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 German!)

Postby garyb » Thu Aug 27, 2020 1:06 pm

I've not been on here for a while. I've cut down a lot on my use of social media and similar things like online forums, influenced by Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism", and it's done me a lot of good. I don't miss it a whole lot, and it's given me some huge benefits: better focus and attention, faster learning, more free time. And this forum wasn't adding a huge amount of value to my life - I mostly find the general discussions too repetitive or too niche, the people who talk the most often aren't the ones who know the most, and there's the odd narcissist using it as a platform to assert themself... But I do enjoy catching up on the logs every so often, and writing my own can be beneficial, so I'll still be here once or twice per month.

My language learning also mostly hasn't been interesting enough to write much about.

German is going about as slowly as it could possibly go without stopping entirely. I'm still grinding through Assimil, and that brings up one of my other criticisms of it, especially the slightly older courses: it just moves too fast. It earns its B2 badge by going into advanced language at the expense of covering the basics thoroughly. Some days, the idea of moving onto the next lesson with all its new vocab and structures just feels overwhelming and I can't find the motivation. Plus I've had a couple of holidays so got out of the habit. I've mostly got back on track in the last couple weeks though.

I've been using Language Learning with Netflix a bit more intensively recently, using the features to hide the English translation and to pause after every sentence. That's challenging me to actually try to understand the German and use the translation only when I really don't know, rather than using it to lazily fill in the gaps, and I'm seeing my comprehension improve. I'm also watching more of Nicos Weg continuing with Coffee Break for something a bit easier and more learner-oriented. I am still feeling things come together but also still feeling that I still don't have much of a grasp on things like prepositions and case endings, so some "real" study might be in order soon.

I've had a bit more motivation for Spanish again and have gone through some of the thriller and comedy selection on Netflix as well as the usual podcasts. I started watching the second season of Mar de plástico, but apparently my timing was bad as it's just disappeared from Netflix. That's one problem with the service: you never know when a series might be removed, first it was El ministerio del tiempo and now this... I'd love to just cancel my account as I dislike the company for various reasons, but it's still just too good a language learning resource despite its faults.

I even felt like having a bit of French in my life again. I watched and enjoyed a series called Dérapages, saw a couple of films, listened to some Grand bien vous fasse, and even reread La possibilité d'une île. I loved Houellebecq back when I was in my mid-twenties and depressed, but I'm not sure if I'm quite as keen now. With my slightly more mature perspective, the negativity and sex-obsession just feel a bit over-the-top. I did however find that with a second read I appreciated the philosophical aspects a bit more.

Italian is still going as ever; nothing really new or exciting to report, and my Italian friends have all been in Italy recently so not much speaking aside from some self-talk.

Something I've written about a lot over the years is my mostly-fruitless attempts at improving my pronunciation and accent in French and Italian, and also the fact that I've never been great at speaking even in my native English so that makes it all the harder in a foreign language. Well, one of my recent personal projects has been working on improving my spoken English. Partly as part of my work on public speaking with Toastmasters etc. and partly just for general self-improvement since it's something that has always caused me a certain amount of difficulty and contributed to my shyness and insecurity, and so working on it should help me in every area of life. I now believe that by trying to improve these things in foreign languages despite not being very good at them in English I was trying to run before I could walk, and that's perhaps one reason why the improvements never really stuck.

The ideas and methods I've been using have been very similar to some of the ones I've tried in the past for foreign languages. Firstly, slow down! Slowing down gives me the time to enunciate more clearly, emphasise words more, and think about what I'm saying and how I'm saying it. Another one is to find someone who speaks well and has a similar voice to mine (male, Scottish, etc.), for example an actor or politician or radio presenter, and model my voice on theirs by listening, repeating, and recording. Then there are exercises like tongue-twisters and reading aloud. Nothing fancy, but with a bit of these daily I'm already seeing significant progress! To the point where I'm tempted to do similar exercises in Italian too, but... one thing at a time! I think I'll give it at least a month or two before I try this kind of work in a foreign language, so I can really figure out what works for me and I'm not spreading myself too thin.

In my past pronunciation improvement attempts I found that the two biggest pitfalls were applying it to real conversation as well as just exercises, and making the new habits stick, so I'm keeping these in mind. It's easier for a native language since I speak it every day so have lots of opportunities to put it into practice and I speak it fairly automatically so there's much more mental bandwidth free to think about my voice, unlike in a foreign language where a lot of brainpower is expended just on finding the words and forming the sentences. Although on the other hand I've been speaking it all my life so the habits could be even more ingrained. And the main foundations (take time, enunciate all the syllables, speak loudly and clearly enough) aren't language-specific so some of my work in English might automatically translate to other languages.

