Stelle's log (Spanish, Italian, Tagalog)

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Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish, with forays into Esperanto, Tagalog, Italian)

Postby Stelle » Sun Apr 30, 2017 5:35 pm

Oh, and I'd also like to apologize for not responding to anyone's messages in my log over the past few months. I didn't get on to the forum very often, and often wrote updates offline and then just cut and paste them to my log. I'm sorry if I ignored you! It won't happen anymore now that I'm home.
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Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish, with forays into Esperanto, Tagalog, Italian)

Postby Stelle » Thu May 04, 2017 11:16 am

While in Central America, I dabbled a bit in Esperanto. Now that I'm home, I've replaced Esperanto with Italian again. Nothing too serious or strenuous, just 30-40 minutes per day of various online resources: bliubliu for listening, old anki deck to revive what I used to know, duolingo and the corresponding memrise deck. While I'm not yet committed to intensive learning, I did request Italian With Ease from the library again. Last summer I got up to lesson 51 before having to stop. Once the book comes in, I think that I'll review five lessons per day until I'm back to where I used to be.

The best thing about my library is that it allows up to ten renewals of three weeks each, so long as nobody else is waiting for the resource. Luckily for me, it appears that Italian With Ease is not a very popular resource, so I should be able to keep it for as long as I need it.

I have zero interest in splitting my time between Esperanto and Italian, in large part because I use many of the same online resources for both of them. From now until the end of the summer at least, I'm going to focus on Italian as my "learning language". Esperanto will still be there for me someday when I want to start it up again.

As for Spanish, I'm still reading every evening. I've also been listening to podcasts while running/walking - mostly Fallo de Sistema, since it's generally light and easy to follow, making it a good choice for listening while exercising.

J and I have both really been missing our long afternoons in Guatemala, many of which were spent in cafes. So in addition to working on our own things during the week, we're also planning on having one Spanish afternoon per weekend, where we head to a coffee shop, chat in Spanish and then do some "homework".
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Whodathunkitz
Green Belt
Posts: 416
Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2016 7:40 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (N), Cebuano (basic spoken daily, best L2), Spanish (beginner, but can read), Esperanto (beginner and not maintained). Sometimes dabble with Dutch, Serbian, Slovak, Czech, German and Arabic.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5133&start=30
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish, with forays into Esperanto, Tagalog, Italian)

Postby Whodathunkitz » Thu May 04, 2017 4:50 pm

I've got a fever at the moment so please excuse any ramblings.

Tagalog is an eventual target but cebuano comes first... I don't want to risk interference.

And even then spanish is current priority.

For cebuano, mormon materials, Memrise and prosody (repetitions, almost chanting a phrase 50 times) has helped. Plus 'ing a ong' for ng letter.

I try and speak it in the house and as a secret Language for parents which probably means the kid will want to learn it to spite us. I speak to him in cebuano / bisaya and often use the wrong language when reading bedtime stories.

Wife not a teacher!

Good tagalog resources?
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2018 Cebuano SuperChallenge 1 May 2018-Dec 2019
: 150 / 600 SC days:
: 6 / 1250 Read (aim daily 2000 words):
: 299 / 9000 Video (aim daily 15 minutes):

User avatar
Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish, with forays into Esperanto, Tagalog, Italian)

Postby Stelle » Thu May 04, 2017 9:28 pm

Whodathunkitz wrote:For cebuano, mormon materials, Memrise and prosody (repetitions, almost chanting a phrase 50 times) has helped. Plus 'ing a ong' for ng letter.

I try and speak it in the house and as a secret Language for parents which probably means the kid will want to learn it to spite us. I speak to him in cebuano / bisaya and often use the wrong language when reading bedtime stories.

Wife not a teacher!

Good tagalog resources?


I hope you feel better soon!

My husband's not a teacher either. He hasn't been terribly excited about me learning Tagalog. He's not against it by any means, but he doesn't really see the point. That said, he did mention once that he wanted me to learn so that we'd have a secret language while traveling abroad.

