kanewai's book shelf (current: italian)

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kanewai
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kanewai's book shelf (current: italian)

Postby kanewai » Mon Jul 20, 2015 8:07 pm

Oct 2015: I finally have a new home computer & can rejoin the forums!
_________________________________________________________________
I have a lot of Super Challenge material that I wanted to write about. I'll just do notes here, and flesh it out when the forum is back or permanently relocated.

Inferno - I stayed up late and made my escape from Hell last night, more than one year after starting. The toscana dialect is still hard to read, and I am still completely dependent on the English translation. I can't tell if this helps my Italian, or if it has no effect at all.

At least it was a good read. And it ended with a bang - the last circle had the saddest and most gruesome stories yet.

Image

We meet the devil, a massive three-faced creature frozen in the ice. One mouth is eating Judas Iscariot. No surprise there. The other two are eating Brutus and Cassius - the men who murdered Caesar. I definitely didn't see that coming.

Image

Our heroes make their escape (no spoilers - you'll have to read it yourselves to discover how), and gravity flips as Virgil and Dante cross through the center of the earth. It was like something out of Jules Verne - I didn't realize that 14th Century Italians understood gravity on that level.

Next up: Purgatorio. I've read that the poetry here is better than in the Inferno. I'll find out soon.
Last edited by kanewai on Fri Mar 31, 2023 7:34 pm, edited 9 times in total.
4 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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kanewai
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Joined: Fri May 22, 2015 9:10 pm
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Re: Kanewai in Exile

Postby kanewai » Tue Jul 21, 2015 2:55 am

It's a lot easier to post pics on this platform. That's a nice change
0 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

User avatar
kanewai
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Posts: 753
Joined: Fri May 22, 2015 9:10 pm
Location: Honolulu
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Active: Italian
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Re: Kanewai in Exile

Postby kanewai » Tue Jul 21, 2015 2:56 am

Post 3 - I'll be official after this!
0 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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kanewai
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Posts: 753
Joined: Fri May 22, 2015 9:10 pm
Location: Honolulu
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Re: Kanewai in Exile

Postby kanewai » Fri Aug 07, 2015 11:54 pm

Log Recovery: selections from my first year of French
alt: J'étais si naïf!

10 August 2011

I'm two months into my drive to reach a passable level of French proficiency by the end of the year.

Goal: To be proficient enough in French by Dec 31, 2011 that I can move on to using original sources. i.e. - that I can read and listen to French daily without actively studying the language.

Pourquoi? I want to be fluent in seven languages by the time I turn 50.

The Warm Up: Two months with Pimsleur 1 and 2

I became a Pimsleur believer last year, when I used it to prep for a trip to Mexico. After doing 1 & 2 I landed feeling pretty confident of my abilities, and was able to travel to places where no English was spoken. The system worked. I wasn't fluent, but I could get around.

So I started using Pimsleur French 1 earlier this Spring as a way to warm up, and refresh my memory. It worked, it was great, I bought Pimsleur 2. I enjoyed the first half, but became increasingly frustrated by the second half. I realized that Pimsleur could help a great deal if I wanted to learn decent 'tourist French,' but it wasn't helping one bit in understanding my podcast.

By the latter half of the second series I was close to hating Pimselur. Every single lesson seemed to revolve around a game of tennis. It was excruciating. Just a tad more variety would have been nice. I had intended to finish Pimsleur before starting a new system, but Assimil looked fun, so I jumped the gun and started it.

Assimil is fun, and I like that it has short lessons. I can do a lesson in about 20 minutes.

FSI is a grind, and I've avoided pattern/drill systems in the past, but ... it works. And I'm even starting to enjoy it somewhat.

16 August

I'm actually getting a bit obsessive over FSI. I enjoy Assimil more, but FSI is more rewarding in that I can measure my progress. I've gone from thinking that I'll just do a couple chapters to thinking, I could finish this volume. Maybe even both!

22 August

FSI has turned cruel. Imagine having to work through this:

j'ai cinquant francs
j'ai cinq enfants
j'ai cent cinq francs


But I persevere! FSI continues to pound information into my brain. It's brutal but effective.

