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 Oct 02, 2017 9:16 pm

The weekend was very productive. I ended a week when I had been very consistent on Clozemaster. I believe it's helping a lot. I'm slowly building a vocabulary for Turkish, which I plan to start soon, and for Indonesian, which I already did, it begins to make sense doing the cloze exercises.

I gathered material- the series I'm going to watch after Constantine. Got all the remaining Hebrewpod101 files, so now it's complete. Podcast-wise, I managed 3 episodes of I provinciali. Great training for my Italian, but I should be doing more per week since they add 1 new each weekday (mon-fri). At the other podcasts - Slow German and Al Filo de la Realidad - I'm halfway the number of published episodes and might soon replace them with a new resource. Anyway, I also spent a good time with the kids so it was all in all a nice weekend.

Started Le avventure di Cipollino, in Georgian/Italian. The Italian text isn't always transparent, but the unknown words don't seem that much relevant. Looks like it's going to be a fun and useful read!

"Mari" in Indonesian means 'let's go', not just a feminine name. Anyway, the Indonesianpod101 lessons have important info on the audio that isn't in the pdf, which is critical for learning especially at the earlier levels.
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
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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 Oct 03, 2017 9:12 pm

Yesterday I had to try hard to fulfill my non-fiction reading quota as well as all my Clozemaster reviews, including the active ones for the intermediate languages.

Started aspect on Russian in Exercises. Hope it will help me tell the different pairs apart.

I think bad typography, especially the space between lines being too tight and the text too blocked, account for extra difficults when reading in parallel. That's the case with Georgian (which happens to be an epub format) and with Russian (a pdf, more understandable.

Cortina Greek keeps surprising me. Since lesson 9, at the end of the lesson you see samples of Greek handwriting with ligatures (which, I reckon, doesn't seem to be taught at newer textbooks). You have samples with almost no ligature, almost like block letters, then an intermediate one, which I would follow myself, and one that seems taken from a medical prescription.

Did the final lesson of the Hebrew Alphabet Made Easy, and now starts real learning! I'll be using the Absolute Beginner lessons from hebrewpod101 as well, in order to slowly become familiar with the language. I'm not 100% comfortable with the alphabet but I hope to review once in a while as well as learn from the newer lessons.
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Expugnator
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Oct 04, 2017 9:22 pm

So far, so good with verbal aspect. I got a feeling for which form sounds right thanks to massive input. I expect it to get trickier in the next pages of exercises, though.

Finished all the Narnia heptalogy. I think the one I liked the most was the first but last (read for Narnia's chronology, not publishing). As planned, I started H.G.Wells' The Invisible Man. Sounds like it will be an easier novel, thanks to the vocabulary, less fantastic. On the other hand, the Brazilian edition has a preface that is a spoiler of the whole story! I read it in a glance and it was too late before I could gaze away. I only hope that won't discourage me, because language-wise it seems a good exercise.

I was surprised that the annoying multilingual typing had been reenabled on my Android phone. Turns out now I had to uncheck multilingual typing language by language in order to avoid having three language acronyms on my virtual spacebar as well as (even) weird(er) word suggestions when I swype.

I receded a bit and decided to do the Basic Bootcamp (greetings, numbers) level before starting the graded Hebrew lessons. It will work out, eventually. Also, I'm going to alternate one strong-language reading - Spanish - between Hebrew and Indonesian because they are similar-layout lessons from the same source (pod101) at the same level for two opaque languages.
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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 » Thu Oct 05, 2017 9:11 pm

The text of The Invisible Man is indeed easier to understand than Narnia in Mandarin, but the reading speed of the audiobook is so much faster that it cancelled any advantage I could have had regarding being able to read more comfortably.

Trying hard not to feel distracted by doing Clozemaster reps while watching my daily quota of series. Turns out I understand more from dubbed Captain Future in German than expected.

The Cortina Greek copy available has eleven pages missing between lessons 12 and 13.
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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 » Fri Oct 06, 2017 8:23 pm

This night I had 8 hours straight of sound sleep. I haven't had that for several months. My mind was much sharper when doing my earlier reps of Mandarin on Clozemaster.

Listening to the nArgentinian podcast is pretty easy. The language is nearly transparent. When it comes to trickier topics I actually want to understand for content, though (not just for language) I have to pay close attention. Not much different to listening to the same podcast about the same content in Portuguese.

Before there was Clozemaster, there were the Goethe-Verlag cloze exercises. For some languages, they are the only option - or at least the only one comprehensive enough, because each language has at least 1500 sentences at the 'beginner' and 1500 at the 'advanced' levels (i'd call them A2 and B1). Estonian, for example. I don't remember if I went through the advanced level or just the easy one, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to redo the 'advanced' level either. Then there are Greek and Indonesian which I haven't started yet.

Third day of listening-reading The Invisible Man. It feels much better now! The audio reading speed is still too fast, but I'm reading the text faster, too. Really missing fewer words per sentence. I have the feeling that, if not this year, next week I'll see a breakthrough in my Mandarin skills. That's a relief, since it's been more than 6 years of study.

