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

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

Postby iguanamon » Wed May 03, 2017 7:15 pm

The HBO Latino series Epitafios is Argentine. The DVD's have Portuguese subs and also switchable to Portuguese dubbed audio. The series is about a serial killer and his brutal crimes, so quite dark. I've watched it. Like most HBO Latino series, it is quite well done. Also, all of the HBO Latino Brazilian series have Spanish dubs and (not exact) Spanish subs, if you're looking for a dubbed series. Epitafios Trailer
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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
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed May 03, 2017 9:43 pm

Thank you blaurebell! i'm really on tbe mood for silly comedies now, reality is too distressing, especially in the case of Argentina which feels almost like home with similar problems. I'll give those comedies a try, but I'm also looking forward to literature.

Thanks iguanamon, I remember you mentioned it, but too dark. I have enough of serial killers with Norwegian books and films.

------------------
So, I thought my bluetooth speakers got damaged again, only to realize their volume is totally independent from the one on the phone; I had accidentally lowered their volume. Now I can listen to my Norwegian audiobook on a reasonable volume again. My comprehension keeps improving and there is still a lot of room for improving until I reach the transparency typical of Romance languages.

Finished watching Le prénom, a good film, 98% of which takes place in a living room of an apartment. Now I'm picking a trilogy again, but no super villains this time.

I thought the old TY Greek would have more version (ie. into L2) exercises...On the other hand, I got used to the old spelling, so as long as I'm not contamined by too many katharevousa forms it's ok to use older material. Not that I need them now. Btw, at TY I see the article μια extended to μιαν, but I don't remember seeing it before. Wiktionary says it's optional.

Started La pratique courante de l'espagnol. A good book, different from the ones I've been using. It has exercises both in text and in the audio, though they point to two different answer keys (the answer key proper and the transcripts of the audio), which can be confusing. The authors are keen on identifying sentences by register.
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Expugnator
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu May 04, 2017 8:39 pm

Time for celebrating a small victory. I listened to the non-fiction audiobook and it starts to actually become transparent. That means I'm more used to the 'almost-known' words, and I can get some of them more quicklyt from context while others I recognize at once.

Watching Õnne 13 with Estonian subtitles and GT-English ones is turning quite productive. Nothing beats a series with loads of dialogues. I'm relying less and less on the machine translation and I'm starting to understand full sentences in Estonian. I'm also reading and processing Estonian much faster, so when the machine translation is a mess I can now make sense of the Estonian subtitles.

Someone on a Whatsapp group recommended the Chinese series 择天记/Fighter of the Destiny. I wonder if anyone has watched it. It's available on youtube, apparently legally (ads) with double subtitles.

Read my first horoscope in Papiamento, this is so cool! Here is what is said about Gemini (not my sign though):

La Prensa Curaçao wrote:Bo ta envolviendo demasiado den problemanan di los demais i bo a lubidá riba bo mes. Bo tin ku separá tempu pa komplasé bo mes.


Greek is coming along quite productive. At TY I had to do some version exercises, which were great. At the Kypros course, the lessons become more challenging with translation exercises as well. Reminds me I still have the new edition of Language Transfer to give a go (and another edition of Assimil, and Duolingo, and Mond.ly...

While we're at it, I wonder if it's worth giving Pimsleur a try for activating some rusty languages, like Mandarin, Russian or even German. The problem is time, audio lessons tend to be long.

Life of Tom

Norwegian
Jeg vil ikke skuffe Tom, derfor øver jeg norsk hverdaglig på Clozemaster.

Tom ble rasende fordi Clozemaster ikke fungerte.

