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

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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby blaurebell » Thu Feb 23, 2017 4:20 pm

Teango wrote:I'm still coughing up krill in the wake of your recent meteoric climb on the 6WC leaderboard.


Haha, I guess I should have warned you guys that I'm gonna hit the turbo once I reach the reading stage! :D I can only take so much with courses, but have unlimited tolerance for playing with a dictionary.
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: 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

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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby blaurebell » Sat Feb 25, 2017 3:51 pm

My health is crapping out on me, so I'm having a rough day. My minimal daily Russian - Assimil, Duolingo, Clozemaster, 10min listening - took me forever today and I actually had it planned to go out shooting the carnival today. I can only work on this one project once a year and my health decided to stop cooperating on that particular weekend, fantastic :roll: Well, there is always next year :roll: At least that means that I will get a bit more reading in Russian done today! I'm making good progress with my book and every now and then I already come across a whole sentence where I don't have to refer to the dictionary. It happens rarely, but progress is definitely noticeable. Also, instead of 1h it takes me "only" half an hour now to figure out 200 words. Not exactly efficient, but I'm learning a lot while doing it. On every page about 35-40% new words appear now, more with long descriptive passages, less with dialogues. I rarely have to refer to the French translation now, only if the word order gets completely out of hand or if there is a particularly Russian way of saying something. Most of the time I can figure it out by myself though. And doing the maths that's almost 50 pages of my Russian Super Challenge done! Progress!

: 15 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - Обретение чуда
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: 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

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Teango
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby Teango » Sat Feb 25, 2017 11:52 pm

It sounds like you're making excellent progress so far, and I hope you feel much better soon. It's always excitedly reassuring in the early stages to encounter whole new sentences without the need to look up a single word...one day soon, it'll be the other way round. ;)
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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby blaurebell » Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:08 am

Teango wrote:It's always excitedly reassuring in the early stages to encounter whole new sentences without the need to look up a single word...one day soon, it'll be the other way round.


Thank you! And it's definitely a nice feeling to see some progress! I'm looking forward to that time when I get whole pages of green words!

Right now I'm scraping along at 47% of known words in my LWT database, which feels really tough after having a substantial head-start with French - 65-70% right from the start. There are some cognates from French and German, but not enough to help an awful lot. And I wouldn't be surprised if I'd need to read 10,000 pages rather than 5,000 to get to roughly 90% known, because it seems to take me longer to pick up new words too. Definitely a struggle! I'll get there though!

Last time round with Russian I wasn't really sure I'd ever get there, since the grammar of even the simplest Children's books confused me even after studying oodles of grammar. Russian is definitely a tough one! This time round I'm more confident and most sentences in a book for adults make sense in the end, even the very long ones. I just need to be patient!
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: 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

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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby blaurebell » Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:02 pm

Russian

: 31 / 100 Assimil Le Russe
: 46 / 79 Duolingo Russian
: 19 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - Обретение чуда
: 2611 / 35000 LWT Known

Finished:
Russian Pronunciation Trainer
Russian World 1
Red Kalinka - Stories in Russian A1
Red Kalinka - Stories in Russian A2.1
Red Kalinka - Stories in Russian A2.2

Time for another weekly update! I've done about 40h of Studying Russian over the last week which is a huge jump from 15h the week before. The reason for this jump is that I've made some progress with my reading comprehension and it usually takes longer before I start to develop a headache. I've played a lot with my favourite Russian dictionary Lingvo Live in combination with Cooljugator whenever the dictionary won't work out the base word properly. I've read about 60 pages - roughly 20% of the book - and by now even longer sentences seem to come together in the end. I still refer to the French translation for sentences where I'm not quite sure, but usually I'm actually right about the meaning. Also, I'm starting to figure out how shorter words make up longer words. It seems a lot like German in that regard. Still getting about 30-40% new words on every new page and some pages are a real grind with most of the new words mashed together in descriptive paragraphs with excessively long sentences. Depending on how many of those long sentences are on a page it takes me between 25-40min to figure out a page now.

