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

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:30 pm

This could well be a general blog entry not just for language. Your reflections on covid and dealing with stress are quite apt.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sat Aug 06, 2022 11:15 am

Thanks! I do worry that I overshare on here, but I try to keep the tangents a bit related to the subject of languages :lol: And life is in the title of the log...

I ended up having a week with every evening free, nothing on at all, and... it was fantastic. Then in a couple of weeks I'm off work for a week, and I've decided not to plan anything big as I'd just like to take it easy-ish and catch up on things.

I did take advantage to catch up on German and discover the joys of Tatort. It's pretty much what I expected: a bit soap-opera-ish with varying quality of writing and acting, not super-gritty but still with a definite edge to it, and very watchable. And the German is mostly clearly spoken, which is key for now.

Naples/Campania plans are also underway for late September/early October, which is giving me a push to brush up on my Italian. By coincidence I ended up meeting up with one of these Italian friends I hadn't seen for a while the evening after I wrote my last post; I was mostly getting by fine in conversation but definitely not at my peak.

As always as soon as I have a little free time, however, I've found/created a problem to solve that fills it up: I don't like the direction work is going in and it's causing me far more stress than it's worth so a career move in the near future is yet again on my mind and I'm getting back into interview study and preparation.

On whether that's here or somewhere abroad like Berlin, I feel ambivalent really. Life here is still good; while the UK economy looks to be in a bad place for the foreseeable future I'm not convinced things are much better in the rest of the West either; and at times it feels like I'm getting past the stage of my life where the idea of starting fresh and meeting people all over again and all the rest is really appealing. And life in a small-ish city is already far too busy for me so I don't know how I'd get on in a proper metropolis. At least Berlin has a pretty chill feel, unlike somewhere like London, and in both these places I already know a few people. Really I think it'll just be based on what job I can get.

In any case, there are certainly things I can do to improve the situation and deal with the stress before any move. One is not committing to too many things, but I also think that keeping up the language studies isn't a bad thing since it's nice to be doing something just because I want to do it, that isn't related to work, and isn't as serious a hobby as music.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sat Aug 13, 2022 10:12 am

I've mostly sorted out the trip now. 4 nights in Naples, 3 around the Amalfi coast, 2 in Procida. The latter is a small island that was awarded the Capital of Culture this year and a friend raved about and told me I had to visit, and should be a good place to properly chill out after more sightseeing and being around people in the other locations.

For the Amalfi part, I'm undecided between staying in Salerno (cheaper, good transportation, more authentic experience than holiday resort, and quite easy access to the famous coastal towns) or just splashing out and staying in one of the towns (likely Positano as there's a nice-looking hostel there, even if a dorm bed there costs more than a private room in Salerno...). To be honest I'm leaning towards the second option because I'm quite up for feeling like it's a proper holiday after not travelling much for a couple of years, and there'll be enough opportunites for "authentic experiences" in the other places.

I think that sums up my current attitude quite well. I'm seeing it more as a holiday and a time to relax than as some kind of self-directed Italian immersion experience like I would've in the past. I do feel motivated to polish up my Italian a little and maybe even do a bit of work on pronunciation, but I'm not aiming for perfection or planning any intensive study and I'm not going to force myself to speak Italian as much as possible or get upset when people respond in English as they're quite likely to in the more touristy areas or resist hanging about with other travellers. Life is difficult enough already.

That said, maybe somewhere like Positano would be one extreme to the other and an overpriced resort town full of tourists and Insta-narcissists will be my idea of hell, but it's a few days of my life and as long as I can get in a bit of hiking and swimming I'll be happy. And I can think of it as exposure therapy for my chronic cheapness.

Similar-ish feelings about German. I feel motivated enough to spend some time on it over my week off, but not enough to obsess over it. Maybe I'm starting to find that balance.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Aug 13, 2022 10:29 am

I went to Procida a few years ago and can confirm it's absolutely gorgeous! It doesn't take long to walk from one end of it to the other though :lol: It should definitely be a nice place to relax after Naples; it was much less busy and touristy than I expected it to be.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Aug 28, 2022 5:22 pm

Recently I've been on a bit of a health kick: drinking less, going to bed and getting up earlier, gaming less, meditating for longer, cycling and swimming more. The thought of going to the Italian coast at the end of the summer has given me a big motivational boost for the latter, so I've been working on my technique and trying to get used to the open water which over there should hopefully a bit more pleasant than the "refreshing" 14 degrees here.

