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

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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 » Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:25 pm

So I'm back!! My last day of studies was May 25th. Long vacations, but rather hectic with two kids. It was the first time I didn't study anything even though I stayed home most of the days; it was also the longest period without studying ever since I started in January 2012.

The only activity I kept was Clozemaster, and I actually expanded it. It would deserve a post on its own.

=================
It will take time for my brain and my body to adapt to the usual rhythm again, but so far, so good. Back to the Estonian soap opera, I noticed my skills have improved. Probably thanks to having mastered almost all the sentences in the small Clozemaster deck.

As for Russian in Exercises, I'm still building up consistently on my cases so I can have solid productive skills next.

It's just the second session with Dronningen sover, by Ingvar Ambjornsen, but I'm enjoying the narration a lot. The story isn't that bad, either. It's a short book after all.

Today I managed a full day of studies, no big deal. I didn't notice any remarkable progress from break time, but no gaps either. I just resumed from where I left.
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7332
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Systematiker » Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:38 am

Glad you're back! And, apparently, joining our next crazy adventure :D
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Expugnator
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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 » Tue Jun 20, 2017 9:26 pm

Thanks Systematiker! Of all the crazy adventures, I'm really tempted this time, as it's a language that's been on my list way too long. I'll see what I can set up.

================================
i'm really enjoying the podcast Al filo de la realidad. Today's episode was actually a replay of a Spanish one where the Argentinian guy is interviewed. It was time to get used to a new accent then. I had trouble mostly because of the low volume, but I expect it to get better with time. It's fun to have those short, sudden breakthroughs in listening in a transparent language for reading.

I like it how Russian in exercises proposes exercises with partial reviews: we're studying the accusative for animates while reviewing the prepositional for pronouns and adjectives.

Today was a surprisingly good day with non-subbed Norwegian soap opera, with overall comprehension bordering transparency at some moments. Was this the result of the break?

Also for Russian I noticed I could understand much more from the series Anzhelika today, but that is clearly the result of a cumulative effect.

The day was less busy than yesterday, but I spent way too much time on Clozemaster at the post-schedule time. Maybe it's better to leave some language combos for later the day.
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
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 Jun 21, 2017 9:37 pm

The current podcast episode I am listening to is from Murcia, Spain, which seems to have a unique dialect. So, that's good training.

Of all the series/films I'm watching in my TLs now, the most productive has been the half-episodes in Estonian, with Estonian subtitles and machine-translated ones. I'm happy about my progress and how much faster I can understand the Estonian sentences now.

With Georgian L-R, I reached once again a chapter with audio, almost unabridged. The exercise is working like miracle and my Georgian is improving.

It was another pleasant study day, and I'm glad I'm back on track.
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Expugnator
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Posts: 1728
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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 » Thu Jun 22, 2017 9:48 pm

Yesterday I finished the French audiobook I had been listening to. It was a translation from a Brazilian book which is part of a series. Since there are no more French audiobooks for books in the series, I'm finally returning to Katherine Pancol's trilogy, now at the second volume, La valse lente des tortues. To my great surprise, the time spent on listening paid off, and the native French audiobook, read at a higher speed, is now pretty easy to understand. When I listened to the first audiobook, I had to read the text later so I could follow it better, and now I believe it's no longer necessary. There are unknown words for sure, which I can recognize/transcript but will have no means to look up. Mostly related to beauty and fashion stuff. That's no big deal, as I want to get back to French reading-only in the future for some other novels.

Today's Õnne 13 episode started with the song Mamma Maria in the Estonian version. I went promply to Google and found who sang it and how it is called. The lyrics are not that hard to understand, before looking at a translation I could get some phrases.



The lyrics here.

Today's German (Fremdsprachenlernen mit System) reading was without a dictionary - no matter how often I download the Google dictionaries on Android, I never manage to use them offline, always an error message - and it went fine, thanks. Next I should try with fiction. Reading fluently inGerman remains a main goal for 2017, as it will allow me access to a wide range of materials in a broader context. I'm short of it and might miss it by a hair, but I'm on the right track. I'm still not on a stage where I can learn bulks of vocabulary through context as I can do immediately for a Romance language, though.

