Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

[Tristano]

After a week of listening Romanian podcasts:
(background: I didn't use any audio for beginners or intermediate previously but immediately with native resources)


My listening skills are similar of the one I had for Dutch one year ago. Sometimes I understand the whole sentence, sometimes part of it, sometimes I understand all the words but I can't understand the meaning of the sentence. Contrarily to languages like Dutch, French and Spanish where the people talk at neck breaking speed, Romanian is spoken at a nice steady pace like Italian. The language has it's own particular sound and intonation that makes it immediately recognizable. I find it to have a somewhat melanchonic sound (comparable to portuguese) that I love. It sounds poetic and masculine, like Italian. Love it.

I scheduled a lesson with an Italki teacher in about 10 days. We're going to work on pronunciation and translation, ideally from Romanian to French. I look forward to it.

[Expugnator]

Your experience with Romanian is so inspiring, Tristano! Thanks for the links. I'll be soon joining you in the learning ("soon" = when I finish my list of textbooks for Spanish and put it on native materials-only mode).

Thanks for the podcasts list, it's bookmarked . Romanian also has plenty of audiobooks, and I tend to favor these. What you say about Romanian being easy to decode phonetically holds true. Back in the middle 2000's, when I used to listen to Romanian music, even my friends who weren't into language learning could almost sing along just by hearing, without understanding the meaning. That means it will be possible to watch native materials right away, which will come in handy since Romania is not a dubbing country.

[tarvos]

Compared to say, the French, I don't think the Dutch speak that quickly, actually. I think the big problem is that the Dutch slur so much of their speech and combine sounds all the time. Spanish is breakneck speed though, yep...

[Tristano]

Your experience with Romanian is so inspiring, Tristano! Thanks for the links. I'll be soon joining you in the learning ("soon" = when I finish my list of textbooks for Spanish and put it on native materials-only mode).

Thanks for the podcasts list, it's bookmarked . Romanian also has plenty of audiobooks, and I tend to favor these. What you say about Romanian being easy to decode phonetically holds true. Back in the middle 2000's, when I used to listen to Romanian music, even my friends who weren't into language learning could almost sing along just by hearing, without understanding the meaning. That means it will be possible to watch native materials right away, which will come in handy since Romania is not a dubbing country.

Hi @Expugnator,
thanks for your encouraging message! I have previous exposure to Romanian in the form of a Romanian manager that was speaking with another Romanian manager or via phone with girlfriend and mother. Back then I was just oneandhalflingual (Italian and very broken English) and I couldn't understand much more than "La revedere" or "Foarte bine" Then he taught me one very specific word, pula The rest was just noise for me. Four years later, having a better English and having learned also French, Spanish and Dutch and with little study of Romanian I can understand much much more than before.

I'm going to integrate audiobooks in a second moment, especially when I discover that following podcasts is no longer a challenge. Nice to hear that there is a broad range of choice anyway, I wasn't aware! Where can I find them?
I wait with impatience to see your progress with Romanian anyway!

[Tristano]

Compared to say, the French, I don't think the Dutch speak that quickly, actually. I think the big problem is that the Dutch slur so much of their speech and combine sounds all the time. Spanish is breakneck speed though, yep...

I would say that I see both the phenomena. I'm somehow starting to slur myself. It's nice to know that if saying "goede morgen" becomes boring after a while, I can always say "goeiemorgen", or "goed morg'n"or simply "mor'n"
I see anyway people in the Randstadt speaking faster than in the north where I'm currently living.

[Tristano]

Period of changes!

Last week my languages remained on the back seat, because I had to prepare a couple of interviews for a new work project. Luckily I passed the selections, and this will have an important impact on my career and on my language studies too. Since I'm going to have longer commuting time, I will be able to listen to my languages for a total of (minumum) two hours per day! My time for interactive study though might be reduced. Since I'm going to start at beginning or half September, I have time to push a little bit and finish the Clozemaster and Duolingo courses. (breaking news, I just terminated the Fluency Fast Track )

In the back of my head there is a voice that says that I should improve my other languages.
Perhaps I should, after Romanian, take a sabbatical leave where I work on my English, French and Spanish for six months each.

