There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

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DaveBee
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby DaveBee » Sun Feb 26, 2017 8:53 am

MamaPata wrote:- Watched: Un Peu, Beacoup, Aveuglement. This was pretty adorable, and occasionally reminded me of Delicatessen, which is one of my favourite films ever. It's on Netflix in the UK and Russia as 'Blind Date' and I'd definitely recommend it.
That is a nice film. Thanks for recommending it. :-)
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MamaPata
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby MamaPata » Sat Mar 04, 2017 5:36 pm

Russian
- 13 hours of Russian - this means I have hit 100 hours of Russian so far this year!
- Read: 37 pages of a Tamora Pierce translation. This looks better than it actually was, because it was started before this week.
- Watched: Все умрут а я останусь, Harry Potter 6, Harry Potter 7 (Part 1)
- Wrote: 160 words. Really need to push forward with this!
- Grammar: Finished Chapter 10 and started Chapter 11 of Colloquial Russian 2.
- 2 italki lessons

French
- 5 hours of French
- Read: continued with La Belle et la Bete.
- Watched: Si j'avais quatre dromadaires and Les Amours Imaginaires. Si j'avais... was recommended to me by a guy on my course, and I really enjoyed it. It's a 45 minute film made up of photographs taken across the world, with a sort of philosophical narration by a couple of photographers. Les Amours Imaginaires was for a film challenge I am taking part in, and is a Canadian film about two friends who fall in love with the same man. I watched it with Spanish subtitles so managed to get a little Spanish practice as well! I've never really explored Canadian French, so that was really interesting for me. I definitely needed some kind of subtitles, but it was more manageable than I had expected.

Spanish
Watched Almodovar's film La Ley del Deseo. I didn't actually like this, which was a bit of a disappointment. But it definitely made me excited about Spanish again, and it started coming back to me a little more easily. I also managed to finish my romance novel in Spanish.

This was a really good week in terms of film watching - we're really being encouraged to watch far more films at university, which is useful for me! But the things I particularly need to concentrate on for Russian are reading and writing, and I didn't manage anything like enough of that.
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby Elenia » Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:40 pm

A mostly unrelated question: what are your thoughts on Tamora Pierce? I've got a boxset of four of her books waiting for me to purchase them at work, but I'm feeling somewhat reluctant - I'm scared I won't like them!
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MamaPata
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby MamaPata » Sun Mar 12, 2017 7:12 am

Elenia wrote:A mostly unrelated question: what are your thoughts on Tamora Pierce? I've got a boxset of four of her books waiting for me to purchase them at work, but I'm feeling somewhat reluctant - I'm scared I won't like them!


Sorry, I only just saw this! I read Tamora Pierce as a young teen and really loved them - they're really cool female heroines and I like the worlds she's created. They're not the best books ever - sometimes the characters can be a little perfect, and they're not meant to be classic literature. But I am really enjoying rereading this one and it does make me want to reread the others. Which ones have you got?
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MamaPata
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby MamaPata » Sun Mar 12, 2017 7:24 am

Russian
- 12 hours of Russian
- Read: 37 pages of my Tamora Pierce translation, 18 pages for uni
- Watched: Harry Potter 7 (Part 2), Suffragette
- Wrote: 225 words. Falling so far behind with the output challenge!
- Grammar: :oops:
- 2 italki lessons

French
- 3 hours of French
- Read: finished La Belle et la Bete.
- Watched: Karmen Gei, a few Gilmore Girls episodes. Karmen Gei is a modern adaptation of the opera Carmen, with a few changes and new subplots - I thought it was a pretty faithful adaptation in spite of that and I really enjoyed it. I didn't count it for the Super Challenge as a lot of it is in a Senegalese language, but it was interesting to watch them swap in and out of French. I mostly listen to French from France, so it was fascinating to hear a different accent.
- 1 italki lesson

Spanish

Woops! I did meet a Spanish speaker though so hopefully that will push me to do some work. My plan is to try and do 5 minutes a day of Spanish every day next week, just to insert it back into my routine, so we'll see how that goes.

This week's been a bit mixed - I did manage to get a bit more reading in but definitely not as much as I should be, and I'm falling behind on a couple of projects. Hopefully I'll be able to get more in control of it all next week, but I also have some non-language related deadlines, so we'll see.
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Elenia
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby Elenia » Tue Mar 14, 2017 11:41 am

MamaPata wrote:
Elenia wrote:A mostly unrelated question: what are your thoughts on Tamora Pierce? I've got a boxset of four of her books waiting for me to purchase them at work, but I'm feeling somewhat reluctant - I'm scared I won't like them!


Sorry, I only just saw this! I read Tamora Pierce as a young teen and really loved them - they're really cool female heroines and I like the worlds she's created. They're not the best books ever - sometimes the characters can be a little perfect, and they're not meant to be classic literature. But I am really enjoying rereading this one and it does make me want to reread the others. Which ones have you got?


