Suzie learns languages...every now and then

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Cavesa
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Cavesa » Sun Jan 01, 2023 9:44 am

:-D Thank you for making me feel better about my inconsistency in replying to people, I am not the only one!

The info on German dubbings is just as relevant and useful to me now, as it was 6 months ago, thank you! I think a Star Gate rewatch or Stranger Things (totally new for me) are a good idea for the next show.

Happy 2023!
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Suzie
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Suzie » Tue Jan 03, 2023 8:32 pm

Happy 2023 to you, too, Cavesa!
If you decide to watch Stranger Things, I am curious to know what you think of it!
0 x
Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete

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Suzie
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then [Fr]

Postby Suzie » Tue Jan 31, 2023 6:44 pm

End of the month - so here we go again...

French

Intensive studies: I am still mostly revising Anki cards from time to time and have moved only 30 new cards to my learning deck throughout this month. For the time being, I am happy with keeping the current momentum to move forward with the Super Challenge and like to call the past five weeks a consolidation phase.

By end of this year, however, I think I would like to make some more progress with the grammar review. As a stretch goal, I would love to complete the review of C1 grammar by end of the year, but at least I would like to learn on average 100 new cards (50 words and 50 phrases/grammar rules) each month.

Reading: Made some progress during January, and kept up with the intended 12 pages/day. I finally completed "Le chirurgien" (and this was really necessary, as the book started to look quite worn out after all those days in my handbag, patiently waiting for reading opportunities that never came).

I have already started two new books in parallel - the second novel of the Rizzoli & Isles series ("L'Apprenti"), and a non-fiction book: "Le régime de longévité" (V. Longo). The one New Year resolution that I always fail is the health-related goal, including the necessary lifestyle adaptations, so this year I am making this my primary goal. To keep engaged with the topic and stay motivated, I am intending to read some books, the one mentioned being the first. I had lingered around this book for quite some time and was somewhat reluctant to buy it due to various negative reviews. Reading it in French ensures this won't be a complete waste of my time. I have read the first third so far, and after a slow start it has now become more interesting. I bought five more books that I hadn't bought otherwise, because if I lack anything it is unread books in French! :roll:

3414 pages to go. By end of February, I would like to finish "Le régime de longévité" as well as the first six chapters of "L'Apprenti".

Listening/Watching: I enjoyed some last-minute binge watching on Netflix before I paused the contract. Binge-watched the first season of "Timeless", as well as two more films with Omar Sy ("De l’autre côté du périph" and "Loin du périph"). Lowbrow entertainment, but I had a good laugh and learned a lot of blue language as well. Afterwards, I continued season 2 of "Star Trek: La nouvelle génération". 2094 minutes left to complete this part of the Super Challenge.

Revision of goals and wanderlust (again)

The usual end-of-the-year assessment made me realize the immense commitment required from my side to ever get the DALF C2, or to feel a comparable level of confidence and ease in conversations with native speakers as I feel now in English. Since my return to Germany (and - more importantly - to a German company), my English speaking skills have degraded significantly; similarly, I am realizing that I even lost some ability to work in German after more than a decade in an English-speaking environment. I feel I need constant exposure to both languages to maintain the level of working proficiency that I'd like to have. How would I ever manage to balance this with French? I am realizing that my brain (as much as I love it) might not be fit for polyglottery.

At the same time, I spent some lovely holidays in Sweden, and wondered if I will ever feel sufficiently confident in Dutch to add Swedish to the mix without confusing myself with too many too similar languages? Also, do I need to decide whether to attempt a DALF or learn Swedish?

So I have now decided the following:

1) My goal in French will not be the DALF C2 or effortless conversations with natives anymore, but really just continued exposure to and fun with the language. I still like the long-term goal of my very first post in this log (from 2017), but there is no commitment anymore to actually become proficient. I like French as such (and yes, this includes the grammar, weirdly), and want it to be part of my life. My Belgians friends would probably freak out anyway if I after all these years switch from English to French. :lol:

2) No more goals for Dutch, rather than reading and listening on a leisurely level. No more attempts to speak or write - hence, no worries to lose active skills by starting Swedish.

3) I will start to learn Swedish soon (but try to get as much as possible done for the Super Challenge first). Here, the goal is to complete a Swedish course aimed for B1, but I have no motivation whatsoever to move beyond this level. In the end, I would like to be more confident in the country - understanding what the local restaurant/supermarket has to offer, not having to guess the meaning of certain street signs, and so on. Again, no active output planned, so no worries about language-related confusion.
8 x
Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete

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Suzie
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Suzie » Thu Mar 02, 2023 6:03 pm

Submitting my end-of-Feb summary with a slight delay.... for French only...

