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

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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Dec 05, 2021 2:57 pm

I, unfortunately, have not yet heard back from the people at Brest. Granted it's only been a week, but I'm impatient. That said, I have started going through French material already, with a set plan until I can get back and get Assimil and other things.

My plan is basically reading a chapter of Nature Method at a time. I then review it the next day and do the exercises on the following day, to help allow things to settle in my mind. So far, this has proven to work decently well, though I'm only three chapters through it, and will likely have to slow down at some point and possibly do exercises more than once.

On top of this, I've also started doing the same thing for Colloquial French. I chose this book because the audio is available online and I was able to get a copy of it from the library. It's decent enough, and goes at a fairly fast pace, which is something I actually like. It doesn't beat around the bush with 3 introductory chapters, teaching regular conjugations of at least one type of verb right from the very first chapter. It is still very traveler oriented, but I guess that's to be expected. It is also nice to have grammar explanations of things I see in the NM books. I think I'm going to start putting some of these words into Anki as well, along with any I really struggle with in NM. I don't really want to use Anki, and would rather learn through repeated exposure, but time is of the essence. It'll also let me add cloze-deletion cards, to helpfully get grammar sealed down quicker. I'll report back on this.

Despite this, there is one huge downside to what I've been doing: I rarely listen to any audio. This is a general issue I have with Irish too. I rarely watch TV, usually only sports, or YouTube, so it's difficult for me to get into the habit of watching things and exposing myself to the audio aspects of French, which I really need to do as I need to get my passive skills up the most. I'm going to have to find a way to change this somehow. Maybe with the plethora of comprehensible input channels out there, etc., but I'd really like to get three hours of passive French immersion a day, with at least one of those being an active hour. Guess it's time to try to develop a TV watching habit.

Or, perhaps, there might be another way. I might just start trying to read straight in French now. I'd love to find some non-fiction graded readers, again to just express immerse myself, relying heavily on Anki. Maybe it'll be possible to find some that also come with audio so I can get a kind of two-in-one deal, like with Nature Method. But this is really an issue where I'm going to struggle, getting my aural abilities up to the level I need, simply because I don't spend much time watching TV/listening to the radio. Any advice would be recommended here! Hopefully Assimil can also help overcome this when I'm back in the States for the holidays.

And, since I was learning French, and have heard good things about the course, I ended up trying to Duolingo again. If anything, it's worse than ever. Even with forcing myself to type in answers, I got more multiple choice or 'matching' ones than were useful. And, quite often it was clear what the answers are. And even the ones I had to type were all French > English, never making me practice recall ever until I got to the 'hard' questions...and then there were two of them. How can anyone claim to learn a language from this program, I'll never know; it's, quite simply, awful in my opinion (I might do a full write-up, with pictures, later). I checked the Irish one out just to see, and it's an already bad course made even worse! The match, in particular, is quite atrocious, as they fade out the ones afterwards, always make you match French - English, and have four of them at a time. If it was one word with four possible choices, sure. But it's four words and four choices, which makes it much easier. And there's no recall. Plus, for the Irish one, you might have to match cat with 'gcat', 'chat' or 'cat', though only the latter should be allowed. It's how the language is in DL's database, and another example of where their method fails and will likely just confuse learners. Not to get me started on the complete the conversation questions for French! I thought this would be great, but then it was multiple choice, with two answers. And one is quite obviously wrong (I mean, who's going to say "A pepperoni pizza" as a response to "What is your name?"). Again, beyond useless for learning. Horrible program, I hate the hype it gets and it's clear all they care about is making it as easy as possible to retain users (and my goodness, the number of times they ask me to sign up to DL plus. No, leave me alone.)


With Irish, I've done the bare minimum again, really. I read some, listen to the radio some while in the shower for the channel that focuses on my dialect, but rarely do more than that, even if I should and have perfect resources for it. I need to work on shadowing and my pronunciation some more as well, but I just struggle to do anything with audio resources; that's the major problem. That said, I do use Irish regularly, online in multiple places, as well as going to the Irish speaking bar in Dublin regularly for the conversation circle. And I have friends I only speak with in Irish. Really, another long period of immersion is what I need. If Brest doesn't work out, I might try this next summer depending on how things work out with the internship I'm supposed to get.