I have been putting a bit more work into my rolled Rs though: I did learn to do it when I started Italian, but I've never managed to get it very strong or consistent and that became apparent with some exercises my singing teacher recently gave me that involve keeping it up for several seconds rather than doing just the two or three flaps that I can manage normally. So I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone and finally nail that.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Tue Sep 22, 2020 6:47 pm

I've got a bit more serious about German again and I'm on Assimil lesson 89, so the end is in sight! I might have already mentioned, I gave up on the Luca method a while ago as it just felt too intense for a new language and I just went for the normal active wave as prescribed; that's well underway now so I'm getting some production practice and realising that even if I think I'm starting to understand the concepts it's still difficult to actually apply them. It's still very early days though, and it'll come.

I finished watching all the Nicos Weg films but still haven't looked into the related lessons. That'll probably come after Assimil, at least after the passive wave. I lost my momentum on Dark, but I'm realising that I can only manage one course and one series at a time. I'm all for multi-tracking, but my spare time is quite full up these days and my schedule just won't allow it without unacceptable compromises like rushing through lessons or watching series in chunks of a few minutes. I have watched a few more Easy German videos and I'm definitely recognising quite a few words and phrases even if a lot of it is over my head. That channel looks like a true goldmine as it covers such a range of subjects.

In Spanish I'm back on Mar de plástico... After my anti-Netflix rant it turned out to just be a temporary thing and the series was back again a couple of days later! In Italian I've been revisiting some of Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo's films: Odio l'estate was good fun and it was a bit of a challenge for my listening comprehension at times, reminding me that I've not been getting enough challenging input recently. Too many podcasts, Youtube videos, and subtitled series, not enough had stuff and both are important.

Not had any chance to speak my languages for months, but will hopefully see Italian friends soon, rules permitting. The rolled R work seems to be going great, but I won't really know until I put it into practice.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby lingua » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:23 am

Gary, are you doing German with Ease or one of the other ones (I don't know the names of them offhand)? And if so which version? I just got the book with CDs and am not happy at how small the book is. I can barely read the font even with reading glasses. I soon after learned that there is a digital version of this. Assimil has offered me 20% of the digital version. I'm tempted.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:40 pm

lingua wrote:Gary, are you doing German with Ease or one of the other ones (I don't know the names of them offhand)? And if so which version? I just got the book with CDs and am not happy at how small the book is. I can barely read the font even with reading glasses. I soon after learned that there is a digital version of this. Assimil has offered me 20% of the digital version. I'm tempted.


I'm using With Ease. The published date is March 2011, although I had previously believed it was from the 90s so I'm not sure if it's a reprint or they just reused some of the old content. No issues with font size for me, it's similar to the other Assimils I've used.

Despite my mixed feelings about this course, I will say that Assimil's typically dry humour is absolutely on point in this one!

Is the digital version the "e-method"? I tried the Greek one a couple of years ago and it was an absolute disaster. I wrote about it in my log, and I had intended to write a long review of it pointing out all the issues but I lost momentum with Greek and never got around to it. I don't know whether they've improved their digital offerings since then, though. I seem to remember reading that a new one came out in the last year or so.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:22 pm

Life got busier again, as it tends to as soon as I get into a good routine, I've missed a few days of Assimil lessons. Just done 92 so it feels like a slow final ascent.

I have watched a bunch more Easy German, and I also watched a mini-film for learners that I was randomly recommended on Youtube (Pluspunkt) and understood almost all of it with just German subtitles! There were only a small handful of words I didn't know and couldn't guess from the context. It's a small milestone especially since it's an "A1" video and I've no idea how I would have got on without the subtitles, but it counts. I'm also continuing with Easy German and have reached a series of episodes that are like a radio play and so have more natural dialogue (warning, the story involves exchange students so certain forum members may get triggered ;) ); I can't follow the full dialogues first time round but I certainly understand parts. All signs that I am progressing, albeit slowly.

Especially with all these materials that are centered around everyday life as well as following certain discussions on sites like Reddit, I'm more keen than ever on the idea of living and working in Germany, especially Berlin. If it weren't for the whole pandemic thing I'd probably be looking at opportunities right now or would have done earlier this year, but I'm really not up for a move like that in the current situation, and yes I do still have some regrets about not taking the offer last year. It's clear that I just wasn't ready for it at the time, but it has been a bit of a lesson that life is short and things can change very quickly so you can't keep putting things off and waiting for the ideal moment forever.

