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

[garyb]

So I've ended up with three active languages and it's a struggle! Last night I was having two text chats, one in Italian and one in French, and it was a bit too much for my brain to handle. I was looking up words in the wrong dictionary (including the Spanish one at times!), almost replying in the wrong language, spending undue time remembering which if any preposition comes after a certain verb in a certain language, making classic mistakes like "sentir" instead of "entendre", and writing strange hybrid words like "approfiter" (French profiter, Italian approfittare) and wondering why my spell-checker was objecting. Occasionally I do miss the times when there was only French and I didn't have to think much about whether to use "à" or "de"; Italian messed all that up and Spanish is just adding to it.

I'm impressed by people who manage to juggle this many languages or far more, although from what I've seen this kind of interference is very much the norm and just an acceptable trade-off for knowing several languages. I don't think I've ever encountered someone who speaks English plus several Romance languages and doesn't mix them all up considerably, although a few "full-time" online polyglots like Luca L seem to be close. There's no room for perfectionism, and some incorrect prepositions and words aren't the end of the world.

I should also say that I've not slept much in the last week and I was feeling quite exhausted last night before the conversations even started, so the effect was worse than normal, and maintaining two involved conversations at the same time is difficult in any language.

Anyway my very part-time language study is still moving along. I've been getting a bit burnt out on music recently so I've been finding a bit more time for languages. Mostly just the usual TV and films and books. I have added a French book into the mix: Pars vite et reviens tard by Fred Vargas: it had been on my shelf for years so it was about time. I'm enjoying it so far, definitely more than the other book of her's I read years ago (Debout les morts), but it's a little challenging and I would've preferred to read it on Kindle with the dictionary.

[garyb]

Spanish

I ended up at a Latin American barbecue at the weekend. Mexico, Chile, and Argentina were all represented and so there was plenty Spanish being spoken and plenty excellent food. It was interesting for me as I don't often encounter Spanish speakers from countries other than Spain. I could understand most of the conversations but it got hard when the Mexicans spoke to each other - no surprises there. I spoke a few words but it was difficult for the usual reasons. Their English ranged from very good to excellent and they weren't afraid to use it, and it was mainly group conversations. Joining in these is hard at my level, not to mention hard in any language when they all know each other and I'm an outsider to the group.

Most of all though it was psychological barriers: the good old circle of not having confidence because I don't speak and not speaking because I don't have confidence, and feeling like trying to join in would be hijacking their conversation for my own interests and forcing them to accommodate me. When there were one-to-one opportunities it just felt easier to use English rather than swim against the tide with my rusty and non-advanced spoken Spanish. Similar to a previous discussion in here, while some of this is obviously shyness I believe it's also partly valid social consideration and not every situation where a target language is being spoken is an appropriate one to make people to use it with me. My language skill still had their uses though: there were some very interesting conversations even if my role in them was mostly passive.

There were a few Italians there too, and I had no such shyness when it came to using that. Completely different situation though: I already knew two of them and we usually speak Italian, and I had the confidence that only comes from having an advanced level and using it frequently.

I've already bridged this gap in two other languages so I should know what to do! I'd rather avoid language exchange hell again, but there's a happy medium between that and my current passive approach of waiting for the opportunities to come to me. By now I know that that they don't come often enough for me to be able to take advantage. Maybe I'll see these people again - and I hope so since they all seemed so friendly and warm and generous, and I'm sure they'd be happy to help me in a more favourable situation - but maybe I won't and I don't want to rely on their kindness especially when I have little to offer in return. On the other hand though, the best language exchange partners are often people who already speak great English but want to perfect it, as they're more serious about language learning than the typical ESL learner (especially from Spain, excuse the generalisation!) who just wants to know the minimum to get by.

I've had an injury recently, which is obviously unfortunate and means I can't do much physical exercise, but it does free up some time for potential lessons or exchanges and I suppose one has to look on the bright side of everything. For example my old Friday morning gym session could be replaced by an online lesson. Time to stop wasting time writing here and start trawling iTalki perhaps! I've also had another couple of potential contacts on Conversation Exchange.

