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

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

Postby MamaPata » Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:30 pm

garyb wrote:Quality over quantity: selecting input materials that I enjoy and are appropriate to my level and goals and concentrating on them properly, rather than just putting in the hours; good conversations with friendly and sympathetic native speakers and not wasting time with unhelpful ones. Solid basics: prioritising a good grasp of everyday language over trying to learn every word and expression. Not making life unnecessarily hard, making the most of resources that facilitate learning like subtitles, L2-L1 dictionaries, translated/dubbed materials, and courses. And lastly, not taking it too seriously, remembering that I'm doing this for enjoyment, not letting anyone tell me that I'm wasting my time, and if I'm getting stressed out about it then something's wrong!


I think these are excellent points for us all to remember! This is something we're all choosing to do in our free time, you have to maximise what you're getting it while also keeping it fun. Sounds like it's been a real year to remember, despite the challenges. Good luck with this one!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:15 am

Finished watching the second part/season of La casa de papel and it was great overall. Even if the plot twists got a little absurd at times, they avoided making it completely ridiculous in order to keep dragging out the story (*cough*Vis a vis season 2*cough*) and it was quite clever in the way that it makes you sympathise at times with the police and at times with the criminals. Very engaging which is what I want. I will take back what I said about it being easy to follow though: I watched the first part on Netflix with Spanish subtitles and found it quite easy, but I had difficulty understanding some of the characters at times without the subtitles in the second part, especially the Professor and the father and son in the gang (is their accent from around Seville? I don't know Spanish well enough to place accents...). Still, being able to mostly follow a series like that is good progress.

Plan now: more series and more dubbed films. My mum (also a fan of European TV) recommended another Spanish series, "I know who you are" (Sé quien eres) which was on the BBC recently, and also told me that the latest series of Engrenages is now on so I can get a bit more French in my life.

That conversation practice opportunity might finally come along: my flatmate said a Spanish friend might stay with us for a few days. It's not confirmed yet though.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby Serpent » Mon Jan 08, 2018 3:26 pm

garyb wrote:
Serpent wrote:Well, the really advanced levels of comprehension do require you to have some active skills :)


What do you mean by this - any examples?

Oops I never replied. I simply meant that I don't think it's possible to get to C2 (or even C1) comprehension without developing some active skills, even if you're a native speaker of Spanish learning Portuguese or Italian. Especially for stylistical appreciation it's really important to be aware which words and expressions are the default ways of expressing a concept and which aren't.
As for examples... well, in Russian "ecologically clean" is just the standard equivalent to organic (while "organicheskiy" is mostly used in a technical context). Or more notoriously, "non-traditional orientation" has meant homosexual since the 90's, and it only became malicious fairly recently :roll: I'm sure this applies to less subtle things as well.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 15, 2018 12:54 pm

I do agree that having good speaking skills is important for reaching a higher level in comprehension just because I believe that participating in conversations is one of the best way to get a feeling for when and how to use expressions. I've said it before: I'm not sure exactly why, but I pick all that up better when I'm taking an active role in conversation rather than just watching one, on a screen or in real life.

That's another reason I'd like to get conversing in Spanish sooner or later, although there's no big rush. The Spanish guest isn't coming after all. I did meet a few Spanish-speakers at the weekend, but of course there were non-Spanish-speakers in the group too so using Spanish wasn't much of an option. It's a little frustrating, the feeling that Spanish is everywhere yet I'm not quite able to take advantage of that.

A bit of progress: Finished reading Harry Potter y el cáliz de fuego and moved swiftly onto the next in the series, which I'm sure I read in English as a teenager but barely remember at all. Watched all of the Engrenages episodes currently available on BBC; it's nice hearing French again, but this latest season is a strange one, all the main characters are just going off the rails. Started Sé quién eres, which is a change of pace after La casa de papel: another crime story, but slower and more convoluted and psychological. The language is also more challenging to understand, a bit above my level for now. My Italian's been feeling a little neglected recently, need to find more films.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 22, 2018 12:43 pm

Spanish: More Spanish disappointment: I was supposed to go for dinner with some Spanish friends of friends, plus the mutual friend who's an L2 Spanish speaker, but they cancelled at the last minute. Sometimes it feels like I'm destined to not speak it... Otherwise things are going fine, but Sé quién eres is still a bit too hard for me so I'm considering other series, native or dubbed.

