Meanderings on Languages and Life
Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 1:15 am
A new year, new goals. Or rather, mostly the same goals as before, but with a renewed sense of purpose.
Or something like that.
Wait a minute. It's May. What are you talking about, a new year? The Super Challenge, you say? Oh, right.
And what better way to start out my third Super Challenge than with a broken foot, and doctor's orders to sit on my butt for the next two months! A combination of the 6WC and the Super Challenge starting at the same time as I'm forced to sit on my ass? Am I dreaming?
Unfortunately, no, I'm not. Now, before you start offering to switch places with me and giving up your busy life full of work and physical activity for unlimited language time, think about staying completely off your feet for three months. And be glad you can go to work and earn your paycheck.
Okay, it's not THAT bad. I broke my foot at the end of February, went through a whole lot of shite from doctors saying "It's not broken" to "Well, let's do a CT scan" to "Oh shit, it IS broken, you need to have surgery" and then "You need to stop everything you are doing for the next three months and. PARK." No work, no walking, no driving. Crutches? How the heck do adults do anything with zero hands and only one good leg? Oh, right. They don't.
So I had the surgery, I've been completely off the damn thing for the last six weeks, and now I am allowed to walk on it, my doctor says. My foot says otherwise. I used to be one of those people who counted their steps. (I love my pedometer! Especially when it told me I hit my 10 miles for the day.) Now I am lucky to be able to walk from room to room in my house with this clunky plastic boot. Maybe ten steps before it hurts. Okay, that is an exaggeration. That was the first day. Yesterday. Today I could walk about twenty.
Do you know what happens if you have a penny and you double it every day? You are filthy rich within a month! So I am holding out hope that I will be able to start walking more while I listen to my Assimil and Michel Thomas lessons. Still, the next few weeks will be slow going, and I will be spending a lot of time working on my Super Challenge languages.
SPANISH
FULL - 100 books, 100 films
My Spanish reading is at a relatively comfortable level, since I've already done two SCs in it. I want to focus my reading more on native materials, books that were originally written in Spanish. I might throw some classics in there, but it's much more likely that I will just find some good fiction and devour it.
FRENCH
FULL - 100 books, 100 films
My French has been on the back burner for too long, and this year I am going to buckle down and finish the SC. I will probably stick with translations of books I've already read and enjoyed, at least at first.
ITALIAN
HALF - 50 books, 50 films
I've studied Italian before, but never much more than glossing over Assimil. I can decipher some of it, since it's a Romance language and my Spanish is pretty strong. I actually was going to do the 6WC in French, and decided to do Italian instead. Now I'm remembering how beautiful the language is, and I want to get my reading level up to a place where I can sit down and read a book without too much effort.
PORTUGUESE
HALF - 50 books, 50 films
I'm thinking of doing something different with Portuguese. I want to take a few familiar books (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Divergent, maybe) and massively L-R them. I'm not looking for active skills, but I want to be able to read and understand Brazilian Portuguese, since I have a lot of friends from Brazil. I think with my Spanish, this might be enough to understand. We'll see.
Now, if that isn't enough, I am also going to be logging English, although I'm not aiming for a Super Challenge proper with it.
ENGLISH
50 books
As Brun Ugle and a few others have mentioned, focusing on the SC in our target languages often leaves our native language in the dust. I often feel like I am searching for words, and my vocabulary seems to diminish when I'm not reading regularly in my native language. When I log these into the bot, I will just be recording the book title, so it counts as one book. I'm not counting (or trying to rack up) pages. If I log movies or TV shows, same thing.
I also think this is a good way to expose non-native speakers to ideas for their reading. During the last two challenges, I liked to look through what other people were reading in my target language, to get ideas of things I might enjoy.
Now, about the Super Challenge. And Rules. I make my own rules here. I base them on what the spirit of the Super Challenge originally was, and how I can push myself in regards to that. Sometimes I break the rules. I vaguely remember it being against the rules for me to count Spanish subs (on a Korean drama) for Spanish reading. I don't even remember how it could be against the rules - maybe because it was video? (I'm sure Serpent could help me out there.)
But holy cripes, do you know how capable you have to be to keep up with reading subtitles in your target language? If you understand the audio, it's easy. But if you don't understand any of the spoken language, you will get lost really quickly if you can't keep up. To me, that was in the spirit of the challenge. I was really pushing myself. I'm not going to debate Cristina's rules, I respect her 1000%, but I think that we all have to look at it as a challenge for ourselves. I don't do stuff like that to cut corners, I do it to challenge myself. I can 100% understand not counting subtitles as reading, 99% of the time.
I guess I'm just a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. Or something.