French: Pars vite et reviens tard so far is everything I had hoped for! It's a page-turner yet it has literary merit: enough colloquial dialogue to help revive my conversational French, and enough high-brow language and cultural references to challenge me. I also finally watched Le scaphandre et le papillon which had similarly been on my list for several years. It was a good one and, despite the subject matter, not as serious and heavy as I had thought it might be.

Edit: Signed up for Kwiziq French because, why not? I got full marks in the entry test so I'm not sure how much it can teach me, and because of this it's claiming I'm C1 which is a little optimistic, but the advanced lessons seem a lot more complete than for Spanish so it might help me to keep my grammar sharp provided it doesn't end up asking the same mostly-basic things every time like the Spanish one does.

[garyb]

Things are getting a bit more serious again: I've booked a Spanish conversation lesson for tomorrow and have plans for a proper French exchange at the weekend. With all my complaining about lack of Spanish practice opportunities, I had forgotten just how convenient iTalki is: if you have just a little spare time and cash you can speak to someone whenever it suits you, and if you're lucky you'll even get some advice and corrections. Prices for Spanish tutors are lower than for French and Italian ones too. Not sure if I'll start taking frequent lessons, but even one or two per month should help a lot at this point since my main problem is simply lack of practice.

On the input side, I've finally dumped Español automatico since it was just feeling more and more like a bad infomercial for their too-good-to-be-true courses and replaced it with Radio ambulante to get a bit of Latin American exposure. Like most radio it's perhaps too easy, but it's a gentler way to get used to the accents and usage than TV or films which are often too difficult to be useful and it fills the "comprehensible input" gap. For more challenging input, I've had some YouTube recommendations on the Spanish Group thread (thanks again!) that I'll check out soon.

I'm listening to a bit of French radio too to get used to the spoken language again. The French do "intellectual" radio very well with the likes of France Inter. Like most public radio it's quite politically biased, but I don't mind that too much if I take it for what it is and if I look in the programme rather than just listening live there might be debate-type shows that could have more varied viewpoints and be more challenging for my French than the usual monologue and interview formats. I've also seen several forum members members mention "Grand bien vous fasse" as an interesting show, so I'll try to catch that.

[garyb]

The weekend's conversations went quite well!

In Spanish I didn't struggle much with the small talk, although specific subjects got hard at times. Some of the things I've usually had difficulty with like verb forms were feeling easier than ever, but on the other hand there were times when my lack of practice was very evident: I was still making many of the mistakes I was making a year or two ago, there was still considerable interference from Italian and French, and I often had to search for my words. I also found myself responding with "sí", "vale", "ok", etc. too often so I want to re-read the excellent chapter of Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish about better ways to express agreement and doubt and all the rest; I read it a week or two ago but have already forgotten most of it. Lessons are an ideal opportunity to put that kind of thing into practice.

Since this was my first real conversation in a few months, during which my "studies" have been perhaps 90% input, 7% writing and 3% study with Kwiziq etc., it was a good gauge for how much I can progress without speaking. Overall it was clear that I have made good progress although due the lack of speaking I have the weak points I've mentioned and, as I've said, I lack confidence. Input gets you far, but only so far: nothing revolutionary that most of us didn't already know, but I'm happy that overall I've improved despite hardly practising. I've upped the writing recently and I'm convinced that that's helping.

The tutor was very impressed with my level and thought that it was quite advanced, rather than the intermediate I had stated in my initial message. Maybe it is by language teaching industry standards! After all, I can use the subjunctive and can converse for more than a couple of minutes I found this a little off-putting despite an otherwise very satisfying lesson as it felt like insincere encouragement and suggested lack of experience with non-beginners, but I got what I wanted from the lesson so it's a minor point and maybe I just need to learn to take a damn compliment! I'm probably starting to approach B2 but not quite there yet in terms of the "wide range of subjects" and "explaining viewpoints" - still very firmly in intermediate territory. But we all know that these terms are a bit arbitrary and are abused on here as much as outside. Her proposal for continuing was to start discussing articles on various subjects - very much the standard method, but it's that for a reason and I've always found it challenging and helpful.

