Lingua's Italian All The Time Log

[lingua]

I have been studying Italian for about 10 years though I haven't spent a lot of time on it in the last 3-4 years. Level is B1/B2. My reading comprehension is good while my speaking is rusty since I have limited opportunities for using it. I only started learning Thai recently and learning the consonants/vowels has been quite difficult. I'm a visual learner and I see words in my head so it's a bit challenging when I have yet to learn all the Thai consonants & vowels. My goal in keeping this log is to kick start my Italian and attempt to work on Thai in a more disciplined way.

Sources for Italian are plentiful. But for Thai ... not so much. I have Thai for Beginners and Cracking Thai Fundamentals. I'm open to other suggestions for Thai. I've also just started using Memrise this week after reading about it on this site. It's just the kind of repetition that works for me. I've started with these six courses though I'm finding the Italian is a bit easy. I am also a little disappointed that the Thai for Beginners only has the first four chapters.

Italian
Intermediate Italian: 50/1001 words learned
The 500 Most Common Italian Verbs: 19/500 words learned
Easy Italian Grammar: 16/1136 words learned

Thai
Thai for Beginners: 32/200 words learned
Thai Level A1/A2 Listening 1: 30/415 words learned
Mrs Yanisa's Thai for Foreigners: 21/1778 words learned

1 hour tutoring session where we went over telling time and food terminology.

[Elenia]

Welcome to the forum we have a growing amount of Thai learners here, so I'm sure you'll be able to take tips from other logs. One of the forum members, Bakunin, has created a site with the kind of material he uses for learning. You should check it out, and also have a look at his log.

Good luck in your studies!

[lingua]

Thank's Elenia. I have looked at Bakunin's log which led me to his recordings but they are way past my level at this point. Someday!

[lingua]

Italian

edX has three Italian course: Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced. I downloaded all of them a couple of weeks ago and started with the Beginner one. It's way too easy but there is a lot of audio which I like. My goal is to go through all of them as quickly as possible and spend extra time on any areas where I have gaps. I've completed Unit 1 with 100% on all of my tests.

I recently started the 30 day trial on MHz Choice. I watched the first episodes of Palermo Connection and Young Montalbano. I'm a huge fan of Camilleri and have read all the Montalbano books in English. I have most of the movies in Italian. I wish the subtitles could be turned off. I found them distracting a lot of the time though they were useful for the Sicilian bits.

I got rid of the Easy Italian Grammar memrise course as it was too simple. I replaced it with a couple of other ones that seem more intermediate. I've also dabbled in some food and color specific courses but they won't be part of my everyday rotation so they're not included here. I plan only five minutes a day with the four listed below. The others I will probably only do on weekends when I have a little extra time. I'm trying to rebuild/increase my vocabulary. When I read I understand a lot of words but when I want to write or talk my recall isn't always there.

Intermediate Italian: 86/1001 words learned
The 500 Most Common Italian Verbs: 30/500 words learned
Reading Italian Newspapers: 24/3590
Italian Idiomatic Expressions: 8/250


Thai

I find memrise especially useful for Thai where I'm still learning the complete writing system. The repetition seems to be working. The big problem is my hunt & peck with the keyboard. Sometimes I timeout because it takes me so long to find the correct key but that should improve over time.

I especially like Mrs Yanisa's Thai for Foreigners because she does everything as syllables. This fits nicely with the advice of Raj in Cracking Thai Fundamentals to not learn consonants as self contained but rather to learn in blocks. Thai can have 1-5 symbols that create a vowel along with a consonant. Vowels can be to the left, right, above or below. The ones on the left are the ones I had the most trouble with initially but I'm starting to get used to them. When I first started learning Thai and found out there are no genders, plurals or verb tenses I thought I was in for an easy time. But the writing system and tones more than make up for it.

For as much time as I spent with the Thai I sure didn't increase my number of learned words very much. I'm spending the most time with Thai for Beginners because that's the book we are using with our tutor.

Thai for Beginners: 54/200 words learned
Thai Level A1/A2 Listening 1: 35/415 words learned
Mrs Yanisa's Thai for Foreigners: 38/1778 words learned

Listened to Lesson 1 of Learn Thai Podcast. It was all very basic introductions, greetings, etc. However it's setup to say the phrase three times allowing time for you to speak in between. I need the repetition as well as to hear different voices.

[Lampang]

But the writing system and tones more than make up for it.

We're all different but I found the writing got easier fairly rapidly, though I read a lot right from the beginning. That said, I had to read Pali written in Thai last week for a bit of group chanting (a friend was making merit and was very insistent that I join in) and that was very difficult. Tones, too, get easier. On the other hand, I find the short-long vowel pairs pretty challenging in normal/fast speech.

Thai can have 1-5 symbols that create a vowel along with a consonant

Do you mean syllable? You could have more than that: เคลียร์ (clear) has seven, if you include the garan at the end. If you add a tone mark you could have eight, though I can't think of a good example at the moment.

