Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

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Le Baron
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Le Baron » Thu May 04, 2023 3:33 pm

It was my task today to raise the flag for remembrance day. In the large communal garden there is a very tall flagpole. The woman who used to do it died last year, so my direct neighbour took it over, but she's on holiday this year. The protocol is for it go out at 18:00h at half mast, but recently people have been putting out flags on 4th of May from sunrise. I'm not much of a flag flyer myself, however it's a huge flag and looks pretty spectacular when it flaps in the wind. The Dutch flag is the oldest tricolour flag in continuous use, older than the French.

I've been exceptionally busy this month, unusually so. Getting garments finished for summer. As usual everyone either waits until the last minute or arrives at the same time with an order/request/repair. As such it has severely cut into any language time. The only actual study I've done in TY Swahili and it was a careful revision of the last two lessons. No extra listening, no extra reading. I figure this will be a slower process than I had with Spanish.

On the book reading front it is only French and German. The Agota Kristof and a sort of pop-sociology book by Swiss writer Martin Suter: Abschalten: Die Business Class macht Ferien. I also read a few pages of Impresion bajo sospecha, Carlos Fortea, but I just don't have the time! When it calms down I can get back to a better learning schedule.
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby lowsocks » Fri May 05, 2023 4:05 am

Le Baron wrote:I've been exceptionally busy this month, unusually so. Getting garments finished for summer. As usual everyone either waits until the last minute or arrives at the same time with an order/request/repair.
My tailor is rich? ;)

(apologies to Alphonse Cherel)
Last edited by lowsocks on Fri May 05, 2023 3:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Le Baron
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 05, 2023 1:56 pm

My tailor is overworked.
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Kraut » Fri May 05, 2023 2:21 pm

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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Le Baron » Sat May 13, 2023 4:13 pm

There's a fairly annoying car/bicycle road which I have to use to get to where I go in the city several days a week. It was 'renovated' and rerouted and actually narrowed despite the fact that the traffic using it remains unchanged. So even though they put new cycle paths on either side, the narrow middle bit is shared by cars giant vans and HGVs, which can nought else but shift onto the cycle paths from time-to-time. The designers of this are idiots. It is the Dutch methodology of using 'nudge theory' to try and make people work out the problem themselves. Like switching off the traffic lights at junctions during the middle of the day, so it becomes a free-for-all. This poisonous social organisation theory flows from the almost religious Dutch faith in 'invisible hands'. It's sick-making.

But I digress... today some French people (or more likely Belgians) crossed that road on a bend, thus blocking the entire road. There are little openings in the foot-high fence on the other side, but they're not official crossings. So bikes were just flying past, me too, it was chaotic. One of the cyclists shouted 'doe je ogen open kerel,'t is hier geen overstekingsplaats! (open your eyes mate, it's not a crossing). Then one of the Belgians, an older geezer shouted back: 'T'es aveugle ou quoi ?! (are you blind or what?!) and something else I didn't catch towards me, which was probably rude. So I stopped and explained that it was unwise to cross away from a crossing and on a bend. While it's annoying not being able to cross, the bicycles aren't really the problem. You have to be aware that here bikes will come from all directions and so you should cross at a crossing where they have to stop (and do stop).

Anyway, as we know from the old 'speak to someone in their language and...' it made him less irate, and I welcomed him to the city as a tourist. He became apologetic and said they'd all been travelling for ages on a coach then tramping around the city trying to find a destination and somewhere to eat/drink. Luckily I was able to assist with that as well and calm reigned once again. As soon as you get a sliver of sunshine in NL, and it's 22°C here today and quite hot in the sun, everyone seems to turn mental. They're all panicking that all the crates of beer will be sold out at the supermarket, because when it goes warm you seemingly have to buy several of them. It's an unwritten law, which I fail to abide by with alarming regularity.
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Le Baron » Sun May 21, 2023 11:43 am

You know that thing where you start a project then immediately everything else gets in the way? Well, that's happening with Swahili. There now seems to be endless other tasks I have to do which has sidelined it and as a result it is being compromised. This is especially so because I have to concentrate a bit harder and seek out material I wouldn't normally encounter.