As for French, it was my first real conversation in a couple of years, never mind months! I was happy to use it again and overall I got on just fine although my speaking felt less precise and refined than when it was at its peak: I got my point across well but not always in the most natural or elegant way. My pronunciation felt fine aside from getting tongue-tied on a couple of awkward words. As usual, more input and practice should help me get it back, and it's all in my memory somewhere. At the moment I'm not sure whether I want to improve or just refresh, but time will tell.

Listened to a couple of episodes of Grand bien vous fasse and I enjoyed it. Nice to have something a bit more interesting and related to everyday life than news radio. I also checked out a debate show (Le débat de midi) which was far more easy and civil than I had expected - no people shouting or talking over each other, everyone was respectful and took their turn - but it had the varied viewpoints I had hoped for and in-depth discussions on a particular subject are great for advanced learners. In Spanish I've been reading some articles on Vice España; I have mixed feelings about Vice and some of the headlines make my eyes roll, but there's some fun and interesting content and again it's a nice change from news. Asco de vida is good stuff for informal language - it seems to be the new Spanish "Vie de merde". Both were recommendations from the Spanish Group thread.

Funnily enough I've spoken much less Italian than usual in the last week, but you can't have everything!

[garyb]

Soon after writing that last post I was invited to dinner with Italians, so I got my speaking after all! And I'm still speaking it at home most days so no worries there.

Had another Spanish lesson last week. My speaking went a bit more smoothly than last time, but there were still plenty times when I just couldn't remember or didn't know how to say something. Bit of a "so close yet so far" feeling, but that's how intermediate (and advanced) language learning always feels and in a sense it's a sign of progress: my main obstacles now are with usage and I'm falling less at basic hurdles like verb conjugations. While the lesson was quite informal and conversational, the tutor was clearly trying to challenge me and we covered a lot of different subjects.

Finished a couple of TV series. My overall thoughts on Mar de plástico were the same as pretty much every other Spanish crime series I've seen: it started off strong and there were some clever ideas in the plot, but as it went on the writers relied more on clichés and absurd plot twists to drag the story out into more episodes. Can't complain though, I enjoyed it overall and I'm sure it helped my Spanish. There's a second series which I'm not optimistic about although there are a few loose ends from the first to keep me curious. I'll come back to it sometime but for now I'm back on El ministerio del tiempo. Engrenages 6 was quite disappointing overall too, for a series that had been strong up until this latest season. I'm struggling to decide what my next French series will be since there's so much choice, especially from the last few years!

Still slow progress with my books. Storia del nuovo cognome is unfortunately, to paraphrase Spoonary, not much more interesting than the title makes it sound. L'amica geniale had a lot going on but this second instalment focuses almost exclusively on the main characters' relationships; for my tastes it's a bit soap-opera-y and feels much longer than it needs to be, even though the writing is great and it has its moments. I'll finish it but I won't be rushing to pick up the third.

[garyb]

I had another long French chat at the weekend, but this time it felt quite messy. Lack of practice, or a bad day, or particularly challenging conversations, or rose-tinted memories of how high my level actually used to be? Probably a bit of each. My pronunciation was feeling weak, which is the first sign of fatigue, but we also had some quite specific discussions including a detailed one on music theory and technique which isn't something I had ever tried to talk about much in French. I'd do well to read and watch videos on the subject like I do in my other languages. On the plus side, I wasn't letting the mistakes and bad pronunciation hold me back, so maybe I'm finding a healthier balance in the fluency versus accuracy trade-off that I always bring up.