I still don't feel like I'm retaining as much with Assimil, but I'm going on faith that the system works and that I'll assimilate it in the end, like the name says.

I've been inputting all new vocabulary and idioms into Anki, and there hasn't been much crossover between FSI & Assimil. But then again, FSI is more concerned with the weather at my villa en Normandy, which I've rented for the season, or whether I've read le discours from the president yet. With Assimil I've admired Degas with a droll colonel, and waited outside a night club in the rain.

Both FSI and Assimil have introduced the past tense this week, which is nice timing. Synergy at it's best. French in Action is still at the super basic level, but le professeur Capretz is captivating and the boys are cute, and I'm resisting the urge to jump ahead to a more challenging level.

7 September: Quelle désastre

I was out of town for two weeks, and was facing long flights and plenty of down time. I wanted to make significant progress on my lessons, and loaded up my iphone with two complete FSI lessons and all of the Assimil lessons, and downloaded the Anki app.

My phone was stolen three hours into the trip. And since I don't travel with my laptop, I only had my books to go on.

I didn't do anything for three days, then decided I might as well just study from the books
As we all know, reading is the easiest part, and listening comprehension the hardest. This is why I could pass French in college without really understanding much in real life. And I finally hit a section of FSI that was so pronoun-intensive that I realized that I had to stop and wait til I could listen to the recordings at home.

It's a bit rough falling behind! And I'll take it slow and steady. I'm studying so that I can order fromage from the fromagerie and paté from the boucherie when I'm in Paris, not so that I can read Le Monde!

The rest of September is all French. And then I'll need to make some decisions. I'm taking an unexpected surf trip to Mexico over Thanksgiving, so I might take a four to six week detour into improving my Spanish. I'll keep up the French passively then, though I'm not sure how. December will be all French, and then I need to figure out how to work Arabic and Italian into the mix!


13 September: Me vs. The Linear Projection Fallacy

I was making such rapid progress for awhile - I was finishing an FSI lesson each week, and was going through the early Assimil lessons like a rocket. I thought, I'll finish FSI Volume I by the end of September! And I'll be able to start Assimil Using French this fall!

Life doesn't work like that. FSI Lesson 9 introduced the passé composé and multiple pronouns in the same lesson, and then mixed in with negative and inverted questions. Mon dieu. It was like being in school all over again. On paper I could handle this. It wasn't that hard. But listening and repeating it? The consonants seem to disappear, to be barely whispered, and I struggled hard. I listened to lessons again and again. I did the lesson three times, and did worse the third time than the first. My poor little brain begged for relief.

I'm gonna move on to Lesson 10 at the end of the week. There comes a point where we just have to move on.

It also took me two long sessions to upload all my new Assimil vocabulary into Anki. I will never fall behind again.

The past couple weeks have been chaotic, and so was my studying. There wasn't anything methodical about it; I would just try and expose myself to French to keep it fresh. That doesn't work for me. I think I wasted a lot of time and energy. I've realized that I need to follow a format, or a plan of attack.

Chaotic and scatter-shot studying did not work! I'm back to approaching the lessons one step at a time.

And I splurged on a treat!!! ... I ordered four graphic novels on Amazon France. They are part of a series commissioned by the Louvre, and each is by a different artist. They look awesome.

18 September: La vie monotone d'un petit bourgeois parisien

Am I actually detecting a touch of humor in FSI? Or have I just been studying too much lately, and am seeing irony where none was intended?

Most of Lesson 13 dealt with how to interview a bonne to help the madame with the kids. I learned that it is difficult managing a house by oneself, and a woman needs a good maid, nanny, and - if she's lucky - a nice French hunk pour faire le gros travail.

I kid. FSI doesn't teach you how to hire a hunky handyman. It's only implied.

20 September

I can now ask ma secrétaire to collect her crayons, take a message en steno, and then to make three copies.

The FSI course is all about reading. I don't think I could handle two full language courses right now, and my French isn't good enough yet to just "maintain." But I find that I can handle one full course (reading, listening, speaking French) and one reading course (Modern Standard Arabic). And so I'm doing about twenty minutes a day of Arabic reading, and it's been fine. I finished three lessons, taking about two days to do each.

