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

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

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 03, 2022 3:48 pm

I watched a film yesterday with a sub-file attached. I have mastered the art (he says!) of only glancing at them when I really need it. I rather skip back a sentence I miss, maybe a few times, and it comes clear. And if not I glance at the subs. This is an L2 subtitle file though, so I'm matching words to audio.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Wed May 04, 2022 5:46 pm

Don't get me wrong, I think that subtitles (L2 especially, but not only) are a fantastic resource at any level if used well and they've helped me a lot, but I just find that these days I struggle to use them well. I get lazy and mostly read instead of listening. I've not quite mastered the art of glancing, although Language Reactor can help with that by optionally hiding the subs and revealing on hover. Without subs, I'm forced to actually pay attention to the speech.

I've also realised that my listening comprehension in my more advanced languages still isn't great and sometimes I can't follow group conversations well, so I'm hoping that watching more challenging material without subtitles helps with that.

Both might just be symptoms of the bigger problem that I just find it very hard to pay full attention to films and TV, especially when watching alone at home, and I often watch them while doing something else like eating. Subtitles can make that kind of "multitasking" (i.e., doing several things badly instead of one well) easier too.

It's a shame I don't have the time or attention span for binge-watching, as it genuinely seems to be one of the best language learning methods!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby Le Baron » Wed May 04, 2022 5:58 pm

garyb wrote:I've also realised that my listening comprehension in my more advanced languages still isn't great and sometimes I can't follow group conversations well, so I'm hoping that watching more challenging material without subtitles helps with that.

Both might just be symptoms of the bigger problem that I just find it very hard to pay full attention to films and TV, especially when watching alone at home, and I often watch them while doing something else like eating. Subtitles can make that kind of "multitasking" (i.e., doing several things badly instead of one well) easier too.

I think you make valid observations and it's sometimes good to drop the crutches, the subtitles, once in a while. I have a patchwork approach to this. Sometimes I want to watch for pleasure rather than pure study, so I'm happy to leave the L2 subtitles running. For study I might see how far I get before employing them. Or I might only employ them for bits I really just can't fathom. Or I might even let the film run through even though I missed bits.

I made a thread about French listening (French yes, but it applies to all listening imo) and I wanted to make the point that all listening material in the learning phase up to 'reasonable' comprehension is always incomplete. So I don't care much if I listen to something and didn't understand it all, as much as that I gained value from understanding and learning many other bits in it. It would in fact be strange to comprehend it all at that stage, otherwise I'd be able to just stop learning and enjoy. So I treat every instance of listening as another brick or few bricks or even many bricks adding to the structure.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun May 08, 2022 11:12 am

On the band front, there's been some drama already (the advert I found them through did say they didn't want any drama and just wanted to make music, which should have been a red flag already!); it seems like it's still going ahead for now, but it has put things in perspective. Unless it looks like it's truly getting serious, it's not something I should invest myself in too much, and if the drama continues I should probably just bail while it's still early. It's not something I should sacrifice other interests or career and life plans for.

I already made that mistake a few years ago when I was keen to leave the country for some time to go travelling and/or move elsewhere but I stayed around because my band at the time seemed to be getting serious, with talk of recording an album and going on tour. In the end it split up in quite spectacular fashion, but in hindsight it was clear even long before the drama that the members (including me) weren't committed or organised enough and it was never going to be a serious thing. I did know that at some level and had been considering quitting for a while, but that part of me kept asking "what if?" (aka, FOMO). I did go travelling after all that, but it was a couple of years later than I would have liked to get that out of my system and move on.

So I'm still making time for languages, and for other things that I had been considering slowing down on like public speaking and work studies. German is slowly moving again and, despite what I said in the last few posts, I am finding myself listening more and looking at the subtitles less. I also had another bash at Harry Potter in German, which is still a slog but I can either see the glass as half empty (I don't recognise around one in four words, and neither does the semi-useless Kindle dictionary) or half full (I do recognise around three in four words!).

In Spanish I'm continuing the Almodóvar rewatches with Volver, without subs. I understand most of the dialogue but there are some lines that I need a few rewinds just to pick any words out of. I did finally start watching the latest season of La casa de papel before my Netflix subscription ran out, but it didn't really hook me at all the way the others did and I'm not too upset about not seeing more than the first couple of episodes. This season seems to be more about mindless action and less about the clever plot development that made the previous ones unique and gripping.

