Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

[Expugnator]

While I celebrated the calmer day yesterday, I totally forgot about the novel I was reading in Spanish. So it was not a 'complete' day because of that detail.

Aujourd'hui, par contre, is much busier. I had an appointment at the eye doctor, as my right eye is still dry and I can't use lenses anymore, at least not regularly. He said I have blepharitis and should treat that first before trying new eyedrops. I'm seriously considering the eye surgery for getting rid of myopia and astigmatism.

I had prepared a lot of materials for waiting at the doctor's, but I was called rather early and so I came back here only some three hours behind schedule. Let's see how far I can get today.

I've made it so far. The Assimil Grec old edition was a review on the subjunctive. Pretty`straightforward to read (it doesn't mean I have memorized all the usages of the subjunctive reviewed), which bought me some time.

Time also for another wonderful Assimil Hebrew lesson. Back to writing after the review lesson. I'm starting to understand a few words and form sentences, while still having a little trouble with the alphabet.

Indonesian seems to have so many verbs that can perform the verbal copula role, that it gets confusing. And with another Indonesian lesson I can call it a day. Oh, wait, there come some pages from La sombra del viento. Done.

[Expugnator]

Today will see some changes in routine after a night of waking up several hours for watching one of the girls. They didn't go to school, I didn't go to the gym and that makes me feel sleepy all day long. I won't go have lunch at home so that means 1 extra hour of studying, but I have to recover from this sleepy stage if I want to make good use of it. So far it's coming along well, because I went to give classes by bus and could take care of the non-fiction and the Italian readings already early in the morning.

Still plugging along through Modern Russian Grammar: a Pratical Guide. I think I will only see a difference when I do part B - communicative situations - and the exercises book. So far I read several topics over my head which might only make sense to study after doing the exercises.

I don't know if any of you Italian learners have read anything from Gianrico Carofoglio, but I'm enjoying a lot the book I'm listening to now. He is a judge and politician himself, so he writes about the legal universe as an insider. The text itself is very well-written, it has all the elegance of the Italian language. The series of the lawyer Guido Guerreri has all audiobooks read by the author himself.

One thing I like about Skam is the soundtrack, the characters party to Norwegian songs that have lyrics related to the story (some of which I bet were either made for Skam or were released therein). It's a rare scene as people tend only to listen to songs in English, more so in parties than in other situations, and I'd go as far as saying that some European countries have a barely existent musical industry in the native language.

Another good day of Georgian reading. I have the impression I'm reading less, but I'm sticking to my 3% and the book is rather short. I confess I could be reading more and still be ok about that, not tired at all, as I only miss a couple of words every paragraph and seldom run into a fully undecypherable sentence. But Count Olaf (A series of unfortunate events, first book) is a disgusting character and I can't take larger doses of his stories a day.

Just for a change, I decided to pay attention to the native soap opera, which I usually just listen to on the background (guilty!) while reading a Papiamento article or doing Clozemaster rounds. To my relief, I can understand enough to follow the story now. That leaves me looking forward to other native series later. I still plan on keeping watching dubbed series in Georgian at my post-schedule, though, because these are both entertaining and helpful for learning.

Finished the episodes I had for Captain Future, German-dubbed. It's a nice cartoon for learners, not that hard to follow, though I admit that I've been treating it like the Georgian soap opera, i.e. only unfocused background listening. That's what I tend to do for resources without subtitles. This means subtitles are also an efficient tool for retaining focus. Anyway, I'll keep working on dubbed series, this time with subtitles, as I'm going to pick one of the series from the Arrowverse for watching in German instead of Georgian.

Another great Assimil Hebrew lesson. The knowledge is starting to build up and I'm also improving my familiarity with the alphabet. GT seems to show dotted words when translated from L1 into Hebrew, so I'm planning on having a lot of fun there. I still have to review the alphabet one more time for learning to write confidently, but that is going to wait some weeks.

