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

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

Postby garyb » Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:56 pm

I watched Deutschland 83 and am now onto 86. I'm enjoying it although I'm still not convinced it's helping my German a whole lot at this stage. As I said, all input is helpful to some extent, but I'd benefit from using something more at my level. It might be time to get back into the Easy German videos.

In "sentences I never thought I'd say": I feel that DuoLingo is going a bit too fast for me! Too much new vocabulary without much context. For now I plan to just do the minimum with Duo, mostly review/practice rather than new lessons, and focus more on slow-but-steady Spektrum.

I checked out one of the Italian series on All4, Non uccidere, mainly because it's set in Turin which is a city I've visited several times and has always fascinated me. So far it seems very middle-of-the-road: I enjoyed the first episode enough but didn't feel in any rush to watch the second. Other than that I've seen Italian friends and watched a couple of the Euro matches in Italian so it's still getting some use.

Still slow on the Spanish front with La sombra del viento. I've not really bothered doing another language exchange; I enjoyed the one I did and it's nothing personal at all, but I've just had other things to do and I haven't felt like it. I suppose after all my frustrations with flaky language exchange partners in the past it's interesting to be on the other side and realise that most of the time if they're not interested in continuing it's usually nothing against me and nothing "wrong" with them, it's just that they don't really have the space in their life for it. And maybe all I really wanted out of the exchange was to prove to myself that I can still speak decent Spanish if I want to, which I did and then some, so I don't feel the need to continue.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby rdearman » Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:39 pm

Non uccidere is a slow starter, that is for sure. I stuck with it for a season or two, I think. It gets more interesting as you find out more about her mother. :) But I won't give spoilers. It doesn't really get "gripping" but it is better than most stuff if all you're looking for is language practice.
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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 » Mon Aug 09, 2021 4:41 pm

Christmas has come early for this half-hearted German learner: Netflix recently released new seasons of Biohackers and How to sell drugs online (fast)! The latter even has German subtitles, which the previous seasons didn't. I got through Biohackers pretty quickly; the plot was even more contrived than the first season, but it had the same good mixture of gripping drama and lighter moments. Onto Drugs now and it's a good one: they've managed to hit the techy accuracy and humour on the spot again and there are lots of clever references in there. I also saw that a documentary on the true story that inspired the series has come out, so that'll be next on the list. In fact, some documentaries might be a good idea in general since they tend to be far easier than fiction.

The other German learning activities are still going slowly. As said before I'm just doing reviews on Duolingo rather than starting any new units, and that's working quite well. It really does focus on drilling the numbers, which is a good thing at least if you're planning to speak the language in real life. I've done a few pages of Spektrum too but it's been irregular.

I'm still quite focused on my work at the moment and even when it's just 9 to 5 I often don't have much energy left for other pursuits, so I'm just accepting that this phase of my life is a more career-focused one and other activities are suffering a bit. It was about time, considering I mostly spent my twenties doing as little work as I could get away with and concentrating on languages and music. But I'm off this week, and still have a lot of annual leave to use up before the end of the year, so I'm finding a bit more time for these other activities.

I re-watched Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios following an attack of nostalgia for Madrid and the Spanish language after a Spanish guitar concert, and found that I was struggling to understand quite a lot of the dialogue. A film with lots of melodrama and colloquial language obviously isn't the easiest kind of material, but it's still quite embarrassing that I've been learning Spanish for quite a few years, even if in an on-and-off way, and still find it hard to follow a film without subtitles. Especially one in Spain Spanish which is the variety I've mostly foused on. I've maybe just become too reliant on subtitles and on easy material like podcasts so need to go out of my comfort zone more and just watch a bunch of material like that with no subs, or Spanish subs if I really need them, and pay full attention. In the vast majority of cases when I don't understand something it's not because I don't know the words but just because the pronunciation was too fast or unclear. I have noted before that colloquial Spanish conversations are a particularly tough nut to crack: while I can manage a one-on-one conversation just fine, things can get very tricky when there are two or more Spaniards involved. Whereas for Italian and French it only really gets difficult when they're all from the same area. Fortunately there's no shortage of good training material.

La sombra del viento is almost done: I'll likely finish it this week. It's taken me so long to read that I can hardly remember some of the details from the start now, and once I finish it I think I'll need to read a plot summary to remind me of who did what and when. Still an excellent book though.

