Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, bits of French)

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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 07, 2019 10:55 am

I am getting back into the habit now. Being back at work helps with that for sure. For my Romance languages I'm just sticking to a mostly-input method and trying to keep that up, and any more intensive work I can add to that is a bonus. For Greek I've been doing an Assimil lesson around two out of every three days, which is better than planned. There's talk of a return trip to Greece in April or May... Finishing Assimil by then could be a realistic goal?

I also signed up for Amazon Prime - I just needed a parcel quickly, but thought I'd see what their streaming has to offer too - and am watching a recent Greek drama, Miss Violence, on it. I struggle to find modern Greek films anywhere else for love or for money. From a quick look it seems that Amazon might have a better foreign movie selection than Netflix which has exactly zero Greek ones, a tiny handful in Italian, and more quantity but little quality in Spanish. Netflix's strength these days is series, of which there are plenty in Spanish and a few in Italian and French. In the long run, paying for both seems excessive considering I'm not a heavy user, so over this month I'll have a better look at Amazon's offering and try to make a choice. Giving more money to Amazon doesn't exactly thrill me, but then I'm not always keen on Netflix's agenda either.

I really need to pay very focused attention to get any language-learning benefit from a Greek film; as soon as I lose concentration I just tune the audio out and read the English subs, and my level's far too low for no subs. But then I've said in the past that even with languages I know well I benefit from concentrating properly: it's the difference between just following the story and being aware of the real subtleties in usage. And I admit that, despite these good intentions, much of my Italian and Spanish listening is done at the same time as other activities: work, warming up for guitar practice, household tasks. It's certainly better than nothing and has its place, but it's limiting and could be one of the reasons I feel on a plateau. Aside from just not enough total time, of course, but I always argue that input's not just about the hours.

I've been listening to a bit more RAI Radio 2, which has a lot of more conversational and less scripted but still clearly-spoken shows. They can get a bit too inane to focus on, especially as background listening, but again making the effort to stay concentrated would probably benefit me.

Picked up La verdad sobre el caso Savolta again, after putting it on pause a few months ago to focus on easier material. It's feeling a little less challenging than before, although still too literary to really be helpful at my current level. Worth finishing for interest and culture though, and then I'll go back to simpler books.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby garyb » Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:07 pm

I've been feeling a bit more enthusiasm for languages again, but unfortunately not had lots of time as I'm currently trying to buy a property and that's taking over my life...

This year I'm trying to implement some ideas from a book (The Miracle Morning, which I actually discovered through Italiano Automatico as Alberto recommends it) and part of that is writing a journal every day. I've taken this as an opportunity to get back into daily target-language writing. Usually alternate days in Italian and Spanish, but not strictly.

Greek is on-and-off as always. Still not even finished that one film, so the Prime subscription isn't looking like great value so far!

I've finished Elite, which I enjoyed overall despite the story feeling so contrived and fake... like every Spanish series ever, it seems. At least they kept this one short and conclusive rather than dragging the plot out and making it even more ridiculous and unbelievable as they usually do. I've returned to La casa de las flores, which is fun because its silliness is intentional and self-aware.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby Expugnator » Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:18 pm

I've heard about the book before. Maybe it turns out as a good read in French. I'm already a morning person myself (I wake up at 5:20), so maybe I'll learn that I'm doing some things right as well as get to improve others.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby garyb » Tue Jan 15, 2019 2:32 pm

Expugnator wrote:I've heard about the book before. Maybe it turns out as a good read in French. I'm already a morning person myself (I wake up at 5:20), so maybe I'll learn that I'm doing some things right as well as get to improve others.


It's a short book and worth a read although (in English at least) a bit fluffy, cheesy, and sales-ey. Cost me £0.99 on Amazon so can't complain. If you look up reviews you should get a general idea of what the author is proposing. I'm not much of a morning person, going from waking up at 8 to 7:30 to fit in the routine is proving hard enough for me, but I do find it a positive start to the day and a good opportunity to fit in things I always intend to do but otherwise never find the time for.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:31 pm

Similar story to last week: I've had some motivation but not much time. A few recent discussions on here plus consideration of my current language use opportunities have made me keen again to take my Italian to a higher level. It's the only language I get to use even semi-regularly, and I'd just like to finally try to take something closer to a C1 level rather than having a few semi-fluent, good-but-with-many-gaps languages. At the moment I'm getting a fairly similar amount of input in each of my Romance languages, and I'm just planning to prioritise Italian a bit more at the expense of the others as I still believe that lots of input is the main key to advancing. Mostly Italian Some Of The Time, I suppose. Other than that I'll just keep up the chatting, writing, and speaking when I can.

