Nótaí galaxyrocker - Ancient Celtic Languages, (Old) French, Latin, Old English

[galaxyrocker]

So, I've finally told wanderlust off and chosen a third language: French. I bought Assimil's New French With Ease as well as Schaum's French Grammar outline, and can't wait for them to come in.

I've had some experience with French before, as it was the first foreign language I ever studied, way back ago. I had a tutor when I was young, but it was mostly basic vocabulary and phrases; nothing super complex. Same with 'gifted and talented' weekend courses I did. Then I took French in high school. While I could read pretty well at the end of it, my other skills were nowhere near advanced, and I switched to Irish when I went to college, thus allowing it all to fall out of use.

So, I'm excited for those to come in and will definitely use them as much as I can. Following a suggestion by Polyclod, I'm going to shadow the Assimil vocabulary daily for the lesson I do, to really work on my pronunciation. I'm also likely going to avoid Duolingo, though I might find a frequency dictionary and start adding cloze-deletion sentences to Anki, if I can find interest in it. Or I might try to find a Memrise course (anyone know a good French frequency one).

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to get started consuming native materials as soon as possible, as well as interacting with natives. Should I start this during Assimil, or wait until I'm finished. Keep in mind I'd also like to be working on my Irish as well, though that'll be mostly reading, listening, and chatting with native speaker friends of mine.

[sctroyenne]

So, I've finally told wanderlust off and chosen a third language: French. I bought Assimil's New French With Ease as well as Schaum's French Grammar outline, and can't wait for them to come in.

Yay! One of us

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to get started consuming native materials as soon as possible, as well as interacting with natives. Should I start this during Assimil, or wait until I'm finished. Keep in mind I'd also like to be working on my Irish as well, though that'll be mostly reading, listening, and chatting with native speaker friends of mine.

I can say from my experience with Irish that I started watching episodes of Aifric from an early stage of my learning and it helped a lot. For whatever reason I got pretty hooked on the show and was perfectly happy watching the episodes over and over again. Since there are only a little over 20 of them and TG4 would rotate through about 6 of them at a time, once individual episodes were posted online again after being offline for about 6 weeks I was able to tell just how much progress I had made studying based on how much more spoken Irish I was able to understand. Plus I got a little "earworm" effect with various lines of dialogue that helped me absorb certain points of grammar (like constructions with the verbal noun and whatnot).

Normally I'd recommend some learner audio such as French in Action or my high school French class favorite Téléfrançais and/or a dubbed series you'd find engaging (dubbed audio is typically easier to understand early on) but if you can find native material that you wouldn't mind listening to many times you should be able to get something out of it even if it's initially too hard. I think emk has some Anki decks with audio that he's shared in the past of Amélie (and maybe others) that you might find useful.

[Cavesa]

Yes, I know of great frequency based resource on Memrise. User Eunoia made a set of awesome huge frequency corpus "lexique" based lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. It might look weird at first to learn words like "to kidnap" really early, but the lexique database is based on movies among other sources, which is a plus. Vast majority of the vocabulary is relevant for many situations and it is a great resource.

http://www.memrise.com/user/eunoia/courses/teaching/
here is a list of the courses by Eunoia. While I am not that sure about my impressions considering the "compound" courses yet, the nouns, verbs, adjectives lists are absolutely awesome.

Good luck with French, enjoy the journey

[Polyclod]

There's a website that has accurate transcriptions of episodes of Les Simpson, if you're a Simpsons fan. When I get some down time I'm going to use subs2srs to make a deck out of a few episodes, with audio if possible.

There's a lot of great movies out there. My all-time favorite is Toute la faute à Fidel, and last I checked it was available on Netflix streaming (I think under it's English title, Blame it on Fidel).

EDIT: I forgot another one called "Chocolat'', not the most famous version, the one I'm talking about was a smaller film from 1988 about a French girl named "France"(hon hon hon) who grows up in Cameroon. Very cool if you want to hear some African French, or just like scenic films shot in Africa.