[Expugnator]

Good luck on your new project, Tristano!

Carti audio are very easy to find and download, at a quick search. There is also this shop, Libris, at http://www.libris.ro/carti/audiobook . I don't know if they have downloadable audiobooks once you purchase or just CDs through mail.

[Tristano]

Thank you very much! I'll start searching.
After ten episodes I got bored of the technology podcast, so I moved on to a news reportage one. Much less boring!
Clozemaster side, after the first fast track I'm finishing the graded levels. Yesterday I completed the 100-500 which is too easy and I put most in the sentences directly on mastered. update: finished also the top 1000 graded level.

But the news is that I had my first Romanian lesson on Italki! He was quite impressed by my comprehension and translation skills and gave me very little corrections about my pronunciation, which is an achievement because it was the first time that I read it aloud. He also asked me questions in Romanian which I understood and answered with very basic sentences. He taught me the numerals even though I had an idea how they worked because I was struggling with it. He said that "I clearly know Romanian" and that I'm one of his best beginners and that he's going to give me more advanced lessons. Very nice experience

[Tristano]

I tried to put on a geographic map the languages I can speak or at least to understand, and what I discover is:

I actually only care about Europe and Asia, and all the rest is a side effect.

Although I will probably try to learn at least one language per continent (with the exception of the poles where I don't really think I'm going to learn some crazy aborigenal language - no offense ^_^).

Yesterday I went through a milestone with Romanian, specifically with the Clozemaster course:
I finished the top 4000 used words. In conjunction with having finished the fluency fast track I feel satisfied with my completion of the course (I was getting too many similar sentences with the same cloze words and this doesn't add anything to my learning). From now on I'm going to master all the played words (must be something around 1000-1500 left words), and read some articles. My broad exposure through different activities (duolingo, podcasts/audiobooks and tutoring) makes me feel confident to use the Clozemaster slot for a new language.

Now, the selected language would be one in a family within I already know related languages (so not too difficult) but in a branch I still didn't touch (so not too easy), and one that I don't need to speak or write or even listen for the moment.

Because of my requirements the language chosen is in the north germanic branch. That branch I want to study as a whole, but idea is to start with the one with more sentences to proceed in negative order to the one with the least sentences. My order will be as a consequence: Danish - Norwegian - Swedish - Icelandic. To the time I finished with them I will certainly have a good command of Romanian, that will mean that I will be able to start a new language probably in the Slavic area. But the small picture is: I started to study Danish on Clozemaster.

Duolingo side, I passed the third checkpoint of Romanian for speakers of English. There are two left. It doesn't hurt!

I have the impression that my listening skills are improving every week. Of course in order to improve further I will need to add extensive reading to my schedule, but I can do so only when I finished the reverse tree of Duolingo (English for speakers of Romanian), that on the other hand will strenghten my active skills. I will consider if to buy an advanced monolingual grammar book or not. I'm a bad course completionist but I'm trying to push myself.

[Theodisce]

It's nice to know that if saying "goede morgen" becomes boring after a while, I can always say "goeiemorgen", or "goed morg'n"or simply "mor'n"
.

Guten morgen becomes often just morgen is spoken German. They also tend to drop the verbal ending e of the first person singular: ich sag' euch, ich werd' es machen. And that's the (more or less) standard German, dialects can be unintelligible even to native speakers from other areas.

It's intriguing that Romanians succeeded in basically reinventing their language, at least when it comes to vocabulary (a 19th century dictionary classified Romanian as a Slavic language, or so I'm told), whereas it did not happen to that extent with Katharevousa, which ended up being substituted with Demotic after having left some traces (I guess some still use Katharevousa, but they are few). Any ideas why?

To my ear Romanian sounds like Italian pronounced by people who have been largely exposed to Slavic languages, but this sensation is obviously influenced by my knowledge of history.

As for audio books, the Italian ones are read with rocket speed, at least those I bought. After 380 hours of input it is no more the problem it was at the beginning of the journey though.