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 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Thu Jan 21, 2016 12:39 pm

Combining languages and other interests, and writing about them in Italian...

La cucina: Mi piace cucinare e mi reputo abbastanza bravo, ma di recente ho voluto portare la mia abilità al livello successivo. Sono diventato pigro, faccio gli stessi piatti da anni, e dopo aver dato una mano a preparare qualche cena con amici italiani mi sono accorto che mi mancano alcune tecniche e conoscenze. Per questo scopo ho intenzione di usare risorse nelle mie lingue straniere: per fortuna tutte sono parlate in paesi che hanno una forte tradizione culinaria, perciò non sarà difficile trovare video e articoli in proposito!

Cooking: I like to cook and I consider myself quite good, but recently I've wanted to take my ability to the next level. I've become lazy, I've been making the same dishes for years, and after having helped out with preparing a few dinners with Italian friends I've realised that I'm lacking some techniques and knowledge. For this goal I intend to use resources in my foreign languages: fortunately all of them are spoken in countries that have a strong culinary tradition, so it won't be difficult to find videos and articles on the subject!

Ho trovato qualche video su YouTube, come quelli di Cookaround, in cui c'è una persona che spiega tutto. Sono utili, però mi piacerebbe anche trovare qualcosa in uno stile più "televisiva", cioè con diverse persone e più conversazione, così prenderei due piccioni con una fava visto che già cercho video con conversazione spontanea. Sicuramente quei programmi non mancano, ogni volta che ho acceso la TV in Italia ce n'era uno su almeno un canale, probabilmente riuscirò a trovarne uno che mi piace.

I've found some videos on YouTube, like Cookaround's ones, where there's one person who explains everything. They're useful, but I'd also like to find something in a more "television-like" style, that is with several people and more conversation, that way I'd kill two birds with one stone since I'm already looking for videos with unscripted conversation. Surely there's no lack of these programmes, every time I've switched on the TV in Italy there's been one on at least one channel, I should be able to find one I like.

Musica: Uno dei miei tanti progetti musicale è di migliorare il mio orecchio musicale, e sto seguendo un libro sull'argomento per i chitarristi. Il libro dà un compito: analizzare una dozzina di pezzi, imparandoli a orecchio e studiando gli accordi e le scale usati. Ho voluto provarlo con generi diversi, e oltre alle solite canzone metal ho anche scelto un brano di un gruppo italiano, Thegiornalisti: Autostrade Umane. Mi risulta abbastanza difficile perché l'indie non è un genere che suono solitamente e per questo non conosco le "regole". Nel metal ci sono delle tecniche, delle idee e delle progressioni che vengono usate molto spesso, e siccome lo suono da una decina di anni ho una certa dimestichezza con loro e riesco a identificarle quando le sento. Comunque ho identificato gli accordi e la melodia dell'intro e della prima strofa; non sono convinto che siano corretti al 100% ma suonano bene.

Music: One of my many musical projects is to improve my musical ear, and I'm following a book for guitarists on the subject. The book has given an assignment: analyse a dozen pieces, learning them by ear and studying the cords and scales used. I wanted to try with various genres, and as well as the usual metal songs I also chose a track by an Italian band, Thegiornalisti: Autostrade Umane. It's proving to be quite difficult for me because indie isn't a genre that I usually play and because of this I don't know the "rules". In metal there are techniques, ideas and progressions that are used very often, and since I've been playing it for about ten years I have a certain familiarity with them and I can identify them when I hear them. Anyway I've identified the chords and the melody of the intro and first verse; I'm not convinced that they're 100% correct but they sound fine.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Ogrim » Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:02 pm

Hola Gary,

A mí también me gusta la cocina, pero también me repito mucho con las recetas y uno de mis propósitos de este año es cocinar mejor y más variado - la familia será contenta si lo consigo :)

No sé si te interesa cocinar en español, pero hay dos programas bastante buenos en TVE que te recomiendo: Cocina con Sergio y Torres en la Cocina. Allí encuentras muchos programas, recetas, "diccionarios culinarios" y otros artículos sobre la gastronomía. Sergio Fernández es un joven cocinero que ha hecho miles de programas para la televisión, y Torres son dos gemelos, Javier y Sergio Torres, que tienen un restaurante con una estrella Michelin en Barcelona. A mí me gusta mucho ver estos programas, aunque solo he probado unas pocas recetas. A veces también es el problema que requieren ingredientes que no encuentro aquí en Francia :( .
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:28 pm

Ogrim wrote:No sé si te interesa cocinar en español, pero hay dos programas bastante buenos en TVE que te recomiendo: Cocina con Sergio y Torres en la Cocina. Allí encuentras muchos programas, recetas, "diccionarios culinarios" y otros artículos sobre la gastronomía. Sergio Fernández es un joven cocinero que ha hecho miles de programas para la televisión, y Torres son dos gemelos, Javier y Sergio Torres, que tienen un restaurante con una estrella Michelin en Barcelona. A mí me gusta mucho ver estos programas, aunque solo he probado unas pocas recetas. A veces también es el problema que requieren ingredientes que no encuentro aquí en Francia :( .


