a few artists that I've really been quite interested in and listened to a fair amount over the years. I could progress through them in order of my perceived difficulty. Here's a kind of roughly calculated order:

Camille - The first French music I listened to a lot, many years back before I started learning French properly.



Stromae



OrelSan (with Stromae) (really like this song a lot lately)



Louane - I listened to a lot of her music with the family a couple years ago, still occasionally





Vianney - From a couple years back up to now, really enjoy his style. This one's with Joyce Jonathan, great song.








Féfé - Listened to his music near the start of my French intensive studies. Not much for a while now.







Vianney and Big Flo & Oli are my favourites of late. Big flo & Oli. Love these guys. They even have a documentary on Netflix I'm yet to watch. It reminds me of my hip-hop days in the 90s (2pac, Heavy D, Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, Salt n Pepa, Notorious B.I.G. Jay-Z, Nas, Kriss Kross, Will Smith, Warren G, The Twinz, Snoop Dogg, Spearhead and so on). I used to sit down and write their lyrics out, or learn from listening and learn to rap them. This is the height of my interest in the English language. Here I appreciate it thoroughly. A couple friends of mine and myself made a mock rap album early 00's as well. It was quite rough, but a lot of fun. All this reminds of the beauty and skill of rhyming, creativity of rap. I moved away from it a lot (all music) when I put my energy into French learning. I also got tired of some artists and their boasting. Big flo & Oli are down to earth, creative, skilled and to sound absolutely cliché, they keep it real. To learn a lot of these lyrics, I feel would really give my French a boost on one of the 500 hour French focus missions. Here are some Big flo & Oli clips:














iguanamon wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:... while it's been high time for me to read lots and watch/listen to a ridiculous amount of content, I haven't done (enough) of it, still. It comes down to time now. I don't have enough of it because I'm busier than ever and I've given in to studying other languages. There is logic behind that decision, since by learning other languages I can incorporate them into my daily life with my family and they will grow with the family without setting aside dedicated study time for myself. ...


The last post I wrote wasn't written with you in mind, PM. It was a general reaction to what I'm seeing amongst folks new to language-learning these days. Having seen a bit of your life from afar, I don't see how you have any time at all! Time is the enemy of all of us who learn languages on our own. There is never enough. I greatly admire what you are doing with your children. They will certainly gain a good grounding in other languages and gain a unique perspective in an overwhelmingly monolingual culture.


Yeah I wasn't certain you had me in mind, iguanamon, but was aware you were addressing others, particularly many relatively new to language learnning. However I felt compelled to respond as I really feel your advice is like gold and is something that took me a long time to recognise the value in (i.e. watching series etc). Thank you for your kind words ;) And yes it's quite the challenge finding time for everything. Usually if I do something, even a little thing out of things that must be done, such as my fiddling with Norwegian language files for a few hours the other day, I bite into something else (language study, exercise, etc).
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Jun 01, 2022 5:33 am

PeterMollenburg wrote:
Dutch
10 hours, 59 minutes.

This included 8 hours, 36 min of reading with the kids. The rest was a little TV. I don't think I studied anything, but I'm not certain as I don't do the breakdown as thoroughly with languages other than French. I don't need to know that information.

As well as a little of the Dutch news I watched a couple of episodes of two different series in which Dutch families move abroad for a new life in another country. One of the episodes I chose was over ten years old but it was set in Norway.
I watched a good Flemish mini-series recently, Blackout.
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby PeterMollenburg » Wed Jun 01, 2022 11:02 am

DaveAgain wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:
Dutch
10 hours, 59 minutes.

This included 8 hours, 36 min of reading with the kids. The rest was a little TV. I don't think I studied anything, but I'm not certain as I don't do the breakdown as thoroughly with languages other than French. I don't need to know that information.

As well as a little of the Dutch news I watched a couple of episodes of two different series in which Dutch families move abroad for a new life in another country. One of the episodes I chose was over ten years old but it was set in Norway.
I watched a good Flemish mini-series recently, Blackout.


Thanks DaveAgain. I haven't seen that one, but thanks for the recommendation.

Speaking of Flemish shows, I recently watched this Dutch movie again from the Netherlands called Ferry and the associated series Undercover which takes place further south in Flanders, and so most of the accents change to Belgian/Flemish in the series. I could follow the film quite well (NL audio, NL subtitles), but I had seen it before. However, I had to turn on French subtitles (but continued with Dutch audio) with the series as I found the Belgian accents too hard to decipher at times. I went back to watch the movie and recap of season 1 as I couldn't recall exactly what had happened and a new season (3) was out that was keen to watch, as well as season 2 which I had started but not completed. Thus I watched the movie, and then the three seasons. I probably preferred the film Ferry and season 1 of Undercover most. I felt like season 2 and 3 of Undercover got a little bit tedious and maybe too inventive, but I'd still recommend them for those interested in Dutch/Flemish movies/series.

The movie:



The series (season 1):

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Jun 01, 2022 6:34 pm

Including lots of videos is very helpful as a guide to what's happening then and now. Thanks.
And thanks as well for reminding me that I have an account with Lyricstraining, on which one of my favs was .
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PeterMollenburg
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby PeterMollenburg » Wed Jun 01, 2022 9:29 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Including lots of videos is very helpful as a guide to what's happening then and now. Thanks.
And thanks as well for reminding me that I have an account with Lyricstraining, on which one of my favs was .


Hey Morkenburg,

Yeah, Louane has quite a few catchy songs. I've never used Lyricstraining but might as well give it a go some day when I decide to focus on music/songs for language learning.

Since you appreciate the videos, here's a catchy Dutch song I listen to occasionally:

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri Jun 03, 2022 12:28 am

Yes, a good, catchy tune. I liked the monumental sandwich and the critics who came by in the SUV. Thanks for that. :)
But though Dutch may be a fairly close relative of English I understood nary a word of it. ;)
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Re: PM's Multilingual Family Adventures in a Monolingual Wasteland

Postby golyplot » Fri Jun 03, 2022 2:01 pm

I watched season 1 of Undercover back in the day, but decided not to watch s2 due to hearing that they killed off one of the main characters. It seems like s1 is a good place to end things.

One thing I found interesting is that they subtitled the German, French, English, Spanish, etc. but there is an episode in Poland where none of the Polish is subtitled for some reason. Maybe it's meant to show that the main character is just as lost as we are.


By the way, there was another Flemish series that I liked on Netflix back in the day (Hotel Beau Sejour), but sadly, it's no longer on Netflix (US).
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