So, the day went on smoothly and I could do everything as planned. I didn't forget the Spanish reading that time. After that, I went directly to writing my first island in Russian. It consists of 4 paragraphs, three of which are general about myself, and the fourth could be replaced for each language. I'm going to ask my Russian teacher to correct it and then I'll be able to use it at will.

Next islands should deal more specifically with hobbies, travelling, the actual learning process (yes, I know, metalanguage permeates the output of every self-learner and that's one of the reasons I feel demotivated to write, but people do ask those questions all the time, particularly the 'how' you learned) and some topics for small-talk.

I went for Greek listening-reading again. Very productive, I must say. Now it's actually working cumulatively. I can already tell which word means what just from seeing the translation, nearly all the cases (this is a main point for starting L-Ring. If you don't know enough grammar nor have enough vocabulary for telling which word is the determiner and which is the determinant, which is the verb and so on, the exercise turns into wild guessing and is much less productive). That's a serious development from last time, and it already means I'm slowing down my Greek by not doing native materials consistently, by sticking to a courses-only (mostly audio courses with a lot of L1 explanations) strategy. My Greek is already better than my Russian, Georgian, Mandarin or Estonian were when I started L-R or parallel reading on those. The time has come! I am already at a stage where I can have fun while learning Greek. Now I have to adjust my schedule to allow for more time, at least 4 pages a day like the opaque languages (though I consider Greek to be semi-transparent). Greek isn't short of audiobooks, even translations. Even a local author from Bahia, Jorge Amado, had his books translated into Greek and has audiobooks available. I should take advantage of this opportunity. I just need a reliable means of getting the ebooks now so I can listen-read the audiobooks.

All in all, a very productive day. The entire schedule and post-schedule taken care of, time for solving some old issues and even writing a language islands. Let January remain a calm month so I can keep improving.

[garyb]

I discovered Carofiglio thanks to this forum (or maybe it was HTLAL)! I think it was Robierre who first mentioned him. I enjoyed "Testimone inconsapevole" and need to read some more sometime.

[Expugnator]

@garyb you're right, Robierre mentioned Carofiglio a few times in his log; I admit I stopped paying attention to his suggestions and reviews of books in French and Italian, because there's so much I still want to read! I do read his activities on the C-range on these two languages. As for myself, I just happened to run into an audiobook by Carofiglio so it was a happy coincidence. They are published at the Emons site.

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Today's Russian lesson was better. Restaurants aren't as complicated than airports, and are definitely more familiar. If there's one thing that gives me hope, is that I can follow the class entirely in Russian now, even the explanations on word usage. I've had my island corrected and it was mostly ok, apart from explaining what the place I work in is, and forgetting to correct the machine translation on the accusative and prepositional for -ya nouns (they got inverted when I translated from English).

Back into comprehensible input for German - dubbed series. The German subtitles are quite long, which means I should learn to stick to German audio - which is pretty clear - and Brazilian Portuguese subtitles so that I can make the transition to no subtitles. I'll be watching 10 minutes a day instead of the previous 12 (against 20 for the remaining series from the Arrowverse in Georgian). That probably won't put this one series much ahead the others, as I'm supposed to follow the Arrowverse chronology and I don't want to just alternate German and Georgian for the four series, that would involve many more downloads (despite them all being on Netflix with double subtitles, I can't access Netflix here and I'd always have to plan ahead what episode to watch for each language).

While working on today's Hebrew lesson, I remembered that my former teacher at the local Israeli Union (that was 12 years ago, for three months) used to say 'babait' while on Assimil it sounds more like 'bebeit'.

Consistency is the word. More dubbed Russian, more Greek audiobook, more taking car4e of pending tasks today.

[vonPeterhof]

While working on today's Hebrew lesson, I remembered that my former teacher at the local Israeli Union (that was 12 years ago, for three months) used to say 'babait' while on Assimil it sounds more like 'bebeit'.