Today was probably the most pleasant day of Norwegian listening-reading. Flow happened. The story is interesting and I have much better reading skills now, both listening and reading. Needless to say that I'm passionate about the sound of the Norwegian language.

Finished the good film Le premier jour du reste de ta vie. Now Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob.

Weltraum and Raumschiff are words I hear everyday. I'm having a much better time now understanding Captain Future in German, actually following the story even without subtitles.

More on Mandarin! In The Name of People is getting easier and also more interesting. I have the feeling I can follow most Chinese series with Chinese-only subtitles after being acquainted with the story.

I'm reading full sentences in Estonian now. I report reaching this stage in Russian a few months ago. I have less than 300 hours of Estonian study behind.

Just went through a great Assimil Le Grec sans peine (i.e. the old edition) lesson that probably was missing from the newer one: it's a brief explanation on the future and subjunctive - in Greek. I not only got to learn those grammar terms in Greek; I also got wanderlust for starting a Greek grammar, which I might do after Assimil; and I was curious as to how many infinitives there were in Ancient Greek.

A friend was kind enough to provide the missing pages for Cortina Greek, and I'm redoing lesson 12 which I only listened to yesterday. On the motivation side, I could get more than the gist just through listening to the dialogue.

No time for Hebrew or Indonesian today. I got in earlier but forgot I was also supposed to leave earlier, so I slacked a bit during the day, thinking I'd then have two extra hours of study. No big deal, though.
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reineke
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby reineke » Fri Oct 06, 2017 8:49 pm

Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob is a fun movie. I like the main actor. Louis de Funès was enormously popular in Europe. I could never finish Captain Future. It's great material for language learning.
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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 Oct 09, 2017 8:19 pm

@reineke: I expect to finish all the episodes I have for Captain Future. I know Louis de Funès from the Fantomas series.

I slacked a bit at the Weekend. I lost the streak for the newly added languages on Clozemaster, but kept it for ZH-NO-DE-RU-EO-EL. Then the usual organizing of my watching material for the week (Norwegian, Mandarin, Georgian, Estonian). Two episodes of the Italian podcast. Oh, and on Saturday afternoon I went to the Polyglot meetup where I spoke French to a native speaker and then some Esperanto. I'm not that far from being able to speak Esperanto, it seems, despite having very limited vocabulary and being unable to read it transparently. This is thanks to my focusing on the 200 most common words on Clozemaster, text-input. It's the closest I can get to a speak-from-day-one approach to any language, in the sense that I'm artifically keeping my Esperanto active skills higher and passive lower by drilling very common words in multiple contents while refraining from learning to read from just having an initial, passive exposure to the most common words overall presented in textbooks. This is just a temporary fix because once I find time in my schedule I'll take the normal textbook path for Esperanto as well, when I expect my Romance background to come into play and turn it into yet another transparent language. I'm taking a similar (should I say slightly mirrored/opposite/inverted) path with Catalan where I'm doing only Clozemaster but progressing faster as I'm doing all sentences at once, but only multiple choice.

Best Mandarin listening-reading ever. Some dialogue lines start to look transparent and I don't need to check the translation.

As for my intensive reading-listening, I'm still on Yabla's music videos. I can say I like nearly all songs, but this is not just due to the easy pop style but I guess also to the fact the language sounds clearer now and the verses are more meaningful. The language resonates more, now that I'm at a higher level.

When attempting to connect to the Georgian bookstore's library (i.e. the books I've bought) I got this message:

Saba.com.ge wrote:ონლაინ წამკითხველი ტექნიკური სამუშაოების გამო დროებით გათიშულია, გთხოვთ ისარგებლოთ Android ან iOS რიდერებით. ბოდიშს გიხდით შეფერხებისთის.


I don't know if I should be happy that I understood the message or mad about the webreader being unavailable. Actually I'm upset. It took long before they could produce a barely stable iOs app and it won't work on my old iPad anyway, only on the newer one which I don't usually bring in here. My phone is Android but it's a pain to read Georgian font, which is already so small. To make matters worse, the Android app isn't synced with the web reader, so everytime I read on it I had to manually adjust the bookmark on the web reader the next day. Anyway, not having a web-based desktop online reader is the reason I'm no longer buying from the other Georgian ebookstore lit.ge (which has a better working iOs app). It's an issue I have with Brazil's largest bookstore, Livrarya Cultura. Why do companies, especially libraries, want to force mobile on their customers? I have a large monitor and it beats reading on a tablet anytime. Especially the parallel reading I do for my language learning.

Image

Finished Fremdsprachenlernen mit System. The book is a great recommendation if you know German well and want to learn more about polyglottery, or if you want to practice your German on a familiar topic, like I did. It helped with both, though I didn't find the book that much innovative. The author seemed a bit too obsessed with an analytical approach to language-learning, nearly excluding organic methods such as extensive reading. He seemed to attempt to dissect language learning into linearly weighable processes and focused too much on getting work references for each activity in language learning: you need a good bilingual dictionary, then a good monolingual one, then a collocation dictionary, then a phrase dictionary, then a thesaurus usw. All that means putting too much emphasis on external sources during the learning process, which contradicts what the author himself advocates in the early chapters. Still an invaluable and insightful manual, though.