I'm absolutely fascinated by the autobiographic series of Marcel Pagnol. TI've watched the second film from the 90's, and now I'm going for the third one (different production, now from 2007). I wonder how much the franc was worth back then. His father receives the palmes académiques which will bring him 22 francs more, and that might be a lot of money.
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
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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 » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:55 pm

I can understand people who only study transparent languages, just enjoying native materials. I'm having so much fun with the audiobooks and podcasts I'm listening to in French and Spanish (which reminds me I have to find a good one for Italian, too, though I have no free slots ATM). When I listen to a text I enjoy in a foreign language, I'm three times happy: for the joy of the interesting and relevant content, for the joy of managing to master the hardest skill, which is listening, and for the joy of being able to do both at once.

On the other hand, this also motivates me for one day to finally be able to enjoy transparent listening in weaker languages. I'm not there yet in German and Norwegian, but I might eventually, and this is one of the incentives that keep me pursuing my goals. As for Russian, Georgian and Mandarin, even though my listening skills keep improving, I still way too much vocabulary to learn for listening to become automatic.

Russian in Exercises is great for training, but I'm missing some explanations, like in the genitive plural for nouns and adjectives.

Today I started watching Le Temps des Secrets, third film based on the Pagnol autobiography. This time I don't have subtitles, but I can follow nearly everything. My French really has improved one level. I might have much more trouble with a contemporary film, but still, that's a good fact.

I had some practical issues today and stopped at the Russian reading. Not really in the mood for more.
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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 » Mon Jun 26, 2017 9:44 pm

During the weekend I could keep my Clozemaster streak as usual. I also managed to prepare the materials for this week (though I have to copy more Estonian episodes).

I'm probably going to create a "weekend-slot" for podcasts/audiobooks. I could start with an Italian podcast, for example. I just have to find a topic I'm absolutely into, because Italian is transparent and I'm not willing to listen to uninteresting stuff just because it's Italian.

I forgot to mention the local Polyglot Meetups. The one before was excellent, and I got to speak Norwegian, Russian and Mandarin. All with other learners, but it still felt good. Lats one it was mostly the admins that were there, but I managed some Italian, which I can speak better, and Spanish, which the other guys already speak at a very good level.

This early commute I forgot to turn in the Argentinian podcast; I was halfway when I remembered it, so I missed some minutes. Still good practice.

Having subtitles is helpful not only for comprehensible input, but also for attention. I'm watching one of the Õnne 13 episodes which has no subtitles, and I've caught myself just browsing away most of the time, the way I do with the Norwegian and Georgian soaps. The exercise becomes much less productive, even if it's still helpful for getting used to the sounds (which in Estonian is ok, they don't talk much fast, the correspondence written - spoken phonemes is consistent and so I hope I can improve my listening just paripassu with the improvement on my vocabulary).

I'm approaching a breakthrough in Russian. The one I noticed in Georgian when I can actually listen-read on the flow and not just read L1 first and then catch up later with L2, or instead just listen to L1 and read L2. This is mostly due to narrow reading (similar topics), but also to the combined efforts of grammar reviewing and Clozemaster.

Although still lagging behind, I managed to get into some post-schedule activities today. Georgian dubbed series was particularly productive, and so was Estonian parallel reading.
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Expugnator
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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 Jun 27, 2017 9:30 pm

Today I didn't forget to turn on the Argentinian podcast, and so I enjoyed the second half of an interesting episode and the first half of an even more interesting one (about the "real" Men in Black, Hombres de Negro).

I inadvertedly realized I had finished my current book by Jeremy Rifkin. In theory 40 pages were left, but they were all notes, index and references. Now there are only 3 books of his left and I'm back on a wider choice (maybe even fiction). I have the next book in either Italian or German, and I might end up making a mix of both. I tried 6 pages in German with the English opened on my phone to compare, and it wasn't that bad, only few word lookups. I'm happy with my progress in German. But then the topic is interesting and I wouldn't like to have a suboptimal understanding of it, which would be the case every time I'd be in a hurry and have to read extensively, German-only. For this, Italian is a safer call. Well, I'll let the coming days bring me the answer.

