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

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Robierre
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Robierre » Sat Jan 30, 2016 12:52 pm

garyb wrote: Also started reading Voyage au bout de la nuit. I now have two copies due to a mix-up with ordering, so I figured I should start on one of them. Seems quite an easy read so far, and just as well since it's so long.

Voyage was very difficult for me; I wasn't able to read it. :cry: It was three years ago, I wonder if today it would be easier. The problem might be the colloquial French, as Céline was one of the first writers (1930's) introducing the vernacular language in French literature.

PS. Alessandro Baricco una volta disse: "uno che non l'ha letto - l'invidia e' totale, hanno ancora da leggere il Voyage, sono privileggiati". :mrgreen:
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:23 am

Serpent wrote:The missing element might be linguistics ;) Also Spanish-Italian parallel texts. although to be fair I also had Latin when branching out in the other direction. well, it's also useful for Spanish/Portuguese, but not that much maybe.


That's a little meaningless, "linguistics" is a massive subject area and much of it has little relevance to practical second-language learning. I did a couple of linguistics courses at university, mostly relavant to computer science (generative grammars and things like that) and didn't find it too interesting, and I've also read stuff like the Loom of Languages about how Romance languages branched out from Vulgar Latin. The parts about spelling changes between the languages were useful, at least for understanding, and might be worth a re-read now that I'm working on Spanish. It's no magic bullet though.

Parallel texts might be useful. Using the Italian-base Assimil for Spanish was certainly helpful for seeing both the similarities and differences, and it fits in with the idea of exploiting the similarities while still seeing Spanish as its own language. I have experimented with L2/L3 bilingual subtitles in the past and I found two foreign languages at once to be too much to deal with in real time, but for reading I can go at my own pace so that isn't such a problem. It's a good idea, I'll look out for Spanish-Italian texts, do you know of any that have relatively everyday language?

Still, the missing element is simply time. I'm not spending much on Spanish and that's why progress is slow.

Robierre wrote:Voyage was very difficult for me; I wasn't able to read it. :cry: It was three years ago, I wonder if today it would be easier. The problem might be the colloquial French, as Céline was one of the first writers (1930's) introducing the vernacular language in French literature.


I'd imagine it should be easier now. I think the colloquial language is the reason it's not difficult for me. Aside from a few old-fashioned words it doesn't feel too dated and has quite a conversational feel.


Not much to report from the weekend. I was playing a gig in another city and then went to a party when I came back; some Spanish and Italian speakers had been at the party but had mostly left by the time I arrived. Missing out on practising one hobby because I was practising another, it's a hard life ;). I did watch a few films though:

- Amer, that I mentioned before. Again not my thing and very little dialogue, just a few lines of French and also a few of Italian at the start.
- Los ojos de Julia: saw the rest of this horror/thriller, I liked it and it definitely held my attention but watching it before going to bed was a bad idea.
- Septimo: one that I wanted to see at the Spanish film festival last year but didn't manage. I assumed it was Spanish but it's actually Argentinian. I'm not very familiar with the Spanish from there but it seemed quite easy to understand, just a bit of unfamiliar slang/swearwords and use of "vos" instead of "tú" which at this point is one of these things I only need to understand rather than use. The film has good Spanish and English subtitles. It's no masterpiece but it's quite watchable and has lots of conversational dialogue.

No Italian films or TV, just some YouTube stuff, like a guy talking about guitar pedals.

Other news: one of these times has come when all my Skype contacts have become too busy or stopped responding to me. I'll wait and see how things go at home and socially, whether I'll have enough opportunity to speak or I'll need to look into tutors yet again, or just work on Spanish for a bit. I've definitely been in a Spanish mood for the last few days.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Serpent » Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:50 pm

Yeah, I mostly meant specifically Romance philology or comparative linguistics :)
Erm I'm not aware of anything but I haven't really sought it out either. Progetto Lingua books have great glossaries in English, French, Spanish and German, but I don't think they've published any full parallel texts. Of course there's HP and LOTR and books translated from one language into the other... I've done Spanish-Italian LR at some point, for example.
BTW I don't necessarily mean Spanish-Italian parallel texts, but also Spanish-English and Spanish-French :)
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Ogrim » Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:59 pm

garyb wrote:A part of me believes that with my related languages I deserve an easy ride and shouldn't have to put in the hard work, so I'm trying to "painlessly" improve my listening comprehension, complaining when something is too difficult to understand, and procrastinating on active skills, perhaps even hoping that with some input and practice they'll take care of themselves. Whenever there's a discussion on related languages I make the point that the discount mostly just applies to the beginner stage, and to get beyond that you still need to make a lot of effort. So I should practice what I preach, eh?