So for now Germany is a "maybe someday" kind of thing. With all the current uncertainty it's impossible to plan anything and for the time being I'm better staying where I am, and if a good career opportunity comes up here then it would be silly to let it pass by just because I have a vague dream of going somewhere else at some unclear point in the future. And hey, if I do go for it in the future then I'll have a better German level!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:32 pm

I had a quieter few days and started watching Dark again. I'm understanding the dialogue more than ever, and the plot less than ever :D Doesn't help that Netflix lost track of which episode I was on, as it sometimes tends to do, and I had missed the last one of the second season when I started the third. It's a series that I'll definitely come back to once my German is better, to milk its language more and get my head round the story properly. Also managed a few more Assimil lessons, and I had a moment after a couple of hours of Assimil and Dark where I was suddenly forming sentences in my head and speaking them to myself. Maybe the comprehensible input folks are right about there being a point where things just click and you naturally feel that the words are ready to come out, and that's it at least for my A1-type knowledge acquired so far. I'm starting to feel that I'd like to try speaking sooner or later, but there's no rush and not exactly much opportunity right now.

I got a bit over-excited about my recent progress and decided to give Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen a try. A few pages in, I realised that I had got way ahead of myself and that if the ideal comprehensible input is "n+1" then this is at least "n+10" at my current level. Especially as my input so far has been (very correctly IMO) focused on listening over reading, jumping into a full story was a bit of a shock to the system. Definitely one to come back to in future, and as with other languages, novels should be the best way to get more comfortable with that tense that confusingly Assimil calls "Imperfekt" and Coffee Break calls "Präteritum". Luckily I twigged very quickly that they were the same thing.

There are bigger grammatical priorities now though, like the cases, genders and prepositions since they're the main obstacle when I try to form these sentences in my head or under my breath. I'm still going by the philosophy of letting the input do most of the work and only referring to tables and explanations when I'm really in doubt, and I think that's working so far as I've heard some of the forms enough times that they roll off pretty naturally.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sat Oct 10, 2020 4:46 pm

garyb wrote:Definitely one to come back to in future, and as with other languages, novels should be the best way to get more comfortable with that tense that confusingly Assimil calls "Imperfekt" and Coffee Break calls "Präteritum". Luckily I twigged very quickly that they were the same thing.


When were the courses published? Is one more recent than the other? (There is a similar confusion in Swedish - the simple past was called imperfekt possibly into the 1990s, and then it changed to preteritum.)
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sat Oct 10, 2020 7:48 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:When were the courses published? Is one more recent than the other? (There is a similar confusion in Swedish - the simple past was called imperfekt possibly into the 1990s, and then it changed to preteritum.)

Could be! As I mentioned, the date on my Assimil book is 2011 but I'm sure it's mostly a republishing of older content, and it also has some old spellings (lots of words with ß rather than ss), while Coffee Break is from just a few years ago.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Oct 11, 2020 12:35 pm

garyb wrote:I had a quieter few days and started watching Dark again. I'm understanding the dialogue more than ever, and the plot less than ever :D Doesn't help that Netflix lost track of which episode I was on, as it sometimes tends to do, and I had missed the last one of the second season when I started the third. It's a series that I'll definitely come back to once my German is better, to milk its language more and get my head round the story properly.


I can't believe I stopped watching it in series three, as I loved the first two series so much. Time constraints have been a major issue and as it had been a while since I saw season two, when I started watching season three I was lost. I asked my wife to stop watching it until I watched season two again, but that just hasn't happened. Great series, good work on your German garyb. Keep it up! Thanks for the reminder about this great series!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Mon Oct 26, 2020 12:41 pm

German was going great and then life got in the way... again! I had a couple of busy and stressful weeks with job interviews and deciding whether to take an offer (not abroad) that initially seemed very exciting but I decided against in the end, then I got a fever for a few days. But with the decision now made and feeling more energetic again (and a negative Covid test result this morning) I'm keen to get back into the routine!

During that time I didn't have much energy for proper study, but I did feel the need to do something relatively mindless in order to switch off a bit, so I got through the rest of the second series of Mar de plástico. It's the show that has everything: crime, mystery, action, drama, romance, constant plot twists, social tensions, Spanish sun... It's a couple of years since I watched the first series and I couldn't remember a lot of the details from that, so I suppose I'll just have to watch that again now to get a better understanding of the whole story :) I definitely feel my Spanish coming back to me.

I had a long walk with a couple of Italian friends last weekend then a video chat a few days ago so I've finally had some real practice. As hoped, some of my recent speech work does seem to have transferred to Italian and I found myself speaking more slowly and clearly than before. I still struggled to express myself at times, but that's to be expected when talking for several hours about all sorts of subjects. As I've been feeling for the last few years, my conversational Italian is pretty good and is very slowly improving but I'm not sure if it'll ever become very good unless I put some very serious time and effort into it. That would mostly just consist of putting in the hundreds of hours of listening and reading, but it would still be time and effort taken away from other pursuits and it's not a high enough priority.

For now I'd rather be a jack of all trades and get my German up to scratch while continuing to revive my Spanish and have a dash of French every now and then. The end of the Assimil German passive wave is so near yet so far, and there are still plenty of Dark episodes waiting for me. I'll also be following CarlyD and Cavesa's new group log as they're in a similar situation and have some nice plans to break out of the beginner level.
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