Ani's 2017 Log

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Tue Dec 19, 2017 9:46 am

PeterMollenburg wrote:Je suis presque certain que tu as déjà vu plusieurs études comme celle-ci, mais je te donne le lien quand même (c’est au sujet d’alzheimer et les régimes cétogènes).

https://www.lanutrition.fr/alzheimer-la-piste-du-glucose


Oui c'est vrai mais merci quand même. J'en ai envoyé à ma mère.. en anglais bien sûr :-p car ma grand-mère souffre de démence. Ça ne va pas aider ma grand-mère beaucoup mais ma mère.. peut-être que oui. Elle a adoptée un régime cétogène depuis quelques semaines. Yay !
______

I have been reading the forum consistently lately but I just haven't really felt like posting. I'm looking over my language achievements this year (if it can be considered such) and trying to squeeze in the last bits that I can before the new year. I think I said I wanted to read a double super challenge with of French. I'm still about 2k pages away from that goal. It's possible but not incredibly likely that I'll get in 200pgs/day through the end of the year. I'm still going to give it a shot though and see where I land :). I have the slight dilemma that I only count pages from books I've completed, however this year I'll be leaving a fair#of books in progress. It's a major pita to record where I left off and count fresh for next year, but it feels like cheating if I carry over pages... What to do, what to do...
I'm not actually sure if I'll set a reading goal for myself in French next year anyway.
I can't even remember what else I said I wanted to do for French. I guess I should look that up. I probably didn't do it. I am going to sum up my TV series hours that I logged in betaseries, but I got way more into YouTube videos for a while so it's not even a good log of how much time I spent watching in French. Either way though, I didn't do enough of it. In think next year I'll skip the reading goal for a video hours goal. Audio books in French mostly put me to sleep unless I am listening while I cook dinner and that doesn't always work out.

Anyway I am in book 7 of the Sookie Stackhouse séries. They are wildly addictive if not very deep. These books are super super good for vocabulary. I think in book 5 the vocab also took a jump. I'm hoping to put my highlights into Anki but just the repetition in the last couple books has taught me so many words. I can now probably name 15 garments a woman wears, 10 different things you can wear on your feet, 5 ways of describing a bar fight and all sorts for nuances in the ways people feel (or don't) about each other. Useful stuff :) One sort of annoying bit about the author, Charlaine Harris, is that she reintroduces characters and situations over and over. I mean she tells the history of one fairly main character in every single book -- as if we could have some how forgotten who he is?? *But* that little fault in her writing style is a blessing for language learners because she's always redescribing situations in different ways. The translators also did a great job with the registers and there is quite a wide range of language from super casual to addressing royalty to being rude in the most polite possible way.

Anyway.. one of my goals *before the end of the year* is to actually type out the list of books I read this year. Really, you have to hold me to that one.

I'm rambling.. it's really late. I need to talk about Russian but I'm really tired and I'm mostly going to sigh a lot and say "Oh Russian...." So.. there.
9 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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MamaPata
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby MamaPata » Tue Dec 19, 2017 10:28 am

Ani wrote:I have been reading the forum consistently lately but I just haven't really felt like posting. I'm looking over my language achievements this year (if it can be considered such) and trying to squeeze in the last bits that I can before the new year. I think I said I wanted to read a double super challenge with of French. I'm still about 2k pages away from that goal. It's possible but not incredibly likely that I'll get in 200pgs/day through the end of the year. I'm still going to give it a shot though and see where I land :). I have the slight dilemma that I only count pages from books I've completed, however this year I'll be leaving a fair#of books in progress. It's a major pita to record where I left off and count fresh for next year, but it feels like cheating if I carry over pages... What to do, what to do....


I think you definitely have to count them somewhere - whether that's this year or next!
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Cavesa » Wed Dec 20, 2017 3:08 pm

Ani wrote:Anyway I am in book 7 of the Sookie Stackhouse séries. They are wildly addictive if not very deep. These books are super super good for vocabulary. I think in book 5 the vocab also took a jump. I'm hoping to put my highlights into Anki but just the repetition in the last couple books has taught me so many words. I can now probably name 15 garments a woman wears, 10 different things you can wear on your feet, 5 ways of describing a bar fight and all sorts for nuances in the ways people feel (or don't) about each other. Useful stuff :) One sort of annoying bit about the author, Charlaine Harris, is that she reintroduces characters and situations over and over. I mean she tells the history of one fairly main character in every single book -- as if we could have some how forgotten who he is?? *But* that little fault in her writing style is a blessing for language learners because she's always redescribing situations in different ways. The translators also did a great job with the registers and there is quite a wide range of language from super casual to addressing royalty to being rude in the most polite possible way.


YES!!! Someone took my recommendation seriously! I told you so! :-D Of course it is not high literature, that is not the intention. But Harris knows the craft, unlike most people in this genre. The constant reintroductions are annoying (really, does she think anyone would start the series from book 9?) but she weighs it out with sense of humour and lots of blood :-)

The translators have done a good job in French and Spanish, I don't know much about the others. I have started a non-Sookie Harris in German, I'll talk about it later, when I am a bit more advanced (both in German and the books)
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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Fri Dec 22, 2017 4:49 am

Cavesa wrote:
YES!!! Someone took my recommendation seriously! I told you so! :-D Of course it is not high literature, that is not the intention. But Harris knows the craft, unlike most people in this genre. The constant reintroductions are annoying (really, does she think anyone would start the series from book 9?) but she weighs it out with sense of humour and lots of blood :-)

