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

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

Postby Systematiker » Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:54 pm

I had 5 required and used an additional two in my research for the DTheol - German and English (the only ones with output expected) as modern, and ancient being Latin/Ancient Greek/Hebrew. Of course, that's a fluke of how I did it, a German writing in theology would have had the ancient languages examined in the prior qualifying degree. I used Dutch and French in my research, but only the latter was really significant (because the period French translations from the Latin made my point about how something was to be understood).
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Teango » Sun Apr 30, 2017 9:14 pm

My first degree was in philosophy and theology, but as a joint honours programme, the language requirements were less strict than they would have been in a degree with a single major (I somewhat regret that now, but am glad I decided to initially pursue both fields all the same). With hundreds of books to read per course each term, and several essays to churn out each week, a knowledge of multiple languages was not only advantageous but strongly encouraged. Both fields required a basic passive understanding of Latin and Greek (Classical and Koine), while French came in handy for readings in philosophy, and a knowledge of the fundamentals of Hebrew was very practical for theology. German was probably the most useful overall though, given that so many books, articles, and passages required at least a basic grasp of the language. And it's worth pointing out here that much of the unique terminology in German (as well as in French) involved wordplay and a deeper appreciation of the language, insomuch that key terms often failed to translate well over to their English equivalents. It would have been possible, however, to pursue my studies with only a very basic understanding of each language and a good dictionary or glossed text, which was what I certainly did with early Irish texts in my BA thesis, and with Arabic for my MPhil thesis in computational linguistics later on.
Last edited by Teango on Sun Jul 02, 2017 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon May 01, 2017 12:05 pm

Totally true, philosophy and theology usually need the most languages. One of my friends - a German native - studied theology at a Danish university, so she was reading sources in Danish, Norwegian and English with an additional requirement of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, phew! Her first degree was in linguistics though, so she had a huge advantage. In my case I'm doing a comparative study in (continental) Cultural Studies. The subject itself doesn't have insane language requirements although languages are super useful - in my case the requirement was German and English C1+ expected and they required a year of grammar translation study for a third modern language with a choice between Italian, Spanish, French, Japanese and Russian. The Romance languages ended up with A2+, Russian barely A1 and Japanese was mainly Kanji. Basically for Romance languages you would be able to read with a dictionary at the end, not so for Russian and hardly anyone chose that. Japanese was basically the pointless option that people only chose for fun, since 4h a week for 32 weeks makes barely a dent at all for a language like Japanese. That said, I always believed that they should have made French obligatory since it's the most useful language for the subject - French thinkers in translation made up 30% of the sources and some of the more philosophical ones are only understandable by referring to the original. Sources I ran into that caused me problems during my studies were usually French but also sometimes Classical Greek, Spanish and very rarely Italian. I actually chose Italian and in retrospect it was really a dumb choice. Most of my course mates who ended up doing a PhD in the subject needed 3 languages - one of them was Turkish and chose a related subject, so he used German, English and Turkish, the others usually German, English and French.

By the way, even Romance languages majors only needed one of those languages at C1 and another at A2. They usually started with B2 in French or Spanish and improved that over the course of the degree. And on the side they picked one of the others - usually they'd end up with B2 if they weren't extremely lazy. So, basically picking a degree where you have to learn a language doesn't necessarily mean that you'll end up knowing many languages. It's common, but not really a requirement. Usually people end up learning just 2 or maybe 3 depending on their country of origin. Theology, philosophy, cultural studies and international relations usually require many more. Linguistics is one of those weird subjects with zero language requirements, at least in Germany - it doesn't really require any other languages apart from English, but most linguists I met learned 2 or 3 to a high level and dabbled in many others without being forced to do so by university requirements. I also met one linguist at an English university who only spoke English fluently, but knew bits and pieces of grammar and vocabulary of about 20 languages without ever having learned any of those languages beyond A1. A strange bird that one ...!
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Mon May 01, 2017 2:27 pm

Spanish

I'm taking it easy these days, so I'm not pushing to maximise the hours I use for language learning. I just do whatever I feel like and still get some language learning done in the end. Yesterday I watched another episode of El tiempo entre costuras. So far I can only guess that the original novel is the typical kind of historical novel that would be popular these days. I find it a little annoying because the main character is a woman who is silly enough to become the victim of all her circumstances. Too naive for my taste. It's still far less annoying than El internado though and the acting is more or less good, so I will continue with it.

Very good and of course impossible to find now for political reasons is the Argentinian series we're watching right now: Germán, últimas viñetas. Really excellent! The lesson to learn is: Always download everything even if it's freely available, since it might disappear tomorrow if governmental policies change. They also removed all the more controversial episodes of Zamba from the official channel :roll: We still have 2 episodes of Germán left and since we're getting to the end it's getting darker and darker - Oesterheld was one of those who disappeared, so it's definitely not going to end on a positive note.

We're still undecided about what to watch next, but we might actually turn to a series called Cromo which looks mildly entertaining. At first we thought it was one of those series that was removed from TV Pública like the other series, but no, they only decided to sell it to Netflix. Argentinian content seems a little harder to find at the moment, but with a bit of digging I think I might make it to 150h in the end.