At first I suspected that those may be two different forms, 'babait' being the independent definite form בַּבַּ֫יִת and 'bebeit' the construct state בְּבֵית . Then I realised that the construct state would be indefinite, so the second b would turn into a v. But then, I'm not entirely certain about modern Hebrew phonology and grammar, so I don't know for sure if that transformation would happen in that case. Is 'bebeit' an independent noun or is it followed by a noun or pronoun that possesses or describes it?

[Expugnator]

While working on today's Hebrew lesson, I remembered that my former teacher at the local Israeli Union (that was 12 years ago, for three months) used to say 'babait' while on Assimil it sounds more like 'bebeit'.

At first I suspected that those may be two different forms, 'babait' being the independent definite form בַּבַּ֫יִת and 'bebeit' the construct state בְּבֵית . Then I realised that the construct state would be indefinite, so the second b would turn into a v. But then, I'm not entirely certain about modern Hebrew phonology and grammar, so I don't know for sure if that transformation would happen in that case. Is 'bebeit' an independent noun or is it followed by a noun or pronoun that possesses or describes it?

Sorry, my bad. It's beveit indeed, I misread it when typing it here though I did read about the explanation about the b turning into v sound. My doubt concerned more the ai -> ei change.

===========================
Today's Papiamento article reminds me of one post at the forum about the situation of the Frisian language - I think it was tarvos' post on trilingual education.

The article goes like this:

Duna papiamentu e mésun protekshon ku fris

It translates as "Give Papiamento the same protection as Frisian".

The article goes on as how in Bonaire it's even ceasing to be mandatory for school exams. Here is the link to the full text.

Second day of watching the dubbed series in German and I'm getting used to the voices, which is making the exercise more productive, as it was with Georgian last year. I believe it helps also with activation, as my active skills in Georgian improved and left German and Russian way behind.

Today's highlight was the Assimil Hebrew lesson and the miracle of the coffee (not that I like the brand that adopted that name and the company behind it at all).

So, the day went calmly and I could go as far as Indonesian despite having to leave to deal with the car documentation. I didn't forget the Spanish reading either, though Zafón's writing is pretty expressive with many words that sound funny and I can almost think of Portuguese equivalents for them thanks to context, but which I should be reading intensively in order to get to know properly.

[vonPeterhof]

While working on today's Hebrew lesson, I remembered that my former teacher at the local Israeli Union (that was 12 years ago, for three months) used to say 'babait' while on Assimil it sounds more like 'bebeit'.

At first I suspected that those may be two different forms, 'babait' being the independent definite form בַּבַּ֫יִת and 'bebeit' the construct state בְּבֵית . Then I realised that the construct state would be indefinite, so the second b would turn into a v. But then, I'm not entirely certain about modern Hebrew phonology and grammar, so I don't know for sure if that transformation would happen in that case. Is 'bebeit' an independent noun or is it followed by a noun or pronoun that possesses or describes it?

Sorry, my bad. It's beveit indeed, I misread it when typing it here though I did read about the explanation about the b turning into v sound. My doubt concerned more the ai -> ei change.

Yeah, in that case those are two different forms: "babait" is "in the house" and "beveit" is, roughly, "in the/a house of". The construct state triggers a change in the vowels in some nouns. From what I've read modern Hebrew uses the construct state a lot less than Biblical Hebrew and instead relies on the preposition "shel" to show possession, but you'll probably be encountering it in fixed expressions.

[Expugnator]

I've read about that as well, vonPeterhof. I've just started (Modern) Hebrew so I believe I'll get to understand all those changes better in the future.

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The weekend had nothing done lnguage-wise, absolutely nothing. I got some rest and browsed the forum during my pauses. I have a guest at home now, it's the friend of mine who owns a travel agency and is going to Russia. I hope we can discuss some details today and I am going to tell him openly how much I think it's worth for me to go.