Looks like my Italian flatmate is moving out so I'll need to make a bit of effort to keep up the frequent practice. If I can be bothered, that is; I might just up my listening and speak it when I can, like with the other languages. At the moment I'm not feeling a need to practise it super-often.

Didn't manage to organise a Spanish lesson this time, but should easily fit one in this week.

Media consumption is mostly the same, but I've started watching Marseille. It's a mix of crime and political thriller that reminds me of Italian series like Suburra - so far so good!

[garyb]

Fairly quiet week again: it's festival season here, work is a bit busier too, and practice opportunities are thin on the ground. The next few weeks will probably be similar, although I'm hoping to take a week off to see some of the festivals and have time for personal projects - mostly music but hopefully some language study too.

I did finally finish Triada last night. Not much to say about it that I've not already said: readable but unspectacular YA fantasy that's doing the job of giving me lots of exposure to simple written Spanish. Almost 800 pages in this case! I'll read the third and final book sometime, but it's even longer and for now I fancy a change. Conveniently, my tutor just recommended a novel: La verdad sobre el caso Savolta by Eduardo Mendoza. From what she told me, it's literary crime fiction with a mix of elegant language and more vulgar dialogue. Sounds similar to Fred Vargas, and might be quite challenging for me especially in a less advanced language.

For the sake of my sanity I've chosen the Kindle version rather than paper, something I'm still wishing I had done for Pars vite et reviens tard. I'm most of the way through that now and still mostly understanding it but missing some details. I want to avoid spoilers, but there's a dark twist as they begin to solve the crime and it's smartly written.

[garyb]

Another "not done much" post I'm afraid; I've not posted here in the last few weeks because I've done so little of note in my languages. It's a busy period and any free moments I've had have gone into music practice.

I've just had my week off work, which was far busier than planned but also involved far more Italian practice than planned as there have been Italian-speaking guests staying in my flat and we've gone out together a few times. My Italian is the same as always: pretty good but true proficiency and fluency still feel far away and probably always will. Still, being able to easily socialise with groups of Italians is something to be proud of: I have the ability and confidence to keep up and join in almost all conversations. Whenever I speak Spanish, in which I completely lack such ability and confidence, I realise that what I've achieved in Italian is truly no mean feat.

I did have a Spanish lesson, the first in almost a month, but I've done so little work on it in the last few weeks that it was even rustier than usual. No writing, no Kwiziq, a handful of pages of reading (English books have been vying for my attention, but I have started La verdad sobre el caso Savolta which is actually easier expected - literary merit doesn't always mean complicated language!), barely an hour of listening. I'm definitely enjoying working with this teacher - great conversations on things that interest and challenge me - but it feels pointless if I'm not "doing my homework" between lessons. I did also have a brief chat with a Chilean friend-of-friend and a Peruvian street food vendor, but neither were particularly easy to understand especially when speaking to each other. I suppose I know where to go if I want to speak a couple of sentences of Spanish and pay £8 for something that's tasty but for my appetite is barely a snack never mind a meal... On reflection, the lessons are better value!

Even less French: I've managed one episode of Marseille and that's about it. My exchange partner was away the two previous weeks and then last week I had no time to organise anything or even chat online. I have however been contacted by another potential French partner in my city and again it's a possibility I can't say "non" to. It's someone who's recently arrived and isn't yet working or studying, so chances are it would be a short-term thing before life gets in the way, but might as well make the most when I can.

Another development: I think I'll be going to Greece for a week to see family and visit some places in a couple of months, so it could be the moment to pick up a little Greek again. My dad's even offered to help me out if I want. Of course, with the past few weeks' performance I'm not optimistic about fitting in another language... But since it's an upcoming trip there's some motivation to find the time. Once I figure out my routine I'll see if I can fit in Language Transfer. I did learn some basics before the last trip a few years ago using Michel Thomas, which I've now mostly forgotten but should come back.