By the way, in the last 5 weeks I have spent 170h on Spanish, as opposed to 9h the rest of the year. Most of it was TV and I'm making good progress on my mission to master the different accents, i.e. my triple audio SC. Reading is going a little more slowly, but I at least finished one book that I read intensively and now I'm starting Osvaldo Soriano's Cuarteles de invierno.

Spanish hours: 3.89h

French

I continued playing Broken Sword 2 in French and I'm rather close to finishing now. Broken Sword 1 is of course a lot better, but the sequel is still entertaining enough. I also made some progress with the French translation of the first book of the Expanse and I'm now about 200 pages into the book. Basically lots of translations right now, but frankly I'm just trying to have fun in French and maybe pick some vocabulary up on the side.

French hours: 2.59h

Total: 6.48h
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Tue May 02, 2017 2:26 pm

Russian

Yesterday was the first day of the 6WC and I chose Russian again this time. This will obviously take away time from my other languages, but I think I'm at a point where I simply need to be disciplined and spend at least 2h reading in Russian every day to make good progress. Over time the percentage of new words will drop and hopefully reading will become less and less of an effort. I really hope that I'll have a proper breakthrough during this 6WC. This is why I will suspend Clozemaster and Modern Russian for now and focus solely on reading. I still feel a huge resistance and I just need to force myself a little more to stick to hard activities rather than to take the easy way out. By the way, unless I have that breakthrough where reading becomes less of an effort I won't try to maximise my Russian hours. It's simply too draining when it's still hard work like that and I think it's more sustainable for my health if I don't push myself on heavy activities.

Russian hours: 2.41h

Spanish

I watched another episode of El tiempo entre costuras, which was mildly entertaining. We also finished Germán, ultimas viñetas, which was simply excellent! The series is about a comic book writer, so I even felt inspired to pick up drawing again. The only problem is that right now I simply don't have the mind space and this will have to wait until I can listen to Russian audiobooks or radio while I draw. Definitely a good sign when a series can inspire me like that though! Of course I also continued with GdUdE like every day and also continued reading Cuarteles de invierno by Osvaldo Soriano in LWT. Lots of Argentinian slang and even some lunfardo in this one and it's heavy topic-wise, but very interesting so far! I finished the bit that I had read before and now get to add more new words in LWT.

Spanish hours: 3.11h

French

I finished playing Broken Sword 2 in French and it's definitely a nice little game. Took me about 7h to finish it and most of it was full of dialogue. I think it's a really enjoyable way to learn some vocabulary because point and click games usually come up with the most random objects to collect. And since you get to use the objects in the game, the vocabulary is even likely to stick because it has context. I also continued reading the French translation of The Expanse which is still very enjoyable.

French hours: 2.24h

Total: 7.76h
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Wed May 03, 2017 8:18 am

Russian

Although I was really tired yesterday I actually managed to fulfil my Russian goal of at least 2h of LWT. I calculated that at my current reading speed I will finish my first book in 2 weeks and I might finish my first 500 pages of Russian by the end of the 6WC. And this assumes that my reading speed will not improve, which is unlikely. It's a good goal for the 6WC and I think by the end of it reading won't be quite as heavy an activity anymore.

Russian hours: 2.13h

French

I watched a video about a drawing technique in French yesterday and it was really cool because I completely forgot that I was listening to French after a while. There didn't seem to be any "barrier" at all, it was like watching similar content in English or German. I also continued reading the French translation of The Expanse. Steady progress.

French hours: 1.58h

Spanish

Just one episode of El tiempo entre costuras, which remains mildly entertaining, and one lesson of GdUdE A. I have now been using GdUdE for 4 weeks straight and doing one lesson a day works just fine. With most lessons I make very few mistakes and so far I've identified 3 problems - overuse of personal pronouns, overuse of articles and the occasional word order problem with adjectives. After identifying all of those kinds of problems with the help of GdUdE, I will make sure to pay special attention to those issues when going through FSI. I will reach that point only after GdUdE B though, which will happen in about 6 months. For now my mission to get rid of fossilised mistakes is going according to plan.

As for the usual Spanish failures: I still can't write polite emails. I write so rarely that I forget all the right things to say and I just find it difficult to express myself in such a formal way. But well, that's something to tackle after my grammar mission. Baby steps!

Spanish hours: 1.53h

Total: 5.24h
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Thu May 04, 2017 9:00 am

Russian

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, so I didn't have as much time as on other days. I still reached my Russian reading goal though by getting it out of the way in the morning. Normally I have the problem that I get tired after an hour of reading in Russian, but apparently if I read in the morning this doesn't happen so much. So, from now on I will get on with Russian reading in the morning.