Mandarin
给予汤姆一些你力所能及的帮助.他很吃惊,害怕他母亲会死。脑卒中真的很严重。
汤姆不认识任何人。变得富有后,他跟过去的郊区生活所有的关系都不要保持。
汤姆偷我的钱包。是肯定的吗?当然是。钱包消失的时候没有别人在我旁边。

German

Diesmal kommt Tom damit nicht davon. Seine Mutter wird nicht mehr tolerant sein.
Mir war überhaupt nicht klar, dass Tom nie zur Oberschule gegangen war. Ich bin sowieso kein Deutschmuttersprachler.
Es ist nicht ungewöhnlich für Tom, sich zu verspäten. Zu seinem Glück ist seine Mutter immer so geduldig mit ihm.
Tom telefonierte gerade, als Maria ins Zimmer kam. Leider konnte sie nichts fassen, deshalb konnte er mit seinen Lügen fortfahren.
TOm hauchte Maria einen Kuss zu, stieg in seinen Wagen und fuhr davon. Es war eine stille, kühlende Nacht.
Als ich in den dritten Stock kam, bemerkte ich, dass die Tür weit geöffnet war.So rief ich die Polizei sofort an. ich dachte, Tom wäre in Gefahr.
Du kannst Tom nicht zwingen zu bleiben. Er muss seine Träume jagen.
Vor drei Jahren fuhr Tom nach Boston. Er ist seither nie wieder zu uns gekommen.
Tom wollte sich einfach nur nachbarlich verhalten, hat aber sich in viele peinliche Situationen verwickelt.

I'm leaving Russian and Greek (the challenge part) for another day. Writing all those prompts has meant renouncing to my favorite post-schedule series.
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blaurebell
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby blaurebell » Fri May 05, 2017 11:35 am

I totally get the need for comedy in these times! In Argentinian there are two comedy styles I like that you could check out. Both are rather demanding on the language though, quite advanced. One is Les Luthiers which is somewhat more high brow, educated with music and lots of word plays. They usually speak clearly though, which is nice. It's usually not laughing out loud funny, but still really fun. I could watch this stuff for hours! You can find tons of old recordings on youtube.

The other one that often makes me laugh out loud is actually really demented and most of the time vulgar and politically incorrect: Peter Capusotto. There is a radio show which is somewhat more consistent in quality - all of them are on youtube - and tons of videos that range from silly to hilarious. It's basically rapid fire slang and inappropriateness with the occasional slapstick. Generally quite demanding language wise because it's so fast. Great to pick up Argentinian slang too, although most words he uses should be avoided in polite company :D The only problem I see is that it sometimes hits too close to home. He often indirectly addresses precisely the kind of situation in Argentina because of which I avoid reading the news at the moment. Satire like that is of course also a kind of social commentary. If I can bear 20min of this kind of low brow aggressive humour I'm doing fine.
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Expugnator
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri May 05, 2017 8:56 pm

@bluerebell: thanks, 2 great suggestions! I'll have a look (time is a main issue now). My first attempt was the series Mosca & Smith, I don't know if you have heard about it, it's heavy on slang.

Pity that En terapía isn't available outside Argentina.


================
Estonian is going by leaps and bounds. The series is really helpful for learning, and I'm relying less and less on the translation.

The book FMS points to ALTE, the Association of Language Testers in Europe.

Currently at the Xmas episode between seasons 2 and 3 on Black Mirror. There are built-in (soft-coded ones) subtitles which sync properly, and so it's been much more productive.

Life of Tom

Estonian
Tom, sa pead tõusma.
See on juba hilja. Ma kardan, et sinust saab kooli hiljaks.
Ma võin kihla vedada, et Tom oskab prantsuse keelt rääkida. Ta on väga meisterlik polüglott.
Tomi käed on räpased. Neil on veres, ja see ei ole tema esimene mõrv.
Ma olen Tomi onu. Ta on abielus minu õe tütraga. Me aitame sul Tomi päästa. Seal ei ole väga ohtlik. Kõik saab korda.
Mary oli terve keskkooliaja Tomi tüdruksõber, aga Tomil oli teiste tüdruksõbrad. Ainult Mari ei oli seda tuntud.