Finished "The Invisible Man" in Mandarin! It's a great book to read in translation. There are some descriptive passages but there is a lot of dialogue. The vocabulary is not that complicated or scientific. I must say this book helped me reach a breakthrough in my Mandarin studies! Now I can more or less follow a translated novel. So far I had most words unknown and I had trouble learning both pinyin and sound. Now everything starts to get transparent (not in the sense of the invisible man ) and I'm motivated like never before about Mandarin.

My next book, another translation, will be Jo Nesbø's Snømannen (雪人). I don't know if it will be as helpful, but it looks promising, because it is a well-produced audiobook, in studio. Not to mention that the album was shared by another user and it seems this one has many gems to follow. The audio started with a preface introducing the author and the main character Harry Hole, and I was afraid I had done something wrong when getting the text, but after a couple of minutes Chapter 01 started normally, matching the text I had found.

My first impression is that there is an attempt to sound more literary from Jo Nesbø's side, but I believe this won't last when he starts to narrate Harry's adventures. The pages on my translation have more content than in The Invisible Man's book, which means I'll be listening-reading Mandarin longer in order to keep to the 4 pages a day. The book itself is also much longer. I hope this doesn't work as discouragement or lead me to just skim through half the pages while browsing elsewhere during my daily sessions.

I was feeling sleepy most of the afternoon, thanks to the heatwave. I had a meeting and so I could barely finish the Indonesian lesson despite having a good headstart from the morning.

[Tristano]

This is going to be quite challenging because Russian is the language I have most trouble with. Words don't seem to stick, case endings don't move into my active command of the language and I can't hold Skype lessons in ways where it seems like I'm actually learning instead of just going over sentences I've already ran into during my self-study time.

My Russian Anki deck has a leech rate of 9%. By comparison, Indonesian was less than 3% and Italian was less than 1%.

I think I know what the reason is.

In English, we have verbs like: to drink, to eat, to swim, to fish, to drive.

If Russian were English, those verbs would look like: to predrinkilate, to predeatilate, to podswimyarate, to pofishilate, and to posdrivilate.

And Russians would have all kinds of clever and rational-sounding explanations for why it couldn't at least be "drinkilate" instead of "predrinkilate" and how the pre prefix added a whole layer of nuisance, etc.

It's the verbs, man!

Oh my [divinity], this made me laugh out loud in the office. What a shame.

[Expugnator]

Modern Russian Grammar is moving towards syntax and leaving morphology, thus making it easier to understand, more fun and more useful. I still have to review morphology when I get to the exercises, I know, this is a ghost that will haunt me throughout my Russian studies, but at least now I'm working more on the communicative side.

Second day of Snømannen in Mandarin. I'm definitely listening-reading longer than the previous book, each page having around 4 minutes of audio, which means I'll have to spend longer on this Mandarin activity, which is then followed by 10 pages of listening-reading in Norwegian.

Finished an interesting, but long and difficult non-fiction book I was reading in English. Now I'm going for more fun and start reading some of these linguistic self-help guides. In English again.

A day of completions: I finished watching "Un air de famille", which is good also for vocabulary, only a little too centered at just one environment, like in a theater. Btw, I don't get the 4-kisses-on-the-cheek farewell.

Yet another resource finished, and it's the first book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, which I'm reading in Georgian/Portuguese - much more Georgian than Portuguese, fortunately. I'm proceeding to the second volume, but so far only the first three have been published in Georgian, which will probably leave me switching to another language if I want to keep reading the series, and finding something else to read in Georgian. I want to take advantage of these three books while I can, because they have been at the exact level I need now. I will try to read more each day, because 3% of a book with less than 100 pages is not that many pages after all.

There are also Ursula K Le Guin's books in Georgian, but I should read them in Mandarin where there are less options (as I need to find audiobooks).

Yesterday I didn't have time for the Spanish reading, but today I did. I could also finish another Russian dubbing episode and listened-read 2 pages of Greek instead of the usual single page.