February was super busy, and I hardly found the energy to move forward with language learning. Still struggling with combining my language goals for this year with the non-language ones. I knew February and March were going to be super busy (but exciting) at work, and my ("private") research activities keep piling up. I took a week off but still continued working on my research projects. If everything goes well, I'll co-author three manuscripts and become lead author for one more by end of the year, and given that this is more a hobby than something my boss means to pay me to do, this would mean a significant professional achievement for me. Still trying not to have the resulting stress messing up with my health goals. The French goals on top of it just give me the creep. So I remain committed to the Super Challenge and skip the Anki-/grammar-related goals that I defined just a few weeks ago.

Intensive studies: I did very little in February. In the first half, I continued Anki reviews, but skipped that activity in the last two weeks. Neither did I move anything to my Anki learning deck or review any grammar. No plans for March.

Reading: Completed my February goal by finishing Valter Longo's "Le régime de longévité" and the first six chapters of Tess Gerritsen's "L'Apprenti". "Le régime de longévité" contained interesting information (through 50-100 pages or so) and a lot of useless stuff. I wasn't overly interested in the author's lengthy "memoirs", and any valuable dietary information was repeated five times over. And then I found there was insufficient distinction made between those recommendations that were based on a scientifically robust analysis of epidemiological, clinical and animal data, and those based only on observations on the usual diet in so-called "blue zones" (= those regions with more-than-average centenarians). How would a recommendation of 1 litre olive oil per week (!) match the equally stressed need for body weight control? Still, reading the book was not a complete waste of time; it kept me motivated to work on my health goals, and counted towards the Super Challenge. I only tracked 250 out of 360 pages, as there were a lot of diagrammes and pictures, and I also skipped the recipe section.

3175 pages to go. No reading goals for March - I am happy to continue with L'Apprenti (and maybe another health-related book) if it feels good to do so, but will not put any pressure on myself to finish the novel. For the remaining 9 months (April-December), I am going to aim for 353 pages/month (=12 pages/day).

Listening/Watching: Watched a few more episodes of season 2 of "Star Trek: La nouvelle génération", and listening to bits of Belgian radio (La Première) during two one-day business trips to Brussels. Not counting the latter towards the Super Challenge.

Speaking: Some short conversations during my two business trips to Brussels (yeah, finally meeting peers other than virtually - one of the few things that I missed doing during the pandemic!). I'll drive to Brussels for three more business meetings in March, and that might be it for the rest of the year. Met some Belgian friends and former colleagues during the meeting, and planned a follow-up lunch with them in April. Might at least speak French with the waiter then (but avoiding a conversation with my francophone friends in French, as usual :oops: )
6 x
Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete

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Suzie
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Suzie » Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:43 am

I have just realized that I most certainly passed the 10'000 pages threshold for reading in French some time in the past weeks, which feels great (if I ignore that the counting started more than 30 years ago). Still, it's a milestone that makes me reflecting.

My first book was "Le petit prince", which I read as a school kid, but outside the normal curriculum. I was an ambitious language learner at the time (also learned Italian and Ancient Greek outside school, and briefly touched Swedish, Spanish and Esperanto in the early 90s). My teenager self would have probably felt ashamed, had she known that 30 years later, I would still not be able to speak French at a near native level.
Still, I am amazed to see how certain interests can survive such a long time, and that - despite everything life has thrown at me in the past decades - I not only have remained interested and invested but actually improved.

On to the next 10'000 pages! I am sure it will not take me another 30 years. It's only two Super Challenges after all.

On a side note, I should really speed up with completing the Super Challenge and move on to start learning Swedish. When chatting with a friend, I realised yesterday that I am (hopefully) going to visit Sweden three times next year (spending about a month there in total, plus a few days in Denmark and Norway).
And yes, I see that I am again ignoring the super-sensible intention (as just expressed a few days ago) not to overload myself with fun goals at the cost of my mental and physical health. Will I ever learn.... :roll:
9 x
Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete

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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Suzie » Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:30 am

There is an interesting thread about immigration https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=18258, but when I wanted to describe my own experiences, my text became longer and longer, and I do not want to bother people with details that are not necessarily of interest for everyone. So I have moved my "biography" here - because if you read my log, it is entirely your fault, and you cannot blame me for wasting your precious time! :lol: Attentive readers with a robust long-term memory may already know bits and pieces:

In 2012, I lost my Dad (my last close family member) to cancer. At the same time, I was unhappy with my profession and had long prepared for a shift of my career to my dream job. At the time, it was obvious that I would have to relocate for this career move, but it had not been an option for me as long as I had family ties. I wanted adventure so applied abroad. In fact, I submitted my first application for a job in Finland before my Dad's funeral! In the coming weeks and months, I went on a job hunt specifically in Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK - this selection was driven by work-, language- and culture-related aspects. In the end, I got to choose between job offers in Helsinki and the Wallonian countryside - and the job in Belgium was more interesting.