As for courses and other formal materials: I've passed the halfway mark with Duolingo and found one skill that was actually somewhat useless: Verbs of motion. It felt totally insufficient! I guess it doesn't matter much for now, but I will have to buy a book on that one eventually. :roll: I'm almost a third of the way through Assimil too and with some sentences my tongue seems to be turning into a knot. Lessons now take 40min rather than the initial 20min. Same goes for my daily 100XP on Duolingo while doing at least 50XP worth of new stuff. With 10min listening to the audiobook of ночной дозор and 10min Clozemaster I'm at more than 1 1/2h daily minimum now. I have played Clozemaster a steady 10minutes a day for the last 3 weeks and have played about 1000 sentences already of the 44000 sentences Fluency fast track. I actually find it so useful that I got myself a Pro subscription. Stats are super motivating for me and I was just getting annoyed by not being able to ignore some of the sentences.

French

Since I was spending most of my time on Russian this last week I actually neglected my French a little. I don't mind, since I'm still getting French in Assimil Le Russe and I watch the occasional episode of Angel French dubs. I am however making lists of things to watch and read once I'm through my Russian Super Challenge.

Spanish

These days I'm not doing anything to maintain my Spanish - I find the accent and ways of speaking over here obnoxious and I don't want any of that to make its way into my speaking. Occasionally I can't help overhearing conversations on the bus or train though, because people are so damn loud here. And what kind of conversations too!

Two middle-aged señoras:
Lady 1: "I only drink lemonade now. I just got so sick of the taste of water." (Uhm, if your water tastes of anything you should probably buy bottled water :roll: )
Lady 2: "That must have a lot of sugar though ..." (Oh really?! :roll: )
Lady 1: "Ah, I don't care about that! Nowadays everything is bad for you. Fat is bad, wheat is bad, sugar is bad. There is nothing left to eat! So, I don't care and drink my lemonade." (Great that you have the choice, if I eat sugar or wheat I eventually end up in hospital! :roll: )
Lady 2: "I actually prefer juice ..." ( :roll: :roll: :roll: It has the same amount of sugar as lemonade!!!! :roll: :roll: :roll: )

And despite all the eye-rolling I still feel guilty about wanting to listen to music, because this torture is actually free listening practice! At least idiotic small talk is better than oversharing not very appetising details of medical histories loudly on the bus :shock: I should probably walk more, but it's still winter and I already walk enough while taking pictures! Other Spanish used this week: "Yes, my camera is old, it's from the 1950s.", "Yes, they still make film for it." and "I develop it myself, even colour film." I think I've said these 3 sentences about 150 times over the last year and I try to say them differently each time for variation, but then catch myself making stupid grammar mistakes because nobody ever speaks to me about anything else. Well, except dogs. I sometimes ask people whether I can take a picture of their dog and then I get lots of "Oh, isn't he cute" and "He's such a good dog" and I will say things like "He has such lovely eyes" or "I don't think he'll hold still for me".

I get lots of speaking practice for about a month each year with my Argentinian in-laws and that keeps me at B2 production, but other than that I only get not very deep camera bla or dog bla. No wonder I can't improve if nobody wants to speak to me about anything else! So much for immersion in the country - wrong country, wrong Spanish, quite obviously. But OK, rant over for now. It's my Russian year, so I probably won't complain about this again. My in-laws might visit in autumn and we might travel around Spain and France for a while, fingers crossed! And for next year I actually have an Argentinian year lined up. Argentinian Super Challenge, lots of Argentinian PhD stuff and I'll probably even find myself an Argentinian tutor to talk about Argentinian literature and correct some essays. That should finally get me to C1. And if I'm really really lucky I might even find the money to finance my archive work in Buenos Aires. 3 months practically living in the Biblioteca Nacional during the day and shooting a documentary project on a 100+ year old tango place at night. I can't wait!
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: 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
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby DaveBee » Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:39 pm

blaurebell wrote:French

Since I was spending most of my time on Russian this last week I actually neglected my French a little. I don't mind, since I'm still getting French in Assimil Le Russe and I watch the occasional episode of Angel French dubs. I am however making lists of things to watch and read once I'm through my Russian Super Challenge.
France Culture has had several Russia themed programmes recently
1917-2017. La Fabrique de l’Histoire, LSD, La série documentaire, et d'autres émissions de France Culture s’emparent d’un des faits majeurs de l’histoire mondiale. Analyses et perspectives, documentaires, archives et témoignages. Une semaine fondamentale pour revisiter les enjeux de la Révolution russe à la lumière de nos perspectives d’aujourd’hui.
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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby blaurebell » Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:22 pm

DaveBee wrote:France Culture has had several Russia themed programmes recently


Merci beaucoup! I just listened to one of them and it was great! I already know quite a lot about the revolution and still learned something new in it.