Continuing with thoughts on life: I often feel like I don't have the time to do everything and get stressed about it, but to some extent that's really just in my head. As long as I have a minimum of discipline (not socialising every night, not drinking too much, not getting sucked into computer games or social media, not working too hard at the day job, etc.), keep my priorities realistic (having a couple of key activities that I'm going hard at, and others that I'm happy just maintaining or slowly progressing like languages at the moment), and accept that some days are just going to be more productive than others, I absolutely have the time and energy to do most of the things I want. I reckon the part about priorities is key, particularly being okay with not going full-speed at everything. As is too often the case, resistance and non-acceptance is the issue. So German and Spanish are going very slowly and I'm not going to reach proficiency any time soon, but I'm okay with that and I'm still getting a lot of value and enjoyment out of what I am doing.

I'm also getting treatment for a couple of minor health issues including the persistent sore throat I've mentioned before, which has been confirmed as muscle tension dysphonia, and an upper back/shoulder sprain, and the key to both seems to be reducing neck and shoulder tension; without that, no amount of exercises alone will fix them. Much of that tension comes from sitting at a computer all day, but tension also has emotional roots like stress and I've been a believer in mind-body medicine for a long time.

This, the return to normality, my recent travels, and playing music with other people again have all reminded me that there's more to life than work and study and I'm finally starting to get the message that I need to relax more, find a bit more balance, and let myself enjoy life now rather than just treating it as a big to-do list that I need to tick off before I can chill out. Because the list never ends.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby DaveAgain » Sun May 08, 2022 1:52 pm

garyb wrote: German is slowly moving again and, despite what I said in the last few posts, I am finding myself listening more and looking at the subtitles less. I also had another bash at Harry Potter in German, which is still a slog but I can either see the glass as half empty (I don't recognise around one in four words, and neither does the semi-useless Kindle dictionary) or half full (I do recognise around three in four words!).
You might want to look at the Goethe eLibrary range, and just sample a few until you find something you both can and want to read.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun May 08, 2022 5:31 pm

garyb wrote:This, the return to normality, my recent travels, and playing music with other people again have all reminded me that there's more to life than work and study and I'm finally starting to get the message that I need to relax more, find a bit more balance, and let myself enjoy life now rather than just treating it as a big to-do list that I need to tick off before I can chill out. Because the list never ends.
Words to live by!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Thu May 12, 2022 5:40 pm

I actually had a chance to speak German a couple of days ago, as one of the guys in the band has a German girlfriend and the language came up in conversation when she was at the pub with us. It went pretty badly really: I got quite tongue-tied and messed up the pronunciation, it came out in a pretty much stereotypical Anglophone accent, and that put me off trying any further.

I don't feel bad about it the way I might have years ago, in fact I smile a bit thinking about it now, and I can always try again next time with the quite valid excuse that I had been put on the spot; no less than with the question we all hate: "Say something"*.

Being on the spot and getting nervous was indeed part of it, but I also think it was because I'm simply not used to speaking German. Because, well, I've never spoken it. Beyond a few words, anyway.

So I could follow the silent period approach and wait for the words to start magically coming out of my mouth at the "right moment", but even if that does work I don't really want to wait a few years. How can I be ready for the next time, which is more likely to be in a few weeks?

Fortunately the solution is quite obvious: speak!

I can stop skipping the speaking exercises on Duo; their voice recognition might not be up to much, but the point is just to get me used to the physical and mental act of producing German words. I can read textbook sentences aloud, or passages from Harry Potter (or something else more accessible, if I follow DaveAgain's good suggestion).

These aren't the same as spontaneous speaking, but it's a start. One thing at a time. I can also think about self-talk, or even writing just to exercise the language-production muscle.

I have said that focusing on listening is important because "what's the point in being able to speak if you can't understand the answer", but then you could also argue: what's the point in being able to understand if you can't ask the question. And while speaking isn't the priority that it used to be, I do still learn languages because I'd like to be able to speak them. Things do feel a bit off when I'm even attempting to read a novel and watch films yet I can't say a few sentences.

*: Yeah, I was too under pressure to think of giving my usual smart-arse response to that, which I suppose would be: Was willst du, dass ich sage?
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sat Jun 04, 2022 1:01 pm

Spanish

Spanish has mostly replaced Italian as my main writing and media consumption language. Still reading the Metro 2033 translation, watching the occasional film, listening to podcasts, and doing a bit of gaming.

German

It's still going at a slow but sustainable pace, and I am seeing my listening and reading comprehension gradually improve.

As promised, I've been speaking aloud more. Still not much spontaneous stuff, just repeating exercises as I said I would, but it is getting me more physically and psychologically used to producing the language.