My favourite resource is actually a textbook: Elementary Tagalog (Tara Mag-Tagalog Tayo) by Tuttle Publishing, along with the corresponding workbook. I made it up to lesson 11 of 24ish before stopping, although I do plan on starting again someday. As a resource it isn't perfect, because the audio clips don't have full transcriptions, but I used to transcribe them myself and then have J check them for me. Still, the book moves along at a reasonable pace, there's a decent amount of audio (voiced by people who are neither shrill nor grating - yeah, I'm looking at you, discarded Teach Yourself Filipino), there are reading comprehension texts, and the workbook is quite useful. It's meant for a classroom, though, so a lot of the oral activities require a buddy.

I also really truly enjoyed the supplementary online resources from Rosetta Stone. (I'd better duck now before someone whips a dictionary at my head for saying something positive about RS.) Really, though, the online texts with full audio were interesting and just the right amount of challenging, and the tutoring (30 minutes at a time) was fantastic. I would pay for just those two resources on their own if I could. I finished the whole RS program and it was...ok. Not fantastic, not as terrible as some people make it out to be. But the online texts (four for each level, if I recall correctly) and the tutoring were really top notch.

Memrise is so-so. The decks that I used had a lot of mistakes in them.

I had a few good conversational tutors on italki, but I didn't use them to the best of my ability when I was booking sessions with them. I was just too tired at the time!

GLOSS is quite good. I haven't done a lot of the lessons, but I was able to apply what I learned almost immediately.

When I do start learning Tagalog again, my plan is to go through the whole Elementary Tagalog textbook/workbook from the start.
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Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish, with forays into Esperanto, Tagalog, Italian)

Postby Stelle » Sun May 28, 2017 6:08 pm

So I abandoned this log and started new one here:

https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5802

...but then I changed my mind, abandoned my new log, and came back here.

So...hello!

My current project: learn as much Italian as I can during the current six-week challenge, while maintaining my Spanish and ignoring my Tagalog. So far so good, especially on the third part of my goal.

I'm going to move back to weekly-ish updates, because the daily six-week challenge updates were getting a bit painful.

So here's where I'm currently at in Italian:

* I've read two Roald Dahl books in the past few weeks, Gli Sporcelli and James e la Pesca Gigante. I didn't particularly like either one of them, and I've realized that the only Roald Dahl book that I can recommend without reservation is The Witches (and possibly Matilda, although I haven't read that one since I was eight years old so I'd have to revisit it first).

* I'm currently reading a Geronimo Stilton book, and absolutely loving it! It's funny and interesting despite being a children's book. And I love that this series was originally written in Italian before being translated to English and becoming popular in North America.

* I finished lesson 54 of the passive wave of Assimil Italian With Ease, and lesson 3 of the active wave. I had to return the book to the library because someone else requested, but I put a new hold on it. So I'm currently in an unwanted three-week break from Assimil.

* I listen to native media at least four or five times a week, usually America 24 (which is almost exclusively news about Trump at the moment). I've also listened to several episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation dubbed in Italian. I think that a binge-watch would really help bump up my comprehension skills, but things are busy now, so I'm only watching one or two episodes per week.

* I'm about halfway through the Duolingo tree and the corresponding Memrise course. I'm also slowly working my way through the Language Transfer course.

* I have a workbook, Italian Grammar Drills. It's both useful and a bit frustrating, because there are a lot of translation exercises and my active Italian vocabulary is still pretty small. It's good practice, though, and it's definitely helping me build my active vocabulary.

* I've booked five 30-minute sessions with an Italian italki tutor, starting next Saturday.

...and Spanish

I'm about halfway through Huésped (The Host translated into Spanish). While I actually quite like the story, the translation is very weak. There are a lot of typos that I've noticed, which means that there are probably more that I haven't noticed. Worst of all, there's a scene where a character shortens another character's name from "Viajera" to "Wanda". It made sense in English, where "Wanderer" became "Wanda". But why wouldn't the translator have come up with a nickname that actually made sense in Spanish? "Viajera" could have become "Vera", but no...the translator decided to keep the name "Wanda", which made that scene in the book completely ridiculous and confusing.

