Lilly's log - French, Russian, Spanish and Italian

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Ingaræð
Orange Belt
Posts: 170
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2016 9:34 pm
Languages: English (N), German (heritage)
Learning: Russian, French, German, Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish.
Mostly forgotten: Italian, Welsh.
x 377

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby Ingaræð » Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:57 am

blaurebell wrote:Yesterday I got some fantastic news about work I submitted for some exhibition calls. I was hoping for succeeding in one call and instead got in with two!


Congratulations! And good luck for the interview - although with your determination, I'm sure you won't need any at all! :D
1 x

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon Jun 12, 2017 9:20 am

Ingaræð wrote:Congratulations! And good luck for the interview - although with your determination, I'm sure you won't need any at all!


Thank you! Although, it seems the photographer I want to interview seems to be away from the internet and there is a planning deadline for the magazine issue. If she won't respond until next Sunday it's probably not going to happen. So, right now it looks unlikely ... :?
1 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:48 am

Weekly Update

French

: 8967 / 10000 French pages
: 299 / 300 French audio total
: 58 / 150 French native audio

I had a very good week with French. I finished two Irène Némirovsky novels - damn, the woman can write, now I want to read all of her stuff! I also finally finished the French translation of the first Expanse book. I feel my Sci Fi vocabulary has profited from it and I'm looking forward to the second book, which I will also read in French. First things first though, I want to read a couple of comics and only then start another one of these 600 pages monsters for bed-time reading. Also, I have calculated that with my currently allotted 2h PhD reading a day I should finish my first 10,000 pages in French in about 2-3 weeks. We also started watching Les Revenants and we're already on the second season. It starts off really good and then deteriorates, but generally there is much less complaining happening than with Spanish TV. This makes me look forward to watching more French series once I switch my PhD reading to Spanish. There was also one episode of Transfert. I guess I need to find some more interesting podcasts, because I ran out of episodes for Transfert! Today I will finish my second French audio SC!

French hours: 22.89h

Spanish

: 141 / 150 Iberian audio SC
: 13 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 12 / 116 GdUdE B

I've been making steady progress with FSI this week and I'm now done with Unit 13. I took a break on Sunday, because ... booooring, but I'll be doing another lesson today. I also watched some more Mar de plástico, but find that it can't hold my interest much. I'll continue watching it though, because I still have some hours left on my Iberian audio SC. I also started reading a Spanish translation of a manga last night. I bought it last year as beach reading and then didn't find it engaging enough. I guess I'll finish it tonight or tomorrow. I also wrote an email in Spanish and spoke with someone on the street for 5 minutes while I was out taking pictures.

Spanish hours: 15.28h

Russian

: 10 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - Владычица магии
: 7918 / 35000 LWT Known

I made a good effort this week and continued to read the second book of the Belgariad saga. My motivation was faltering a bit though, because I got a bit distracted. I still managed to get to about 10% of the second book and I'm inching my way forward. I still believe that I can reach 500 pages before the end of July.

Russian hours: 5.91h

Total hours: 44.08h

General

This last week proved that even when I'm utterly demotivated I still make plenty of progress. Of course, on such days I might not be very inclined to work on the more challenging stuff, but I have integrated my languages sufficiently into my life that I keep going simply because of my routine, at least for Spanish and French. I now also have to get Russian to the stage that I can just have fun with it and simply use it receptively every day.
3 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon Jun 12, 2017 4:15 pm

I just had a PhD supervision meeting and my supervisor didn't tell me off for adding the Russian content back in again. I was a bit worried because he didn't reply to the email explaining my reasons to him. I had removed the Russian stuff last year, because I was completely stuck with my Russian learning and he was fine with that, now I'm adding it back in again and he's fine with that too. In fact he even agreed that it's probably a good idea! Did I mention that my supervisor rocks? He leaves me to work in peace, doesn't try to talk me into stuff I don't want to do and he's there whenever I need him. Such luck to have found him! Now he's going to push me to produce text which means I have to go through some red tape to see whether my silly German university will let me write in English or not. If I have to write in German it will take triple the time to write, because producing academic German is like pulling teeth now. Fingers crossed that they don't force me to write a parallel text, since I will need the English text for collaborations. In any case, since I haven't been told off it means that learning Russian isn't a guilty pleasure anymore (yeah, I know, you may call me a masochist now) but a necessity for my PhD 8-) Phew, one source of anxiety out of the way!
1 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Tue Jun 13, 2017 4:06 pm

LesRonces wrote:I love your log just for your writing. As an educated native speaker of English, i can comfortably say that your writing is better than not only mine, but most native speakers. If there were a C4 on the scale, you'd be it.

