Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

[Expugnator]

The weekend wasn't much productive as I was worried about the file loss and spent the little study time I'd have trying to fix it. I'm going to call a specialist because my free time also has a price, and I believe that person can solve it much more quickly. I have backups of most of it , I've been using my home PC much seldom the past years but I still want the files back as the problem with losing files is forgetting that that file even existed, and that could be a cool series or a unique textbook shared by a friend.

Today is only part-time so I'm probably not going very far, but I'll try my best. I couldn't do any study in the morning as I was taking care of the kids - it felt great to spend so much time with them, including the weekend. I did read the forum, got involved into controversy but at least it feels good to participate.

Moving forward at L/R Haarteppichknüpfer. Andreas Eschbach's style makes the text a little too dense, slow-pacing. At least the book seems short, but I'm expecting to spend more time on German daily than I was with Cornelia Funke's trilogy. I'm trapped between those two authors for native fiction, and I should find new ones.

I got side-tracked so I only made it to the Chinese series. No Russian, Estonian reading, Georgian dubbed series, Modern Greek, Hebrew or Indonesian. I had something else planned instead of my usual schedule, and now that I didn't make it that far, I regret not applying it instead, but who knows what comes next? I'll try and get some reading done in the evening.

[hedgehog.chess]

Moving forward at L/R Haarteppichknüpfer. Andreas Eschbach's style makes the text a little too dense, slow-pacing. At least the book seems short, but I'm expecting to spend more time on German daily than I was with Cornelia Funke's trilogy. I'm trapped between those two authors for native fiction, and I should find new ones.

Maybe you could find something here: Contemporary German Authors

[Expugnator]

Wow thanks a lot, hedgehog chess! That's a list I should keep coming back to!

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I still haven't built in the habit of writing down where I stopped when playing Grand Bien Vous Fasse. Either I'm skipping part of some episodes or I'm re-listening to other excerpts. Either way, I can hardly make it to a full episode on calmer days, because I play it only when I'm busy with one task and I can't read or watch video on my TLs.

Finished my current non-fiction read; started another one, now in English. Also a short one, which will allow me to move through different topics and reduce my to-read pile.

Today I finally tuned in to reading Georgian well again. I was focused and I noticed I really only miss few words, but I wasn't even trying to get them from context. Now I'm at least looking them up at the translation and making a concentrated effort to understand the sentence. It gets easier the better I get at reading.

Finished the first book in the series of the lawyer Guido Guerreri (I had listened to the third one before). Now I'm saving the second one for a while and listening to Aldo Busi - Incipit, which is more like a lecture and which I find boring so far. I'm in search for more Italian audiobooks and I'd like to sign up for Audible, but it's not the best moment yet. I have to increase my internet speed at home and shouldn't add new expenses.

A cool lesson from Routledge Hebrew about the verb to be in the past. I still have doubts about the pronunciation - after all, there is neither audio nor transcript, but I'm going to review it on pod101 as well. For now, I've had good sentence practice. I was getting into the habit of OCRing the exercises as well, but now I'm trying harder and only translating individual words while trying to understand the figure out the sentences on my own.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I bordered on completion for the SRS part but I didn't do the text input for Modern Greek and I totally forgot about resuming at Indonesian and Hebrew at home (I leave them for home because of the SRS).

I finished listening to the audiobook Hvite Negger by Ingvar Ambjørnsen. It was the second audiobook I listened to extensively in Norwegian. Even if but my level still doesn't allow me to do comfortably, I noticed some improvement throughout the weeks I spent on it. The story itself is a bit chaotic, like other works from the same author, and doesn't help comprehension. I left with the feeling that if it were a more linear plot I'd probably have been able to follow more naturally. I won't check it now because I'm taking a break from audiobooks on a harder language and replacing it with French: I started Michel Houellebecq's Soumission. It starts a bit difficult but I hope I can get the hang of it. I haven't read a novel in French for a couple of months (apart from having it as stronger language while listening-reading to Russian).

I noticed the sound quality at my phone had deteriorated and got noisy, so I thought it was the earphones. I tried another one and it was the same. Then this morning at the gym I decided to change the settings, and noticed something was changed at the equalization. I restored to the original and got my sound back, what a relief.

