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

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

Postby kujichagulia » Tue Oct 17, 2017 3:01 am

Getting an early start on Christmas, I see! Keep having fun. :)
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:03 pm

Thank you, great kuji, always nice to see you around! I heard this song on an Estonian soap opera I watch everyday, which is helping a lot language-wise and culture-wise.

===============

I might have reached a new level regarding French listening. My new phone has a lower volume, but I'm able to follow the audiobook cristal-clear even while walking through the noisy
traffic. Just a few weeks ago, I had to really focus in order to keep all details. Now the unknown words are really rare.

No classes in the morning and so I could sleep one extra hour that does all the differene. My mind is sharper. I got delayed in my studies, though, because I had to solve some car issues.

Ok, I tried hard but it wasn't enough to catch up. I stayed before Russian parallel reading. But then I had a very long and demanding chat in Norwegian, that forced me out of my comfort zone but also showed that I can express quite a lot in the language. It also helped consolidate some islands, as I was talking to some friends about the daily routine with my kids.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Oct 18, 2017 8:42 pm

Mandarin listening-reading is progressing well. Today I read 50% more and didn't even realize that, as I was involved with the story.

I'm about to run out of Slow German episodes. I've listened to episode #134 and the newest one is #147 (plus absolute beginner and dialogue episodes). I wonder if I'm ready for a full German audiobook.

Still watching Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob, and I saw the welcoming banner they made: Bienvenue Rabbi Jacob. I can read the Hebrew as well. I had a good laugh today, by the way.

This is a special week, the week I'm busiest the entire year, moreover I'm dealing with car stuff. Not surprisingly, my study has been seriously lagging behind, even today, when I started 1 hour and a half earlier. Well, at least I noticed a remarkable improvement in reading Georgian, even though I'm obliged to read from my phone screen. That alone is worth celebrating for this week that almost never was.

Has anyone been to Visby? Looks like a good reason to learn Swedish (if that's what's spoken there).

The transition theme of Captain Future sometimes gets me on the nerves because it's much louder than the usual dialogues. I have to adjus the volume all the time. Apart from that, I feel I understand much more from the dialogues now.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu Oct 19, 2017 8:38 pm

At Õnne 13, the characters keep referring to Saaremaa as a popular travel destination for the locals. Here is one of the reasons:

Image

One more place to my "I wish I could travel" list. I can almost imagine myself speaking Estonian there.

In the book about tourism I'm reading, they have post-tsunami Thailand as a case study and how the country managed to keep the number of visitors steady, just visiting different places. Thailand being so attractive for the tourist industry, it almost gives me wanderlust for learning Thai and preparing the path for Brazilians. I'd get stuck at the spelling/computer input and the lack of resources, I'm afraid.

After struggling a lot this week, today I could study further. Georgian dubbed series was productive again.

Also managed to reading in Estonian. I'm just 2 pages away from finishing an Agatha Christie's novel, and I'm looking forward to buying a contemporary YA fiction novel and have even more fun with Estonian reading.

At lesson 17, Cortina Greek shifted from a parallel reading with audio, Assimil-like approach, to L1-text only. That was a stretch. I could get the hang of the text, but I missed the chance of learning the fewer unknown words, which are probably rarer, and so that would have been a good opportunity. I have plenty of materials for listening-reading so that wouldn't harm my studies, but I feel that an opportunity has been wasted. It goes like this till the end, lesson 20.

Not a bad day in the end. Only Hebrew, Indonesian and the Spanish reading remained undone.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Oct 20, 2017 8:05 pm

While studying aspect, I'm supposed to pass some sentences to the future. The exercises usually don't make sense because it sounds like talking about the future in a very precise and detailed way.

I'm still struggling with the parallel reading of the book 'Cities for people'. The German translation is loose, with inversion in coordinate clauses and even between periods within paragraphs. In those cases it's better to read each period entirely instead of trying to do the eye-glance parallel reading on the go, because most of the times I won't be glancing at the correct, equivalent English text for the German I'll be currently reading. As a matter of fact, I think just sticking to the German and then only skimming through the English to catch up the unknown or ambiguous words might be more productive.

Now I have all the rights to be **** off at the Georgian ebookstore. The online reader is under repair, the iOs app stopped working after the last update and the Android app just gets back to the main screen whenever I try to open a book, quickly displaying the cover and a 'loading' message before that. I wrote them an email in English and wrote on their Facebook wall in Georgian.