¡Gracias Ogrim! Sí me interesa cocinar en español también, me gustó mucho la comida en España :). Y en francés; la cocina francesa todavía es un poco misteriosa para mí, no la he intentado mucho. De hecho es una pena no incontrar los ingredientes justos, ¡mi gustaría tanto preparar la carbonara con el guanciale y el pecorino pero no sabría donde encontrarlos aquí! En mi ciudad hay una tienda de comida italiana y española pero no es cerca ni barato. Luego me limito a la pancetta y al parmesano.

I'd just like to comment that in the latest versions of Google Chrome, the spell checker works differently: instead of you having to select from your languages, it just uses all of them. It's awesome for multilingual posts like this! Although maybe a double-edged sword when it comes to words that are similar but not the same in Italian and Spanish.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Montmorency » Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:57 pm

garyb wrote:
I'd just like to comment that in the latest versions of Google Chrome, the spell checker works differently: instead of you having to select from your languages, it just uses all of them. It's awesome for multilingual posts like this! Although maybe a double-edged sword when it comes to words that are similar but not the same in Italian and Spanish.


Thanks for the tip. I'm just updating Chrome now, so I'll soon see how it works. I can see there might be some issues between British and American English as well. (And I'd only relatively recently succeeded in getting Chrome to be cool with my British English...).
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 25, 2016 12:26 pm

Some thoughts on input, another matter of finding balance between language learning and other interests...

I generally choose, and recommend choosing, input based on language learning utility rather than enjoyment. There is some balance: soap operas and reality TV are probably great for learning and I've not wanted to go that far, but at the same time, I have watched and read my share of low-quality stuff like romantic comedies and Fabio Volo novels in the name of language learning. I've noted before that I sometimes feel I'm not getting enough out of my input because I'm not focusing and paying attention, and while that's sometimes related to things like tiredness, a big part is probably that it just doesn't interest me enough. Moreover, every time I have a conversation about cinema I realise that there are so many great movies that I've still never watched, while I've seen hundreds of average movies in recent years just because they were in a language I was studying. Similar for literature. There's the other side of the coin too, however: I have discovered some great stuff that I wouldn't have found otherwise thanks to languages. French and Italian cinema and literature are famous for a reason.

So for the moment I'm going to choose based on interest first and language learning benefit second, and start making a dent in the big list of films I've been wanting to watch for years. Some of them are in my target languages (especially French which I said I was wanting to keep alive, and some are even Italian but I've passed over them because they're too old or don't have enough dialogue), so all the better, but many are English. For these there's always the option of watching with TL subtitles, which is still good language exposure: I always find it useful to see how they translate words and expressions in context. Not the same experience as a TL film, but it's combining languages with another interest, and if I concentrate it's probably more beneficial than half-watching some generic Italian drama while checking my phone every few minutes because it's not holding my attention. Dubbed films are also an option but even with Italy's famously high-quality dubbing I don't think I could bring myself to watching them, especially for great English-language works.

Again, similar for literature, there are plenty English classics that I've been rejecting in favour of target-language pulp. There are also some authors I've been wanting to read that are originally in languages I don't know, like Kafka and Murakami: for those, I'd be reading a translation anyway, so it might as well be a TL one.

My current input: La donna della domenica is decent but hardly captivating so I'm not sure whether to continue. I'll probably keep on going at my current slow rate and I might finish it in a month or two. El ministerio del tiempo as I said just isn't really my genre, but I'll finish the second episode and see if I get into it more. Montalbano is just enjoyable enough to be worth continuing.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Thu Jan 28, 2016 4:08 pm

It's been a busy week, but a few small things:

Watched a French/Belgian film recommended by a friend, L'étrange couleur des larmes de ton corps. It's a modern take on the Italian giallo style. For me it was just too strange and experimental, technically impressive but really just a lot of weird violence and little discernible plot or narrative. Not enough dialogue to even justify it for language practice, and some of the dialogue was in Flemish (I think). So overall, not much positive to say! Amer by the same directors has been on my to-watch list for years so I'll try to get round to that soon. Apparently it's a little more, well, normal.

Watched more of El ministerio del tiempo as I said I would, and decided to give up on it for now. It's just a bit too difficult, and not interesting enough to compensate and make me persevere. Seems like a well-made show but it's simply not my thing. The Spanish subtitles don't make as big a difference as I had hoped; L2 subtitles/transcripts helped me a ton at the intermediate level in French and Italian because they exploited the big gap between my reading and listening levels, but since I've focused on spoken Spanish from the start there isn't the same kind of gap. If I don't understand something it's generally because I'm simply not familiar with the word or expression, so reading it doesn't help me much. The big limiting factor is just vocabulary.

