Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

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Expugnator
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Aug 29, 2017 8:34 pm

My Mandarin is getting better and now it makes sense to try just listening to Mandarin and reading in Portuguese. I'm still reading the Chinese text as well, but sometimes in long paragraphs I prefer to just listen. Other times, the vocabulary is familiar and so I understand it just through listening.

I had some extra time in the morning and could advance my readings, and so everything finished earlier. Yet I felt sleepy most of the day. Even though I have more time for doing the study and finishes it, like, one hour later, the mental strain is the same or higher.

Putting Hebrew on hold. I've had a glance at the alphabet, and the book starts to cover a lot of grammar. That's a huge spoiler for me. I don't want to do the same I did with Modern Greek, where I picked a book from the same series and read about all the verbal tenses before studying them actively and in context. That would be disastrous for Hebrew because it would spoil the fun of a more exotic grammar.

Still deciding what to do for Hebrew now. Not in the mood for a "serious" Assimil yet. Maybe Hebrewpod101? Any resource with short lessons will do the job. Praktisches Lehrbuch Hebräisch sounds good, but too serious. Tried Mond.ly, but it's not totally vowered. Modern Hebrew for Beginners might be the choice. I have yet to get the audio for this and for Langenscheidt's.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Tue Aug 29, 2017 8:44 pm

Expugnator wrote:Still deciding what to do for Hebrew now. Not in the mood for a "serious" Assimil yet. Maybe Hebrewpod101? Any resource with short lessons will do the job.


Maybe if you find lessons at the right level? I'm currently using podcasts from the same company for Cantonese (limited knowledge) and Czech (no knowledge). I have written some comments in my log. Some lessons teach more or less the same stuff (e.g. greetings, nationalities), some lessons appear in several series, some series have nearly the same explanations and so on.
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Expugnator
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:19 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Expugnator wrote:Still deciding what to do for Hebrew now. Not in the mood for a "serious" Assimil yet. Maybe Hebrewpod101? Any resource with short lessons will do the job.


Maybe if you find lessons at the right level? I'm currently using podcasts from the same company for Cantonese (limited knowledge) and Czech (no knowledge). I have written some comments in my log. Some lessons teach more or less the same stuff (e.g. greetings, nationalities), some lessons appear in several series, some series have nearly the same explanations and so on.


I haven't checked, but I expect I will. What I need at this stage are texts both transcribed and vocalized. I'll leave 'real' Hebrew for when I'm familiar enough with the words to recognize them from its shape (or grammatical function, for that matter).

==============
Yesterday I could work on Clozemaster to the fullest, as the girls slept earlier, not before messing around the apartment a bit. I still couldn't find the time to get all the material I need or Hebrew, but the good news is that the book Modern Hebrew for Beginners has audio at the publisher's site, University of Texas. Let's give it a try! Hebrew is too much of a cool language to put on hold just even for a few days.

On the Arrowverse front, I got the first episode of Constantine in Georgian, but I'm still wondering if I shouldn't watch it in German instead, once I'm done with the current film.

I should learn to call the Estonian soap opera properly. It's Õnne Kolmteist (13 = kolmteist). Even mentally it's wrong to call it "õnne treze" :D .

Norwegian has definitely adopted past participle after modals, even when future is meant: "Kanskje vi kunne invitert han på middag".

Finished the film "Un ticket pour l'espace". Not a bad comedy.

Today was an almost non-study day due to some serious issues, involving a bank robbing its costumers explicitly. Better luck tomorrow.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu Aug 31, 2017 9:40 pm

Current Jeremy Rifkin's book, which I'm reading in French, is much less repetitive than the previous ones. The author is presenting new perspectives rather than just repeating his arguments for why the Third Industrial Revolution might happen. Particularly interesting is the chapter on 3D printers.

As for Italian, Elena Ferrante's books are really rich in vocabulary. I won't say I understand it all, Romance-like transparent. I'm reading almost always extensively so I'm missing the chance of learning the new vocabulary as well. Yet I find it really insightful into Southern Italy. At the current chapter, the author complains how native speakers don't always have a clue where the stress of a word falls, especially words that are typical of the written language. Unlike in Spanish and Portuguese, stress can't be predicted from the spelling in Italian, and guessing correctly whether a word is paroxytone or proparoxytone can be a call of faith sometimes.

Mandarin Chinese starts to sound transparent. I keep doing the exercise of listening-only to the long excerpts of Narnia's final book, and I notice that it starts to sound familiar. Sometimes I understand more from listening than from reading. When reading, you get utterly confused from an unknown character, while Mandarin as a spoken language sounds just like another language where you can fill in the gaps from context.