The translators have done a good job in French and Spanish, I don't know much about the others. I have started a non-Sookie Harris in German, I'll talk about it later, when I am a bit more advanced (both in German and the books)


I *always* take your recommendations seriously. I think I've gotten more media suggestions out of your log and posts then any other. I have at least another book or two you've recommended on my shelf. L'ange du chaos, I think and something else. I'm glad you're working on German. In three years or so when I'm ready to commit, I'm sure you'll have tons for me :) I just need to make some progress on Russian first....
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:26 pm

Ani wrote:
Speaking of my husband, we had an interesting discussion today about the value of ideas related to languages. I'd like to bring the discussion here at some point, but I don't have it all nailed down to a distinct question yet. I think we have more to discuss on this topic so there was a lot of sorting out of ideas in order to analyse what we were thinking. The root of this discussion was prompted by some friends who are planning to teach their young children Latin. In discussion, the friends said the reason to start early was so that the children would have deep knowledge of the language in order to impose higher order thinking on to.. presumably the various original latin texts. The discussion evolved into the assertion that the thinking and ideas most valuable to the world came through Latin and Greek. I think that is kind of a dumb statement since it is unverifiable, but it prompted a great discussion. If you are going to teach a child a language for the ideas found in its culture or roots, should that language have a significantly larger corpus of valuable texts than other languages? And if you are going to teach a dead language, shouldn't it have an even larger corpus to outweigh the negatives of not having another use besides studying texts. To this end, how do we separate what is cultural signaling in educational choices from what has a quantitative value.. or is it even possible to quantify or analyze great thought across distinct cultures. And how does the idea that "the length of time a work has survived is indicative of the value of ideas it contains" relate here..?
Pardon the belated interruption. You may say more about this topic later in your log, so I'll save commenting until I finish it. But what a stimulating set of observations and questions.
2 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Dec 23, 2017 5:51 pm

Well, this is odd. I'm following my own post.
So, anyway, I just caught up with your log. Like some other folks on this forum, you routinely run up Mt Everest dressed only in a jogging outfit and with no oxygen. In about 30 minutes. Every day. I mean language-learning wise. If I wanted to find someone else who does everything that you do, I would need to find at least four other persons, not just one.
Congratulations on everything that you have accomplished.
4 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Gutenberg » Sun Dec 24, 2017 12:05 am

Reading this makes me want to read the Harris books in French. I have a problem where I tend to only go for the heaviest/most difficult books and therefore finishing relatively few of them, especially in French which I don't speak well.
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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Mon Dec 25, 2017 10:05 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Pardon the belated interruption. You may say more about this topic later in your log, so I'll save commenting until I finish it. But what a stimulating set of observations and questions.


I'm so glad you stopped by and brought this up. I had forgotten that I posted about coming back to talk on this theme, actually. I keep thinking about it though, especially as we study history chronological and see what was happening all over the world at different times. It's love to hear your thoughts and if we have any others interested in the discussion maybe we can port my original thoughts into a discussion thread.
MorkTheFiddle wrote:Well, this is odd. I'm following my own post.
So, anyway, I just caught up with your log. Like some other folks on this forum, you routinely run up Mt Everest dressed only in a jogging outfit and with no oxygen. In about 30 minutes. Every day. I mean language-learning wise. If I wanted to find someone else who does everything that you do, I would need to find at least four other persons, not just one.
Congratulations on everything that you have accomplished.


That's such a sweet compliment. I'm not sure it's deserved but it sure gave me a smile! :)

Gutenberg wrote:Reading this makes me want to read the Harris books in French. I have a problem where I tend to only go for the heaviest/most difficult books and therefore finishing relatively few of them, especially in French which I don't speak well.


Do it!! They are fantastic for vocabulary and ordinary speech. And reading through a few thousand more pages will surely make whatever hard stuff you are interested in seem easier.

-------

Merry Christmas everyone!! Hope you are all having a wonderful time with family and friends.
3 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Mon Dec 25, 2017 11:58 pm

Oh I forgot I wanted to throw a bunch of things into my log..

So.. I've been living for a few weeks now in this teeny place in interior Alaska. Actually it's not teeny by Alaska standards because there's probably like 1000 people living within a 75 mile radius. And there's like three stores, a school, and a real library. I went to an event last week and, as luck would have it, I met the only French speaker for 100 miles around (as far as she knows). The upside is, I met her. The down side is her kids don't really match up in age with mine and I have no excuses to make her my new best friend :( We mostly talked in English which also wasn't so great but I think next time it would be not awkward to start off right away in French so maybe that's good.
There seems to be a really nice community of people up there. (I'm confusing myself with heres and there's.. I'm home in my regular house in AK for Christmas but then we go back for another 6 weeks)

On another topic, it was my birthday a couple days ago and DH got me some books -- some of Einstein's lectures on relativity and a Gary Taubes book. But you know you're a language nerd when your DH tacks on, "but they are in English so I wasn't sure if you'd want them" lol ( I do want them. He knows me so well)

And finally, I'm looking at correspondance school courses for ds3 in French. There is at least one school that offers a maternelle petite section for his age and I'm trying to decide if it makes sense to try it out. I'm on the fence because I could easily make up my own things to work with him on and Lord knows I am not short on books and resources and all kinds of nonsenses around here. But, it could be educative for me to be integrated into an actual program with actual contact teachers. One of the program's I am interested in a couple years for him requires Skype interviews with the parent to set everything up, which sounds very intimidating right now so maybe I should jump in to the system right now to force myself to be better prepared in two years...idk.
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Peluche » Tue Dec 26, 2017 4:05 am

You're a Physicist Ani?
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