My experience from studying several Romance languages in parallel is that you need to pay even more attention to the differences. You do get a lot "for free", but that is mostly in terms of vocabulary and basic grammar structures. I learnt Spanish before Italian, and I really had to work hard on my Italian to make it sound like proper Italian and not "españoliano". Writing was a bit easier because I took time to check syntex, morphology etc., but I remember my Italian teacher corrected quite a few spagnolismi.

Also beware of falsi amici. Here is a nice list of the most common ones.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Tue Feb 02, 2016 9:38 am

Ogrim wrote:My experience from studying several Romance languages in parallel is that you need to pay even more attention to the differences. You do get a lot "for free", but that is mostly in terms of vocabulary and basic grammar structures. I learnt Spanish before Italian, and I really had to work hard on my Italian to make it sound like proper Italian and not "españoliano". Writing was a bit easier because I took time to check syntex, morphology etc., but I remember my Italian teacher corrected quite a few spagnolismi.

Also beware of falsi amici. Here is a nice list of the most common ones.


Again I agree. I've seen plenty "españoliano" on the forum from people who are good at Spanish and so think they can pick up Italian quickly. Nothing wrong with that if you accept it for what it is, it's a natural phase when learning a related language and I'm aware that I make Italian-influenced mistakes in my Spanish, but indeed one has to break out of it sooner or later to reach a higher level. Especially for productive skills. I remember an Italian guy telling me that it's quite rare for Italians to get very good at Spanish: they often get quite good but then never quite break away from Italian and it limits them, while Germans for example often reach a higher level because they see it as a separate language from the start.

The falsi amici list is useful, although it took me a little while to figure out how to read it!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:42 am

Ho letto che Netflix ha deciso di porre un freno all'uso delle VPN, quindi dovrei sfruttarlo finché posso! Il servizio è disponibile in Italia ormai da qualche mese e ci volevo dare un'occhiata prima o poi. La scelta di film italiani non è vasta, ce ne sono una trentina, ma rispetto alla decina presente nel catalogo britannico non c'è male. E molti hanno sottotitoli italiani, sempre un bonus. Sono soprattutto film comici moderni, il mio vizio segreto ;).

I read that Netflix have decided to clamp down on VPN use, so I should make the most of it while I can! The service has been available in Italy for a few months now and I was wanting to check it out sooner or later. The choice of Italian films isn't huge, there are thirty or so, but compared to the dozen in the UK catalogue it's not bad. And many have Italian subtitles, always a bonus. They're mostly modern comedies, my guilty pleasure ;).

Sì, ho detto che adesso voglio vedermi più film di qualità, ma questo non vuol dire limitarmi ai generi più seri, a volte ho voglia di qualcosa di leggero e una bella comedia ci sta. Come ogni genere ce n'è di buono e di meno buono. Dei film disponibili ho già visto qualcuno ma di altri non avevo sentito parlare e alcuni mi sembrano decenti. Ieri ho iniziato a guardare Tutti i santi giorni e finora mi piace, mantiene la mia attenzione. I protagonisti mi piacciono, lui è un tipo colto che legge i classici e lei è una musicista carina. Come ci si aspetta di un film del genere, è pieno di linguaggio colloquiale.

Yes, I said that now I want to watch more quality films, but this doesn't mean limiting myself to the more serious genres, sometimes I feel like something light and a nice comedy is what I need. Like any genre there's good and less good stuff. Of the available films I've already seen a few but I hadn't heard of others and some seem decent. Yesterday I started watching "Every Blessed Day" and so far I like it, it's holding my attention. I like the main characters, he's an educated type who reads the classics and she's a cute musician. As you expect from a film of the kind, it's full of colloquial language.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Wed Feb 03, 2016 10:18 am

Further update to the last post, I also discovered that there's some interesting Spanish and French stuff available in the Italian Netflix catalogue that's not in the UK one. With Italian subtitles, of course, and often you can choose between original audio and Italian dubbing. Now I'm curious: I wonder if there's more Italian and Spanish stuff in the French catalogue, or more international stuff in general in the US one than the UK one. All the more reason to take advantage of this VPN thing while it's still possible.