Audible doesn't work as I had thought, and it might not be the right time to give it a try. My to-read pile in Italian is only increasing, as it's my stronger language I read the least a day in, so I thought about listening to audiobooks. Even so, Audible is probably not the answer as I need to be able to read one book from Italian and another from France and so on, and I don't know if I'll find all of them through Amazon.com (or even none, when Amazon launchs Audible officially in Brazil thus making us stuck at Brazilian audiobooks). I still don't know how this business model surpasses just buying individual audiobooks.

Routledge Hebrew has full-speed audio. Not sure it's the best at this stage, but the dialogues are short enough anyway.

[Expugnator]

Definitely tuned in to 'Soumission'. It feels like a normal French audiobook. There is some occasional mumbling that loses me once in a while, but that is less than 1%.

I finished Sur la piste du marsupilami. A pretty okay comedy adventure movie, typical. Now I'm going to indulge myself some dubbing, by watching Les cinq légendes aka The Rise of the Guardians.

"Incipit" by Aldo Busi is a bit disgusting. I like Italian audiobooks o much and I'd like to keep listening to what I really feel like reading, not just to an "Italian resource". That's my dream for all of the Romance languages I speak. As a matter of fact, Romance languages remain the only ones I can listen to audiobooks to, given my total failure to reach B2 in any other language family. That limits a bit and reinforces my need to keep a list of stuff I'm really looking forward to listening to, or surrendering to listening in English once in a while. Adding German to the game would make it all easier, though.

When answering French Clozemaster, random, text input, I have reached a level of automaticity that is higher that any other language, even multiple choice (for example, Italian). This is a confirmation of having reached a higher level and sets a bookmark to be pursuited and used as reference for other languages.

What's on Grand Bien Vous Fasse today:



It felt almost like holidays; a short review at Assimil Indonesian and a short end-of-unit lesson on Routledge Hebrew. Tomorrow is another day off from studies.

[Expugnator]

The weekend was mostly forum reading. I finally caught up with the discussions. It's good to feel a bit more part of the community, rather than limit myself to this log. I did some reading ahead while taking the car for washing, listened to one episode of the Italian podcast and did the bare minimum to keep my streak on Clozemaster for Norwegian and Mandarin. By the way, I noticed that if I work on missing levels individually towards mastery, I'm less likely to have to go through mastered sentences again which are presented erroneously at 0% mastered.

My HDD hasn't been recovered yet, so I'm not gathering any new material. Italian audiobooks are critical. Anyway, only this week and half the next one of full study and then quick vacations.

I'm trying to be "present" on my studies again and avoid zoning out. This is an ongoing topic in my routine and it happens not only when the material is too high for my level - I tend to use subtitles and translation anyway, so this is no excuse. Today at Estonian I forced myself to hear the dialogues and not just read the subtitles, trying to build up the confidence that I can already understand a lot from them. With Mandarin listening-reading, this fanread is still too fast, and I hope things get back into good when I do the next one, The Three-Body Problem, with a properly edited audiobook. As for Norwegian, I'm really looking forward to finishing Evna and starting a new one with 'normal' vocabulary, but I have the Vindeltorn series to work on yet, though it's easier than Odinbarn. I have the feeling I'm not far away from basic fluency in Norwegian, but not knowing well enough the main words prevents me from getting there.

Listening-reading in Modern Greek is starting to pay off. I might soon be reaching the same level as in Estonian, looking forward to surpassing Georgian at this rhythm. I want Greek to be an extensive-listening-audiobook language.

Plenty of post-schedule time, though it was spent on some important pending non-language activities. SRS got postponed.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I managed to do all my Clozemaster. No Speakly.me or Duolingo though, as I didn't have my earphones by then. I got to bed earlier and slept well. I went to the gym this morning and then back again there for some tests, all right. As a result, I got here later so that means less study time today, which I hope won't impact that much.

Finished Aldo Busi's Incipit - actually a lecture - and started the second book in Guido Guerreri's series - Ad occhi chiusi. Audio transparent as usual; it's my last audiobook before I have to search for more. I still haven't got my HDD back so i won't turn on my home computer.

German is becoming transparent. I wonder if some actual extensive reading wouldn't help for a change.

Today's Routledge Hebrew lesson was enormous. They introduced the gerund, but I am still clueless. Not much new in terms of vocabulary, just the unusual length made me tired. No Spanish reading for the day.

[Expugnator]

I'm get on the mood for Grand Bien Vous Fasse. My listening comprehension has improved somehow in the sense that I have to make a less intense effort in order to understand.