One issue with Italian is that I don't really have a big list of "go-to" resources. It can take a bit of time and effort just to seek out something to watch, read, or listen to, and that stops me doing it in the first place especially when I have plenty stuff in the other languages within easy reach. Partly just because it's a smaller language and the quality stuff can be harder to dig out, but there's enough out there. To solve that, I think I just need to have some kind of "queue" of podcasts, series, films, YouTube channels, articles, and books, so when it's Italian input time there's always something to dive straight into. Usually I find something, finish it, but then have nothing to move onto.

I've also exchanged messages about a potential Skype exchange, but haven't managed to follow up on it yet. Speaking more frequently again would be nice, if I can make the time. My consistent exchange partner simply doesn't have time for calls, although we do text-chat plenty.

Greek: A couple more Assimil lessons - up to 31 now I think - and a bit more of the film, plus the usual Anki and Duo.

Spanish and French are still in maintenance mode. I still haven't managed to go to that Spanish exchange meetup, and a recent message in the group was basically begging more Spanish-speakers to come because there haven't been enough lately: just a lull, or the beginning of the end already? The whole "language meetup" thing is dying out in general here, which I have mixed feelings about. In the past I went to too many of them and they weren't even that helpful, but at the same time they were good for socialising and I did make some native-speaker friends through them.

On the Amazon Prime front, I've found a couple of Italian films on it and am currently watching a fairly recent drama/comedy, Ti offro da bere. It might be a worthwhile resource, but even compared to Netflix the navigation is awful. It's fine if I already know what I'm looking for, but I just can't find a simple way to list, say, all Italian films. Netflix can kind-of do this.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby garyb » Thu Jan 24, 2019 10:50 am

Obviously it's far too early to say whether my Italian focus is giving results, but what I can say is that it feels great. When trying to actively improve or maintain three non-beginner languages in the limited time I made for them, as well as the inefficiency of dividing that time there was always a kind of mini paradox of choice whenever I did have it: Which language do I work on now, and with which material? It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it all added up and sometimes the effort of making the choice stopped me from working on any. Now the whole process takes much less thought: I just listen to or read or write Italian. I'm finding that I'm actually getting more total input, I'm diving into some of the blogs and Youtube content on diverse subjects that I had bookmarked but never found the time for, and I'm thinking more in the language.

I've started reading a book that was recommended in one of these blogs, Sulla strada giusta by Francesco Grandis. So far it's a very standard "quarter-life-crisis" account of feeling comfortable but stuck in life then finding a passion and realising there's more to life than consumerism, but it's relatable for me and chock-full of words and expressions about everyday life and careers which I'm highlighting for future reference and SRSing.

I am still doing Anki and listening to podcasts in French and Spanish for maintenance, but they're easy enough to keep up with.

I've found a bit more Italian stuff on Amazon just by typing "Italian" into the search. It does the job although I can't help but feel it might not be covering everything. I'm currently watching a film set in Sicily, Mai; so far I can't tell whether it's a serious art film trying far too hard to include every cliché to tick the boxes and please the critics, or a kind of parody of the genre, but it's input and nice eye candy with its beautiful scenery and people.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby StringerBell » Thu Jan 24, 2019 2:38 pm

garyb wrote:I've started reading a book that was recommended in one of these blogs, Sulla strada giusta by Francesco Grandis.


I was very curious about that book after it was mentioned in this Efficacemente article which was a guest post by Francesco Grandis. I was really interested in reading it, and I'm even more interested now that you say it's worth it! (especially from a language learning point of view). Another book recommendation from that website that I made note of was "Resisto Dunque Sono" by Pietro Trabucchi. Have you ever read this, by any chance?