I can see why some people prefer books, or more fancy methods like LR and subs2srs, to normal TV/film watching for vocabulary acquisition. Pausing to look things up works but it's a bit of a pain really and I can't blame anyone for wanting to do things more efficiently. I'm tempted to watch something like Avatar and/or more films with English or bilingual subs to help get my listening comprehension up to the "understanding most things" level more painlessly and bridge the gap I was talking about a couple of posts ago where everything is either too easy or too difficult. Aquí no hay quien viva is probably also worth sticking with: with its more everyday language that I can mostly understand fine without subs (although I'm probably missing some of the more subtle humour) it fits the "n+1" category. With films you never really know how difficult one will be until you watch it, so per my last post I might as well just choose based on interest rather than learning utility.

Still speaking plenty Italian. The new Italian temporary-flatmate is arriving next week so I'll see how that goes.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Fri Jan 29, 2016 10:47 am

More thoughts on the last post: for Spanish I think I'm just being lazy and looking for shortcuts. A part of me believes that with my related languages I deserve an easy ride and shouldn't have to put in the hard work, so I'm trying to "painlessly" improve my listening comprehension, complaining when something is too difficult to understand, and procrastinating on active skills, perhaps even hoping that with some input and practice they'll take care of themselves. Whenever there's a discussion on related languages I make the point that the discount mostly just applies to the beginner stage, and to get beyond that you still need to make a lot of effort. So I should practice what I preach, eh?

Spanish is low-priority for me at the moment because I'd rather focus on Italian and on music, which is fine as long as I accept that it means slow progress, I can't have my cake and eat it. If I want faster progress I need to put in more time, and accept slower progress in other things. Simple maths really.

For films: Started watching Los ojos de Julia: not too difficult, has subs in Spanish and English, and I'm enjoying it.

EDIT: Also started reading Voyage au bout de la nuit. I now have two copies due to a mix-up with ordering, so I figured I should start on one of them. Seems quite an easy read so far, and just as well since it's so long.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby iguanamon » Fri Jan 29, 2016 12:26 pm

When I first started learning Portuguese, I had a similar attitude. It wasn't until I accepted that it was, indeed, a separate (but similar) language that I was able to leverage my Spanish to help me rather than hinder me. When I stopped looking at Portuguese as "Spanish that's spelled differently and pronounced differently, when I started to work on the grammar, constructions and vocabulary, when I gave Portuguese the respect it deserves as a separate language... that's when I began to properly learn it.

It can be hard to come to that realization, because for the most part you can get the general gist of what's going on, but then you realize that you don't get the details that make the difference, that you can't speak it like you can your previously learned related language and you know that's what's missing. Once that point is reached you can make real, genuine progress, in my experience.

That's why I rejected the various "From Spanish to Portuguese" courses out there. I tried them and felt they were making me think of Portuguese through a Spanish prism.
Last edited by iguanamon on Fri Jan 29, 2016 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby garyb » Fri Jan 29, 2016 2:32 pm

iguanamon wrote:When I first started learning Portuguese, I had a similar attitude. It wasn't until I accepted that it was, indeed, a separate (but similar) language that I was able to leverage my Spanish to help me rather than hinder me. When I stopped looking at Portuguese as "Spanish that's spelled differently and pronounced differently, when I started to work on the grammar, constructions and vocabulary, when I gave Portuguese the respect it deserves as a separate language... that's when I began to properly learn it.

It can be hard to come to that realization, because for the most part you can get the general gist of what's going on, but then you realize that you don't get the details that make the difference, that you can't speak it like you can your previously learned related language and you know that's what's missing. Once that point is reached you can make real, genuine progress, in my experience.


I agree. Intellectually, from the start I've tried to see Spanish as a separate language and I've stayed aware of this. Especially after my experience of Italian after French, where I reached B1 in a matter of months but then was in for a shock when that nice phase of fast progress didn't continue. But there was still a subconscious part of me that hoped for an easy ride and thought this time might be different because I had two related languages under my belt instead of just one, speaking opportunities were easier to find, better resources were available, and I had some familiarity from socialising with Spaniards over the years. Of course, resources and speaking opportunities aren't going to make a difference unless I actually find the time and put in the effort to make use of them!
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's 2016 log (Italian, Spanish)

Postby Serpent » Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:24 pm

The missing element might be linguistics ;) Also Spanish-Italian parallel texts. although to be fair I also had Latin when branching out in the other direction. well, it's also useful for Spanish/Portuguese, but not that much maybe.
Totally agreed about enjoyable over useful, within a reasonable range of course (unless you're way more interested in Dante than in conversational Italian, for example). I find non-fiction a good balance, authors like Beppe Severgnini for example. (awesome stuff about travelling!)
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