I might need to spend more days on each moving forward. I'm not gonna push it, and not gonna stress about it. I'll think of it as my "passive" phase, and do this at least through the end of the year, and see where it takes me. Even at this slow pace I should be able to finish Volume I by then (there are three volumes, though!). And at some point in the Spring I'll make a push for actually speaking Tunisian Derja.

30 September: 16 Week Wrap Up

And here are my thoughts on my 4-month French semi-intensive (it was intensive for me, at 30" minimum a day ... I know that's light weight for some folks in these parts!):

Intro: Pimsleur 1. I did this back in the Spring, and don't really count it as part of my study. It was more a refresher, since I haven't studied French since 1990. It was a good intro, and I think Pimsleur is a strong system for European languages. Pimsleur Japanese and Arabic, on the other hand, just frustrated me.

One month: Pimsleur 2 . This started well, but became excruciatingly painful by the end. It seemed the editors ran out of steam, or any original idea, and it was lesson after lesson of, Do you like to play tennis? Ask Alain if he likes to play tennis. Ask Alain if he will play tennis on Tuesday. Tell Alain that you did not play tennis last month. Tell Alain that you did not play tennis last week. By the end I wanted to tell Alain to shove a tennis ball up where le soleil don't shine.

Even though Pimsleur helped me a lot, I don't think I ever want to do a course again.

12 weeks: Assimil to Lesson 84 (out of 113), FSI Vol 1 to Lesson 10 (out of 12).
This was an awesome combination. I highly recommend it. They each balance off each other quite well. I could do FSI drills while cooking or driving, while I could do Assimil when I had time to sit down with a book.

I wanted to finish FSI Volume 1, but I'll have to pick it up again post-break.

French in Action As much as I enjoyed this series, I never got beyond Lesson 5. It just didn't compel me enough.

Anki I ... uhm ... don't hurt me, but I can't keep up the enthusiasm for my Anki deck. I started with a bang, but there was so much vocab being introduced that it became a real pain to keep the deck updated. Like FIA, I might find it more useful in the coming maintenance phase.

C'est tout! I am nowhere near as far along as I thought I'd be. It's easy to forget just how massive an undertaking it is to truly learn a new language! My goal now is to maintain what I have, then after Thanksgiving (end of November for the non-Americans) I'll refocus.

For studying I had to get comfortable with the idea of talking out loud, in the car, or at the coffee shop, or even at home when no one was around. I'd make sure I'd have my book visible so that I didn't look too crazy!

And I don't think I can go back to any of the "Teach Yourself" or "Living Language" type books, although there was a point (pre HTLAL) that those would have been my first and only choices.

06 December

And I'm back on Plan A: French and only French for the next two months. I might "cheat" and try some Arabic on the weekends, but I've realized that I really do need to focus on one language at a time.

I had done about 15 weeks of study, then took 8 weeks off to focus on Spanish. I had some exposure to French, mostly through reading graphic novels. But for the most part, I was Franco-free.

After my experience with Assimil Spanish in Mexico, I realized that I was rushing the course too much. This round I'll slow it down, even though I really, really want to finish the course.

The past week I went back to FSI French, picking up right where I left off at Lesson 11. And it was easy at first, and I thought: the break really helped! I'm speaking French even better than before.

18 December

Am I actually detecting a touch of humor in FSI? Or have I just been studying too much lately, and am seeing irony where none was intended?

Most of Lesson 13 dealt with how to interview a bonne to help the madame with the kids. I learned that it is difficult managing a house by oneself, and a woman needs a good maid, nanny, and - if she's lucky - a nice French hunk pour faire le gros travail.

I kid. FSI doesn't teach you how to hire a hunky handyman. It's only implied.

23 December

Whoever stocked our public library should have consulted with HTLAL first. There are shelves full of sub-par programs (Learn French in Ten Days! Making Out in Gaelic! Speak Ancient Greek with the Five Minutes a Day Method! ). And yet they only have the short versions and the introductions for the courses that actually work.

29 December: 2011 Wrap Up

I would guess I spent 24 weeks with French as my focus between May and December, with a break in the fall, spending between 30" to 90"
per day. I liked this order, starting with Pimsleur and then moving to an FSI/Assimil combination.