Multilingual cross-over series: if The Sniffer was in Constantine, he would make John Constantine's life much easier.

Got the full text of Cortina Greek. I asked Ericounet to update it at the site, though it seems a different edition.

Had an easier day and so I'm back into studying Hebrew and Indonesian. Not sure if it's good or bad for the sake of retaining pronunciation, but Hebrewpod101 lessons are already making me familiarized with some words without the niqqudot. I think for adverbs it's harmless to look only at the undotted form because the risk you might run into a form that looks the same but is pronounced differently when declined for gender etc. is much lower.

I noticed I've subscribed to many Youtube channels that provide language lessons. I'm a bit resistent to using them 1) because they usually lack a linearity that would allow me a perception of progress both towards the end and in the language in general and 2) they usually have many minutes using L1, which I already experience with pod101 and language transfer. I'm subscribed to Hebrew teaching in Portuguese, Modern Greek in Spanish, Guarani in Spanish and native materials such as Russian series and bilingually-subtitled Hebrew songs.
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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 » Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:05 pm

Being done with Fremdsprachenlernen mit System, my German reading is again non-fiction, and now on a second-best subject: Urbanism. I'm going to read Cities for People, by the Danish architect Jan Gehl. I would have started with an earlier work, but this was the one I could find in German on Kindle. The book is really well-designed with lots of pictures. I am considering improving my quota of 10 pages a day for this one, because some pictures consist only of pages (!). Anyway, the German title is Städte für Menschen. Still a bit tricky to read, but once I get used to the author's style and the most common technical terms, I hope to read it mostly extensively, without recurring to the English original that often.

Enjoying Råta's audiobook a lot, but what I'm really looking forward to is to be able to follow my next Norwegian audiobook comfortably. Regarding Råta's history, it's interesting how the change of perspective takes place for the protagonist. Our world seems bizarre, unthinkable, self-destructive. Then she hears about in vitro birth and blood transfusion and she learns to respect technology a bit more.

Finished the first season of Constantine. No more episodes were produced because the main character is a smoker. Now I'll keep following the storyline of the Arrowverse, which means I'm starting the series Supergirl. All dubbed in Georgian, I should add.

Hebrew, like Turkish, puts the number one after the noun it counts. Todsy's lesson was on numbers, and it was rather boring. I prefer to learn with time and context.

I wonder if the Spanish asir is a cognate of the French saisir.

I'm trying to understand "yang" as "which is", "that is", i.e. a relative pronoun with a built-in copula, which would correspond to restrictive clauses.

Mau makan yang enak. = I want to eat which-is delicious.

Reminds me of the Mandarin particle 的 (de), perhaps only with a different word order.
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
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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 Oct 11, 2017 8:03 pm

Today was the opportunity to finally consolidate the usage of perfective x imperfective in the future. Morphologically it's straightforward, but syntactically it demands some mindset rebuilding.

Finished my non-fiction reading, a book on Content Marketing. I've definitely got serious, as my next choice is the leading textbook Contemporary Tourism (by Hall). Later I might get back to not so business-related topics and to reading in other languages besides English. What I really want is to reduce my backlog of books I just downloaded to one of my devices (usually my phone) to form a long to-read list.

Still adapting to the parallel reading of Städte für Menschen/Cities for people. The German edition is more often than not paraphrased, with sentences having inverted orders within a paragraph. The pictures are distributed in different orders as well. That accounts for a challenging parallel-reading experience, to the extent that I'm choosing to pause and look some German words up regardless of the translation.

It's great to start a new series. The dubbed audio is clear and I can learn a lot of Georgian from it.

Out of 5 Basic Bootcamp lessons at Hebrewpod101, two are on counting, the second one going all the way up to one million. Some weird priorities.

I used the additional time on a very calm day for taking the audiobook test again for Modern Greek: listening-reading The Lost Symbol. Even though I'm far from being able to read extensively, now after those months I can already learn a lot from the exercise, unlike last time when there were way too many unknown words for me to make any didactical sense. Now I'm even more motivated to enter into native material stage for Greek. I did just one page but I feel like I could be doing 10 like I did when I started doing the same exercise for Norwegian.

A long weekend ahead thanks to a public holiday, which means I'll be off from regular studies until Monday. Looking forward to reading and watching a bit for fun, though.
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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 Oct 16, 2017 8:08 pm

Today I heard Silent Night, Holy night sung in Estonian. Celebrating any religious holiday seems liberating for the Estonians, or at least that's what the series wants to show.

Got to read more in German, from the urbanism book. It's not tiresome at all, and I start to approach the book in a more textual and less sentence-isolate level.

Enjoying the new Georgian series and enjoying even more what's been doing to my Georgian. If I had time I would try watching another series only dubbed, no subtitles.

Finally a true beginner Hebrew lesson (absolute beginner level). Funny how I'm learning the shapes of words rather than just the spelling. It's as if I instinctively want to prepare for the niqqudless times.
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