[galaxyrocker]

I can say from my experience with Irish that I started watching episodes of Aifric from an early stage of my learning and it helped a lot. For whatever reason I got pretty hooked on the show and was perfectly happy watching the episodes over and over again. Since there are only a little over 20 of them and TG4 would rotate through about 6 of them at a time, once individual episodes were posted online again after being offline for about 6 weeks I was able to tell just how much progress I had made studying based on how much more spoken Irish I was able to understand. Plus I got a little "earworm" effect with various lines of dialogue that helped me absorb certain points of grammar (like constructions with the verbal noun and whatnot).

Yeah. I really, really like Comhrá and Nuacht TG4. I tend to avoid Aifric because of the subtitles, as well as the fact there's not many native speakers (I don't consider 'natives' who were raised outside the Gaeltacht tradition (it's fine if raised outside the Gaeltacht, as long as with Gaeltacht Irish) to be native) used as I would like. Comhrá contains a lot of them, plus, since it's a talk show, the visual feed isn't as important and I can just rip it or switch to another tab and even try to type along with it. I also enjoy the nature documentaries.

Normally I'd recommend some learner audio such as French in Action or my high school French class favorite Téléfrançais and/or a dubbed series you'd find engaging (dubbed audio is typically easier to understand early on) but if you can find native material that you wouldn't mind listening to many times you should be able to get something out of it even if it's initially too hard. I think emk has some Anki decks with audio that he's shared in the past of Amélie (and maybe others) that you might find useful.

Thanks. I'll certainly look into that. And, yeah, I'm definitely about getting native material as soon as possible.

Yes, I know of great frequency based resource on Memrise. User Eunoia made a set of awesome huge frequency corpus "lexique" based lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. It might look weird at first to learn words like "to kidnap" really early, but the lexique database is based on movies among other sources, which is a plus. Vast majority of the vocabulary is relevant for many situations and it is a great resource.

http://www.memrise.com/user/eunoia/courses/teaching/
here is a list of the courses by Eunoia. While I am not that sure about my impressions considering the "compound" courses yet, the nouns, verbs, adjectives lists are absolutely awesome.

Good luck with French, enjoy the journey

Thank you! I'll check out those courses.

There's a website that has accurate transcriptions of episodes of Les Simpson, if you're a Simpsons fan. When I get some down time I'm going to use subs2srs to make a deck out of a few episodes, with audio if possible.

There's a lot of great movies out there. My all-time favorite is Toute la faute à Fidel, and last I checked it was available on Netflix streaming (I think under it's English title, Blame it on Fidel).

EDIT: I forgot another one called "Chocolat'', not the most famous version, the one I'm talking about was a smaller film from 1988 about a French girl named "France"(hon hon hon) who grows up in Cameroon. Very cool if you want to hear some African French, or just like scenic films shot in Africa.

Haven't ever really watched the Simpsons, but I might start doing that in French. And, yeah, I'm kinda looking forward to the movies and literature.

[galaxyrocker]

Wow. It's been a while since I've done anything. Well, I'm going to put it off to a busy weekend.

So, Assimil came in and I started it today. Got through the first lesson. Currently, I'm following the Dutch With Ease instructions, pretty much to a T. However, I am adding shadowing to them, so I can try and work on that pronunciation. I can do the <r> in isolation, but am trying to incorporate it into speech, as well as get the nasal vowels right. But, I really like the Assimil method so far. I plan on doing a lesson a day, and in my free time listening from my phone and reviewing the older lessons. Basically shadowing.

After I get a few lessons of Assimil in, I'll likely start using the Schaum's Outline I bought, as well as perhaps going further in-depth with a grammar book I already had (French Grammar and Usage - any opinions?). Probably start trying to do Lang8 as well, since it'll be useful with a language like French.