Phenomenal stuff. I especially enjoy reading your stuff about French.


Thank you so much for your kind words! I've been writing in English for about 10 years now, academic writing and non-fiction mostly, philosophical essays, scientific articles in journals, articles about photography, interviews, those kinds of things. Some of it indeed gets published among the writing of native speakers, which makes me rather happy! In fact, I always wanted to become a fiction writer even as a child, but for fiction I still feel that my writing needs some more refinement, especially in the storytelling department. I have some drafts for fiction sitting in a drawer somewhere, but I don't feel I'm ready for the rewrites yet. That's why I'm so happy with reading and watching movies / series in different languages right now. I learn so much about storytelling! I often feel that I still need to read another 100,000 pages to finally be ready to tackle fiction writing properly. The funny thing is that this number never goes down although I've read about 80,000 pages since I had that feeling for the first time! Maybe after my reading missions in French, Spanish and Russian I finally feel ready, who knows!

By the way, I'm pretty sure there is something beyond C2 actually, even if it's not on the official scale. Most of the writing required for C2 is academic style writing, so I'd guess journalistic writing might be C3 and fiction C4 perhaps? For C4 I think I might still need to churn out some 500,000 words of fiction - roughly 10 short novels. Not quite there yet! Ultimately that's my aim though! It's something I doubt I'll ever even try to achieve for any of my other languages.
0 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:26 am

I think I can forget about this week for productive work. Between hour long skype calls, and the usual insomnia thanks to loud neighbours I can be happy when I manage to get a minimum of language stuff done. Yesterday FSI had to take the hit and I did only two lessons of GdUdE instead before bed. And the next two days I'll have doctor's appointments too, so I will have less time as well. That said, the 6WC just finished and I think with almost 268h in total I did pretty well there and deserve a little bit of a break too! I didn't actually do that much Russian throughout the 6WC, because I tried not to overdo it with serious studying. My health simply doesn't take too kindly to the strain. For Spanish I made some pretty good progress though and the 6WC definitely helped with that. I think until August I will take it easy now, do my 2h of PhD reading in French, 1h of Spanish grammar and do as much Russian as I want, no actual goal. It would be nice to get to 500 pages in Russian read until August, but I think I won't push myself.

Instead I'll make sure to get this year's bulk of photography for my project out of the way and enjoy the summer a bit before the mad hordes of tourists invade in August. It's already crowded enough as it is during June and July, so August will be a good time to read and stay away from the city centre. This year my plan is to cover the neighbourhood Amara and I somehow managed not to miss the fiestas del barrio like usually - they are actually this weekend. Shooting the fiestas is always a good start, because I can power through a few rolls while exploring. I've already been shooting on the outskirts of the neighbourhood in winter, but haven't yet started on the bulk of it, because the neighbourhood tends to be a bit deserted when the weather is gloomy. I still have one more neighbourhood left for next year, and then I'm pretty much bound to repeat myself if I don't get out of the city. Looks like my project is coming to an end next year! Speaking of getting away: We've turned my frustration about the cancelled course into something positive and travel to Barcelona next week to meet with my sister in law. She is passing through on one of her frantic trips of x cities and countries in so many days and meeting up with her will get me some decent Spanish practice! I'll also get to see the Natural History Museum in Barcelona which should be fun! We're only staying two days, because my husband is insanely busy, but it's better than nothing.

So, imminent Spanish speaking practice + dinosaurs lined up, finally getting out of the the city again, summer finally beginning, less anxiety because Russian is now part of my PhD again, motivation coming back for photography thanks to the better weather ...! Things are definitely looking up again!
2 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Thu Jun 15, 2017 12:44 pm

Morgana wrote:Hi Lilly! I've been lurking your log for a while, especially after being so inspired by your quick progress with French! If I'm correct, it's been less than a year since you started with French, and you are already reading at the PhD level? That's incredibly impressive.


Hi Morgana :) That's true, I started in July last year with French, so it's been only 11 months so far. That said, I basically got French for free, because with English and Spanish you get like 70% vocabulary overlap. The grammar is also very similar to Spanish and Italian grammar, so I was already familiar with the grammar concepts. I still had to put in the work though, 5000 pages of intensive reading, so far more than 9000 pages in total read, 300h of audio. In total I've spent 850h on my French in the last 11 months, 460h just on reading. Most of it was fun though because I could break through that initial hurdle where everything gives you a headache very easily. I'm definitely not having the same experience with Russian. Vocabulary, grammar and word order are all very alien. There I simply wouldn't be able to read more than 2h in a row yet. Basically French was easy because I had already learned two other related languages to a good level before.