Finished Tutti i santi giorni and I'm not sure I still feel the same sympathy towards the characters, she's a bit crazy and he's a bit spineless, but what do you expect from that kind of film? It was still decent by the standards of the genre. With modern comedy/drama, I find that if the IMDB average rating is over 6 then it's generally enjoyable enough.

Started El orfanato, Spanish with Italian subs. As I said, I've tried L3 with L2 subs before and it was difficult. I have to concentrate in order to listen to the Spanish rather than just reading the Italian. I think it'll be helpful though, for seeing the similarities and differences.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:58 am

El Orfanato was quite good, I got the hang of the Spanish audio with Italian subs. It'll probably feel more natural if I do it with more films, it's just strange at first.

Watched Celda 211, which is one of the names that always comes up when I ask for Spanish film recommendations. It has very accurate Spanish subs, and English ones, so I did the bilingual thing again. The language is a little difficult, as one would expect from a film set in a prison. Quite a bit of slang and colloquial forms I hadn't come across before, like "para" contracting to "pa" or even further like "p'acá", but I'll learn all these in time. It's set in Spain but interestingly there's a Columbian gang in the prison so you get to hear some of their Spanish too.

I met my Italian temporary flatmate and her boyfriend. She prefers to speak Italian and was relieved that I know it (her English seems decent but she doesn't seem very at ease in it, shame for her but great for me ;)), while her boyfriend has a very high level in English. So far so good, they seem nice.

For a few days I've had a cold and in particular a sore throat, so I can't speak very much. Tonight I was planning to go to the international meetup and hopefully speak all my languages but I think I'll have to give that a miss. Looks like it's going to be an input-heavy weekend whether I like it or not!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Exasperated » Fri Feb 05, 2016 10:42 am

Hey Gary, It's been really interesting reading through your log - I always like hearing about people balancing multiple related languages, particularly in that B1-C1 range. And I definitely enjoy the additional analysis and thought you put into your posts.

I was also wondering about the comments you made awhile back about feeling the need to justify learning Italian - is this something that you experience often when you've chatted with natives? As in they prefer not to speak Italian with you, or they simply question your motivation in doing so? Aside from finding the entire concept of English natives more so than others struggling to keep the conversation in the target language interesting, I was also curious as to how you found the Italians compared to the notoriously challenging French in this regard?
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:15 pm

Exasperated wrote:Hey Gary, It's been really interesting reading through your log - I always like hearing about people balancing multiple related languages, particularly in that B1-C1 range. And I definitely enjoy the additional analysis and thought you put into your posts.

I was also wondering about the comments you made awhile back about feeling the need to justify learning Italian - is this something that you experience often when you've chatted with natives? As in they prefer not to speak Italian with you, or they simply question your motivation in doing so? Aside from finding the entire concept of English natives more so than others struggling to keep the conversation in the target language interesting, I was also curious as to how you found the Italians compared to the notoriously challenging French in this regard?


Thanks Exasperated, glad you're enjoying my log. Yeah I get that very commonly with Italians, it was mostly them I had in mind when I started the thread on "Why are you speaking our language?", I talked about it a bit more there. In some cases they prefer not to speak it with me, sometimes they don't mind but just find it strange.

Very roughly speaking I'd say that maybe a quarter of the Italians I meet are happy to speak Italian with me from the start (like typical Spanish natives), a quarter simply refuse and don't take my efforts seriously (like typical French natives), and the remaining half are reluctant at first but just need some convincing, like seeing that I can keep up with the conversation or being told by another Italian that I have a decent level. This is all based on Italians abroad, like those living here in the UK or those I meet when travelling elsewhere. In Italy people are generally much more willing to speak with me and less surprised, because it's the local language and it's more normal for a foreigner to speak it in that context. Also it's less obvious that I'm an English native. Obviously these are just generalisations and I've met exceptions to the rules for both Spanish and French.
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