Sgt Schultz knows nothing!

[Sgt Schultz]

One thing to remember with French is that for pronunciation purposes, you can think of words beginning with vowels (or silent H) as taking the closest consonant to the left as the "beginning" of the syllable. So:

à neuf heures -> "a neu veur"
à quatre heures -> "a ka treur"
la semaine écoulée -> "la se mê né cou lé"
toute œuvre dramatique -> "tou tœuvre dra ma tic"

This is one reason (along with lack of lexical stress and liaison) for the impression that it all "runs together" and it can help to be aware of it when "decoding" speech.

That makes perfect sense, thanks for pointing it out!

How are things in Dallas? Did you guys get any flooding or hurricane damage?

[tastyonions]

Un peu de pluie, rien de grave.

[Sgt Schultz]

French
Completed lesson 11 of Pimsuler I. And repeated it for more practice.

Started Assimil French and did lessons 1-3. These were very easy. I'll continue to read/listen to multiple lessons until they become harder. I listened to the audio for lessons 1-3 on repeat while at the gym yesterday. I liked this and will probably continue to do it as long as I feel I'm getting something out of it.

Listened to RFI in the background at work yesterday and have it playing today too. There is one woman on there occasionally that has a very nasally accent. It's a bit annoying.

Spanish
I watched last nights Argentina v Uruguay match on Bein Sports Espanol. I could understand about half of it. For some reason, football tv commentators seem to be really difficult to follow 100%. I'm fairly certain that at least one of them was an Argentine. From my experience, Argentine Spanish is rather different. I know native speakers from other countries that have to watch Argentine TV with subtitles, so I don't feel too bad about having difficulty with it.

Other
For anyone that follows this log, you know that I have some bad wanderlust. It seems that having a reason, such as a trip, keeps me focused. I haven't (yet!) had any wanderlust for German or Italian. Hopefully, this continues.

[Sgt Schultz]

French
Last night I watched Priceless, a movie starring Audrey Tautou and Gad Elmaleh. I've seen this one a few times already but it's one of my favorites that I enjoy watching over and over. I mainly watched/listened for words and phrases that I knew and heard a fair amount of those. And of course quite a bit that I didn't understand, which is fine at this point.



This morning I did Pimsuler lesson 12. It was a bit of a disaster and I plan on doing it again.

I also did lesson 5 of Assimil. This lesson was really easy and I had no problems. If I have free time this afternoon I'll go on to lesson 6. If not, I'll do it tomorrow.

Spanish
Envíe textos con mis amigos en Whatsapp. También, leí y escuché a español en el sito web LingQ. No fue muy dificil, solo quise un poco de practicar.

Esta noche voy a comenzar la tercera temporada de Narcos. Estoy seguro que voy a oír mucho de español.

OK, enough from me, it's gym time.

[Sgt Schultz]

French
Over the long holiday weekend, I left town to visit family. During the drive, I knocked out several Pimsuler lessons. Today is lesson 16, which I did during the morning commute. I'll review it on the drive home this afternoon. I've been repeating every lesson twice. Sometimes the pronunciation is a bit difficult. There are times when negations end up sounds like the English word "pat". Very odd.

I also did Assimil lesson 6 and 7. Lesson 8 will be tonight.

I signed up for a 7 day trial of LingQ and did some French reading with it. I like it. A lot of the content is all over the place but it seems to be a fairly inexpensive way to get n+1 content that comes with audio. I'll stick with it a while and see how it goes. If anyone has an easier way to get n+1 with audio, please let me know.

Spanish
More of the same. I did add in some Spanish reading/listening with LingQ the past few days. I really like that.

My parents heard me talking to Clara in a video chat over the weekend while I visited them. After I was done, they said, so, you are pretty much fluent in Spanish it sounds like. I dislike the word fluent but it was nice of them to say.

Other stuff
Amazon had Assimil Italian on sale yesterday. The last time I saw it on there it was around $100 and it was on sale for around $60. With Prime free shipping, I didn't think that was bad. So, I went ahead and grabbed it. I also have Assimil German still sitting on my desk from when I got it on sale too, although, I think it's an old version. I'll get to both eventually.

OK, that's it for today. Until next time.