Italian: I've been trying to work on this a bit more actively again recently and fill in some gaps in my knowledge, rather than just relying on input and conversations. I'm doing more writing again, and trying to write about the specific topics that I'd find myself talking about in real life (work, interests, etc.) as well as standard "my thoughts" diary-type writing.

Recently I've been getting more into cycling and bike maintenance, and there's definitely some opportunity for the old "combining languages with other interests" here: I've been learning the relevant vocabulary by looking up information and forums in Italian. For specialised vocabulary for components etc. that's not in the dictionary, Wikipedia is a useful resource: you can look up the page in English and from there go to the equivalent L2 page, or look up the L2 page for a term you don't recognise and the article and pictures usually make it quite clear. After a couple of hours of this I reckon I could talk about the subject relatively confidently. I plan to do similar things for other subjects, especially technology since vocabulary related to my work is still a gaping hole in my knowledge; I generally dislike reading about work outside of work, but I need to learn that stuff sooner or later since it does come up in conversations. I'm tempted to do it for Spanish too, but at this point in my learning I still need to stay focused on everyday language.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby garyb » Tue Jan 30, 2018 12:27 pm

Spanish:

I decided to keep on going with Sé quién eres because I've not found anything else very interesting and I want to keep following the story. I'm more used to the characters' voices now, and it's not too difficult if I actually pay attention! And make an effort not to rely on the subtitles too much.

I've decided it's time to make my studies a bit more "active" rather than just input-based, in order to help reinforce some vocabulary and expressions that are on the less frequent side of everyday. Since I'm already reading Harry Potter, I've started highlighting some phrases with the idea of putting them into Anki. The biggest risk with a strategy like this is of course ending up studying language that you don't really need, or uncommon ways of saying things that have more common equivalents; moreover, at a non-advanced level that's not always easy to identify. To mitigate this, my rule is to only highlight phrases from conversational dialogue. I still believe that SRS isn't strictly necessary, but there's nothing wrong with taking shortcuts and SRS can be a shortcut if used sensibly.

Italian:

I think my writing plan is going well: I've had a couple of conversations about work and they've felt easier than before thanks to having already written about the subject and searched for the appropriate words and expressions. I'm also considering reading some books on my work and interests in order to complete the loop. There are a few non-fiction books on things like music practice that I've been meaning to read, and I might as well do so in Italian if translations are available. (Update: The stuff that interests me mostly hasn't been translated into Italian, but there's bound to be something out there...)
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby garyb » Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:09 pm

Which language to read Harry Potter in?

I've finished the 5th book in Spanish, which is the last of the ones that I read when I was a teenager, although as I said I remembered very little. The 6th is completely new territory, and I was wondering about whether to continue in Spanish now that I'm used to the language of the series, switch to Italian just for some variety, or go for the original English. I initially decided on Italian, thinking that having read three of them in Spanish I'm probably at the point of diminishing returns and I'd get more bang for my buck with Italian. Even if my level is much higher, it could fill in some gaps with action vocabulary and so on.

After a chapter in Italian however, I'm a little disappointed for the same reason I wasn't keen on them in French: the translator has changed a lot of names. Maybe I'm too fussy but it's just not the same when major characters like Snape and Dumbledore have different names. Plus it just adds confusion, especially if I've not already read it in English. In the Spanish translations at least the major characters' names stay the same, even if they might sound awkward. At least the Italian translator didn't go as far as changing the name of Hogwarts like the French one did! I can't understand the logic; are they trying to make us forget that we're reading a translation?

Between this and a recent post in Brun Ugle's log saying that some of the details of the plot have been mistranslated in the Spanish versions (and that could well apply to other translations too!), the only sensible choice seems to be English. Afterwards I can always go back and read them in other languages if I feel like it. I do prefer to read literature in the original language if I can, and I suppose that also applies to something like HP even if it's not exactly of literary merit; if I'm reading for enjoyment over language learning then I might as well enjoy it properly first.

So, has reading these three books helped my Spanish? I don't know, as I've still not had a chance to speak it!