I've had a bit of travel nostalgia recently (thanks Ogrim :D) but the thought of actually using my languages in the countries just feels quite strange and distant now. Even when the person who let me into the concert yesterday actually greeted me in Spanish I automatically replied in English and didn't really think about it until afterwards; the idea of Spanish being something I could actually use with people rather than just consume from media didn't really cross my mind at the time. Italian is a bit different since I regularly use it with friends, but looking back at all the time I spent in Italy and speaking it with people, with varying results, still feels pretty strange.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Fri Sep 10, 2021 7:39 pm

I've stopped watching German series for the moment and I've gone back to Easy German instead. Series might be better for entertainment but I don't think they were really helping me learn German much. As I said a few posts ago, all input is valuable; but some types are certainly more valuable than others at a given stage and especially given how little time I'm putting into German it makes sense to optimise and try to get more bang for my buck.

I hinted at the same idea regarding Spanish in my last post, where it was the opposite case and I was using too much material that wasn't challenging me enough. I'm trying to watch more films and series without subtitles rather than just defaulting to podcasts, with the most recent one being Criminal: Spain which has a good mix of clear and formal language and more colloquial speech.

Duo is still my main German resource since I still just can't find the time or the motivation to use something more serious. Despite its faults, it is way better than nothing. Spektrum seems like a great and very comprehensive course and all, but whenever I open the book and see all the exercises I just feel like I can't be bothered.

I do think my decision to go for depth before breadth on Duo, building up the earlier skills more before moving onto the later ones, is paying off as I am seeing improvements in recall and ability to construct sentences. I still feel like I'd benefit from more explicit understanding of some of the rules though, things like adjective endings before nouns.

Italian is going as it usually goes: still the only foreign language I actually speak to people in these days, and that keeps up the motivation. I watched Generazione 56K on Netflix, which was a bit of a let-down. I was aware that it was a romantic comedy so I knew what I was getting into, and romantic comedies have been not just a guilty pleasure but a key part of my Italian learning since quite early on so I've nothing against the idea, but this one was definitely more on the romantic side and I hadn't expected it to pour on the cheese quite so thickly. The premise sounded good and the trailer gave me high hopes, and the series format could have allowed for some proper plot and character development rather than just a longer list of clichés, so it felt like a missed opportunity. Still watchable enough and with some nice shots and accents of Naples though.

I do miss the days when I was willing to make serious time for languages, I made faster progress (even if it never felt fast enough!), and I could really immerse myself in the cultures (or at least the portrayals of them from media). Sure, I've also said that I regret putting quite so much time into them instead of my career and other hobbies, and there are many things I'd do differently in hindsight like putting less emphasis on speaking, avoiding perfectionism and other unhealthy attitudes, and dropping French much earlier :D, but I did love losing myself in them and my studies these days just seem so half-hearted and superficial in comparison. Really I just need more energy and more hours in the day, but that's not going to happen any time soon. Social life and the music scene are going back to normal (which I'm very happy about, but it does mean less time for my own pursuits), my work and work-related studies are as demanding as ever, and I'm not getting any younger.

Who knows, maybe there'll be another time in my life when I can learn languages more seriously again, and for now it's quite nice that enjoying media in other languages has become a relaxing activity and a break from everything else. Now if I can just get my German past the painful beginner stage and start being able to actually enjoy it the way I do with my other languages...
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Oct 03, 2021 12:34 pm

All the signs are saying that I've made progress in German. I'm constructing the sentences more naturally; I've tried reading a few more pages of Harry Potter and it's gone from impenetrable to just about manageable between recognising more words, knowing the story, and using the Kindle dictionary (but this last one is much less useful than it sounds since the German dictionary is even worse than the others I've used: it doesn't recognise many conjugated verb forms or compound words, and you can forget about seperable prefixes!); and as I'm strengthening Duo units and re-listening to Coffee Break episodes at 1.5x speed it's feeling a bit like rereading a book or rewatching a film where much of it comes back to you quickly and you also pick up on many details that you had forgotten or hadn't noticed the first time round.

As I've said already, my choice to just keep going over the basics rather than move onto more advanced material seems to have been the right one, at least for a language like German where the difficulty is very front-loaded.

With this foundation, I believe I could progress to a low-intermediate level fairly quickly if I wanted to. Not that I'm saying I do want to - it's still not a high enough priority for me - but hopefully it also means that if I keep learning at (for want of a better term) "normal-person pace" rather than "super-keen-language-learner pace" I should keep advancing slowly but surely. And if I do develop a burning passion or find a more immediate use for German then I can always pick up the pace since I'm past that absolute beginner stage where the brain can't take in any more than a small amount of study per day. Maybe I was putting too much pressure on myself to learn quickly since I'm supposedly an accomplished language learner by now, despite my situation and priorities being very different from when this was my main hobby, and losing motivation because I couldn't meet that expectation.

This progress is giving me more love for the language and motivating me to study harder, though! But I also have tons of motivation for other things that I love too. It's a hard life...