[Sgt Schultz]

I believe these updates are getting repetitive so I may start doing them only when I have something interesting or out of the ordinary to share. I'm sure nobody is interested in seeing I did lesson x today of Pimsuler

I'm still chugging along and making progress with Pimsuler and reading/listening with LingQ. I'm really enjoying LingQ on the iPad. It's nice to be able to be sitting on the couch or laying in bed and spend 30mins or an hour with n+1 content with audio at my finger tips. I dunno why I didn't get addicted to this before now. I remember trying it a number of years back and it didn't stick. I think it was a lack of structure that turned me off last time.

OK, not a lot to share with this update. Until the next one.

[Sgt Schultz]

Life updates
I'm not sure that anyone actually cares but a brief update on non-languages stuff.

My company finally announced that they were being sold. They've been using sold and merger interchangeably so nobody knows for sure exactly what the truth is. Most people here have decided to convince themselves that we will be running them and nothing will change since we are the superior company (supposedly). I asked if this was actually based on fact or wishful thinking and was told fact but wasn't given any actual facts to support it. So, I have my doubts and will assume it's wishful thinking until it's proven otherwise.

I've taken an interest in data science and have been going through a course for it based on Python. I've written Python before so a lot of it is review. But since I don't get to do Python every day, it's good reinforcement and practice. Some of the later topics in the course cover Machine Learning, that should be really interesting.

The job search has somewhat taken a backseat. I've been fairly picky since I feel like I'm in the driver's seat right now but I would love to find something that blows me away. I have come to the conclusion that I want to get back into a job that uses open source technologies. The majority of my career was C++, Java and Unix/Linux before taking a detour over into the world of .NET for the past few years. I like C# but I really miss working on Linux and Linux based technologies. Hopefully, I can get on a path that I enjoy, at a company I like soon.

I've also decided that I'm open to relocating for the right position. I'm ready for a change of scenery, I think it would do me a lot of good.

French
I'm still plugging away with French. I'm mostly doing Pimsuler during commute time and then something at night for a little while. Usually Assimil but occasionally I throw in Duolingo for a change of pace.

Spanish
Still using it on a daily basis and maintaining my level.

[Sgt Schultz]

Last night I discovered a French learning program that I think will be useful. It's here: https://www.frenchtoday.com/audiobooks-to-learn-french/beginner-french-audio-method.

It's a story + audio that's similar to Assimil. There are both Andriod and iOS apps, something that is lacking in Assimil. While I'm a fan of Assimil, I'm not a fan of the size of the Assimil book (or physical books in general) and have wished for a very long time that Assimil would make a mobile app that simply showed me the text and played the audio of the lesson. I've felt for a while that this would make it much more convenient. I know that Assimil has an e-method now but those aren't mobile and I don't find the desktop format useful. This French Today app seems to fit the bill exactly.

As for the content, there seem to be multiple levels of progressively harder material. I haven't been able to find any info on word count so it's hard to compare to Assimil. The levels seem a bit pricey at $55USD too, although they are fairly long at ~150 pages. I will reserve judgment until I have a better grasp of how much content they offer and how well they teach the language.

I downloaded the Android app and have been trying out the free level that they offer. I'll report back on what I think about it in a day or two. I'm hopeful that this will be a drop in replacement for Assimil and complements Pimsuler well.

If anyone has tried this already, I'd love to hear about your impressions.

[Vedun]

The job search has somewhat taken a backseat. I've been fairly picky since I feel like I'm in the driver's seat right now but I would love to find something that blows me away. I have come to the conclusion that I want to get back into a job that uses open source technologies. The majority of my career was C++, Java and Unix/Linux before taking a detour over into the world of .NET for the past few years. I like C# but I really miss working on Linux and Linux based technologies. Hopefully, I can get on a path that I enjoy, at a company I like soon.

A job that uses open source or that writes one? There are quite a few positions for that.

[Sgt Schultz]

The job search has somewhat taken a backseat. I've been fairly picky since I feel like I'm in the driver's seat right now but I would love to find something that blows me away. I have come to the conclusion that I want to get back into a job that uses open source technologies. The majority of my career was C++, Java and Unix/Linux before taking a detour over into the world of .NET for the past few years. I like C# but I really miss working on Linux and Linux based technologies. Hopefully, I can get on a path that I enjoy, at a company I like soon.

A job that uses open source or that writes one? There are quite a few positions for that.

Using open source. The first 10+ years of my career was working with C++ and Java. I wouldn't mind going back to that. I've also been doing a lot of Python in my free time over the past 1.5 years. I've developed quite the crush on that language and wouldn't mind doing something with it professionally.