For all that, I still don't think I've made the jump from A1/A2 to B1! I don't think I speak well at all, and want to step back in 2012 and focus on some of the more speaking-oriented programs: Pimsleur III, maybe Michel Thomas Advanced. And I fully intend to finish French with Ease, and to start Using French.

2 January 2012: French Intensive

I took advantage of the holiday weekend to do some intensive studying. For the past five days it's been French whenever and however I can. I made a big jump, but it was exhausting and intense and felt a bit psychotic at times.

I don't know how some of you all study four or five hours a day. I lose focus and start to drift off. This was good for a week, and I'll do three more intensives in the coming months (one per holiday weekend), but this coming week I'm moving back to "slow and steady."

I've also added a bit of weight from all the sitting around studying, given that I usually study with either a glass of wine, a beer, or a pint of ice cream to feed my brain. Professor Arguelles never mentioned that big hips were one of the prices of polyglottary.

I did a self-evaluation that I saw on Black Dahlia's log, and got a 60% in French, or Beginner level. That's fair, but I had hoped for more!

25 January

It has really helped me to have a variety of materials to work with. I have a main course for each of my target languages, and will do some from other courses if I've met my goals for the week. Or if I'm bored and need a change. The main challenge is keeping track of where I left off on my secondary resources. I used Google calendars for awhile, but now just check `em off on a spreadsheet.

30 January

I'm getting a little impatient with Assimil. There's nothing in particular, I just think it's time for a break. I want to finish the Active Wave of French with Ease, at least to Chapter 100 (so, eight to go). I'll skip the last 12, as it revolved around a dull story about a couple looking for work. I know how the story ends, and I don't feel like reading it again!

I think the Passive / Active wave of Assimil is brilliant. I like going back and re- doing earlier chapters. At first I could transcribe most of the chapter without difficulty, but more and more the dialogues involve slang and idioms that aren't repeated. It's hard to retain much when you only encounter a phrase once or twice.

1 February

This is how my week went:

Friday: I am so far behind my goals. I suck. I'm not learning anything.
Saturday: Actually, I'm doing pretty good! Look at the amazing progress I've made!
Sunday: Just ... a little more ... I can get past this hump. Just ... one more hour ...
Monday: I love Assimil!
Tuesday: I hate Assimil!
Wednesday: I can't do three at once. I need to drop one. Or add one! I want to learn Catalan! Yeah!

I knew my brain was gonna snap if I tried three languages at once.

16 February: Crunch Time

I leave for Europe in 40 days, and am shifting away from learning new material towards cleaning up my conversational skills, and solidifying what I know. It's an epic trip: 6 days Barcelona, 6 in Rome, 10 days Tunisia, and 6 days Paris. It's been my incentive to study hard! And, since I really need to not spend any money between now and then, studying gives me a good excuse to stay home at night.

For me, conversation=Pimsleur, but the thought of doing Pimsleur lessons in three different languages each day sounded awful. Instead, I've decided to try rotating my language. One day everything will be in Italian, one day French, then the next Arabic.

I don't think this is a sustainable method, but I think it'll work for the next six weeks. I have so many resources for French and Italian (movies, podcasts, music Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, Assimil, novels, and graphic novels!) that it's kind of fun to immerse myself. I figure, as long as I do one or two "real" course lessons each day, the rest can be the fun stuff.

24 February

I can barely handle three languages, so why not do five? There's a flaw in my logic somewhere. My thinking went something like this:

1. Studying three languages is hard! I think I'll only do it this one time ...
2. But I really should brush up on my Spanish, so maybe I'll work in a few Pimselur lessons right before I go ... maybe I'll do a five-day Spanish intensive ...
3. I'm at a comfortable place with French, and I've learned far more than i thought of Italian; maybe I should think about trying to do ten days focused on Spanish.
4. And ooh, the new Teach Yourself Catalan is only $27, I can squeeze some Catalan in there, I think ... I wonder how much I could learn in a week?


1 March: T minus 4 Weeks

My brain hasn't exploded yet.