For me, Belgium was a great choice, because I had learned French at school and Dutch during an Erasmus semester in Flanders during university studies. I had always wanted to solidify my French, so this was a perfect opportunity. I loved the prospect of being a member of both French- and Dutch-speaking communities simultaneously one day! Also, my childhood home is not far away from the Belgian border, and my new workplace was only a 2.5-hour drive away. So I could move to another country and still have a coffee with friends at home! My Belgian colleagues found the idea hilarious that I wanted "adventure" and chose a Wallonian village :-)

The plan was never to emigrate for good. I loved my childhood home in the countryside, with local wildlife in my garden, and dreamed of returning either for retirement or if I would be able to work remote (which I considered to be unlikely, and only possible in a far future). I gave myself five years to dive into the Belgian job experience before re-assessing my situation, with the goal to move to another job/country before even considering a return to Germany.

You make plans and then life happens. The short distance to my former home turned out to be a curse at first and a blessing in the long run. I decided not to sell the house but only to rent it out - and got totally lost in renovation and maintenance works. In the end, I spent nearly every weekend back in Germany. Also, finally in my dream job, I worked a tremendous amount of overtime to advance my career. English was working language in the company. Learning French and integrating into the Belgian community suffered. And I dreaded more and more the day where I had to hand over the keys of my beloved childhood home to someone else. When, all of a sudden, the opportunity opened to work remotely, I did not hesitate but moved back. First step-by-step, and then officially in 2018.
10 x
Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete

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Suzie
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then [Fr]

Postby Suzie » Sat Apr 01, 2023 11:16 am

March Update French

Despite not having had set any goals for March, I made some surprising progress towards the Super Challenge:

Reading: Finished "L'apprenti" and continued with the 3rd book of the Rizzoli & Isles series ("La reine des morts"). In the middle of "L'apprenti", I started to question my reading choice. In my mid-twenties, I had lost interest in reading fiction overall, and - except for French - have rarely touched a novel since. I started to get bored with "L'apprenti", too. I just can't be bothered who the murderer is, and the main character was quite one-dimensional and not really likable either. At the end of the book, at last, there was some minor character development, and I cared enough to continue with the series - and haven't regretted it so far, since I am becoming a bit more invested.

In parallel, I turned to some non-fiction: some material on health and nutrition, and a book "Pourquoi les Belges ne veulent pas devenir Français !" (B. Van Humbeek). The book is from 2011 (so some bits are outdated, such as the cover showing the two then-head of states: Nicolas Sarkozy and King Albert). It is apparently based on a French poll where the majority of respondents had been in favour of uniting with Belgium. The book is a tongue-in-cheek dissection of the differences between France and Belgium, with a lot of references to pop culture that l hadn't been aware of, and which had me go down into various internet rabbit holes. I also was delighted that an OECD document that I had to read for work was also available in French, so I turned my meeting preparation into a little French lesson.

626 pages read in March. 2549 pages to go; approximately 10 pages per day until year end. In April, I aim to finish the two books above.

Listening: Finished the 2nd season of "Star Trek: La nouvelle génération" and the first season of "Star Trek: Voyager". Mostly because I hate loose ends. I then watched two movies ("Star Trek: Beyond" and "Demain tout commence"). I have currently subscribed to a month of Netflix, so plan to try out a mini series about the Notre Dame fire, and then plan to conclude the Super Challenge with Stargate SG-I.

Intensive studies: Zero.


Planning, Wanderlust and (again) stress management

When looking for the next opportunity to start with Swedish, I decided that I'd rather like to finish the first review round of French Grammar first. And then I realized that I really am a "One project at a time"-type of person. So even though bolstering the Super Challenge with simultaneous vocabulary and grammar training would make more sense, I am going for the rather inefficient but more soothing split of activities. I have decided to reconsider if I am down to 200 pages/month at some point, because this number feels relaxing enough that I could sneak in some intensive studies. But mainly, the order will be: 1) Super Challenge, 2) French grammar and vocabulary training (until the first round of grammar review up to C1 is completed), 3) Swedish coursebook until B1 (maybe with interruptions to continue with French in between).