So today I decided to give series a go. I could watch 20 minutes of Mr. Robot of Russian dub and a comedy series in English with Estonian subtitles. Both were very productive. Then I totally broke the routine and went into the meeting room for taking part in a Skype call with advanced learners from the Norwegian IRC channel. It was fun, we tried to translate a poem and it was challenging. Sound quality was good and the connection was stable, so I'm looking forward to more opportunities like that. Norwegian is starting to come out almost fluently.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon May 08, 2017 8:56 pm

I can call it a weekend! Wife and I went out partying on Friday, for the first time since the babies were born, and I thought I'd have trouble catching up for the weekend, but I was good. Could get a productive Saturday despite not having compensated the missing 4 hours sleep.

The reason I didn't take a nap on Saturday despite being home alone for nearly three hours (the girls had stayed at my in-laws', and so did their mother for the rest of the day) was Dialang. For the Nth time I read about it on the forum (that was before I accidentally marked all posts read), and I decided I could no longer live in doubt.

To make a long story short, I got A2 for Norwegian listening. I don't think I'm that low, even if I have a clear trouble with it. I had just had a Skype session with other learners the day before, I listen to an audiobook and I get more than just the gist. I think it was the combination of a not so sharp day and the mere nature of the exams: short clips, out of a context, then you have to retain so much info for answering that even in your native language would be troublesome. Also, I wonder how much emphasis is put on that placement test where you have to rule out non-existing verbs. It makes more sense for fine-tuning at the C levels. I'm a bit frustrated but not depressed. I'm trying to get over it, at least motivation-wise. Language-wise I don't know what I can do to even my listening level with my reading, other than improving my vocabulary overall so that both can level up. I'm doing a good hour of listening a day - the audiobook is probably N+2 input, sometimes N+1; the audiobook listening-reading is comprehensible input (even though there is some unknown vocabulary that isn't covered by machine translation and I don't have L1 text) and the TV sitcom watching without subs is just...gibberish. I can probably get 40% on a good day. The missing link is series with subtitles, which I can't do most of the days.

Just for revenge I did French listening. Self-evaluated for C1, took it and got C1. I got 3 wrong in the "getting the subtleties" range (all was correct in getting the big picture) and I still question the test, because I answered some blanks with numbers and it might have been marked wrong. I don't remember not understanding more than a couple of words in the whole test. Anyway, that's motivating enough for dreaming about C2 because I understood really hard stuff, the test seemed much harder than the mock C1 one I tried inside a FUN MOOC (it had the same issue as the Norwegian ones, only that the excerpts were usually longer and so helped more with tuning in and listening for the context, so in some sense the C1 test was easier than the B1-B2 test aimed at me for Norwegian).

We're still on Saturday. In the afternoon, I could recover from the sorrow of A2 Norwegian by having fun at the local Polyglot Meetup. The man behind the National Club was still there, and this time we talked more than plain English which was getting both sick).

We had talked in Mandarin and Papiamento two weeks before, and this time it started with French: we tried to discuss the possibility of not having elections in 2018, and I saw my vocabulary shrink. Should I feel depressed now? Not really, because then we switched to Italian and I was happy that my spoken Italian was above average and almost caught up with French, especially grammar. Then German for a while (still hard to formulate sentences) and then Esperanto. Yes, Esperanto. My A1ish skills accounted for more than I would have expected and we could speak better than in German. So maybe it's not A1 Esperanto after all. The guy said I could claim to speak Esperanto just like the other languages I already do, but I think that's a stretch. I am better off learning skills out of my comfort zone now.

I was frisk som en fisk on Sunday and while taking care of the girls, now at home, I could watch one episode of Side om Side. Still with subtitles, but I might understand now much more than I used to. That's the training I need. Also another episode of Travelers in unmatching German audio+sub, and I'm happy with my progress in German (also because of today's reading and series sessions when the word lookup was slow, the processing speed keeps growing and the audio seems almost transparent).

Then Clozemaster streak. I thought I'd break it on Saturday afternoon, but I had enough dead moments with an internet connection (or while people were boringly talking in English at the Meetup). Also Hello Chinese: it's like taking a break: fun, mostly reviewing but still useful and providing a sense of progress. Not much material gathering last weekend, but I'm happy with the results so far.