I finally got around to reading Atomic Habits, which must be the most talked-about book on YouTube and blogs since it came out, taking the place of Outliers, so it had been on my list for a few years. I think it's helped with the lifestyle changes, and there are some great ideas in there; perhaps the one that's helped me the most is that keeping up a habit is more important than doing it "well" every time. For example it's still worth going to the gym even if you're tired and will probably have a crappy workout, and it's still worth studying even if you can only fit in five minutes; these sessions might contribute pretty much nothing to your fitness and your language knowledge in themselves, but the fact that you're doing them reinforces your identity as a person who goes to the gym and studies a language, which plays a huge role in maintaining the habits over the longer term. Which is what really gets the results.

The book's not the only factor though; I'm just losing interest in sitting in pubs and going to gigs several times per week and I'd rather keep active and have some time for myself, and the good parts of drinking rarely seem worth the negative effects these days. Maybe it's the usual reason of "getting older", or realising that I don't really like certain things (or like them but just in small doses) but just did them because everyone does them, or maybe simply too much of a good thing in the last few months. The time off work helped too, and since going back I've been avoiding overcommitting and taking on too much work in order to leave some mental energy free for everything else.

In any case, my language studies have definitely benefitted. I've watched a good few episodes of Tatort, got closer to the bottom of the DuoLingo tree (which is really a graph, not a tree - yes, the computing studies have been going well too!), and even made a dent in Spektrum. To state the obvious, using real textbooks in addition to Duo and input gives a big boost and I think it's something I'll need to keep up if I want to get past A1 sometime this decade.

The pre-trip motivation for Italian still hasn't quite arrived, although I'm starting to see it on the horizon. I have been writing in Italian a bit more, and I've been informed that there's a new-ish Montalbano episode that I've not seen yet which will be a good way to dive back into input.

Everything comes in cycles and I'm not expecting to keep up these positive changes forever or claiming to have become a new man, but I believe they are another step in the right direction.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Wed Sep 07, 2022 2:03 pm

With the effort I've been putting into German recently, you'd think I was going to Germany rather than Italy in a few weeks! But I suppose it's the old classic of procrastinating on one language by studying another.

I did fall off the wagon this weekend and week though, as I had to prepare a presentation that ended up taking over my life for a few days, but it's over now so I just need to chill out a bit and get back on.

More Tatort. It's become something I look forward to watching, and it has a good balance of being gripping enough to keep me interested yet not so much as to get my mind racing like some gritter crime shows would. Despite the subject matter, it has quite a pleasant feel to it, I suppose because there's always a happy ending. Well, not so happy for the people getting murdered, but the crime is always solved and justice is done. In terms of language it's still above my level, but I do understand quite a bit of the dialogue so it counts as comprehensible input, and to some extent it's just about getting in the hours so the best materials are the ones that keep you engaged and motivated.

As for Italian, still no real plan other than input. It turned out I had already seen that Montalbano episode - it was new on the BBC but being a good Italian learner I had already caught it on the RAI - but I have watched a couple of old favourites instead. And a re-watch might not be a bad thing since I no doubt didn't pick up everything without subtitles. I'd like to listen to some podcasts but it seems like Italian podcasts aren't much of a thing anymore, neither learner-oriented ones (Podcast Italiano only does a few episodes per year now, and Italiano Automatico has mostly been rehashing the same stuff for a while) nor native ones (RAI don't seem to publish proper podcasts anymore; maybe you need their app?).

YouTube is alive and well though, and I've been watching some stuff related to my current interests, for example swimming as I mentioned in the last post. But with the trip coming up, watching clearly-spoken informational material on specialised subjects might not be the best use of my time and maybe I should be focusing more on the basics (especially the sort of "basics" that only really come up in-country), on challenging my listening comprehension, and on taking some rust off my speaking and pronunciation.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Sep 07, 2022 4:16 pm

garyb wrote:
As for Italian, still no real plan other than input. It turned out I had already seen that Montalbano episode - it was new on the BBC but being a good Italian learner I had already caught it on the RAI - but I have watched a couple of old favourites instead. And a re-watch might not be a bad thing since I no doubt didn't pick up everything without subtitles. I'd like to listen to some podcasts but it seems like Italian podcasts aren't much of a thing anymore, neither learner-oriented ones (Podcast Italiano only does a few episodes per year now, and Italiano Automatico has mostly been rehashing the same stuff for a while) nor native ones (RAI don't seem to publish proper podcasts anymore; maybe you need their app?).
Channel 4 have a new Italian series, Redemption (Io ti cercherò ?).
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Wed Sep 07, 2022 8:16 pm

DaveAgain wrote:Channel 4 have a new Italian series, Redemption (Io ti cercherò ?).