I had a strange moment a couple of weeks ago where I was with an Italian friend in an Italian restaurant speaking Italian and the waiter didn't understand me at first a couple of times (quite surely due to the noisy environment and me not speaking up enough, rather than my pronunciation or accent) and I suddenly got this uncomfortable feeling that it was all a big act, I was somehow pretending to be someone I wasn't, and I was getting sick of keeping up the act after so many years and just wanted to be myself now.

I realise that this doesn't make much sense since there's nothing necessarily "false" about speaking a non-native language, even if you're not in the country, so I'm not interpreting those thoughts too literally. I think they just say something about my own baggage related to the language where in the past I was practically trying to be "one of them" rather than embracing my position as an imperfect yet skilled and enthusiastic foreigner and non-native speaker. I suppose the situation put me into that old mindset and made me feel an expectation to perform, then the waiter not understanding me triggered the associated feelings.

It's understandable since, especially in parts of Italy, "revealing" that you're a non-native speaking the language can lead to bad treatment and reactions. But now I think I'd rather just be myself as it were, address the elephant in the room, and let the chips fall where they may. Dealing with a few bad reactions is probably less mentally draining than constantly trying to avoid them in the first place, and it's probably much easier to take them in stride when you have that attitude. In fact there's likely an element of self-fulfilling prophecy where the more you try to "perform" the more you attract these negative reactions since you're less at ease, and you maybe even compromise your own efforts. Perhaps the waiter didn't understand me because I was holding back rather than speaking clearly and confidently, foreign accent or not.

It's parallel to the paradox in social life where the more you care about people's reactions to you and try to monitor your behaviour, the more you hide your true self and the more likely people are to dislike you or find you boring.

Of course all that can be much easier said than done and it's very easy to go back into old patterns despite your good intentions and understandings, as my experience shows. At least I'm mindful of when it happens so I can try to change it. And on the subject not being understood first time, it's important to remember how much this happens even between native speakers. Last night a waitress in a noisy bar misheard my beer order in English and I just repeated myself without thinking because it's such a completely normal everyday occurrence.

I might also just need a bit of a break from Italian, and I'd be quite happy to focus a little more on Spanish and German. Spain does feature highly on my post-pandemic travel list (although Italy isn't far behind) and I'm keen to see more of the German-speaking world sooner or later. Not to mention other parts of Northern Europe, where a bit of Germanic knowledge could go quite far for understanding.

For Spanish, my main focus is just on improving listening comprehension by using more challenging material without subtitles as I described a few posts ago, and I'll shift some of my diary-writing from Italian to Spanish to get a bit more production practice.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby gsbod » Sun Oct 03, 2021 1:23 pm

garyb wrote:And on the subject not being understood first time, it's important to remember how much this happens even between native speakers. Last night a waitress in a noisy bar misheard my beer order in English and I just repeated myself without thinking because it's such a completely normal everyday occurrence.


Absolutely this. It's not just background noise that can be a problem either. So much of our comprehension, in our native language, is about filling in the gaps according to what we expect to be hearing, that confusion and misunderstandings arise all the time. It's a wonder we manage to communicate at all sometimes.

Well done on the German progress too!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:36 am

German is still moving along nicely, which I'm happy about. I'm managing to get through a few pages of Spektrum a few days per week on top of the usual Duo, Coffee Break, and Easy German. I'm also watching Deutschland 89, which I know I said I'd leave for later, but I couldn't resist, and as long as I'm still doing the main foundational activites it's all good and it's all part of my historical and cultural learning associated with the language. I am understanding much more of it than I did of 83 and 86 only a few months ago. I also saw that there's a new Netflix series in German about tech entrepreneurs, The billion dollar code, and of course I'm all over that so it's next in the list.

The last episode of Easy German that I watched was about differences between East and West Germany, which tied in nicely with my TV viewing. I know I keep going on about it but I really can't sing the praises of that channel highly enough. The topics range from the very everyday ("what are you doing this evening", etc.) to full-on social and political questions. Interesting to hear that there are still a lot of real and perceived differences between the two sides even now although they're gradually dying out with the newer generations, which some of the modern TV I've watched (such as Criminal: Germany) has already hinted at.

I mentioned in a couple of previous posts that I was in a work phase and my other interests had been left a bit by the wayside; in the last few weeks however this has reversed. I took a week off which I mostly spent socialising and working on music and languages, and I'm finding a lot of joy in these semi-neglected passions and struggling to get back into work mode :D So I'm just riding the wave for now and enjoying it while it lasts.

On the music side, I've been discovering some of Schubert's songs. The language in them, while still very above my level, seems less old-fashioned and flowery than much of the Italian and French classical music I've encountered and I mostly struggle to understand without a dictionary even with my much higher level in these languages. That's likely less a question of the language and more of the style though: the Italian and French stuff I know is more on the opera side while Schubert was more into shorter lieder. It'll be great to sing some of the stuff one day, and I suppose I already have a good enough idea of the pronunciation that I could even start now if I wanted to. Not understanding the text well doesn't stop many singers!

