A language learners’ forum

I found a gem over at Memrise. (Spanish) Preterit Irregulars (link below). It's only 456 words, moving very fast and exactly what I need right now. It was waaaay towards the bottom of the list as not many people have done it yet, but it deserves more recognition.

Otherwise, everything is good. Still working on preterit/imperfect and reviewing ser/estar. I seriously need to get back to also reading/watching movies, but it seems like there's not enough time in the day. I'm considering giving up housework.

https://www.memrise.com/course/57907/pr ... egulars-2/

A quick-and-dirty from Perfecting the Past:

If you can measure it, Preterite
If you're in doubt, get ABA/IA out.

I'm loving this book. Every time he talks about something, he does a "let's do an exercise about it now" so there's been lots of practice. I looked further into the book and there's pages and pages of exercises, plus not only does he give the correct answer in the back, but why it's the correct answer.

Memrise is getting on my nerves again. "Love" isn't amor, it's la amor. But "the face" isn't la cara, it's cara. I hate getting it wrong for just that reason.

So I just took 4 Spanish level tests. These were just ones I found on Google that are 15 or so questions and will give you your results right away, so nothing official.

Last year I passed A1 on all of them and A2 on most of them.

This year I passed A1 on all of them and flunked A2 on all of them.

So the more I study, the worse I get.

Big push to the end of the 6 Week Challenge. I'd made a module in my Language Journal of everything I wanted to accomplish--and there's no way I can finish it all by Tuesday. I'm going to do as much as I can though--I have no appointments or anything between now and the end.

Then a break while I work on taxes and on to the next module.

And yet another 6 Week Challenge ends. I went back to the Bot and wrote down all my previous challenges and saw pretty much the same pattern--6 or 7 days full on, then miss a day. The more days I did straight, the more days I missed when I started burning out. So instead of feeling guilty for missing a day during the challenge, I'm going to schedule 6 "free" days for the next one. Which might be German. Or not.

I have no serious plans for the moment. I'm staying with Memrise, both Spanish and German, maybe Duolingo German, and am working on reading for the Super Challenge in both languages. For Spanish I'm currently reading: Otto es un rinocerante, Lola Lago, Banco Imperial (that from the vocabulary list is going to be robbed), and a mystery about a guinea pig. Oh, and Pobre Ana.

In German, I'm reading Arme Anna (same book).

Rant: I looked all over Memrise for a beginner Slovene course THAT HAS AUDIO and haven't found one yet. I was just hoping to dip into it every now and then as I transition what little Croatian I know (and have no need for) to Slovene that I actually need to understand at least the basics of. I don't have a clue how close the pronunciation is to Croatian. Meh.

Good for you for noticing your pattern and making a change!

What do you need Slovene for? (If it's not something you want to share on a forum, feel free to ignore or be vague to the point of pointlessness.)

CarlyD wrote:Rant: I looked all over Memrise for a beginner Slovene course THAT HAS AUDIO and haven't found one yet. I was just hoping to dip into it every now and then as I transition what little Croatian I know (and have no need for) to Slovene that I actually need to understand at least the basics of. I don't have a clue how close the pronunciation is to Croatian. Meh.

As a native Croatian, living 25 km from the Slovene border, I can only say that it depends on the word. Generally, the stress is different, and some things are not pronounced as written, e.g. dolg "long" is pronounced as /douk/.

Allison wrote:Good for you for noticing your pattern and making a change!

What do you need Slovene for? (If it's not something you want to share on a forum, feel free to ignore or be vague to the point of pointlessness.)

I'm working on my genealogy and my mother's family came from Slovenia. Grandma was "Gotschee" German (ethnic Germans that had lived there since it was the Austrian Empire) and Grandpa was Slovenian. Some records I need are in German but most are in Slovene.

Daniel N. wrote:

CarlyD wrote:Rant: I looked all over Memrise for a beginner Slovene course THAT HAS AUDIO and haven't found one yet. I was just hoping to dip into it every now and then as I transition what little Croatian I know (and have no need for) to Slovene that I actually need to understand at least the basics of. I don't have a clue how close the pronunciation is to Croatian. Meh.

As a native Croatian, living 25 km from the Slovene border, I can only say that it depends on the word. Generally, the stress is different, and some things are not pronounced as written, e.g. dolg "long" is pronounced as /douk/.

Good to know. I went over to Youtube and found some videos on learning Slovene so I can watch them for my pronunciation.

I also watched a lovely video from a returned Mormon missionary who (native English, learned Spanish in school) was sent to Slovenia for her mission. A year in, she was sent to Serbia and had to learn that, plus Cyrillic, then was sent to Bosnia, which she described as a close dialect of Serbian. So basically three languages in 18 months. Very impressive.

Replying here to your recent Spanish Group post.

CarlyD wrote:I have a stack of "easy" Spanish books that I just don't like. They're based on classics and I'm more of a romance or Scooby Doo reader. I keep picking them up to read and it's just not going to happen.

I would be happy to mail some or all of them, book rate, to anyone in the U.S. for free, or to anywhere else for actual postage. If no one wants them I'm going to donate them to the spring charity book sale.

If you still have these, I'd be interested! I'm in the US (happy to pay postage).