I'm a bit disappointed with the teaching of verbs of motion at Russian in Exercises, at least so far. The verbs are introduced linearly, with no contrastive usage. Maybe it will come later.

As for Russian reading, I'm starting to understand full sentences. First it was a sequence of words. Next step is full paragraphs. From my experience, this is the doorstep to reading fluency.

Cultural shock. At Skam, a girl goes to the school's doctor for counseling on contraception.

Started the film "Mon père est femme de ménage". Interesting. Contemporary, urbain, authentic language.

Wow. Finished the non-language course. Now I have more time for languages and one thing less to worry about.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:51 pm

Today I inverted most activities. I had 3 hours of no access to my desktop in the morning, and so I did all the reading. It was more effective, actually, to read in a calmer environment and less distracted. I think all of my older languages are at least on a B1 reading level.

Finished Zweiohrküken. A bit gross for what I would expect from a German film, but not bad. Now I'm going to try again a cartoon that lacked subtitles and I couldn't follow tjhe first time. Let's see how it goes now. After that, probably dubbed series.

Started watching Constantine. It's relaxing to watch a series that only had 1 season. Pity that it's been canceled due to a detail. The main character is interesting and well played.

Despite having a headstart in the morning, it still wasn't enough to finish all the tasks. Spanish and Hebrew were left behind. I have to finish a textbook in Spanish and start a ne one on Hebrew.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Sep 04, 2017 8:58 pm

The weekend was again mostly about Clozemaster. I'm satisfied with my progress in Catalan and in Czech. Whenever I start Catalan properly, it will probably be transparent already. As for Czech, I was attempting to master each new level before moving on, but I realized it's closer to Russian than I had expected and the following level usually is at the same difficulty range. So, I'll just view the new sentences and leave the mastering for when I'm properly studying the language, preferably as text input.

Only one episode of I provinciali. I was trying to figure out the best way to keep track of where I stopped, then I realized it's safe to just leave the website window opened at my phone's browser. Even if I accidentally close its window, I still have the browser's history to check the last date watched for the podcast.

Catching up with most logs I follow, only the first page has unread posts.Thanks to rdearman, I have renewed my playlist of French songs on a treadmill. Moreover, I also got a couple of German songs and even a Hebrew one, besides the usual sertanejo I listen to while running.

Note to self: remember to always download the original subtitle file from the browser instead of pasting it on pastebin and then again on Notepad (you get mostly gaps on the subtitles by doing the latter).

Russian in exercises finally introduced the contrast of идти and ходить. As usual, no explanations, but I already had an idea of usage and now I'm consolidating it.

The word for "mean" in Norwegian is slem. Thanks, Skam.

The film "Mon père est femme de ménage" is among the best to learn slang. I've read several films before and I'm learning new words from this one. The characters even explain the meaning of words to one another (the boy to the girl or to his father), which makes the film even more useful.

41% into the tween novel, and Georgian seems easier again. I'm learning important words as the unknown ones reduce their number.

The old Assimil Grec has similar texts for the lessons, but the grammatical explanations seem to go much further. I've even seen the term 'périspomène' for the first time.

Accomplished Language Textbook: Curso de español comercial

Image

Written by Blanca Aguirre and Consuelo Hernandez, this book delivers faithfully what it intends to. The reader will know the most important terms in business, economy and the likes (though some outdated and the newest ones are missing). Even though Spanish is nearly transparent, I could make a good use of this book and I know where to pay more attention to. I believe learners from a more distant background will benefit even more from this book.

I was supposed to start Español Comercial, by Aurora Centellas, but I'll give it a pass. I just checked it, and although it also looks quite good the content overlaps a lot. So, for the time being, I'm going to just read a non-fiction book a friend from the local polyglot club lent me. It's called Por otro camino. I'll try to read as many pages as I feel comfortable with each day. Then I'll see if it's worth any activation of Spanish through Duolingo (as initially planned). I think Clozemaster does the job well enough, and I could employ the time of dealing with the lower Duolingo interface on series instead. By the way, lower interfaces are a minus for Duolingo and Memrise when compared to Clozemaster. I've been advised the Hebrew Alphabet Course on Memrise but I'm reluctant to spend more time tapping and switching windows than on actual content.

So, back to Hebrew! I couldn't study the past days as I ran out of time, but now I'm certainly going to keep my pursuit. I found the definitive alphabet course, the series of videos from hebrewpod101 . Having the course as videos certifies that 1) I'll follow the actual way the letter is written and 2) I'll write along and thus enhance my own memorization. Looks like it's going to do the job. As a false beginner, I hope to fill in the gaps this time and start the textbooks I selected as my pre-Assimil warm-up. I'm looking forward to finally learning useful expressions and unique grammar.
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Sep 05, 2017 9:30 pm

Today probably the most important chapter on Fremdsprachenlernen mit System has started: how to make output out of input. I started reading extensively but then I turned to intensive because the topic deserves it.

