A language learners’ forum

Well, that swim yesterday killed me. I've reevaluated my prep for Boston Light on 17 August and have come to the sad conclusion that I will have to pull from the swim. I just can't get my stomach used to the salt water and my speed is so slow I probably wouldn't be able to make the time cut-off. I'm not too mad at myself. I'm only out ~$350 for the swim. Worse would be going on with it, paying the boat pilot over $400 plus paying for my crew's travel, then not finishing. Always look on the bright side of life...

Russian still going well. I've found an English version of Bunin's Dark Avenues so can check my progress. Will probably skip forward to Akunin next.

Have a quandary about Italian. I'll be out of town for the first 3 possibly 4 classes of a 15 class session. Should I still take the class? I want to, and I think I can talk the instructor into letting me. While I'm out of town I would work on Pimsleur and the Sessanta raconti book. I'm losing that quickly gained Italian proficiency so I'll need the 3+ weeks to get back up to snuff!

If I were you, I'd still take the class since you did well with your self study during the last one and if I recall correctly you mentioned the pace of the class was not fast so you would easily catch up.

Admittedly, I'm influenced by my belief that everyone should learn Italian.

I think you're right @lingua. Both about me taking the class and about everyone needing Italian.

I've already changed my Russian plan because as I was leafing through Листая (ha!) I saw that there was a fragment from Teffi. I've wanted to read her for quite a while. There's also one from Nabokov, so he's next after Teffi. And then Petrushevskaya who I heard is really good. Then I'll finally get to Akunin.

Picture from yesterday's 10k. This lighthouse was about 5km into the race. So beautiful. That's my wife paddling for me.

Keep the leaf joke coming!

What is your Akunin plan? Are you going to read through his whole history with companion historical novels, or one of the other series? I myself would really like to do the history sometime. I like that every bookstore in Moscow & SPb prominently features those books, and that of course might be propelling me to want to read them as well.

David1917 wrote:What is your Akunin plan? Are you going to read through his whole history with companion historical novels, or one of the other series? I myself would really like to do the history sometime. I like that every bookstore in Moscow & SPb prominently features those books, and that of course might be propelling me to want to read them as well.

No, I mean the Akunin story in my current Russian book, Листая... The story is called Unless and the title is in English, for some reason.

Holy crap I love the Speater app that @Adrianslont recommended in this thread. So easy to use. Very nice half hour of a Russian podcast at 0.9x speed this morning. Close to normal but more understandable than their usual speed-Russian.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge progressing. Recovered from the 10k this weekend with two easy swims this week totalling a measly 1.72 miles. But felt good to get the kinks out. I have two races this weekend, both in wonderfully-odd Salem, Massachusetts. Saturday will be a 2-miler and Sunday will be my favorite distance, 5k. After that I have some time off from races till the end of the month.

Language-wise, looking at ~28 August for my Russian DLPT. Still hoping for a 2+/2+. I think I can pull that off in Reading (probably just jinxed myself... Стучаю на дерево), but Listening has always been hard for me. We'll see. After the DLPT, back to Italian. Need to get the little italiano I had back! I look at the books every night (on a shelf near my bed) and wanna pull a book out, but don't. I do not want to go down that rabbit hole then after the DLPT think about how much better I could have done in Russian if I hadn't strayed!

IronMike wrote:Holy crap I love the Speater app that @Adrianslont recommended in this thread. So easy to use. Very nice half hour of a Russian podcast at 0.9x speed this morning. Close to normal but more understandable than their usual speed-Russian.

On one of the Polish youtube channels for language learning (I can't remember which one), I heard that the opposite action is better. They advised to listen to a piece a few times and to increase the speed with each iteration. This should train your brain so when you hear normal tempo it will be a piece of cake for you

cjareck wrote:

IronMike wrote:Holy crap I love the Speater app that @Adrianslont recommended in this thread. So easy to use. Very nice half hour of a Russian podcast at 0.9x speed this morning. Close to normal but more understandable than their usual speed-Russian.

On one of the Polish youtube channels for language learning (I can't remember which one), I heard that the opposite action is better. They advised to listen to a piece a few times and to increase the speed with each iteration. This should train your brain so when you hear normal tempo it will be a piece of cake for you

The Russian newscasters already speak way too fast, much faster even than on the DLPT! If I listened to the same podcast episode over and over again then I would slowly speed it up, but that's not how I roll...

I was scheduled for two swims this weekend, a 2-mile swim on Saturday and a 5K on Sunday. I did the 2-mile swim. Water was "unseasonably cold" as one local put it. One watch said 58F. The harbormaster said 62-63F. All I know is it was cold.



The swim was 2 x one-mile loops. I was freezing until the first turn buoy, maybe 300m away. Then I felt fine. There were cold spots on the last third of the loop, enough that it was shocking. But otherwise I felt strong. Last year I did this swim in some seconds over an hour. I felt so good yesterday that I thought I might do it under an hour.

Nope. Over an hour. A bunch. 1:15-1:16. Like, way slower.

It dawned on me that I might not be recovered from last weekend's marathon. I re-thought Sunday's 5k. Especially due to the water temp. (Swim was in the same city, different bay/cove, in Salem, MA.) I decided to opt out of today's 5k. I mean really, what I did was basically run a marathon last Saturday (10k swim is equivalent to a running marathon), then yesterday I did the equivalent of running 8 miles, and then expected myself to run a half-marathon today. I'm not too bright.

So I had a good relaxing day today. I started and am almost done with a friend's novel. He asked me to read it critically and give him edits and notes. So far so good; I'm about 120 pages in. Probably will finish it tonight.

I also grabbed a book off the shelf and started reading it. It is book #1 of The Expanse, Leviathon Wakes, but in Russian (Пробуждение Левиафана). I started it in Moscow and got pretty far (~65%), so I figured I'd done enough of "study reading" for my Russian DLPT and can spend some time finishing this novel. And I decided to L-R it.

I L-R'd chapter 37, all in Russian. Then I thought I'd throw English in, but which part? I decided on listening to chapter 37 again in Russian but read it in English. It was weird, but I was able to follow it. Should I also do it the other way, with English audio and Russian reading? I have all versions, so I have options. What do you guys think?

So many changes...

Turns out 28 August may not work for my DLPT. So I'm going to the testing center tomorrow morning in the hopes that I can take the DLPT tomorrow. If not, then I have to find another date/location.

If I take it tomorrow, then I'm free to move on from Russian after tomorrow. If not, then I'll continue my L-R of the James SA Corey book.

I'll report back tomorrow.