I've waffled back and forth on whether or not I should just abandon the book, but the story is interesting and it's easy to read, so I'll keep going until the end. But I definitely wouldn't recommend this translation to anyone.

I've been talking to Auri, my Spanish tutor, weekly. We were talking today about what I should do to bump my Spanish up to the next level. We both agree that some combination of writing and Gramatica de Uso del Español C1-C2 is in order.
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Spoonary
Blue Belt
Posts: 876
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 3:45 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Español (Adv), Italiano (Int), Esperanto (I try)
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish and Italian, with forays into Esperanto and Tagalog)

Postby Spoonary » Sun May 28, 2017 9:10 pm

Buona sera Stelle! Welcome back!

I'm so happy to see that you're focusing on Italian now. I am hoping that your never-ending enthusiasm will persuade me to study the language more actively than I have ever done. I really want to make progress but I am just not as disciplined as you when it comes to actually studying a language. You should know as well that if you ever want any company, I would definitely be interested in another group read-along, especially in Italian :P
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Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish and Italian, with forays into Esperanto and Tagalog)

Postby Stelle » Mon May 29, 2017 10:55 am

Spoonary wrote:Buona sera Stelle! Welcome back!

I'm so happy to see that you're focusing on Italian now. I am hoping that your never-ending enthusiasm will persuade me to study the language more actively than I have ever done. I really want to make progress but I am just not as disciplined as you when it comes to actually studying a language. You should know as well that if you ever want any company, I would definitely be interested in another group read-along, especially in Italian :P

Thanks Spoon! I'm still reading kids' books right now. I can highly recommend Geronimo Stilton! I have a copy of Io Non Ho Paura, which I think will be my first "real" book. Have you read it?

As for active study and enthusiasm...the trick is to turn language study into the thing you do while procrastinating. I'm an expert procrastinator. Ha!
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Spoonary
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Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Español (Adv), Italiano (Int), Esperanto (I try)
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish and Italian, with forays into Esperanto and Tagalog)

Postby Spoonary » Mon May 29, 2017 12:19 pm

Stelle wrote:I have a copy of Io Non Ho Paura, which I think will be my first "real" book. Have you read it?

I bought a copy of that in Florence and haven't opened it yet. That settles it. You just let me know when you feel ready and we can go on that adventure together! :)
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User avatar
Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish and Italian, with forays into Esperanto and Tagalog)

Postby Stelle » Mon May 29, 2017 9:31 pm

Spoonary wrote:I bought a copy of that in Florence and haven't opened it yet. That settles it. You just let me know when you feel ready and we can go on that adventure together! :)

How does July sound? I'm going to spend the month of June reading Geronimo Stilton books. Looking forward to a read-along! :D
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Whodathunkitz
Green Belt
Posts: 416
Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2016 7:40 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (N), Cebuano (basic spoken daily, best L2), Spanish (beginner, but can read), Esperanto (beginner and not maintained). Sometimes dabble with Dutch, Serbian, Slovak, Czech, German and Arabic.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5133&start=30
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Re: Stelle's log (mostly Spanish and Italian, with forays into Esperanto and Tagalog)

Postby Whodathunkitz » Tue May 30, 2017 6:40 am

How do you find the language transfer course?

I'm doing the Spanish one and I like it (31 of 90).

I haven't done many courses, so I don't have much to compare it to. I like the fact it's listening, interactive, has a real student (competition when joining in/answering) and it explains WHY something happens and links to other languages.
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2018 Cebuano SuperChallenge 1 May 2018-Dec 2019
: 150 / 600 SC days:
: 6 / 1250 Read (aim daily 2000 words):
: 299 / 9000 Video (aim daily 15 minutes):


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