For now I'm putting my Spanish focus back onto listening comprehension. I was listening to a recent episode of the podcast I love to hate, Español Automatico. In between adverts and a "challenge" where the participant who does the most of their advertising for them wins one free lesson where they'll no doubt be encouraged to pay for more, they were talking about how to learn effectively and one tip was to stay focused on one thing at a time rather than trying to work on everything at once. I suppose that gives me further justification to stay in my listening comprehension comfort zone rather than go out and speak, as if I needed it...
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby garyb » Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:12 pm

I decided to give Kwiziq a try for Spanish since a couple of members have been saying good things about it!

My first impressions weren't the best: yet another wildly-exaggerating online level assessment (it claims I'm "C1 or higher"; will anyone ever design one of these that's accurate?!) and the usual tacked-on fashionable gamification crap. Looking past that though, the interface is nice and it seems like it'll give me practice with the things I need to practise. The test did highlight some weak points in my verb knowledge, like some of the vosotros forms, and I had been looking for a way to make my studies a bit more active and keep my skills fresh since I'm not speaking much. This seems more relevant to my needs and more forgiving than DuoLingo, better designed and less silly than Clozemaster, and smarter than traditional textbook exercises since it'll supposedly keep track of what I need to work on and focus on that. Overall, it definitely has potential and I'm going to try using it for a little while.

UPDATE: I'm already finding a lot of technical problems with it. It marked me wrong for something that I'm sure is correct, using indicative instead of imperative for a request, "Me lo das, por favor" instead of "Dámelo, por favor" (but I might be wrong there - if any more advanced Spanish speakers are reading this and I'm wrong then let me know!), and when I tried to post a question about it I discovered that their message board function is broken. The "recommended lessons" part also sometimes shows as empty and gives me errors when I try to use it.

Further thought: the tests have far too many multiple-choice questions; I'd find more free-text ones much more useful. The thing that stopped me using Clozemaster was that I didn't like multiple-choice mode and the free-text one was very broken.

Other than that, just the usual things.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby Ogrim » Fri Feb 16, 2018 10:31 am

garyb wrote:UPDATE: I'm already finding a lot of technical problems with it. It marked me wrong for something that I'm sure is correct, using indicative instead of imperative for a request, "Me lo das, por favor" instead of "Dámelo, por favor" (but I might be wrong there - if any more advanced Spanish speakers are reading this and I'm wrong then let me know!), and when I tried to post a question about it I discovered that their message board function is broken. The "recommended lessons" part also sometimes shows as empty and gives me errors when I try to use it.


In everyday speech you can certainly use the indicative instead of the imperative for a request. I asked my wife who thinks that it is just a way of "softening" the request, making it less direct. She would normally say it slightly raising the tone at the end to make it a question: ¿Me lo das, por favor? It is kind of between a direct command, using the imperative, and the even more polite ¿Me lo puedes dar, por favor?

I guess one of the problems with on-line learning tools like this is that there is always a limit to what they "know" when it comes to how a language is actuallly used in everyday speech. I still have not seen any online learning tool which is really able to distinguish between different registers of speech (or writing). There are more than one way to express a request - not only in Spanish, just think about the many ways you can ask for something in English. (from "Give me the book!" to Would you be so kind and let me have the book please?"
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French)

Postby Spoonary » Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:32 pm

Ogrim wrote:
garyb wrote:UPDATE: I'm already finding a lot of technical problems with it. It marked me wrong for something that I'm sure is correct, using indicative instead of imperative for a request, "Me lo das, por favor" instead of "Dámelo, por favor" (but I might be wrong there - if any more advanced Spanish speakers are reading this and I'm wrong then let me know!), and when I tried to post a question about it I discovered that their message board function is broken. The "recommended lessons" part also sometimes shows as empty and gives me errors when I try to use it.


In everyday speech you can certainly use the indicative instead of the imperative for a request. I asked my wife who thinks that it is just a way of "softening" the request, making it less direct. She would normally say it slightly raising the tone at the end to make it a question: ¿Me lo das, por favor? It is kind of between a direct command, using the imperative, and the even more polite ¿Me lo puedes dar, por favor?

You know, I was thinking that 'me lo das, por favor' would sound better as a question, so I'm patting myself on the back right now. :lol: An example of the indicative being used as an imperative (that I have heard numerous times) would be something like 'Si necesitas algo, me lo dices/me llamas ¿vale?'.
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