Russian hours: 2.11h

Spanish

I made some good progress on Soriano's Cuarteles de invierno on LWT. It's not very long, so I will probably finish it in no time. It's somewhat harsh, so maybe I will pick something less grim for the next book. There was another lesson of GdUdE, which is the first grammar book in Spanish that I find bearable. In the past I abandoned all previous attempts with other grammar books, because they didn't have such an easy to follow structure. So far GdUdE definitely seems quite useful! We also watched the first episode of the Argentinian series Cromo on Netflix. I found the music a bit annoying and not very fitting for the scenes. Half of a series is the atmosphere and the wrong music can totally ruin that. Apart from the music it seems quite alright as a series opening. We'll see whether it turns out to be interesting or not. There were also about 20min of Capusotto videos on Youtube, which is the limit of what my brain can take. That guy is seriously deranged, but oh so funny at times :D

Spanish hours: 2.59h

French

I listened to a nice France culture documentary and a short episode of Transfert. The Transfert episode was frankly a bit silly. Not all of them are good and some of them are super harsh too. Interesting as a phenomenon, but not always enjoyable. Although I'm progressing only slowly on my second French listening SC I'm really close to finishing - just 22h more! I'm also challenging myself to have a separate count of French native content only and this is how I've been filling the last few hours of the SC. I will make an effort to stick mainly to such content now. There won't be fast progress with this, mainly because I try to watch mostly in Spanish these days. I also read a bit more of the French translation of the Expanse.

French hours: 1.96h

Total: 6.66h

General

It seems that I have changed my priorities and plans a bit. Since my health is too unpredictable for traveling right now, speaking Russian has become less of a priority. I will work towards it on the side, but I have suspended Modern Russian until after I have made substantial progress with my reading. I will now focus most of my efforts on finishing the reading part of my first Russian SC and with this hopefully replicate my success with French. Once I'm done with that I will get back to Modern Russian while working on the listening part of the SC. This way I might not finish Modern Russian by September, but since it's very doubtful that I can travel, there is no rush anyway. I also focus much more on Spanish now than I had originally planned, because I don't seem to have much energy for heavy studying right now and therefore have to restrict my engagement with Russian somewhat. This means that this year has actually mutated from a Russian year into a Spanish year with Russian on the side. It's probably a good choice since this way I can make concrete progress on my PhD again, finally work towards my push to C1 in Spanish and still improve my Russian without taxing my health too much. The outcome will be the same in the end, just that I will reach my Spanish goals earlier than expected. The plan goes like this: triple Spanish audio SC (34% done), Spanish intensive reading SC (7% done), progressive grammar challenge (GdUdE A, B, C + FSI, 9% of GdUdE done) and 50,000 words output challenge after I'm done with the grammar. If this plan doesn't get me to C1, then nothing will ;)
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Stelle
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Stelle » Thu May 04, 2017 10:39 am

I read El Tiempo entre costuras - or rather, I should say that I clawed my way through the book. I found it very dull and couldn't relate at all to the main character. Since then, I've thought on and off about watching the TV series, but I'm not terribly inspired to start. Your glowing review of "mildly entertaining" doesn't quite convince me otherwise! :lol: That said, I really did enjoy El Internado, so who knows?
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby blaurebell » Thu May 04, 2017 12:00 pm

Stelle wrote:I read El Tiempo entre costuras - or rather, I should say that I clawed my way through the book. I found it very dull and couldn't relate at all to the main character. Since then, I've thought on and off about watching the TV series, but I'm not terribly inspired to start. Your glowing review of "mildly entertaining" doesn't quite convince me otherwise! That said, I really did enjoy El Internado, so who knows?


Haha, yeah, it's not exactly amazing, although as Spanish series go it's almost "good" writing! It's just such a drag to have a woman be the stereotypical "things happen to her" character / victim. Not a single spark of independence in her so far - I watched up to episode 4. I can't relate to women like that at all either. Personally I wouldn't watch it if I had already read the book. Nevertheless the story is at least somewhat coherent, which I can't quite say about "El internado" :D The first 3 seasons are kind of ok and the last 2 seasons pick up somewhat again, but the holes in the story are big enough for elephants if not even dinosaurs! It's all a sort of incoherent mexican evil twin brother style writing for which I never had much tolerance. I really need to make an effort to suspend belief when the acting and writing is so shoddy, so I can't really find it very enjoyable. The acting in El Tiempo entre costuras is definitely a notch better (not good yet, but at least almost invisible) and the scenery is beautiful. By the way, I noticed that Cable Girls on Netflix has 3 of the El internado actors and that looks also "mildly entertaining". Since Netflix always publishes a bunch of episodes at once it might be also somewhat more coherent in writing, who knows. Maybe that's worth a look for you?
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: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
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: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7332
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Re: Lilly's log - French, Russian and reluctant Spanish

Postby Systematiker » Thu May 04, 2017 5:10 pm

El tiempo entre costuras was the first thing I watched when I started working on Spanish again last year. I never read the book, but the series gets a bit better, she grows a backbone and starts to take a little more charge of her life.

I also watched all of Cable Girls - I suspect you won't like it, because the characters are pretty much stock and the plot is thoroughly predictable. I enjoyed it in part because precisely that it such a brainless downtime watch. El Pais panned it for having little originality, and they were right. Odd music choices, too. Again, I liked it, but I think I want something else out of video media than you do :lol:
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