French is taking less and less brain power ... I think that's a sign that I'm finally reaching a stable level.

6 March

Thirty minutes from the end of the last tape, and Michael Thomas says, "there is one more thing I have to tell you ..."

Dammit. Really. I'm almost finished, I've just mastered nineteen tenses, it's the home stretch, and now you say "one more thing???"

"... we have something in French called the subjunctive ... "

and I hang my head in defeat. Of course. I was trying to pretend that it didn't exist; I was hoping that this mood would just stay quiet and not bother me.

The thunder was so loud last night I couldn't sleep, so I rode out the storm curled up on the couch with the subjunctive and my cat.

21 March: Self Evaluation

I am really happy with the progress I've made. There's been a bit of trial and error, and a few dead ends, but I've made pretty solid progress overall. My big issue now is under-estimating the time needed to study properly. For future planning I have to remind myself: You have to put in the time! You have to put in the time! You have to put in the time! Like a mantra.

I have logged about 300 hours, and think that I'm at a solid A2, with B1 in reach. I have ten days in Tunisia and six in Paris coming up, so I should easily reach a B1 level, & perhaps have a shot at B2.

27 April: Trip Report

Aloha all! I'm back from my wanderings. I'll get back to my log as soon as I catch up at work (or at least, when I'm not so far behind). I had a pretty amazing trip.

Here's my "language trip report."

Catalan (Barcelona, 5 days) - I did about fifteen hours of study, so I had no illusions of actually knowing much. There was definitely no practical benefit for this, and it might have actually hurt me in the real world! I'd try to speak, and sometimes some Spanish would come out, and sometimes Italian, and sometimes Catalan. If I was lucky it would be a full phrase in one single language, but usually it was some Romantic mush with a little bit of everything thrown in.

But I would still study it again.

Italian (Rome, six days) - I did about 65 hours of study, and felt comfortable with basic communication. I loved the Italian language, I loved Rome, and I will be back one day.

I tried to do some FSI lessons while in Italy, at the coffee shops or over wine, but FSI isn't really conducive for study while on the road. I think a Teach Yourself-type book would've been better for the level I was at.

I guess my accent was good - there were a couple people who tried to carry on full conversations with me, not realizing at first that I could only understand a small fraction of what they said.

Derja / Tunisian Arabic (Tunisia, 10 days) - No luck. I spoke French in Tunisia. If I study Arabic again it will be one of the major colloquial dialects, one that has more material for the student. I was also traveling with a monolingual buddy for this part of the trip, so I wasn't as immersed in the language as I was in Italy and Spain.

French (Paris, 6 days) - I was also with an English-speaking buddy for Paris. I know that my accent and grammar were atrocious, but I was able to handle almost all basic travelling needs in French. This was a pretty big advance for me. In the touristed areas people would usually switch to English, but otherwise everyone was very supportive and encouraging of my attempts to speak.

I listened to Michel Thomas Language Builder in my down time. It was an excellent program to use on the road. Almost every phrase he taught was useful (as in, I'd hear a phrase and think, I could've used that this morning! And then I was ready to use it when the next opportunity arose).

Language Builder is fast-paced; I don't think it would've helped me if I didn't have a solid base already.

----------------------------

I'm continuing on with Assimil Le Français en Pratique, and should finish in a couple weeks. I'm going to ease up on the intensity of study for awhile, and just stick to one language and go at an easy pace!

Though ... my coworker and his wife are starting Japanese, and it is tempting ...

30 April: Kerrie makes a fateful suggestion

Kerrie wrote: You should think about doing the Super Challenge that Cristina has organized. It would be great motivation for your French. :D

1 May

100 actual books in 20 months is completely unrealistic for me

10 May

I read somewhere on here that almost no one finished the second level of FSI. That alone is motivation for me to try! Though right now I'm finding Assimil and the Super Challenge challenging enough. FSI is something that I'll get back to, maybe this summer, maybe further on.