Also, I made plans for post-Super Challenge reading activities. I plan to combine 50 % French books with German, English and Dutch literature, without any goals, but still trying to keep the momentum going while also allowing myself some detours. Still, I strive for 100 books in French.

And I am struggling with my decision to drop any aspirations for a potential future DALF C2 exam. Well, I do not have to decide it now. The next steps are set and feel good.
6 x
Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete

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Suzie
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Suzie » Tue Apr 11, 2023 10:24 am

After a bit of reading during the extended Easter weekend, there is a milestone to report: I have finally completed half of the Super Challenge! I am currently at 55 books and 89 films.

I finished both the Tess Gerritsen novel and the book "Pourquoi les Belges ne veulent pas devenir Français !". I learned a lot about both Belgium and France from the latter. Some of my language-related highlights are the cuistax (be), which I remember driving myself ages ago. I enjoyed learning that baguette (fr) is called pain français in Belgium, and the French call pralines (be) chocolats belges (fr). I also learned about the term outre-Quiévrain, which is how the French obviously call Belgium.

I hadn't been aware that anyone had ever seriously considered for Belgium (=read: Wallonia - this was not really clear in the beginning of the book) to join France, so I asked a Belgian friend, and she confirmed this had been publicly discussed as a potential scenario a while ago, during one of the eruptions of the independence movement in Flanders. She also summarised her feelings and the content of the book quite well in one (emotional) word "Never ! "

I have four books on my table that I am targeting simultaneously:
- "Ce qui ne me tue pas" (D. Lagercrantz) (the continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy). This one has been on my list for ages. Although I would have liked to continue with the Rizzoli & Isles series, I want to avoid learning Swedish and reading a Swedish book in French at the same time (brain melt!), so I postpone the Tess Gerritsen novels until later.

- "La grande histoire de la Belgique" (P. Weber). Now I am hooked. I finally want to understand what makes Belgium Belgium, why Flanders and Wallonia, these "jumeaux siamois devenus frères ennemis" (to quote the book mentioned above) became one country in the first place and are still together.

- "l'île au trésor" (R.L. Stevenson). My bathtub book for extensive leasure reading. About twenty years ago, I was told by a middle-aged man "Did you read "treasure island" as a child? Oh, of course you didn't, as a girl!". This has bugged me and my feminist heart ever since (because indeed I have never read it). So I am closing that knowledge gap once and for all. (By the way - another middle-aged man, around the same time, when seeing me reading an English book in a train, felt the need to let me know that I would never be able to read James Joyce's "Ulysses". I was so upset. More than ten years after that conversation I still remembered, bought the book and dived into it. Yeah, turned out he was right. Some battles are just not worth fighting. And after having been furious for a long time with this unknown guy who suggested my skills might be limited, I have meanwhile realized that this was in fact nothing else than friendly conversation. Unless he was a professor for Irish literature in disguise, he probably failed this challenge, too. So instead of glancing furiously at him, I should have shown some friendly curiousity and asked for details.)

- one of the aforementioned books on health and lifestyle changes. (Although I get the feeling that I will not open it in near future).

2200 pages to go!
9 x
Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete

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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Iversen » Tue Apr 11, 2023 1:26 pm

I read a couple of chapters of Ulysses back in 70s where I actually studied literature (and yes, I did get my exam :lol: :lol:)- but I concluded that it wouldn't be worth reading the whole book. It looked most of all like an exercise in writing in different styles about boring things from all over Dublin. Actually I found Finnegans Wake more interesting because it didn't even pretend to be legible...
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Suzie
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Re: Suzie learns languages...every now and then

Postby Suzie » Tue Apr 11, 2023 2:32 pm

Iversen wrote:I read a couple of chapters of Ulysses back in 70s where I actually studied literature (and yes, I did get my exam :lol: :lol:)- but I concluded that it wouldn't be worth reading the whole book. It looked most of all like an exercise in writing in different styles about boring things from all over Dublin. Actually I found Finnegans Wake more interesting because it didn't even pretend to be legible...


Hi Iversen, I am glad you are confirming my impression. It sounds like I should stay away from Finnegan's Wake as well then... :D Is there any book at all from James Joyce that you would recommend to the average reader?
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Super Challenge French:
100 books: 100 / 100 complete
100 films: 100 / 100 complete


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