The week that almost never was is over. I hope that better times are coming, even though things tend to get busier as we approach the end of the year, not to mention other bank holidays with no regular study are coming as well. Anyway, hope to get back on track next week. Today I went as far as the Russian series.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Oct 23, 2017 8:46 pm

I'm trying to get back on track, but it's not being easy. Today I gor delayed thanks to a meeting and going to check on the car again. I've been slacking on Clozemaster above all.

TOday at Russian in exercises there were fill-in-the-blank exercises on aspectual paris. Not that bad, pretty instructive. I know naysayers will claim that aspect doesn't work exactly the same in Russian and in Romance languages, but there is a great deal of overlap that for all practical purposes makes the notion much more straightforward than for a Germanic speaker.

This is a week of finishing resources, at least that as a relief. I finished the good film Les aventurs de Rabbi Jacob. Next is Hors de prix. Still on my way to finish the pending films and then TV series.

Yet another day where due to technical issues I couldn't read in Georgian. Well, at least I' getting some practice as I exchange some messages with the ebookstore staff.

Today's Yabla video had a folkloric Chinese song, 好一朵美丽的茉莉花, performed by a orchestra and choir. What a gem! (A Western orchestra and choir actually, with a Chinese singer).

The Curaçaoan newspaper I usually read has one section of 2-3 pages with Aruban stories. Those use the Aruban spelling. It's enlightening to see both spellings at the same work. I can usually move from one to another when reading without paying great attention to it. As the Aruban spelling is more etymological, it tends to resemble Spanish more.

I could finally read further in Russian. Still a long way to go on the current book.

The other resource I finished was Agatha Christie's book 4:50 from Paddington in Estonian. Her books are great for language learning! Light translations, plenty of dialogues, repetition. I had some books on my wishlist for Estonian, but I'm sticking to Agatha Christie and Miss Marple's adventures, as it's doing well to my Estonian.

Still not enough to call it a day. I went as far as Assimil Greek but no Cortina. Several days without any Hebrew, Spanish or Indonesian.
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neofight78
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby neofight78 » Tue Oct 24, 2017 1:35 am

Expugnator wrote:.
TOday at Russian in exercises there were fill-in-the-blank exercises on aspectual paris. Not that bad, pretty instructive.


Bear in mind that the verbs don’t really come in pairs, it’s what they tell beginners but it’s a half truth at best. Often there are several possibilities for the perfective or even the imperfective. Also the meaning is usually slightly different rather than the change in aspect being the only difference.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:53 pm

neofight78 wrote:
Expugnator wrote:.
TOday at Russian in exercises there were fill-in-the-blank exercises on aspectual paris. Not that bad, pretty instructive.


Bear in mind that the verbs don’t really come in pairs, it’s what they tell beginners but it’s a half truth at best. Often there are several possibilities for the perfective or even the imperfective. Also the meaning is usually slightly different rather than the change in aspect being the only difference.


I know, it's not the first time I "learn" about aspect, this time I'm just paying more attention to morphology so i can finally activate this knowledge. I distinguish these other prefixed pairs as having distinct preverbs, the terminology applied in Georgian. Though in Georgian they're morphologically more independent.

================
I am still contacting the Georgian bookstore regarding the app issues. I'm really appreciating this free practice. I don't seem to have much trouble understanding what they write to me. It resumed working after an update, so I was right to complain in the end.

Today was an even busier day and I only went up to Georgian watching, while still doing the Russian and Estonian reading. No Mandarin or Russian watching.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:23 pm

Today I came to my desktop determined to go through all of my schedule and post-schedule language learning activities.

Russian in exercises is now on syntax. Anything is easier than morphology.

At Råta, Graal used the fom "erindre" which is a cognate to German erinnern, but not used much in Norwegian. It's probably archaic?

Speaking of the book/audiobook, it's quite interesting nowadays. It helps that I understand much more than I did from Odinsbarn. My Norwegian is better and I'm starting to fill in the required gaps so that I can dream of proficiency someday. Needless to say that I absolutely love listening to Norwegian.

Back into studying Greek. Cortina's monolingual dialogues are way over my head. They're just native audio with transcriptions and notes.

Still no time for everything. I god distracted while trying to read the 10 pages in Spanish, so I had no time for Indonesian. It's great to be back, though.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:44 pm

Expugnator wrote:At Råta, Graal used the fom "erindre" which is a cognate to German erinnern, but not used much in Norwegian. It's probably archaic?


I assume so. We have "erinra" in Swedish, and it's not the first choice unless I want to express myself in an archaic or a formal way.
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