For Irish, I've fallen way behind. I really just need to discipline myself and sit down and work on my listening. I know I do. Perhaps it's just because of lack of variety among Irish stuff, but I'd much rather just read and chat with people. Which is fine, but not what I need to be focused on. That said, I'm almost done with the folklore collection - I have one and three quarters stories left. One I'm listening to, since the book came with a recording. The last one is only a few pages. From there, I'll likely start going through the 'Best Novels' that I have or are available on Scribd. It'll be fun, reading some of those.

Also, I wanted to give some more resources for grammar, since some people expressed interest. Perhaps the best Irish grammar, right up there with Gramadach na Gaeilge, is the Christian Brother's one. The best version of this is written solely in Irish, and can be found as a PDF on Scríobh.ie. No worries, as the website got permission from the publisher to host it! There's also an "Annotated Guide" to go along with it. The guide is written in English, and just offers some more information about the topics. A Grammar of Modern Irish: An Annotated Guide to the Graiméar Gaeilge na mBráithre Críostaí. I really like flipping through it and reading some. But I'm a nerd.

Oh, another resource I shared earlier, but want to consolidate here (partially so I can find it later, since Basque is already seeming to be my next language, after I get decent French) is Indigenous Tweets. It's hosted and worked on by Dr. Kevin Scannell (who's also pretty active in the Irish language community, too). It collects basically lesser-studied languages, and goes through Twitter finding users who tweet in that language. It's pretty sweet. It's not just for minority languages,tough, but basically all non-colonial ones (seeing as Kiswahili is on the list). Figured y'all'd have a field day with that.

[galaxyrocker]

Wow. So I've been very inconsistent in my usage of Assimil. It's not that I don't have time, it's just that I haven't disciplined myself enough. Going to really get better on that this week, and change from trying to do it before bed to earlier in the day when I'm not as tired. The same has held true for my Irish reading. I've kinda just let it fall off the map, despite the fact that I'm almost through with my current book of folklore, and have plenty of other 'great books' to start on. I just need to discipline myself and stay off Reddit and this site as much, haha.

Also, I wanted to warn everyone about Duolingo Irish again. I was on there helping out today, and I realized that, in at least one case, the contributors to the course completely mistranslated a sentence and still haven't corrected it. In the beginning there were several passive Irish sentences (the progressive passive e.g. It is being done) that they translated as active. Now they've gotten the subject and the predicate mixed up! So they're translating a sentence that means "Their artist is the man" as "The man is their artist". There's a different meaning in those sentences, and this is really an amateruish mistake. Once more leads me to believe none of them are true native speakers, or even have a really great grasp of the language, apart from beginner stuff.

Also, the head mod, AlexinIreland, is advocating something that is quite clearly a direct translation from English, and would never be used by native speakers. In fact, a corpus search on Potafocal only shows one instance, used by a non-native. Just kinda annoying and more reinforcement. Sadly, I believe I've spoken out against them too much to ever be made a contributor, despite the fact that I've passed the B2 exam.

[Polyclod]

Ouais! Génial! I've really been looking forward to an update. Glad to see you're liking Assimil. The fact that the company hasn't...umm..."retooled" New French With Ease makes me hopeful that these courses will continue to attract new French learners for at least a few more years.

I had good results with the "official" instructions, but I think it's good you're adapting the course and doing your own thing. That's one of Assimil's strengths, the fact that you can come back to it over and over and manipulate it to do so much. I'm having a much less successful time getting FSI Spanish to do the same, it's possible but it's a lot more editing work.

I think you're right about morning being a better time to study, at least it is for me. I always promise myself I'm going to study in the evening as well, but something happens between 7 am and 3 pm and my motivation goes out the window.

Bon courage!

[galaxyrocker]

I generally tend to update once a week, but I feel if I do it more it'll keep me honest. So I might start doing it two or three times a week, assuming I have stuff to report.