I also had a hard time finding a good source of go-to Italian stuff that I enjoyed. I eventually started using heavily the Efficacemente website as my go-to for Italian reading because there were so many articles, I didn't need to spend hours finding something to read. (I'm sure you've seen me mention it on my log, so I won't pitch it here!). I did enjoy reading those articles, but now that I've read almost every single one, I'm searching for other interesting sites and blogs and not really finding a much. Italian has such a rich history of literature, but I'm not really impressed with the modern media; my husband says he stopped watching and reading Italian stuff 2 decades ago for a reason, and see why. I'm sure there is some good stuff, it's just really hard to find and I'm not having much luck.

One thing you (might) enjoy is a comedy skit-show called Camera Cafe (it's been made in many countries, so if you search, it, you have to specify "Italia"). Each episode is about 5-6 minutes long, so it's convenient when you have a few minutes here or there. There's a fixed camera above a coffee machine in the break room of a company and all the action happens while the characters are there getting their coffee during their break. I watched a few episodes and they were abbastanza divertenti. You can watch them for free through Raiplay.it and there are also episodes on YT:

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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby garyb » Thu Jan 24, 2019 5:15 pm

StringerBell wrote:...
Efficacemente and Camera Café, that's a blast from the past for me! I used both of them in my early days of Italian learning (and the latter in French too) but I suppose I got bored of Efficacemente and forgot about Camera Café, or perhaps it was too challenging at the time so I put it aside. Thanks for the reminder though: I did enjoy it, it's probably a good choice at my current level, and there are hundreds of episodes.

If you've heard of Efficacemente you might already know Psicologia Neurolinguistica, another one I had forgotten about for years but then come across again recently when I saw the author in a Youtube series (Chitarra Facile channel) on the psychology of guitar playing and thought I recognised the face and voice!

Almost all Italians will say that their media is universally crap, but I'd take that with a pinch of salt and say that there is some good stuff. There's some interesting modern cinema and TV, although mostly crime stories, and the industries churn out a lot of silly but watchable material like romantic comedies. Thriller films have become bigger in the last few years. As you say though, it's hard to dig out the diamonds in the rough, and Italian cinema isn't what it once was. I've tried to mention the things I've enjoyed in my log, but I know it's not very easy to search. I've discovered some modern cinema through the annual Italian Film Festival in my city and the blog I Cinemanaci, although actually finding a way to watch many of the titles can be a whole other story.

I'm struggling a bit to find interesting podcasts though. There's nothing like the variety and quality you find in French and Spanish, or if there is it's not evident. I follow a couple of radio shows, but Italian radio tends to be either serious news or inane chat without much in between, and am working through the archives of Lezioni di Musica.

For reading, I haven't built up a proper go-to list, but a few blogs I sometimes read are Bikeitalia (cycling), Nomadi Digitali, Non Sprecare (mix of lifestyle topics), Viaggiare Low Cost and Scappo all'Estero (travel and living abroad; neither are very active now but they have archives), and Oltreuomo (silly humour, but again no longer very active). Other than that, books, occasionally news, and InSegreto for real juvenile/slang language. These days I'm gravitating towards Youtubers rather than blogs as it's become a more active scene, and there's material on most topics I've searched for.

Not come across Resisto Dunque Sono, so thanks for mentioning it, I might check it out!
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 28, 2019 10:59 am

In other blasts from the past, I realised I hadn't seen the latest two episodes of Il commissario Montalbano and have started rectifying that. It's been a few years since I attempted it without subtitles, since I've usually watched it on the BBC and had no choice in the matter, but it's feeling pleasantly easy now aside from a few minor characters with particularly strong accents. That's progress, especially when I've not done any specific work on Sicilian accents. I suppose as general listening comprehension improves you become better at decoding regional varieties too, since not struggling with the standard language frees up some mental capacity.

I've started another thing I had been meaning to do for years: professional development in an L2. I'm working through material for learning recent web programming technologies in Italian, to kill a few birds with one stone: keep my skills up to date, keep up the input, and learn how to talk about my work. Often the thing limiting me from pursuing interests in other languages is just a lack of quality materials compared to those available in English, but these days there are more and more Italian blogs and online courses on coding.

I'm finding more music content on Youtube too, and will check out Cuore di Cioccolato for cooking, thanks again to StringerBell who I think was the first to mention it!

Travel plans: looks like Greece might not be until autumn, but I'd still like to make it to Italy in the spring, so more motivation to focus on Italian.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now some Greek)

Postby rdearman » Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:45 pm

Where are you finding Il commissario Montalbano ??
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