At a Whatsapp group, someone recommended "Nit i dia". What am I waiting for? I have novels and series recommendations for Catalan. Well, podcasts are missing. Moreover, I don't even have time for Spanish and Italian series as of yet. Having no way for watching series at home makes it tougher.

I mistakenly launched a Lower Intermediate instead of a Lower Beginner Hebrewpod101 lesson, and I was about to curse on their steep learning curve, as they were already covering the past! Well, it didn't feel that difficult, which means I'm on the right track.

Catalan keeps haunting me. I also got recommended this channel:

En Peyu

Le tube d'aujourd'hui:



Another day with a very long Routledge Hebrew lesson. I'm running out of mental energy for decyphering also the grammar explanations, which also have sample sentences. Still, I'm happy with my reading skills so far, I'm not falling much behind as with other resources. Anyway, I was so ahead of schedule earlier on that if it weren't for the Hebrew lesson I would have at least 3 free hours at the end of the day.

Grand Bien Vous Fasse stopped working on the browser today. I wonder if the audioblock came into play weeks later. Anyway, for today I've downloaded the France Inter app and I hope I can resume using the browser for it again, because it's much more convenient than having to pick the phone for pausing and resuming it all the time.

[Expugnator]

Listening to "Soumission" feels like a prize and a rest after a long study day. I like Houellebecq's style at this particular book, in spite of the controversial theme. It doesn't seem that much groomy so far, on previous books it sounded much worse even when dealing with milder topics.

I still missed the TTS-dependant Hebrew and Indonesian (more so Hebrew than Indonesian, as Indonesian works on Chrome) on Clozemaster. I need to think of a better routine for when I'll have access to the newer iPad, maybe early in the morning.

"Grand Bien Vous Fasse" isn't working on the browser any longer :/ Extra work changing earphones from the one on the phone to the one at the desktop. Well, at least the podcast app keeps track of where I stopped.

At the Georgian novel, there's a tricky similar-sounding word: სეტყვა means hail, while სიტყვა means word.

Today I watched two episodes of Лунтик with near 100% comprehension. I think it's still a useful exercise because the words are not part of my active vocabulary. There is another cartoon Arnaud recommended which seems also interesting, but eventually I'll have to get back to series (everyone is watching Нюхач season 3).

A short Hebrew lesson, for a change. Finishing tasks over 3 hours ahead. Today's Routledge lessons was about numbers and how the masculine forms end in -ah. I could do with a more common textbook that covers grammar in a learner-friendly order, because at Routledge Hebrew there are no translations or transliterations for the sample sentences and a normal grammar book will enter into too much detail (while pod101 is more systematic than Assimil, it still isn't suitable for using as a reference work). Surprisingly, Colloquial Hebrew comes quite suitable. Well, even Routledge's Essential Grammar seems essential enough.

I even had a lot to do today, and as a result I listened to a full episode from Grand Bien Vous Fasse on the background, while starting a new one, Comment se sortir d'un burn out?.

I didn't work on anything new in spite of the extra time available. I'm a bit devastated that I don't seem to have access to my series dubbed in German anymore (well, I can on Netflix but that won't work here). I only hope that if the trend prevails and I finish my language study earlier and earlier, I might end up productive on other spheres as well.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I managed to do pratically everything in terms of sentence method. I had more time in the evening and so I did the Clozemaster Hebrew and Indonesian with TTS, text input for Mandarin, Russian, German and Modern Greek and also Speakly.me for Estonian and Duolingo Russian and Hebrew.

Today I have a new goal. I expect to be able to do something different while still at study time.

Back with German series, fortunately. I noticed new seasons for a couple of them aren't available in dubbed German, so I'll probably watch these in Georgian and the remaining ones in German. As for Grand Bien Vous Fasse, it's official: I'll be able to listen to it only from my iPhone now.

Starting to understand the Russian at A series of unfortunate events. Finally. Still far from being able to read extensively, but while listening-reading I only have to look up a few words.

So I started to use my extra time by first resuming older series, in French and in Italian. It was really hard to follow either of them because of the noise around, with people talking out loud here. yet I noticed an improvement, especially in Italian. Last time I watched that Italian series I hadn't started listening to audiobooks yet.

IT. Sono davvero un po' stanco, sebbene non fisicamente, ma mentalmente. L'aria condizionata non è stata messa in funzionamento tutta la giornata, e per questo non ho la stessa energia da solito. Almeno è venerdì e potrei tornare a casa e vedere le bambine prima di prendere la macchina per andare ad un'altro appuntamento.