So, for Irish, I've finished the folktale collection I was reading, and, instead of turning to the 'great books' right away, I've turned to some short stories by an author who is a native speaker of the variety of Irish I really wish to master. While he doesn't write completely dialectal in these stories, there's still quite a lot, and I hope to get used to seeing and using that. I also just wanted to include some more resources I've found:

[url = http://annexedicoirlandais.free.fr/pronprep.html]Here's a list of prepositional pronouns[/url]. I'm sure most will know that Irish declines prepositions if they're followed by a noun, something which is very interesting and not relatively common cross-linguistically; it's actually led some to pose a connection between some of the Celtic languages and Semitic languages, or at least theorize that there was a Semitic language in Ireland before the arrival of the Celtic language, which influenced the newcomer, though this theory is generally not held to be true nowadays. However, what's unique about this webpage is that it shows them how they're actually pronounced, as opposed to the standard. So it's really great for learning an Irish dialect, which is what I recommend everyone to do.

I was also sent a link to Aistear.ie which has information about common mistakes in written Irish, as well as practice on translations, and identifying mistakes in written Irish. I really wish I had this resource before I took the TEG, as part of the B2 writing section involves you correcting some text.

Sadly, I've still had no luck with HelloTalk, and am about to give up on it, at least for Irish. Neither of the 'native' speakers I've messaged responded, nor has the learner from France, who I was hoping to chat in Irish/French with. I guess I just tend to have bad luck with these things.

As to French, I'm still going along with Assimil. I think that once I start the active wave, however, I'm gonna start with children's books and maybe Harry Potter. I'll also start listening to music and shows, just to try and work on my listening and get a better rhythm for the language. But, that's still 45 days away.

[galaxyrocker]

I started reading An Fear a Phléasc by the renowned author Micheál Ó Conghaile the other day, and I'm really enjoying it. The first story was nothing but a monologue, and, because of that, Ó Conghaile decided to use a lot of dialectal features, including some spellings. This led me to go off and ask some questions over at ILF, and I certainly have some better colloquialisms for my chosen dialect from it.

The second story was one of my favorites: Seacht gCéad Uairdeadoir. While I've never read it before, I had watched a video (included below) interpretation of the story, as part of the Údar series. There's several other videos in the series, and I recommend them as they're all in Irish (though, sadly, all subtitled in English). They're not word-for-word from the stories, but they convey the same message. It was really quite interesting to read the actual story.

Also, thanks to Assimil and a post I read on Reddit, I now have a concrete method on how to improve my listening ability. Vifax, which I mentioned in an earlier post, contains a short snippet of Nuacht TG4, usually about two minutes long. It also contains a transcript from this. So now I'm listening once without the transcript, then reading the transcript and listening along with it, then once more without it. If I understand it all, I call it quits on that segment; if I don't understand it, I repeat the process until I do. There's also questions that I might start incorporating into my routine later, but first I just need to improve. I wish I could find transcriptions of Comhrá, since it's a longer show (half an hour) and features native speech(though the main presenter on Nuacht does use very Connemara Irish) a lot more. Sadly, I don't know of any, and my isn't dialectal knowledge isn't strong enough to transcribe dialects I'm not familiar with.

As to French, I'm completing one Assimil lesson a day, and it's going pretty well. I've tried to move my studying earlier in the day, but it does make it harder, so I've been doing it at night still. Sadly, this does lead me to drowsing off sometimes! I think once I hit the active phase I'm going to try to read some of the first Harry Potter book. But if I don't recognize a majority of it, I'll probably call it quits and wait until I'm done. I

Next week:

I want to read at least one story, though perhaps two or more in An Fear a Phléasc. Since it isn't too long (only 198 pages), I'd love to finish it, and could probably do that by reading a story or two a day, but we'll see. I also want to train my listening on a segment a day, possibly more, and keep up with my talking and such. As to French, just keep doing the one Assimil lesson a day for now.