So whilst it's great that I have quite a bit of tailoring work right now (still not rich though) with all the late requests for 'linen summer trousers', I also have annoying things, like the fact the gate and fence partially collapsed - due to normal erosion, but also bloody kids climbing over it to retrieve lost balls, when I'm out. So I've had to get two new gateposts and I'll have to rebuild the gate. That's just one thing from a list of mishaps and jobs which seems to have appeared from nowhere. There's also administrative work I have to do for the Chamber of Commerce and a tiresome tax filing I'm doing to likely receive back what I've probably overpaid. My wife also wants to buy a car, but I really don't because I don't think we need one at all. So she keeps bringing it up when I'm studying in the hope I'll agree just to make her stop. :lol:

I'm just under halfway through TY Swahili. It's fine as a course, though there's very little audio really if it was going to be used for listening. I have listened to it like that and it's good for fixing the content of the lessons, but I'm really going to have to get something more substantial for longer listening. I actually set up the Pimsleur Swahili on the mp3 player, but part-way into it I started getting annoyed with it. On Pimsleur courses there is a tendency for the speakers to weirdly hammer a particular phrase which always seems to me the most irrelevant phrase in the entire lesson. I don't know why this happens, and after they've repeated it five times I get aerated and turn it off. I'm worried that being short on time and not being able to settle into a learning trajectory will have a psychological effect where it blocks learning. I did nothing for the last two days and to be honest I'd rather halt it and restart when I have better circumstances. Even though I'm halfway through TY.
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jun 06, 2023 12:38 am

May was really an atrocious month for language learning...for me that is, not as a general rule. My mp3 player is broken because I crashed off my bicycle at a crossroads and as luck would have it I landed right on the player and smashed the screen. So now I can't listen intensively on the go until that is solved.

Every moment I've tried to get to do study (of Swahili) has been interrupted by work, by nuisance roadworks, by the necessity of repairing the entire fence while the weather is good. Etc...etc.

However, I have read some books. El disputado voto del señor Cayo (Miguel Delibes), though I've been reading it for more than a month. Earlier I started Papel Mojado (Juan Jose Millias), which is really 'young adult' literature and ought to have been easier, but I couldn't get into it. Wrong moment no doubt. Or the fact of reading in bed and not being motivated, so that I ended up reading an Asterix in French (Asterix chez les belges). :lol:

Oh dear. I'll hopefully be taking a holiday soon, so I can put the language train back on the rails.
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Le Baron » Fri Jun 16, 2023 7:31 pm

Brace yourselves I had one of those little (250ml) cans of Coca-Cola today. The can was very cold and I was very hot. It was offered to me free of charge so I took it. My cola drinking history is not illustrious, in the sense that the last one I drank was last century. It was one of those even smaller cans, which I think is referred to as 'fun size'. There is no record regarding the exact dimensions of 'fun', though it seems to be some version of 'small'.

It was also the diet version. I am not on any actual 'diet' in the sense of trying to lose weight, but the 'zero sugar' option seemed like the correct move, especially for teeth, though apparently any carbonated drink causes some mild tooth erosion due to the carbonic acid. Someone offered me a straw and I know this is used as a way to avoid tooth and sugar/gas contact (doesn't really work), but I rejected it because they are for children and make you look silly. Even though it was a 'responsible' paper straw like the old days.

I doubt I will be repeating the experience soon, even though it was mildly stimulating while it lasted.

Coke is it!
Is it though?
No, I don't think it is.

After I finished work I went to a special shop. Under cover of buying some sambal peteh - which I could easily buy from the Indonesian toko - what I really wanted to to do was listen to the people speaking Swahili. Someone alerted me that there is a shop run by Tanzanians in a small side street just before you get into the long street dominated by Turkish merchants. I wanted to eavesdrop on them speaking to one another and see what it's like. How fast they speak and how much words are articulated etc. You can do this with videos, but there's a different sense when you're there in real time. It was like the first time I went to Suriname and later Indonesia. I was familiar with spoken Sranan here in NL, but when everyone is speaking it and you realise it's the main language, it's like a fright and a thrilling sensation at the same time.