On the gaming subject, I'm tempted to give Linguist FPS, which I saw posted here recently, a shot. It looks entertaining enough, and more useful and accessible than a regular game would be in German at my level. I'll report back.

Italian

A few friends and I have been having a bit of a giallo phase recently, watching some films by Argento, Fulci, et al. They're maybe not the best choice for input, as they tend to have a lot of dubbing: interestingly, many of them don't really have an "original language" as such, because they were filmed with actors from all over reciting their lines in their own languages and then the whole thing was dubbed in different languages for different markets. In Profondo rosso, the same characters converse sometimes in English and sometimes in Italian... But that's just part of the fun.

I've been saying for years that I want to visit Naples, and I'm thinking that this year I should finally make it happen. It's a bit late for the pre-summer period now, but I might manage it around September.

If I do that, I will do a bit of linguistic preparation. Upping the input in general, and in particular media set in that area to get more used to the accent, which there's no shortage of! In fact I went to see a film set there last week, Il bambino nascosto. I'm certainly not going to go as far as learning the dialect itself, but there is a lot of mixing of dialect with Italian in everyday speech so some listening could help pick up the common instances. Plus the usual speaking with Italian friends, and maybe some pronunciation work. Which brings me to...

Life

I've been doing speech therapy exercises for muscle tension dysphonia, and they seem to be working well! It could take a while before I'm fully pain and tension free (if ever; it seems like one of these things that might never fully go away and I'll just have to be mindful of it and use it as a warning sign to take it easy) but it's already a vast improvement compared to a few months ago. The exercises are also making me a better speaker in general in terms of things like clarity, pace, and vocal variety. This should help me a ton in my foreign languages too, and it means that pronunciation work like what I just mentioned for Italian could be more effective. I did a lot of this sort of work in the past with limited success, and now I think that one limiting factor was my general poor voice use.

I feel that in the last month or two, with things going back to normal, I've found a balance in life that I never really had before. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, a lot of this is just about accepting my human limits and realising I can't go hard on everything all the time. I'd love to be able to put more time into all the language activities I described above, which make a fairly small proportion of my free time, but I have to be realistic and I'm fine with not being able to.

I became a bit obsessive about my career during the pandemic and spent a lot of time studying to get better at my job and eventually get a better job, as well as researching the possibilities and which places might have the best prospects. I also got quite focused on money and investing. In a way this was just healthy compensation for not caring much about my career or finances in my twenties, but in hindsight I did take it too far and got very out of balance. It was a bit of a coping mechanism during the pandemic: it kept me busy and distracted; it was the one area of life that I felt I had real control over; all the time stuck at home made my usually non-materialistic self want a better home; and all that research was causing me to compare myself to the high achievers who are overrepresented in such discussions rather than the people around me.

Again as I said a couple of posts ago, I'm remembering that there's much more to life. There's a saying that "money is what people pursue when they don't know what else to pursue", and that is hitting home. Sure, if I had given it more attention in my twenties I could be much more comfortable by now and have more time and opportunity for things like languages and travel and music, but at the same time I can't really regret trying to do the things I wanted to do while I was young, and continuing to do so while I still am.

My industry has also had a big downturn in the last couple of months and there's a lot of news about lay-offs, pay cuts, and hiring freezes. Which kinda messes up my plans of trying to change job in the near future, and makes me think I might be better staying put for a bit longer. Again a good reason to remember that there's more to life, and tech companies having a long-overdue correction and losing a bit of their power and influence can only be a good thing for society so I'm not too bothered about it affecting my own prospects. And life here has been so good recently that I don't really feel in a rush to find work elsewhere, even if it's something I'd love to do sooner or later.

There's the fantasy versus reality aspect too, and I think there's a parallel with what I've said about speaking: I wish I had got better at speaking my native language before even getting into foreign languages. And maybe it's good to make the most of my life here and learn to be happy with what I have before thinking about going somewhere else, and then if I do go somewhere else it could be all the more enriching.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:09 pm

German is sort-of on track again. I'm finding that there's a level where I'm just about keeping up, then a level a bit above that where the language is actually bouncing around in my head and I feel like I'm making progress, and I've managed to get into the latter one a few times in the last couple of weeks.

The difference between the two is just a bit more input, a bit more Duolingo (at least a couple of lessons and maybe a story, rather than just the minimum one lesson to keep up the streak), and some textbook work. The latter seems to make a difference for sure, even if it's covering much of the same ground as Duo like the perfect tense and vocabulary on unavoidable subjects like work and school. Attacking the same things from different angles never hurts, and I find that textbook exercises engage my brain a bit more while Duo can sometimes feel more like recall practice.

