An Opsimath's Log: DA, LA, NL, FR

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PeterMollenburg
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
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Languages: English (N), French (B2-certified), Dutch (High A2?), Spanish (~A1), German (long-forgotten 99%), Norwegian (false starts in 2020 & 2021)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18080
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Feb 08, 2021 2:04 am

jeff_lindqvist wrote:.....

Elsa Maria wrote:.....


Thanks guys! Very informative.
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Kaputin
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Languages: Norwegian, English, Russian, Ukrainian
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby Kaputin » Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:30 am

I can recommend a large library with free Norwegian audiobooks - https://lydbok.online
It's a really large choice of different dialects can be found there. :!:
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Elsa Maria
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby Elsa Maria » Sat Feb 27, 2021 10:50 pm

I'm reasonably happy with my 6WC so far, but it seems that deciding to focus on European Portuguese was a good way for me to spend time on Dutch.

So far, my pie chart looks like this, using round numbers:

29% PT
Using Linguaphone, Pimsleur, and Practice Portuguese.
If I ever buy another Linguaphone course, it will not be a digital version. It is really annoying to navigate.

32% DA
This is my 365 Day challenge language. I usually read for 30+ minutes per day. Right now, I am reading Barndom by Tove Ditlevsen.

19% NL
16% LA
4% NO

I am definitely in love with Portuguese, and it just might be the language that excites me the most. It pretty much ticks all the boxes that I am looking for in a new language: a personal connection, lots of untranslated literature, and spoken in places I might actually visit someday. But I don't really like this beginning phase of learning very much.
Last edited by Elsa Maria on Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
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Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby Iversen » Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:32 am

In my opinion Danish isn't a tonal language, but rather more a language that uses stress to give utterances structure, including the special kind of stress that is called 'stød'. Let's first compare "galop" (as done by a horse) with the company name "Gallup". "Galop" has stress on the last syllable and therefore there may be a slight tendency to raise the tone level, while it is likely to go slightly down when the stress is on the first syllable as in "gallup". However the changes will never be as pronounced as in Swedish or Norwegian, and I doubt that you can find any examples where they have phonemic value, i.e. define minimal pairs. The stress pattern already contains all the relevant information.

On the other hand 'stød' definitely has phonemic value, i.e. you can find lots of minimal pairs where stød/not stød is the only difference - like "ender" (ends as a verb or a noun in the plural) versus "ænder" (ducks, with stød). Some have tried to describe it as a suprasegmental feature like stress (which is tied to a whole syllable), and it seems to me that the stød actually could be described as a special kind of stress which just happens also to affect the airflow.

It is well known among us Danes that the people on the 'Sydhavsøerne' ('South sea Islands') Lolland, Falster and Møn don't have stød in their dialects, but it is far less known that there allegedly are some areas in Southern Jutland, Funen and a snip of Zealand that also lack it. You may ask what the Sydhavsø people say instead of the stød, but I'm not sure that there even is one single clearcut thing that replaces it - like a tonal pattern as in Swedish or Norwegian. However I'm not a professional dialectologist, and I don't live in the relevant areas so I may have overlooked something.

You have to get up to larger segments before anything like tones affect the meaning - f.ex. we do raise the tone in most questions. But we can also use words like "mon" (from the old verb "at monne") that already defines a sentence as a question. And if we say "mon hun kommer" with a raising tone then she may come (happy expectation!) - but if we say "MON hun kommer?" then the tone goes down, and the implication is that she probably won't come. Tonal patterns simply aren't as important in Danish as in certain other languages, and even in the example I just gave the stress pattern is more important - but supported by prosody.
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jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:19 am

Iversen wrote:In my opinion Danish isn't a tonal language, but rather more a language that uses stress to give utterances structure, including the special kind of stress that is called 'stød'. Let's first compare "galop" (as done by a horse) with the company name "Gallup". "Galop" has stress on the last syllable and therefore there may be a slight tendency to raise the tone level, while it is likely to go slightly down when the stress is on the first syllable as in "gallup". However the changes will never be as pronounced as in Swedish or Norwegian, and I doubt that you can find any examples where they have phonemic value, i.e. define minimal pairs. The stress pattern already contains all the relevant information.


I'm not thinking of moving stress (and possible tone change as a result), but rather the fact that spoken Danish has something which matches a Swedish grave pitch accent (2-4 in pinyin). And the same two-syllable words are also pronounced flat, or with an acute pitch if you want (4-5). In a series like Badehotellet, there are people (presumed locals?) who use mostly 4-5 for two-syllable words, whereas the city people have the 2-4. In my book, that's one example of pitch accent in a tonal system. Even if the usage doesn't change the meaning.
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Elsa Maria
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby Elsa Maria » Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:49 pm

I'm really happy with my language learning right now - probably the happiest that I have been in a long time. I feel motivated, I like my resources/strategies, and I am not too busy to study. Let's see how long this trifecta lasts :)

At the moment, I am participating in the 40h7dLC on Twitter. The idea is to do 40 hours of language in 7 days, and the challenge is running this week. I honestly don't expect to reach 40 hours, but I do want to see how many hours I can manage this week without making myself miserable.