There were two people in there, but they didn't say a lot and it was inaudible when they were at the back of the shop,then one of them left! I finally mustered-up the courage to say 'hello', 'how are you', I'm learning Swahili', mnatoka Tanzania?. I also asked if they had Sambal Badjak. He actually laughed, so I didn't know if it was because I sounded funny or it was just an unexpected spectacle for him. So I inquired (in Dutch..then English because he wanted to speak it). No, he was from Kenya :roll:, even though the shop is indeed owned by a Tanzanian. I asked him if he understood what I said. He said 'yes', that it sounds stilted, but he understood it.

It's small, but it feels like an achievement. Swahili doesn't really feel like a language in which I should be merely reading, but one to be spoken. Like Sranan was to me. I didn't read Sranan, there's not much to read really, though there are a lot of songs, It was that I wanted to be at the table when they were all speaking it and for me to understand as much as possible and speak a little.
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Jun 16, 2023 8:41 pm

Le Baron wrote:It's small, but it feels like an achievement. Swahili doesn't really feel like a language in which I should be merely reading, but one to be spoken.
One of my favourite books is Beryl Markham's West with the night, your post put me in mind of a particular scene:
As always, my door is open. It may as well be closed - there is nothing to see but night. There is nothing to hear for a long time, and then I hear what I know to be naked feet walking toward me. But there is no stealth in the sound , neither is there any noise. It is the honest sound of one used to darkness, moving through my palace guard of trees.

I do not lift the pen from the paper nor raise my head. I wait for a word, and it comes.

"Hodi."

The voice is soft. It is deep with a timbre I almost remember, but do not know. It is respectful and warm and there is shyness in it. Through the single Swahili word it says, "I am here," and the echo of it adds , "Am I welcome?"

I do not have to think. Now I leave the pen and raise my head from the half-covered sheet of paper. Somehow that word is always to be trusted. "Hodi" - we who have used it know it would scorch the lips of a liar and make a cinder of a thief's tongue. It is a gentle word, a word of honour, asking an answer gently. And there is an answer.

I rise from the chair and look out through the door, seeing no-one, and give the answer.

"Kaaribu!"

I have said, "Come - you are welcome."

:-)
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Re: Hare-brained language learning schemes 2023

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jul 10, 2023 9:48 pm

Last Friday (or could have been Thursday, the devastation of it has affected my short-term memory) I had a negative language experience. It made me stop and reassess. Briefly it was one of those incidents where you realise that your on-the-fly speaking skills are lacking, but that they really shouldn't be and that backing-off into 'maintenance mode' for a language might have been premature.

You see I ended up near the cathedral and the cathedral is a paper plane throw away from Instituto Cervantes. I did some short courses there some time back, but I've always been in touch with a few from there. I saw one of the tutors I'd had, a woman, whose husband I actually met in totally independent circumstances unrelated to IC. However they were both there, and their daughter and also two people I haven't seen for some time who returned to Spain in 2014. So I could hardly just greet and leave. To the side of IC there are three cafés with outdoor seating around the base of the Dom tower, so we went to sit there and have a drink and they also wanted to eat something so we went to small Spanish 'bistro' type place - whose owners I also know and the woman there is a real anglophile. In any case all the people except me were Spanish, so the language had to be Spanish. What I found was that although I could understand the majority of everything spoken and I that I even spoke myself for the good two hours we were all together, I found myself stumbling in formulating some sentences. It was really annoying to the point that I started really simplifying my speech and thus not taking part in a full way.

This is really a language-learner's sort of complaint. One should probably be happy to be able to take part at all. Even being able to understand other people is fantastic. Yet it bothered me that things I know how to say in theory aren't always so forthcoming in the moment and this has always been my litmus test of 'functionality'. I've had such an odd experience with Spanish. It's not that it's 'hard' necessarily, but somehow I still slip up and falter on certain things. I haven't even studied Italian and the little bit I do know feels more natural on the tongue. However there are fewer opportunities for Italian here and many more for Spanish, so I went with Spanish. It seems to me I moved into 'maintenance mode' before I actually drilled down into getting a speech reflex. The sort of reflex I have if someone speaks French or German or Dutch and there is no real searching for words and expression. I think I need to go back and do some actual polishing.
Last edited by Le Baron on Mon Jul 10, 2023 10:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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