Ooh thanks for mentioning that, I hadn't heard of it and it sounds right up my street!
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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 Sep 15, 2022 8:19 pm

My trip is very soon, under two weeks away, so I've stopped procrastinating and shifted the balance Italian-wards. It's a shame to slow down again on German when I was finally picking up good momentum, but I'll have the rest of my life to learn it...

I'm enjoying Redemption so far. Solid crime thriller, perhaps not the best I've ever seen but it's keeping me engaged and it's a change of pace from Montalbano: more serious, more gripping, more emotional.

I've done a bit of Italian speaking work in the last few days, as I said I might. Very similar things to what I've already been doing in English to improve my public and general speaking: recording myself reading aloud (a few paragraphs from a news article, etc.) then spontaneously speaking in the "table topic" format - pick a random question (there are lots of lists of them online) and answer it in the form of a one-to-two minute mini-speech with no preparation.

So far I've pleasantly surprised myself! While I sure don't sound like an Italian and my intonation is a bit all over the place, I thought that the individual sounds were all good and I heard very little of the bad English-speaker habits that came up when I did similar exercises in the past, like shifting towards stress-timing and reducing or clipping final vowels. I did spot one or two clipped final Os, but just becoming aware of it seemed to be enough to fix it in subsequent recordings. I do miss a few trilled Rs, but I'm finally getting better at producing the sound so it's just a case of making sure to always do so when I should.

Based on these I'd describe my speaking as clear and comprehensible, relatively fluid, and mostly with the "neutral non-native accent" that I think is the best that those of us not gifted with strong imitation skills can aspire to. There were maybe a couple of points where the Scottish tone came through, especially when I sped up, but it's probably not obvious to someone not listening for it.

I'm trying to focus on taking it slowly and thinking about what I'm saying rather than just blurting it out as quickly as I can, but I'm aware that when there's actually a person in front of me and especially if I'm at all stressed I'm more likely to do the latter so it's just something to be extra-mindful of in interactions. Hopefully I'll manage to meet up with Italian friends before the trip so I can try putting it into practice.

I could probably tune up the tone, intonation, and syllable-grouping with some more focused work, but... do I really care that much? As I said recently, practising Italian isn't and shouldn't be a main purpose of the trip, just a bonus. And unlike I might have done in the past, I'm not aiming for perfection or to fool native speakers or to impress anyone; it's mostly just for the personal satisfaction of being able to use the language well while I'm there, and I suppose to at least appear as a competent speaker since people do judge by first impressions.

It's not something I'm planning to put lots of time into, just a few minutes per day, but I still feel it's very worthwhile and offers a lot of bang for my buck: not only the obvious speaking and pronunciation practice but also getting me more physically and mentally used to speaking the language (like I mentioned for German quite recently), improving my ability to think on my feet and put my thoughts into words (which is language-independent to an extent), forcing me to go beyond small-talk and speak a bit more deeply about subjects, getting a few quick wins like the Os and Rs, and just giving me a confidence boost.

Plus if it does keep working well it'll just be another tool in my belt for any time in the future when I want to work on speaking or just warm up for a trip or even a single interaction. I do however think it's quite an advanced tool and there's a reason I've not had much success with similar work in the past: it's based on self-feedback, which needs both a pretty good knowledge of how the language "should" sound, acquired from lots of listening and phonetic study, and an understanding of how my own voice works. The second especially was likely lacking in previous attempts.

I think it would be too early to apply it to German for example, but it could be adapted: less focus on pronunciation, simpler prompts and shorter answers for the spontenous parts, and perhaps repeating after recordings rather than just reading texts. Could be a great way to finally bridge the gap from studying at home to actually speaking with people.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby Le Baron » Thu Sep 15, 2022 9:01 pm

garyb wrote:I could probably tune up the tone, intonation, and syllable-grouping with some more focused work, but... do I really care that much? As I said recently, practising Italian isn't and shouldn't be a main purpose of the trip, just a bonus. And unlike I might have done in the past, I'm not aiming for perfection or to fool native speakers or to impress anyone; it's mostly just for the personal satisfaction of being able to use the language well while I'm there, and I suppose to at least appear as a competent speaker since people do judge by first impressions.

Yes, this is a fair approach. If you want to spend time on that sort of perfection you'd always be holding off until getting into it. Even if afterwards you think you should work on accent/intonation etc, at least you 'll know what to work on if at all. Hopefully you'll be complimented which will spur you on even more.
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