The Chinese House of Cards is a bit slow-paced to my taste, even though my comprehension actually has improved. I probably would have enjoyed a lighter story, but I don't have time now for two Chinese series.

Now with Russian I have a feeling I had with Georgian last year: each reading session becomes considerably easier and the grammatical mess starts to make more sense, while vocabulary gets less foggy. This happens first with a specific genre of texts, then spreads unevenly until basic reading fluency is reached. I'm probably getting closer for familiar non-fiction themes; next step are modern-language fiction themes (with a language similar to the ones of the soap operas) and then other genres come.

Czech on Duolingo. What more can I say? If only the day had a few quarters of hour more. I'll get there, eventually. Now it's time to enjoy my cool Hebrew Alphabet lesson.
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:30 pm

The final Narnia book seems to be the most fun so far, and I like it doubly because my own Mandarin skills have also improved considerably. I hope I can find fun audiobooks in Mandarin next.

I didn't pass the German audiobook text. Today's Slow German episode was also the broadcast of an audiobook chapter by the podcast's author. I simply couldn't follow the story. I understood most words, but probably no higher than 80% (words) which lead me to a real low overall comprehension. That's one step further from Slow German's non-fiction monologs. I've got to keep going, as my reading skills also improve and they will probably reflect on my story listening skills.

With Norwegian things are going much better, so I think there is some sort of cousing-language-bow-wave-effect going on here. When learning two related languages and they reach a similar level, looks like each one progresses faster, alternately. Now it's time for Norwegian to seem so go faster, but it used to be German in the past weeks.

Started harvesting Cavesa's new log for media suggestions (sorry it took me so long, Cavesa). Found audiobooks for Лукьяненко, which puts him high on my to-read list. Then the Chinese 刘慈欣 also has audiobooks available and a couple of English translations. Can you imagine that? I might be reading sci-fi in Mandarin! Even the German/Czech author she mentioned also has a translation, which only raises my Wanderlust. Plus the authors in English I'll probably pass, unless I happen to find good translations of them. Oh well, looks like I should outsource my media selection to Cavesa And that was just the first page.

Regarding In The Name Of People, I changed my source and so i'm getting the regular 40-min episodes instead of the 1-hour ones. That means the English subtitles correspond episode by episode, though they don't match entirely. I have to find episode 10 that got lost somehow. I believe halfway through it I'll be able to understand a lot from Chinese alone.

So, I finished watching Анжелика. My Russian is still not enough to watch it comfortably, but it's a light story and I could follow some clues. Now I'm going to watch one of those series for which there are transcripts, even though I'd prefer comedies. Let's start with Нюхач.

Reading Spanish, finally intensively. Actually, now the unknown words are very few, around 1 per chapter.

Found some tasks earlier. Not as early as expected, the final leg, post-schedule, tends to take longer than planned. Yet I found time to watch the first season of Vixen, and with Constantine I'm on my way to catching up with other series besides Arrow and Flash at the Arrowverse. Vixen was in English, though, and season 2 is probably going to be in Russian, but all the others are Kartulad (which means I should start searching for Supergirl, as I already have Legends of Tomorrow lined up).

At a relationship, one must know and accept when it's time to let go. It's sad, but not depressing. I knew it would happen one day. It's time to move on and say goodbye to my 145-day Clozemaster streak (I'm travelling to the countryside for the next 3 days, no internet connection).
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Expugnator
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Languages: Native Brazilian Portuguese#advanced fluency English, French, Papiamento#basic fluency Italian, Norwegian#intermediate Spanish, German, Georgian and Chinese (Mandarin)#basic Russian, Estonian, Greek (Modern)#just started Indonesian, Hebrew (Modern), Guarani
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:48 pm

The final Narnia book seems to be the most fun so far, and I like it doubly because my own Mandarin skills have also improved considerably. I hope I can find fun audiobooks in Mandarin next.

I didn't pass the German audiobook text. Today's Slow German episode was also the broadcast of an audiobook chapter by the podcast's author. I simply couldn't follow the story. I understood most words, but probably no higher than 80% (words) which lead me to a real low overall comprehension. That's one step further from Slow German's non-fiction monologs. I've got to keep going, as my reading skills also improve and they will probably reflect on my story listening skills.

With Norwegian things are going much better, so I think there is some sort of cousing-language-bow-wave-effect going on here. When learning two related languages and they reach a similar level, looks like each one progresses faster, alternately. Now it's time for Norwegian to seem so go faster, but it used to be German in the past weeks.