ZH 我必须先去超市然后才回家。有些小吃要买。巴西的小吃很好吃。我不太喜欢油炸食品，但是我刚才发现有一个不需要煎炸的小吃品牌。我是今天早上带孩子们去幼儿园的时候发现的。我正在红绿灯处等候，有一个女士给我一本宣传单张。所以呢，我下班以后才要去超市看一看。

NO Jeg gleder meg til ferie. Jeg trodde jeg aldri skulle skrive noe slik, men det gjør jeg nå. Jeg skal reise til hjemby for å besøke foreldrene og søskene mine. Vi flyer dit - siste gang reiste vi med bil, men det var jul og nyttår, det var sommer, vi skulle på strand og vi hadde flere dager med ferie. Nå er det bare ei uke og det løner seg ikke å tilbringe en full dag på veien dit og en annen tilbake.

PAP Mi ta tuma parti den un grupo di Whatsapp unda hendenan ta interesá siña su mes Papiamentu. E grupo ei no tábata hamás mashá aktibu , ma tin un par di luna kaba ku un tipo fo'i Venezuela a kuminsá skirbi i puntrá kos tur dia. Esaki ta gustá mi, maske ku mi no ta logra partisipá hopi i kontestá tur kos ku e ta puntrá.

ET Mulle väga meeldiks, kui saaksin eesti keeles romaani lugeda. Ma proovin iga päev ühte lehte lugeda, aga ma loen tõlgitud romaanid ja mitte originaalseid eesti romaanid. Lugemine on väga aeglane Mulle meeldib ka telekat vaadata. Kahjuks ei ole mul aega ega keegi kellega harjutama eesti keelt. Pealegi, ma kasutan app nimega Speakly.me eesti lausete harjutamiseks.

ES Desde que leí el tópico "French or Spanish?", he pensado de escribir algunas palabras en español en homenaje a mi amigo iguanamon. Citándolo, yo estaría aprendendo español despacito desde hace unos años. En verdad he hecho variadas incursiones en el idioma, incluso he tenido clases en el colegio y en una escuela privada. Todavía no he aprendido mucho, es verdad, y se nota la influencia de mi idioma materno en lo que se convencionó llamar 'portuñol', una interlingua hablada por millones de personas en Latinoamerica, en la península ibérica e incluso en otras regiones de los EE.UU. y de América Central (y aquí se lee 'interlingua' en el sentido técnico lingüístico y no en el de aquel idioma auxiliar). Bueno, tengo que admitir que el español no es una prioridad en este momento, pero que sí me agradaría muchísimo hablar con fluidez. Es uno de los pocos idiomas para el cuál yo tendría una utilidad práctica así como la oportunidad de hablarlo en la vida real. A veces me pregunto qué hago con todos esos idiomas que no tendré casi ocasión de utilizar además de leer novelas y ver series de televisión en mi ordenador.

FR J'aime bien écrire dans mes langues étrangères quand j'ai de vrais choses à dire. Je n'aime pas quand tout ce que j'écrit dans une langue s'agit du métalangage, c'est-à-dire un texte qui parle du processus d'apprentissage lui-même. Cela me rappelle ces vidéos sur Youtube où des polyglottes se présent et disent la même chose dans 10, 15 langues, sur leur vie personelle et sur comme il sont devenus polyglottes (en réduissant, bien sûr, la quantité d'information à mesure qu'ils passent de la langue plus profficiente à la langue moins profficiente). J'ai essayé de ne pas faire cela aujourd'hui: j'ai écrit les mêmes choses que j'aurais écrit en anglais, mais je n'y ai pas complètement réussit en estonien parce qu'il n'y avait vraiment rien de nouveau à racconter sur mes études dans cette langue aujourd'hui. En autre, j'ai écrit en italien, espagnol et français d'après ma memoire et mes compétences linguistiques, sans consulter un dictionnaire ou Google sur mes doutes. J'ai fais ça timidement pour le norvégien, mais pour le chinois et l'estonien c'était plutôt une construction textuelle hybride entre deux fênetres de Google Translator, comme c'était le cas auparavant.

That's what I had in mind when I wrote that I'd try something different today. I think I made a good use of my extra time. I tried hard just to keep writing my log as if I were doing it in English, about whay I did today, instead of taking the repetitive path of writing on how long I've studied a language, why I like it, the troubles I have with it etc. While it's true that I have yet to build some islands, I think it helps writing more naturally. I still have some minutes which I'm going to use on sentence-based apps.