15 May: Where I get jumped by the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif

I've started thinking of this as 'French Round 3' for me. Round 1 was two years at the University. Round 2 was reaching B-1 over the past year. And now Round 3, where I aim to go from B1 to B2

The what? you ask. Isn't that one of those tenses in the back of the book that our professors told us that we would never, ever, have to use? Well. Something has escaped from the back of the book. Witness this paragraph from Madame Bovary:

Elle se demandait s'il n'y aurait pas eu moyen, par d'autres combinaisons du hasard, de rencontrer un autre homme; et elle cherchait à imaginer quels eussent été ces événements non survenus, cette vie différente, ce mari qu'elle ne connaissait pas*.

There's not a single simple tense in there. The 'literary tenses' are beautiful, but it's hard to take it all in at this point - I hit critical mass and all the tenses I had ever learned suddenly merged into a big pile of mush in my brain. I need to do more than just read and assimilate things; I need to set my ass down and do a touch of good old-fashioned studying. My first step will be to make a complete conjugation reference sheet of the top 20 verbs.

(* She asked herself if there might have been another way, by another combination of chance, to have met another man; and she dreamt of events that never happened, the different life, the husband that she never knew.)

22 May

The more I learn, the more I realize just how far I have to go.

12 June: Brain Freeze

It went like this:

Pimsleur: Tell your friend you want to go shopping.
Brain: zzzzzz
Me: Hey! Wake up!
Pimsleur: Kyo wa kaimono ga shitai n desu ga?
Brain: Kyo wa ... something.
Me: Oh come one, try a bit harder.
Pimsleur: Ask her if she has any money.
Brain: Why are we doing this again?
Me: Just focus.
Pimsleur: okane o motte imasu ka?
Brain: I knew that.
Pimsleur: Ask her if she has fifty one dollars.
Brain: No.
Me: What?
Stomach: I'm hungry. Let's eat.
Brain: I don't care.
Me: Fine. (hits pause, and ends the pain)


14 June 2012: First Year Progress Report

kanewai wrote:
Goal: To be proficient enough in French by Dec 31, 2011 that I can move on to using original sources. i.e. - that I can read and listen to French daily without actively studying the language.

Reality:
ah ha ha ha ha! I'm not even close. I've read three graphic novels, three books (Le Petit Prince; 20,000 lieues sous les mers, part 1; and most of Madame Bovary), and am slowly getting more proficient. Perhaps by December 2012? The Super Challenge is helping me stay motivated here.

I've also realized that the 'maintenance' level of a language is much higher than I anticipated, and I have a lot of active study ahead of me before I reach that point.

kanewai wrote:
Pourquoi? I want to be fluent in seven languages by the time I turn 50.

Reality: Thank you all for not laughing out loud when you read this. Or at least not doing it to my face.

Again, I had no idea how much work polyglots need to put in just to maintain their languages. Use it or lose it, right? My new, realistic goal is to be fluent in three (French, Spanish, and English), though I still might flirt with lots of others.

kanewai wrote:
Yardsticks: I'll listen to a podcast of RFI, Journal en français facile to measure my progress. And this coming Spring I intend to spend a week each in Tunisia, Marrakesh, and Paris. That will be my real test!

I am just now reaching a point where I can listen to RFI and catch most of it. But I did travel - ten days in Tunisia, and a week in Paris - and was very happy with my level of spoken French. It wasn't elegant or refined, but nobody was wincing in pain or demanding that I switch back to English, either. I'm calling that a victory.

I think it should be possible to reach a solid B2 level by the end of the year, through a mix of reading and coursework. I'll be watching lots of flics and listening to podcasts also, but these feel more supplementary to my actual studying.

Speaking will be the challenge, so I'm already fantasizing about another trip next winter or spring to somewhere francophone. Tahiti is only five hours away (!), but it costs just as much to fly 18 hours to Paris. I can't figure that one out.
Last edited by kanewai on Sat Aug 08, 2015 2:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
10 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

User avatar
kanewai
Blue Belt
Posts: 753
Joined: Fri May 22, 2015 9:10 pm
Location: Honolulu
Languages: Native: English
Active: Italian
Maintenance: Spanish, French
Priors: Chuukese (Micronesian), Indonesian, Latin, Greek (epic and modern), Turkish, Arabic
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Contact:

Re: Kanewai in Exile

Postby kanewai » Sat Aug 08, 2015 12:00 am

Something I noticed while looking over my HTLAL log: I am always just a few months away from reaching B2.
10 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