Input-wise, I felt like a change from Easy German so I checked out some cinema from the last couple of decades. Das Leben der Anderen (needs no introduction); Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (I've said it before jokingly, but dramas about young political activists really do seem to be one of the major German genres); A Coffee in Berlin (which I saw described as the film that best caputures the Millenial generation); Victoria (definitely heavy on the informal language and slang, and an interesting one as the dialogue is partly improvised, although half is in English).

I would like to add in some output practice as I've mentioned, but only if I can get the above input and study routine consistent first. One step at a time.

Spanish: Mostly podcasts and gaming. Not managed much writing.

I've been playing the Hitman series over the last few months since I loved Silent Assasin as a teenager. A couple of the games (Contracts, Absolution) are available fully in Spanish, while some others like the newer Hitman that I've just started just have subtitles.

I've almost finished reading Metro 2033 so thought I'd give the game based on it a try too. I'm not a huge FPS fan these days, espeically not ones with annoying non-human enemies that jump around erratically and are hard to hit with the crappy weapons you start with, but it does capture the atmosphere of the book well and seems to be a gem for language learners: lots of dialogue and writing, and you can choose the written and spoken languages separately. As well as the usual FIGS, it has Russian (as one would hope) and Ukranian for spoken languages, and these plus Czech and Polish for written.

I did try Linguist FPS in German and it was passable. Even more limited than I expected as a game, and I'd say not really worth the price, but language-wise it was at the level I had hoped and it has helped to drill in a few words. The developers say they might expand it in future, which would be nice but I'm not holding my breath.

In work and life, I'm finishing my placement and going back to where I was although in a different role and I think (and have been advised) that it's worth staying there at least for the next six months or so, which takes off some of the pressure for studying and thinking about the next move. But it can feel like it's always "six more months" and I'm not properly committing to anything...

Life is still pretty busy and I'm not sure if that always-hoped-for lull will ever actually come, but I'm carving out a bit more hobby and leisure time. I'm trying to keep at least one weekend day and a few weeknights free per week, even if it means saying no to things.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Jul 31, 2022 1:08 pm

I fell off the wagon again pretty soon after writing that previous post, and it's clear that I've been suffering from what I'll call post-lockdown burnout: everything is happening again and it's too much to handle. Obviously I'd never wish for more lockdowns and I never really agreed with them in principle, so I hate to say this, but I do miss having more time for myself and less stuff going on...

The new role at work is quite full-on, and on top of that I have two musical projects, social life, trying to stay healthy (I went to the gym this morning for the first time in about a month), and I'm supposed to fit language learning in somewhere along with all that... And I've been dealing with the burnout in unhealthy ways, like staying up late playing games. Sure it's good that now I allow myself to do unproductive activities just for fun, but when they're keeping me awake and the stuff I play isn't exactly relaxing it just contributes to the vicious circle: when I'm tired, instant gratification is always more appealing.

I'm having a long weekend to chill out a bit, catch up on things including language studies, and think a bit about how many of my activities I genuinely want to do and how many I just do because I think I "should" do them. Which is a tricky one since like many people I go through phases, so there is a certain amount of going through the motions in the things I care less about just to keep them progressing until they have their phase again. But I do think there are some social outings, work events, and gigs that I just go to because of FOMO or feeling like I should when in reality I'd rather just stay at home and work on my interests or take it easy.

Anyway I am trying to get German moving again with my fellow Scot and eternal beginner Mark from Coffee Break German (hey, it's not a bad thing: if he got past the beginner stage there wouldn't be much point in the podcast anymore!), getting back into Duo, some subtitles in non-German films and games, and a bit of media. I tried to watch Das Boot but got bored after a while; I know it's a classic but war films aren't my thing. So instead I've reclaimed a bit of German-learner credibility and started watching Tatort...

Learning German is another thing that I'm not sure if I genuinely want to do or just feel like I should do. Or if just I want the result of being able to understand and speak German but don't want to go through the pain of getting there. I think I want to, even if the motivation comes and goes and often I'd rather spend my time learning something more useful, and again it's a matter of phases. I do find that the motivation comes back in times like now when I have a little chance to breathe in between other things.

Nothing much to report on Spanish (not that I really said much about German in that tangent either!), still the bare minimum, and almost zero Italian. I still want to organise that trip to Naples though, and I've not caught up with my Italian friends for a while, so there's a bit on the horizon.
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