Today I had another productive Õnne 13 session. I don't know how much Clozemaster has helped, but now I can actually listen to the dialogues while reading L1 subtitles and just using the machine-translated ones for the sake of clarity. I'm happy with how many sentences I understood at first glance - I'd say they're the majority now. The funny thing about this soap opera is how we have different characters in each episode, like whole subplots popping up, while keeping a few main ones that are actually secondary to that specific episode's plot. After three episodes, it's early to think about who is going to stay the rest of the show.

After some search I came across the Norwegian author Vidgis Hjorth, on related books. I wonder if she writes YA fiction, children's books, adults, all of the aforementioned.

The issues with Narnia are over. I managed to find the album for the 5th book made by the user I was listening from before, up to book 3. The one that did Prince Caspian has a better recording, but only did the first 3 chapters of book 5. The other ones don't match the text I'm using. So it's a relief to know I'll be able to keep enjoying the series with matching audio and text for listening-reading.

Today I also finished, unexpectedly (too many pages with reference notes), my current non-fiction reading. Only 4 more books from the same author, Jeremy Rifkin. I'm doing next "The European Dream" (which, being from 2004, is claimed to be proved wrong by the facts, but that's another issue). In English, unfortunately, for that's what I got, and the Spanish one was beyond what I'd like to spend on Spanish, as it's not a language that one has shortage of materials for.

As my Chinese knowledge progresses, I also get hold of more series I want to watch, and I'm starting to have fun watching them. Maybe the overall quality is actually improving, the characters are becoming more complex, and the language is up-to-date. I got Fighter of the destiny lined up, then I got the recommendation of In the name of people at Batman's log, and it seems even more interesting. I'm really looking forward to these (even though it might take me months to start).

Some serious business caught me up today (language-related and not), and I could only go as far as the Estonian reading (which I enjoy more each day). Better luck tomorrow.
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Expugnator
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue May 09, 2017 9:30 pm

This morning I came listening to the Norwegian non-fiction audiobook with over 90% comprehension. Deal with it, Dialang!!

Russian in Exercises is getting into the fun parts. I really enjoy going through one grammar topic at a time, with lots of exercises and no new vocabulary being throw in in dozens to make things worse. I hope it's really going to work this time.

Finished a Georgian book, and that only happens once or twice a year. I'm done with Murakami's Kafka on the shore. A crazy but entertaining book. Now a new era for muy Georgian studies: listening-reading. I've started with Paulo Coelho's A Bruxa de Porto Belo. I'm a bit frustrated that the audiobook is so abridged, jumping every three paragraphs, but I can't deny it's a powerful exercise. Waiting for more dialogues to come up. Hope that until I finish this one there will be some young fiction audiobooks in Georgian that I'm really willing to read.

If you like German chanson:



Another awfully busy and tiresome day after sleeping only up to 3 o'clock in the morning. I was much behind schedule again, but this time I made it at least until TY Greek. I've finished the noun part (almost) and I'm going to start verbs. The book is really practical.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Elenia » Tue May 09, 2017 9:40 pm

Expugnator wrote:If you like German chanson:



Thanks for this, Expug! I really like it!
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Tue May 09, 2017 11:09 pm

Expugnator wrote:Russian in Exercises is getting into the fun parts. I really enjoy going through one grammar topic at a time, with lots of exercises and no new vocabulary being throw in in dozens to make things worse. I hope it's really going to work this time.


Is it this book?
Image

(That's the one I'm working with now and then, and your description matches my book - solid grammar concepts with limited vocabulary.)
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby MamaPata » Wed May 10, 2017 5:12 am

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Expugnator wrote:Russian in Exercises is getting into the fun parts. I really enjoy going through one grammar topic at a time, with lots of exercises and no new vocabulary being throw in in dozens to make things worse. I hope it's really going to work this time.


Is it this book?
Image

(That's the one I'm working with now and then, and your description matches my book - solid grammar concepts with limited vocabulary.)


I'm also using that (though not as pretty a copy). I do like it, but it can be a challenge to get myself to open it!
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