[lingua]

Thai can have 1-5 symbols that create a vowel along with a consonant

Do you mean syllable? You could have more than that: เคลียร์ (clear) has seven, if you include the garan at the end. If you add a tone mark you could have eight, though I can't think of a good example at the moment.

Perhaps symbols isn't the correct word. I am thinking of this:
เอียะ or เออะ

I just meant a vowel wasn't always one character. It seems to me that Thai is very syllable driven in the sense that they're very pronounced ... certainly far more than English. I'm only a couple of months into this and I must say Italian was a lot easier! I think once I learn the entire writing system Thai will become much easier.

[Lampang]

Ah, I see what you mean. Well, the good news is that after a while, you stop seeing these kinds of composite vowels as a series of components which you have to assemble and they just present themselves directly as the sound.

[lingua]

Italian

As much as I like memrise, I have noticed that some of the courses have errors which is to be expected since anyone can create a course. I went through my current courses and set some words/phrases to ignore. My criteria for omitting was if it included additional words in parentheses, if there were multiple words/phrases in Italian for the same English meaning or if the word was something I didn't think I needed to learn. That's not the way we learn things. We learn words or phrases on their own. And I rather doubt I have much need for the word pechblenda in my long term memory though at this point I think I will never forget it.

I haven't added many words over the last few days as I've been making Thai the priority. Today I decided that I should start writing sentences for the words that I'm not consistently remembering. I also randomly reviewed food words.

Intermediate Italian: 86/1001 words learned
The 500 Most Common Italian Verbs: 34/500 words learned
Reading Italian Newspapers: 27/3540
Italian Idiomatic Expressions: 18/233

I watched episode 2 & 3 of Palermo Connection on MHz Choice. I also asked MHz Choice about turning subtitles off and the response was that "We are contractually prohibited from exhibiting our series without subtitles or with removable subtitles. Our contracts only convey the English-language rights and without the subs, it’s no longer in English." Fair enough.

Thai

Sadly, I had to give up on Thai Level A1/A2 as it was starting to present short sentences and I simply can't write that quickly yet. I will bring it back once I have mastered the Thai keyboard.

I really like the Thai for Foreigners. As I understand it, this is the way Thai children learn the writing system. It's all about มานี (Maanii) and her friends. Everything is presented in short syllables at the moment. Sometimes they are just vowel sounds with no meaning and sometimes the syllable has a meaning. Strangely, I'm recognizing the syllable sounds but I don't always remember the meaning if it's an actual word. But I think understanding the sounds is better for me at the moment. This course doesn't have sound so if I'm unsure of the pronunciation I've been using http://forvo.com/languages/th/ and/or http://www.thai-language.com/ to hear it.


Thai for Beginners: 107/199 words learned
Mrs Yanisa's Thai for Foreigners: 78/1778 words learned

[lingua]

Italian

memrise:
Intermediate Italian: 105/1001 words learned
The 500 Most Common Italian Verbs: 44/500 words learned
Reading Italian Newspapers: 39/3540
Italian Idiomatic Expressions: 31/233

I also completed 53/53 Advanced Colors on the side most of which I hadn't learned before.

Watched episode 4 of Palermo Connection and episodes 2 & 3 of Young Montalbano. My comprehension is pretty good and I'm trying to train my eyes to ignore the subtitles.

Completed Unit 2 of the Beginning Italian class at edX with 100% on most of the tests. I'm going through this rather quickly and need to read the instructions a little better.


Thai

I recently bought flashcards for consonants, vowels and food at http://lanna.io/ which is in Thailand. Cooking is one of my other interests so it's important to me to know the Thai food. I spent time finding pictures of some of the basic dishes online and listening to the pronunciation to make sure I could say them correctly and knew what they were.

Thai for Beginners: 115/199 words learned
Mrs Yanisa's Thai for Foreigners: 92/1778 words learned

[lingua]

This week I did less than the last couple of weeks due to being out of town for several days.

Italian

memrise:
Intermediate Italian: 118/1001 words learned
The 500 Most Common Italian Verbs: 52/500 words learned
Reading Italian Newspapers: 42/3540
Italian Idiomatic Expressions: 40/233

Watched episode 4 of Young Montalbano.

Spent some time with Clozemaster and DuoLingo. I am not sure that Closemaster is all that useful. It seems far too easy. Duolingo English translations are often too literal and not natural sounding so I'm not sure if I will continue to use it. I do like the fact it makes me write Italian sentences.

Thai

memrise:
Thai for Beginners: 119/199 words learned
Mrs Yanisa's Thai for Foreigners: 100/1778 words learned

I found a new to me site http://fasttrackthai.com/ that I played with a bit. So far I like it and will try to spend some time with it the next couple of weeks to see if I am willing to pay the cheap monthly fee. Today I downloaded the Thai for Beginners app which has all the words and sentences from the book. Since the Thai for Beginners on memrise only goes to Chapter 4 this should make a good supplement to the book.