User avatar
kanewai
Blue Belt
Posts: 753
Joined: Fri May 22, 2015 9:10 pm
Location: Honolulu
Languages: Native: English
Active: Italian
Maintenance: Spanish, French
Priors: Chuukese (Micronesian), Indonesian, Latin, Greek (epic and modern), Turkish, Arabic
x 3219
Contact:

Re: Kanewai in Exile (TAC Team Caesar)

Postby kanewai » Thu Aug 20, 2015 10:45 am

Experiment time: uploading images from my pad:

Failed. Images too large.
0 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

User avatar
kanewai
Blue Belt
Posts: 753
Joined: Fri May 22, 2015 9:10 pm
Location: Honolulu
Languages: Native: English
Active: Italian
Maintenance: Spanish, French
Priors: Chuukese (Micronesian), Indonesian, Latin, Greek (epic and modern), Turkish, Arabic
x 3219
Contact:

Re: Kanewai in Exile (TAC Team Caesar)

Postby kanewai » Thu Aug 20, 2015 10:43 pm

Ten more hours and I'm off to Italy for three weeks.

I've been working on Italian for about a year, putting in an average of an hour a day the past three months. I've completed Assimil, Living Language, and 4 1/2 Pimsleur levels, I can understand most of a podcast at the A2/B1 level, I'm 60 books into the Super Challenge & am reading more or less independently ... and I still feel like I know nothing and am not prepared at all.

I've been so busy at work the last few weeks that I had to back off on the intensity. I liked the idea of doing all-Italian all-the-time, but didn't have the mental energy for it. Instead I've been doing one Pimsleur lesson in the morning, reading over lunch, and just listening to music when I get home.

I tried to make restaurant reservations yesterday over the phone. It was a simple sentence: vorrei prenotare un tavola per sei persone. I practiced at home, and I thought my accent sounded good. And then I actually made the call ... and what came out was buon giorno ... vorrei? ... hmm ... prenotare? ... un tavoloa? ... non, mi scusi ... una tavala? ... no ... damn ... prenotare un tavola. Si. Per sei persone.

It must have been painful for the guy on the other line, but he was a good sport and worked me through the dates and times. I choked again when he used 24-hour time, and set the reservation for dicinnove e mezza. He slowed it down for me: Dieci. Nove. e Trenta. And my mind was all: 10-9-30 ...what the bleep time is that?

I said yes, worked out that he meant 7:30, and had to call back and set it for a more civilized time. What I remember from my last trip to Florence was that 7:30 was the seating for American tourists, and 9:30 for the locals. And I want to eat with the locals. The second call went better.

I fall into uptalk a lot when I start speaking for the first time. I hate it when I hear other Americans using it, and it was killing me that I was doing it and couldn't stop. Once I settle down it will go away. Hopefully that will be soon.

First stop: la bella Napoli.

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Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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kanewai
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Re: Kanewai in Exile (TAC Team Caesar)

Postby kanewai » Fri Aug 21, 2015 7:23 am

Another experiment: can I upload photos from my phone?

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Ça va!
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Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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Teango
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Re: Kanewai in Exile

Postby Teango » Mon Aug 24, 2015 4:49 am

kanewai wrote:Something I noticed while looking over my HTLAL log: I am always just a few months away from reaching B2.

Haha, I know exactly what you mean...

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kanewai
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Re: Kanewai's meandering log

Postby kanewai » Sun Dec 06, 2015 1:49 am

I've been pondering how to treat the log now that I'm back online. It really helped keeping one in the beginning, and I love looking back on my old posts. However, I don't know that I have the inclination to keep it up right now. I'm thinking now that I'll just drop random updates here, and make individual posts for anything more substantive.

I'm in a mad dash to finish the Super Challenge, and I go back and forth on whether it's even possible. I don't have that far to go: I would need to read about 20 pages of French and 15 of Italian each day for the rest of the month. That's theoretically possible. However, the holidays throw a wrench in the works, and I have an unexpected (and unasked for) house guest for the next five days, and let's just say that he's a bit of a disruptive presence.
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Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50


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