Day 1 (Monday) and Day 2 (Tuesday) were just over 4 hours each.

The current breakdown looks like this:
NL: 33%
PT: 31%
LA: 23%
DK: 13%
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Elsa Maria
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby Elsa Maria » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:51 pm

My latest challenge for myself is to write in my log every day from now until the beginning of the 6WC on May 1st.

I ended the 40h7d challenge with 25+ hours. That's a decent amount of studying for one week. That was last week.

This week yielded less hours, but there were some good reasons for that. I might do some more this evening, so I'll make a full report tomorrow. Right now, I'm at 13h53m for the week.

Seeing how many hours I can fit in motivates me, whereas streaks never motivate me. I lose streaks all the time, but I don't much care. OK, yes, I was kind of mad at myself for missing a lot of days in March on the 365 day challenge. There was no really good reason for that. I don't think I actually missed ten days in March like ATracker tells me. I think it was more like five. But I reported it as ten because maybe it was ten. I didn't feel like ten! Oh well, so it goes. I've missed two days so far in April.

I thought about switching from Danish to generic, so I could keep my streak, but I decided to just stick with Danish for the 365 day challenge. I'm currently in maintenance mode, but that maintenance is very important to me. I think it is paying off. I had a long video call today with some Danish friends. I have not spoken much Danish in recent months, and it went better than I had expected.

A regular week for me right now includes the following interactions. All are online.

Small group class (NL)
Language Exchange (NL-EN)
Italki Lesson (PT-PT)
Asynchronous Latin: 3 sessions per week

Now I want to add in some sessions with a Danish tutor.
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Elsa Maria
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby Elsa Maria » Sun Apr 18, 2021 4:24 pm

18 April Sunday

I didn't do anything last night with languages, so I ended the week at 13h53m.

DA (4h57m, 36%)
NL (3h55m, 28%)
PT (3h31m, 25%)
LA (1h13m, 9%)
NO (0h16m, 2%)

Danish:
I finished two Moomin books this week (Farlig Midsommer og Troldvinter) and had the long video conversation yesterday. I also watched some YouTube videos but they somehow didn't make it into ATracker.

Dutch:
I usually read for about 20 minutes every day, and I have started to build an anki deck. Occasionally I do Duolingo. But other than reading, I mostly just try to prepare things or study things that are in preparation for my class or language exchange. Wanting to feel prepared for something is a big motivator.

Portuguese:
Other than preparing for my italki lesson, I have been scattered. Too scattered, and I feel the need to make a solid plan now. I have gone through Pimsleur 1-30. While I need to do some revision there, I also need a break from Pimsleur. I wish I had something else to listen to while walking or doing chores. Almost everything is still too hard. I'm going to try Portuguese with Carla's podcast. I love her YouTube channel.

Latin: We we on a bit of a break this week and I was caught up with the assignments, so I only did some drills.

Norwegian: Just some rounds of Duolingo. I don't love or hate Duolingo, and I have heard that the Norwegian course is one of their best so I play with that a bit. I'd like to get back to the Lær Norsk Nå podcast because it is very good.
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Elsa Maria
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby Elsa Maria » Mon Apr 19, 2021 7:51 pm

19 April Monday

PT:

I have fallen in love with Portuguese, and I am over-the-moon excited about this language.

I've listened to the first three episodes of Carla and her husband Marlon's podcast. Its just OK. I'm not loving it, but I don't have anything else to listen to at my level. They made these first episodes in 2014, and stopped updating it in 2019. They've really come a long way with their brand/content, and I think their YouTube channel is great. Down the road, I might try a paid subscription. But right now, I am paying for italki lessons and the Practice Portuguese app. And an unused Linguaphone course awaits. So that is enough for now.

I found two hours of Peppa Pig in PT-PT (complete episodes) , and I have finished the first hour.

I have plans to watch a soap opera (O Sábio), which has 300 episodes and closed captioning. Are they called telenovelas in Portugal? I've never watched anything like that before, and I don't know when I should start. I'm not even A1 yet. Is it too soon? It feels like it is too soon, but I tend to wait too long to try harder things.
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lingua
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Languages: English (N)
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Studying: português, Latina
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Abandoned: ไทย, español
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Re: Elsa Maria's Log: Danish + (PT, LA, NL, NO)

Postby lingua » Tue Apr 20, 2021 10:34 pm

Are you watching O Sábio on rtp.pt? Thanks for mentioning it. I need something like that.
0 x
Super Challenge 2022-23:
DE: books: 0 / 2500 film: 1654 / 4500
IT: books: 3065 / 5000 film: 5031 / 9000
PT: books: 2921 / 5000 film: 5010 / 9000

Output Challenge 2023:
IT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 84 / 3000
PT: write: 0 / 50000 record: 0 / 3000

PT: Read 100 books: 28 / 100


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