Started harvesting Cavesa's new log for media suggestions (sorry it took me so long, Cavesa). Found audiobooks for Лукьяненко, which puts him high on my to-read list. Then the Chinese 刘慈欣 also has audiobooks available and a couple of English translations. Can you imagine that? I might be reading sci-fi in Mandarin! Even the German/Czech author she mentioned also has a translation, which only raises my Wanderlust. Plus the authors in English I'll probably pass, unless I happen to find good translations of them. Oh well, looks like I should outsource my media selection to Cavesa And that was just the first page.

Regarding In The Name Of People, I changed my source and so i'm getting the regular 40-min episodes instead of the 1-hour ones. That means the English subtitles correspond episode by episode, though they don't match entirely. I have to find episode 10 that got lost somehow. I believe halfway through it I'll be able to understand a lot from Chinese alone.

So, I finished watching Анжелика. My Russian is still not enough to watch it comfortably, but it's a light story and I could follow some clues. Now I'm going to watch one of those series for which there are transcripts, even though I'd prefer comedies. Let's start with Нюхач.

Reading Spanish, finally intensively. Actually, now the unknown words are very few, around 1 per chapter.

Found some tasks earlier. Not as early as expected, the final leg, post-schedule, tends to take longer than planned. Yet I found time to watch the first season of Vixen, and with Constantine I'm on my way to catching up with other series besides Arrow and Flash at the Arrowverse. Vixen was in English, though, and season 2 is probably going to be in Russian, but all the others are Kartulad (which means I should start searching for Supergirl, as I already have Legends of Tomorrow lined up).

At a relationship, one must know and accept when it's time to let go. It's sad, but not depressing. I knew it would happen one day. It's time to move on and say goodbye to my 143-day Clozemaster streak (I'm travelling to the countryside for the next 3 days, no internet connection).
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
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Languages: Native Brazilian Portuguese#advanced fluency English, French, Papiamento#basic fluency Italian, Norwegian#intermediate Spanish, German, Georgian and Chinese (Mandarin)#basic Russian, Estonian, Greek (Modern)#just started Indonesian, Hebrew (Modern), Guarani
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Sep 11, 2017 9:15 pm

So, I took Thusrday-Sunday off from regular studies and travelled on the countryside, no internet connection. I took my tablet and a couple of books and still got a little done. Mostly was reading the two non-fiction books I'm already reading (the one in French by Jeremy Rifkin and the one in Spanish by Carlos Raúl Yepes).

I got hooked to the French audiobook, and listened to it till the end: La valse lente des tortues, by Kathérine Pancol. I liked it, better than volume 1 which was already quite good. I was still deciding whether to buy the 3rd audiobook and that was actually the first thing I did at the computer yesterday.

I also listened to a couple of German podcasts but then I started one about literature and I thought I had better take notes and search for the authors I'd want to know more about, instead of just listening passively and letting the tips fall into oblivion (this is one of the reasons I postpone reading some topics and logs here, I want to make sure I can take the most out of them).

My main focus was getting the Hebrew alphabet done. I looked at several sources, including obscure Brazilian books. I think the main road is paved, and now I only have to consolidate the details. I'm really looking forward to start the cool part of learning the unique language. Now I'm relieved that I have a good set of textbooks and I should only start worrying when it comes to native materials, as I haven't heard of audiobooks or dubbed series. The different alphabet makes any search tougher. But that's an issue for the coming years.

I got my resources lined up for the week, too. Got 1 episode of En terapía (need help finding more, PM me if you know how to). I don't know when I'm going to have the time for that, though. I got more from Skam and In the name of people. I can't wait to start Indonesian through Indonesianpod101, which is much more complete than last time I tried, but I'm with a diskspace issue which I want to handle optimally.

The only bad news is that the Estonian TV chain moved their servers again and I can no longer download their files. Still works on streaming, but this is never a permanent fix. I think those files are supposed to be downloadable anyway, they even have a form to fill if you want to download and an email for doubts. To find this out I'd have to suddenly activate my Estonian. Or check the forums: sounds like they found a solution at least for the main videos, not the archive. But then I get geobloc while downloading and not while streaming. Weird. If they put everything on Geobloc, I'm doomed.

I've been wondering if I shouldn't work on activating my German, given the positive results, nearly epiphany I've been noticing with my passive skills. I'd need to write the language more often, and some corrections would be welcome. I can already chat on a regular basis if I put in the effort.

So I started watching Нюхач. It's great to pick something for grown-ups, for a change. Since there are Russian subtitles, I'm following the transcripts in order to improve my listening.

Best day of Russian reading ever. It helped that this chapter consisted of mostly dialogues and short lines, but the % of known words has indeed increased considerably.
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