I've got the four books of the Song of the Lioness series! Are they worth buying?
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MamaPata
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby MamaPata » Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:06 am

Elenia wrote:
MamaPata wrote:
Elenia wrote:A mostly unrelated question: what are your thoughts on Tamora Pierce? I've got a boxset of four of her books waiting for me to purchase them at work, but I'm feeling somewhat reluctant - I'm scared I won't like them!


Sorry, I only just saw this! I read Tamora Pierce as a young teen and really loved them - they're really cool female heroines and I like the worlds she's created. They're not the best books ever - sometimes the characters can be a little perfect, and they're not meant to be classic literature. But I am really enjoying rereading this one and it does make me want to reread the others. Which ones have you got?


I've got the four books of the Song of the Lioness series! Are they worth buying?


Ahh, it's always hard to advise other people! I read them when I was in my early teens, so I find it quite hard to work out whether I can recommend them to adults. I loved them, and did end up getting my whole family into them so they work for some adults at least. I like the way she brings in feminism and politics into a sort of a medieval world, I like the intricacy of the worlds she builds and the mix of reality and fiction. I definitely think they're enjoyable, and I have read my copies so much that they are falling apart (though I do prefer the Protector of the Small quartet). But they are pretty simple, so if you're not a big re-reader, it could be a lot of money to shell out for a series you get through very fast.
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MamaPata
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby MamaPata » Sat Mar 18, 2017 2:31 pm

This has been a pretty uninspired week for language learning sadly. I am applying for summer jobs, which is taking up a slightly ridiculous amount of time, but will hopefully pay off! I've also been doing a lot more reading in English, as I make my way through the classics. Finally, we've had to watch a lot of silent films for class, so while I have watched several Soviet films, I haven't heard any Russian! I'm not sure whether I think this will improve at all next week - I need to buckle down on my project and the number of films we're being told to watch is increasing. We'll see how it goes.

Russian
- 12 hours of Russian
- Read: 3 pages for my project and I signed up for a Pushkin poetry thing, so I've read about 5 of his poems, but nothing else.
- Watched: The Belovs,
- Wrote: 445 words. Still very behind but heading in the right direction.
- Grammar: Let's not go there shall we?
- 1 italki lesson.

French
- 2 hours of French
- Read: Absolutely nothing.
- Watched: a few more episodes of Gilmore Girls. I'm planning to get back into watching TV series in French asap... :oops:

Spanish
My goal was to do five minutes of Spanish a day and I failed pretty much every day. This continues!
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MamaPata
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby MamaPata » Sun Mar 26, 2017 9:21 am

I've been in a bit of a funk about languages (and generally) this week, and I think my week summary kind of reflects that. Though, on the plus side, I have now hit 200 language hours so far this year so I am ahead of target (just). I love languages, but I am definitely not as committed as most people on this forum. And recently I have been finding myself being drawn away into other areas. I am really trying to read more this year, particularly classics, and a lot of the classics I want to read are English classics. I did consider (and started) reading some of these in translation, but it does mean I miss out on some of the brilliant things about the writing itself. And then, as a result of the classics reading, I started looking into adaptations of Austen books and so am planning to watch as many of these as I can before I run out of steam. I also have other reading and film challenges I want to work on. All of these things are brilliant and wonderful, but they do cut into my attention span/time for languages, and as a result, a lot of what I have been doing is memrise. This isn't particularly something I want to change or work on: I am loving reading and watching the Austens, and it is very important to me to try and expand my horizons as there are so many things I don't know about. But it does have an impact and I'm not 100% sure how I want to manage that.

I'm not really sure what my point is here. Just some thoughts I guess?

Russian
- 11 hours of Russian
- Read: 12 pages of the textbook we were using in class. Also a few odds and ends that won't be counted until I finish a bigger chunk.
- Watched: Метель, Станционный смотритель, He's Just Not That Into You
- Wrote: 749
- Grammar: Nope.
- 1 italki lesson.

Overall in terms of Russian, this wasn't amazing, but it is a bit of progress from last week in terms of the things I need to focus on like writing.

French
- Half an hour of French :oops:
- Read: I read about 40 pages of my Pullman translation. I haven't really been reading in French lately, so I'd become a bit worried about whether I would be able to get back into it and just kept not doing it. (Sensible strategy obviously). But having started again with something light and easy, I am feeling much more confident about it and next week should be less pathetic!
- Watched: Nothing

Spanish
Nothing.
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Elenia
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Re: There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

Postby Elenia » Wed Mar 29, 2017 7:54 am

I have nothing helpful to say on the language front but: Yay! Austen! I love Jane Austen, although I got stuck on Mansfield Park and so haven't finished that. I've also never read Emma, and never plan to. I do want to read her younger works, though, and also see the recent film, 'Love and Friendship'.
What's your favourite so far?

One good thing about getting to know Austen well is that she's widely translated. I really enjoyed reading Pride and Prejudice in Swedish, and found it easy because I knew it so well.
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