By the way, somehow I was surprised about actually understanding everything. Not 95% or 98%, no I understood it all! I've watched mainly dubbed stuff and listened to a few hours of audiobooks only, not much in the way of actual French native content in natural speaking situations. This one was super clear although they talk over each other and all have different accents. On some days I still can't quite believe that I understand French :D To think that a year ago I didn't know a word of it!
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: 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

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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby MamaPata » Thu Mar 02, 2017 4:16 am

Ah verbs of motion... :shock: I think I'm getting less terrible at them but who knows?! It sounds like you're doing an amazing job with Russian - you're doing so much work!
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blaurebell
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby blaurebell » Thu Mar 02, 2017 8:19 am

MamaPata wrote:Ah verbs of motion... :shock: I think I'm getting less terrible at them but who knows?! It sounds like you're doing an amazing job with Russian - you're doing so much work!


Thanks :) I'm still in that early stage where I can't really "relax" with the language, which makes it a little tough. At least I'm seeing lots of progress though, which is definitely nice! I can never decide whether I like or dislike this part of language learning. I definitely can't bear it for longer than 3 months, but as long as the momentum carries me along and I see progress, I can keep going.

Thankfully I'm not even near the production stage yet, I don't know how terrible I am with verbs of motion. Right now I'm pretty much terrible with everything I suppose :D I don't mind. First I just want to read and watch stuff! I'm afraid for production I'll have to go through a lot of good old-fashioned drilling though, otherwise I'll have to keep it a secret that I'm half Russian :lol:
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: 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

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blaurebell
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
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Re: Lilly's log - French and Russian

Postby blaurebell » Sat Mar 04, 2017 5:54 pm

5 weeks of Assimil done. The lessons are getting longer and difficult to shadow, but I'm keeping up just fine. I don't normally make any mistakes with the exercises at the end of each lesson, so that's a good sign. 2 more weeks to go and I'll be at the halfway point / the start of the active wave. Hopefully around that time I will also have finished Duolingo, because that one is starting to become a real drag. I don't think I can face Assimil passive + Assimil active + 100XP of Duolingo with super long annoying sentences. Luckily there seem to be lots of short skills towards the end of the tree, so I can probably get through 2 a day. Shouldn't be long now!

Other than that I have spent a lot more time on French the last few days after DaveBee pointed me to those France culture documentaries. They are really enjoyable programs and give me a good feeling because I understand them despite their somewhat more highbrow nature and occasional Russian accents. I also get some of the occasional Russian bits which made me feel very good about myself indeed! And totally accidentally I even got a couple of pointers for my PhD, so that's great! I also randomly started reading La grotte chauvet before bed which is about a cave with some of the most amazing cave paintings. We have way too many random interesting TL books lying around at home, I always get distracted in the "Oh look, a butterfly!" fashion when I already have a list of PhD related reading that is longer than my arm. In any case, although the cave book is academic and rather specific I'm enjoying it a lot and not missing much apart from some very specific geology vocabulary that I don't really know in any other language either.

So, basically I can work with French sources now without any issues, that's cool and totally unplanned! I guess I will have no excuses now not to read work related stuff in French. I have a few lying around that I've been keeping around for "someday perhaps". My PhD supervisor will probably be a little :o about the news, since this means I'm now up to 4 languages used for the PhD so far - German, English, Spanish and French. He'll be :shock: when I add Russian. I warned him that I might perhaps, but told him also about a year ago that I'm not having much luck with cracking Russian. With Assimil I'm actually getting there now so I just randomly changed the plan for this whole year going back to the previously abandoned Plan A. He'll be rolling his eyes and shaking his head for sure. I guess I'll be nice and add translations :lol:

That said, I need to stop procrastinating in the mornings. Since I'm starting to dread Duolingo and I'm supposed to do that first, I spend hours wasting my time with other stuff.
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


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