There are potential opportunities to use my other languages coming up too though! The plan is to fly back from Greece via Italy so I might as well spend a few days there too, especially if I can arrange to see friends. In a couple of weeks I'm going on a weekend away with a big group that includes several Spaniards and it would be nice to take advantage of that. And there's that potential French exchange on the cards as well as hopefully catching up with the current partner soon. I'm back at work now, the festivals in my city are finishing, and the guests aren't around for much longer, so it's time to get back into normal life and make a little more space for language study again. Despite less free time I'll probably actually get more done now that the distractions are out of the way and I have a normal routine to fit it into again. I'd love to just have a nice big dose of French and Spanish TV and modern novels to get them back on track, but that might be too ambitious right now.

[patrickwilken]

It's definitely cool that you have all these Romance languages floating around in your head. I am quite envious.

[garyb]

As plans for the trip are coming together, I started studying Greek a few days ago! I'm working through Language Transfer. I can see why the Michel Thomas publishers want to sue them, as the method is practically identical. Things are just taught in a slightly different order and there's only one student, who is thankfully a little more with it than the typical MT ones. Plus it's free! Fine for me as I like MT and think it's the best way to start a language, or restart in this case; since I did the real deal a few years ago I'm happy to use a variation on the theme rather than go through the same thing again.

It's interesting having the beginner experience again. I was never a true beginner in Spanish or Italian: I had been hearing them regularly for years and could understand a fair bit thanks to similarities with my other languages, so the beginner stage was just filling in gaps. It's frustrating going through a few lessons then feeling like I've forgotten it all half an hour later, and I can understand how this feeling drives beginners on here to silly things like working through five basic courses at once or putting high-frequency vocab into Anki or devising over-complicated study plans. But with my experience now I'm confident in the process and I know that if I just keep working through the course and letting repetition do its thing the basics will stick. What I'm not so confident in is how much I can really learn in the two months before the trip, but my aims aren't high: I just want some basic understanding and maybe survival speaking ability.

Three or four lessons (20-30 minutes) in one sitting seem to be as much as I can take in before really starting to struggle, which is a sign to give it time to sink in. Just as well since finding any more time in my day would be pushing it. The structure and basic verbs (to have, to know, etc.) are coming back to me although some vocab is new to me. I'm keeping my dad's offer in mind; I really don't know what use lessons or conversation would be at this early stage but it's nice to know I can speak to someone if I want.

I had another Spanish lesson this week and it went better than the last. I've also started the third Memorias de Idhún book just for some bedtime reading when I'm not in the mood for El caso Savolta. I think I'll keep up the Spanish effort for the next couple of weeks, with the weekend away in view, then shift more attention to Greek afterwards. By that point I might know the absolute basics a little better so be able to get some input (learner podcasts etc. if I can find anything like that) to reinforce them and get used to the sounds, and spend a little more time studying it.

I met with the other potential French exchange partner at the weekend. It went quite well, at least after the initial slightly awkward moment of having to convince her that I'd actually be capable of understanding and maybe even replying . I'm just not sure I can find the time for anything regular, especially in a non-priority language that I already have someone to practise with now, but we'll see how it goes. Like buses, nothing for ages then two come at once.

I watched a film on Netflix to warm up my French the day before. I felt like something lighter than Marseille and picked the first decent-sounding one from their quite small selection, a romantic comedy called Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément!. It appealed since it involved piano (I play a bit myself even though guitar is my main musical love) and the main character was extremely attractive. I'd recommend it if you like your cheese with cheese on top, but for me it was a little too much! Clever idea but spoilt by that and by sticking rigidly to the Hollywood-style story template. As I've said I'm not against the idea of romantic comedies but these days they just churn out the same unrealistic story with a dash of some convoluted idea to make it seem original and that's sadly spread to Europe too. Either that or they try too hard to be "quirky" after the success of things like Amélie. These films are much better than crime dramas for everyday language, but there must be some happy medium!