I heard the rumor that Parisian French now has only 2 nasal vowels. That's a serious development!
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Expugnator
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Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
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 Jun 28, 2017 10:18 pm

The Argentinian podcast today ended with ads of other podcasts. I liked it a lot!

Back to subtitles on Estonian, and to a productive session. Now fewer sentences actually are unintelligible. One day I might stick to Estonian subtitles-only and drop the machine-translated ones I use for parallel reading.

Russian in Exercises is putting particular emphasis on the accusative x the prepositional cases. Several pages of it. I don't mind it, it's helping a lot.

I'll be doing the following with my non-fiction slot: when I'm not able to sit down and read properly, I'm going to read the English text on my phone; otherwise, I'll read the German and English in parallel. The German print has really small typewrite, so my usual commute reading time only accounted for 10 pages of the German edition. Usually I can read my daily 20 -page quota while on the bus. Today I was standing on the bus and so I read on the phone in English, and even so it only corresponded to 10 pages in the German print. No wonder the Italian epub was displayed as having over 900 pages on my iPad. I won't complain because I want to finish non-fiction books asap because it's usually stronger languages and my to-read list is awfully long, with books scattered through the all the devices I use (two desktops, two iPads, one smartphone).

I was already wanderlusting for Romanian before. I'm using Clozemaster and that's helping a lot, but I'm reading Paulo Coelho's The Portobello Witch, born in Sibiu, Romania, and I'm really longing for actually using some audiobooks in Romanian which I found 1 month ago. I'm not in the mood for going the whole path of all Assimils, learner's podcasts and such. As with Esperanto, my first encounter with Romanian was baffling, too hard for a supposed transparent language, but now I've mapped up the cognate network (also on the Slavic side) and the language looks even more attractive. I like the spelling, too (pity that people don't write the diacritics in real life).

Anyway, the Paulo Coelho's book is in Georgian and the reading is going quite well. Today I had one chapter that was on the audiobook and another one that wasn't, and both readings were equally productive, with few unknown words and full sentences starting to be processed and decoded.

A particularly good day for Russian. The series Anzhelika started to become near transparent towards the end of the episode, and the listening-reading is getting easy to follow with some long sentences standing on Russian-only.

I had just a little more time today, which was all spent on Clozemaster. I'm still optimist that I might get back to my previous routine when I had almost 3 hours left for whatever activity after my schedule and post-schedule tasks.
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
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 » Thu Jun 29, 2017 9:15 pm

When I'm listening to a podcast on iVox and the phone rings, the audio is not only cut, but when I get back it is fast-forwarded much further than the time I spent on the call. I'm talking of incoming telemarketing calls which I just end, it doesn't take more than 10 seconds, but when the podcast resumes on iVox it's 2 minutes forwards. No idea why this happens.

I finished Dronningen sover, by Ingvar Ambjornsen. A short, interesting book that now leaves me with the task of finding a new one just one credit card bill later. At Tanum.no it's possible to "bla i boka" for some books. Quite helpful. I was undecided about picking Tone Almhjell's first book, but I browsed through it and thought I liked the style. So I bought ebook and audiobook. I already had the English translation, all of which will allow me for a great learning experience. All was well until I got the message that my account was associated with an address abroad and so I had to create a new account. Right, but what about all my previous purchases? I can't login at all, and they're all there, my ebooks and audiobooks. Until this is solved, I'm reading non-fiction, corporative self-help. These are the books by book-boon.com , which are available in several languages. Last time I tried they were much harder, which means even my non-fiction level has gone up. Clozemaster is to thank, because otherwise I had been reading mostly fiction in the past years.

Tomorrow I have the day off, so no studying, only Clozemaster at most.
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