As the title of my log might suggest, my log is not going to be only about languages. You know that thing called life? It has a tendency to interfere with languages. I know you know what I'm talking about.
Or something like that.
Wait a minute. It's May. What are you talking about, a new year? The Super Challenge, you say? Oh, right.
And what better way to start out my third Super Challenge than with a broken foot, and doctor's orders to sit on my butt for the next two months! A combination of the 6WC and the Super Challenge starting at the same time as I'm forced to sit on my ass? Am I dreaming?
Unfortunately, no, I'm not. Now, before you start offering to switch places with me and giving up your busy life full of work and physical activity for unlimited language time, think about staying completely off your feet for three months. And be glad you can go to work and earn your paycheck.
Okay, it's not THAT bad. I broke my foot at the end of February, went through a whole lot of shite from doctors saying "It's not broken" to "Well, let's do a CT scan" to "Oh shit, it IS broken, you need to have surgery" and then "You need to stop everything you are doing for the next three months and. PARK." No work, no walking, no driving. Crutches? How the heck do adults do anything with zero hands and only one good leg? Oh, right. They don't.
So I had the surgery, I've been completely off the damn thing for the last six weeks, and now I am allowed to walk on it, my doctor says. My foot says otherwise. I used to be one of those people who counted their steps. (I love my pedometer! Especially when it told me I hit my 10 miles for the day.) Now I am lucky to be able to walk from room to room in my house with this clunky plastic boot. Maybe ten steps before it hurts. Okay, that is an exaggeration. That was the first day. Yesterday. Today I could walk about twenty.
Do you know what happens if you have a penny and you double it every day? You are filthy rich within a month! So I am holding out hope that I will be able to start walking more while I listen to my Assimil and Michel Thomas lessons. Still, the next few weeks will be slow going, and I will be spending a lot of time working on my Super Challenge languages.
SPANISH
FULL - 100 books, 100 films
My Spanish reading is at a relatively comfortable level, since I've already done two SCs in it. I want to focus my reading more on native materials, books that were originally written in Spanish. I might throw some classics in there, but it's much more likely that I will just find some good fiction and devour it.
FRENCH
FULL - 100 books, 100 films
My French has been on the back burner for too long, and this year I am going to buckle down and finish the SC. I will probably stick with translations of books I've already read and enjoyed, at least at first.
ITALIAN
HALF - 50 books, 50 films
I've studied Italian before, but never much more than glossing over Assimil. I can decipher some of it, since it's a Romance language and my Spanish is pretty strong. I actually was going to do the 6WC in French, and decided to do Italian instead. Now I'm remembering how beautiful the language is, and I want to get my reading level up to a place where I can sit down and read a book without too much effort.
PORTUGUESE
HALF - 50 books, 50 films
I'm thinking of doing something different with Portuguese. I want to take a few familiar books (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Divergent, maybe) and massively L-R them. I'm not looking for active skills, but I want to be able to read and understand Brazilian Portuguese, since I have a lot of friends from Brazil. I think with my Spanish, this might be enough to understand. We'll see.
Now, if that isn't enough, I am also going to be logging English, although I'm not aiming for a Super Challenge proper with it.
ENGLISH
50 books
As Brun Ugle and a few others have mentioned, focusing on the SC in our target languages often leaves our native language in the dust. I often feel like I am searching for words, and my vocabulary seems to diminish when I'm not reading regularly in my native language. When I log these into the bot, I will just be recording the book title, so it counts as one book. I'm not counting (or trying to rack up) pages. If I log movies or TV shows, same thing.
I also think this is a good way to expose non-native speakers to ideas for their reading. During the last two challenges, I liked to look through what other people were reading in my target language, to get ideas of things I might enjoy.
Now, about the Super Challenge. And Rules. I make my own rules here. I base them on what the spirit of the Super Challenge originally was, and how I can push myself in regards to that. Sometimes I break the rules. I vaguely remember it being against the rules for me to count Spanish subs (on a Korean drama) for Spanish reading. I don't even remember how it could be against the rules - maybe because it was video? (I'm sure Serpent could help me out there.)
But holy cripes, do you know how capable you have to be to keep up with reading subtitles in your target language? If you understand the audio, it's easy. But if you don't understand any of the spoken language, you will get lost really quickly if you can't keep up. To me, that was in the spirit of the challenge. I was really pushing myself. I'm not going to debate Cristina's rules, I respect her 1000%, but I think that we all have to look at it as a challenge for ourselves. I don't do stuff like that to cut corners, I do it to challenge myself. I can 100% understand not counting subtitles as reading, 99% of the time.
I guess I'm just a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. Or something.
As the title of my log might suggest, my log is not going to be only about languages. You know that thing called life? It has a tendency to interfere with languages. I know you know what I'm talking about.