Also, understanding is always easier than production. I certainly wouldn't be able to produce any kind of complex French sentences right now because that wasn't my priority. I will tackle this as soon as I'm done with my Spanish C1 mission. As for the PhD reading: Right now it's mostly straight forward narratives and history stuff, which is not that difficult actually. Some of it has quite unusual vocabulary, but I rarely look anything up for the PhD reading unless I can't guess it from context. I'm looking for very particular kinds of descriptions in these books, so I can easily read those books extensively and get a lot of pleasure out of them too. Some excellently written literature on my reading list! Non-fiction is actually easier because lots of vocabulary in this context are cognates and the language structures are very logical. Reading those kinds of books is for me the same as if I'd read them in English or German. I still haven't tackled more than a few pages of philosophy though (some Simondon) and probably won't do more complex stuff until I hit 15,000 or even 20,000 pages. I'm also not yet tackling more postmodern literature or books that are more inventive with the language. So, I'm leaving the Derrida, Céline and Perec re-reads in the original for later. I guess it helps that I always had a love for French literature and philosophy!

Morgana wrote:You mention you're a photographer by profession, do you also do some for leisure as well? What sort(s) of photography do you enjoy most?


I'm actually not a commercial photographer, so leisure and profession aren't really separate for me, it's more of a calling! I usually do documentary photography with a bit of conceptual photography in between when I feel like it. These days the conceptual stuff is a little stronger and I exhibit more of that, but that's mainly because my documentary projects are rather long term these days, usually 3-5 or even 10 years and I rarely get the chance to exhibit before they are entirely done.
0 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:37 pm

Spanish

I finished FSI Spanish Basic Volume 1 yesterday and started on unit 16. I have to say that this course is strangely enjoyable, although it's of course also pretty boring to do all the drills. Sort of feels like watching a spy movie from the 1960s. I definitely think it's doing something too and going over this a few times would probably sort out most of my fossilised mistakes. I also noticed that I've actually incorporated some leísmo over the years of living in Spain, yikes! This alone is reason enough for a second pass over all of this. I'll leave that kind of drilling to perfection until after my Output mission though. I also spoke some Spanish for about 40 minutes yesterday with my doctor and it wasn't entirely straight forward. One or two complex sentences worked out quite well, but at other times I was struggling a little when trying to explain things. I simply need more practice. Before bed I also finished the Spanish translation of a Japanese comic I was reading. Although I enjoyed the atmosphere of it, the colloquial Iberian translation made my hair stand on end ... not my kind of thing. I should keep reading comics in French.

Spanish hours: 3.15h

French

I read some more of my Irène Némirovsky book - currently Suite française - and it's not necessarily the most chipper book in the world. There are only so many war stories one can read without getting depressed. It's still quite amazing that this is actually coming from an unfinished draft. The woman sure could write! We also watched another episode of Les Revenants. None of the characters behave in a logical way and the story came to a standstill at about episode 5 of season 1. Season 2 feels like a veritable staring contest - how long can they go without anything happening, I wonder? We only have 2 more episodes to go, so that's just 100min of unbearably slow nothingness, perfectly survivable. It has an interesting premise, but they totally tank it in the end, what a shame!

French hours: 2.89h

Total: 6.04h
4 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

DaveBee
Blue Belt
Posts: 952
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 8:49 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native). French (studying).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7466
x 1386

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby DaveBee » Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:57 pm

blaurebell wrote:I'm actually not a commercial photographer, so leisure and profession aren't really separate for me, it's more of a calling! I usually do documentary photography with a bit of conceptual photography in between when I feel like it. These days the conceptual stuff is a little stronger and I exhibit more of that, but that's mainly because my documentary projects are rather long term these days, usually 3-5 or even 10 years and I rarely get the chance to exhibit before they are entirely done.
I've just come across a photography competition run by the Alliance Française, that might be of interest.
1 x

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Fri Jun 16, 2017 12:35 pm

DaveBee wrote:I've just come across a photography competition run by the Alliance Française, that might be of interest.


Thank you for the suggestion! I've had a look, but I don't think it fits my profile really. The competition is for amateurs and on top of things the topic this time is fashion, which is about as far away as one can get from documentary photography. That said, I think if we stay in the area I might actually focus on the south of France for my next project. I sort of suspect that the Basques on the French side might be less suspicious of outsiders. And who knows, those kinds of things might well lead to opportunities to exhibit in France at some point. I also prefer to let such opportunities evolve naturally rather than trying to scramble for attention in competitions. I usually get enough opportunities to show simply by people noticing my work or within my community of photographer friends around the world.
0 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: merino_iceberg and 2 guests