For Spanish input, I've gone back to the old favourite of Aquí no hay quién viva. It's maybe slightly still in the "too easy" category for 80-90% of the dialogue, but the remaining proportion that is very fast or colloquial or unclear is enough to keep me on my toes, and subtitles aren't an option.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Tue Nov 23, 2021 6:34 pm

Life got in the way yet again, but it seems like I've now built up my German enough that it can survive life getting in the way without too much loss. In any case, comprehension is always lost much more slowly than speaking ability and when my speaking ability is near zero to begin with because, well, I've never spoken German with a person since I started learning it, there isn't much to lose! I'd happily try speak it if I could, but I have few opportunities and even less motivation to actively seek them out for now.

I did finish 89 and start The billion dollar code. I watched the first episode in a hotel room with a TV that had Netflix (yes, I did log out at the end of my stay; the option to do so is not easy to find!) and without the usual luxury of having two subtitle languages in parallel with Language Learning With Netflix (or whatever much less meaningful name they've given it now) I had to choose just one. I started with German and was pleasantly surprised to find I could understand almost all of the dialog in the first ten minutes or so. After that initial scene-setting was done and things got more legal and technical it stopped being easy and fun so I switched to English, but it was nice while it lasted.

Someone contacted me about an in-person Spanish exchange. The exchange still hasn't happened between them being away, me being away, them having a last-minute job interview, and me having a sore throat, and I don't know if it ever will - I've been getting time-waster vibes from the start even if all the reasons for not managing it so far have been completely legitimate - but it did push me to do a bit more listening, reading and writing so that's already a good thing.

I had a dinner with Italian friends and it was just yet another reminder that my Italian is far from perfect and probably always will be, and I guess I'm okay with that.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby StringerBell » Tue Nov 23, 2021 11:44 pm

garyb wrote:when my speaking ability is near zero to begin with because, well, I've never spoken German with a person since I started learning it, there isn't much to lose!


Now there's a glass half-full approach if I've ever seen one! :lol:

garyb wrote:I've been getting time-waster vibes from the start even if all the reasons for not managing it so far have been completely legitimate


My Italian friends have really been struggling with finding other LEPs - everyone they contact messages for a while but then they keep making excuses as to why they can't do actual video calls. I feel really bad for them and I totally don't understand why so many people seem to be about wasting time.

garyb wrote:I had a dinner with Italian friends and it was just yet another reminder that my Italian is far from perfect and probably always will be, and I guess I'm okay with that.

I bet your Italian friends don't care about that at all and they were just happy to hang out and catch up with you. I'll raise a glass to not caring! :D
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Wed Nov 24, 2021 11:18 am

StringerBell wrote:My Italian friends have really been struggling with finding other LEPs - everyone they contact messages for a while but then they keep making excuses as to why they can't do actual video calls. I feel really bad for them and I totally don't understand why so many people seem to be about wasting time.
I believe that most people who sign up to language exchange sites or groups do it because it seems like a nice idea at the time but then, perhaps after contacting and beginning to make plans with a good few people, get overwhelmed and quickly realise that they don't really have the time or the interest to commit to it. Or even if they do, it's a very low priority compared to everything else going on in their life - which IMO is a healthy attitude in that language exchanges are very much a nice-to-have rather than an essential even when you're serious about learning a language, and in the past I've placed far too much importance on finding speaking opportunities, although of course I'd never condone messing people around and wasting their time the way that many people do. Some of the people I talk with have said that they find messages much easier to fit into their life than video calls which are a much bigger commitment, but at least they're upfront about that.

With this potential partner I think they just have a busy life (I mentioned job interviews for example, which are clearly a much higher priority than a language exchange!) but might be unwilling to admit that they can't commit so instead just don't reply to messages or cancel at the last minute, and it's not important enough to me for me to keep chasing it up and trying to rearrange. I did send another message yesterday but if nothing comes of that I'm not going to waste any more time.

StringerBell wrote:I bet your Italian friends don't care about that at all and they were just happy to hang out and catch up with you. I'll raise a glass to not caring! :D
Indeed, and I'm also sure that they enjoy being able to speak their native language rather than struggle in a second one (which isn't a statement about their ability; even at a very proficient level, a second language is still a second language, and even my friend in Norway for example says that even though most people there speak near-perfect English it still takes considerable more mental effort than Norwegian and she often felt excluded in social settings before she could understand it) and I get to practise my Italian so it's win-win. And they always insist that my Italian is perfect, no matter how much I struggle, which is obviously a lie but I understand and appreciate the sentiment behind it.
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