Anyway, that's that. If you have any advice for overcoming my aversion to audio resources, I'd truly appreciate it. Especially since I've screwed up something in my heel/Achilles and can't run (when I would normally put audio stuff on). If the gym wasn't always so booked I might try to get in and bike and listen to stuff...maybe I can wake up earlier and do that, we'll see. It's just a pain cause it's always booked and the university is too far away from another one to easily get there, not counting monthly cost. Anyway, that's that, I would appreciate any advice as I've said.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Dec 05, 2021 6:42 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:Despite this, there is one huge downside to what I've been doing: I rarely listen to any audio. This is a general issue I have with Irish too. I rarely watch TV, usually only sports, or YouTube, so it's difficult for me to get into the habit of watching things and exposing myself to the audio aspects of French, which I really need to do as I need to get my passive skills up the most. I'm going to have to find a way to change this somehow. Maybe with the plethora of comprehensible input channels out there, etc., but I'd really like to get three hours of passive French immersion a day, with at least one of those being an active hour. Guess it's time to try to develop a TV watching habit.

Anyway, that's that. If you have any advice for overcoming my aversion to audio resources, I'd truly appreciate it. Especially since I've screwed up something in my heel/Achilles and can't run (when I would normally put audio stuff on). If the gym wasn't always so booked I might try to get in and bike and listen to stuff...maybe I can wake up earlier and do that, we'll see. It's just a pain cause it's always booked and the university is too far away from another one to easily get there, not counting monthly cost. Anyway, that's that, I would appreciate any advice as I've said.
1. what sports do you like?
2. what sort of thing do you watch on YouTube?
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:41 pm

DaveAgain wrote:1. what sports do you like?
2. what sort of thing do you watch on YouTube?



Soccer, mostly, which is decently easy to find in French of a weekend, thankfully. As for YouTube, I meant I don't generally watch it.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Mon Dec 06, 2021 7:27 pm

I've been doing more French today. Went back through and did the problems of Lesson 3 of Nature Method. Definitely need to work on my active recall on spelling of words. Guess that's another thing to add to Anki if I get to it. I also listened to the lesson on YouTube, which was much harder than reading through it yesterday, and moved on to Lesson 4 and listened to it, again much more difficult than reading through it. Thankfully, I've had this issue before with Irish and plan to implement my 'Vifax' method for learning to distinguish all the words and eventually recognizing them. So there's hope there. I also listened to the third A1 video by the "French Comprehensible Input" channel, with subtitles turned off. It's easy enough to understand. I went through the first French in Action video, which was a waste of time as there was little-to-no French -- it was just explaining what the course is and how to use it. But I might start using the other videos for immersion practice, just to listen to French a lot. I've also found a series of podcasts on YouTube, around 15 minutes each, which seem to provide transcripts, so there's another resource. Now to just make myself use them.

With regards to other stuff, I have moved on to Lesson 4 in NM, and am reviewing chapter 2 in Colloquial French, with an eye at going on to chapter 3 tonight or tomorrow. Thankfully I have a bit more time currently as it's study week for finals, and all my classwork is pretty much done and I don't have any finals until next Friday. Since I don't have class, I use the French stuff as a nice break in studying for finals. I found some manga in French. I'm not a huge manga fan, but I feel that they're probably reasonably easy to read given the target audience. Or so I hope! I did learn there is an international languages bookstore in Dublin, so I intend to head there next time I head into the city (either tomorrow or Friday), and see what they have available. Hopefully I could get a few cheap-ish graded readers. At least they shouldn't be as expensive as in America, given that shipping is much cheaper. Finally, depending on fees and what level I can get to, I might try to do an Alliance Françáise class in the Spring, but I really want to do the advanced Irish one, as I still have half a mind to take the C1 exam (not sure how that'll go with me focusing on French, though) if it's offered. The courses for French are €205 for 16 hours of class -- 2 hours each week -- which sounds like a reasonable deal if I can get to an A2 level course where I could reasonably be in the B1 range by the end of one or two of them. I don't think their next set starts until April, so that gives me time (and also would give me time to do two of them before having to go to France). I'll have to do some more research, as again, I want to do the advanced Irish one which is cheaper and offers more contact hours, but this could be promising, and probably worth the cost if there's a chance I can get accepted to the program in Brest.

The other issue I have though is Old Irish. I recently got a free textbook from a friend for learning OI through Modern Irish and I've been itching to try it out. I will likely take it at Brest if I get accepted to the program, so it will be useful, but right now it's just a major distraction. Or is it? I might dabble a little, just to get a feel for how the book teaches, but I do intend to bring back my other OI stuff with me when I come back after the holidays. But that's for another time.

Thankfully, my courses in the Spring should be a bit easier. There is only one of those which has a final -- maths of machine learning -- and all the rest are pretty much project and programming based high tech-oriented courses (I like the applied maths side of the masters more than the theoretical physics side, what can I say?). They'd hopefully make it easier to get a job in Ireland afterwards, or, if I go do the masters in Brest (and maybe a PhD), give me something to fall back on other than just teaching (I'll have to somehow make sure my American teaching certificate stays valid), which I always have as there's a dearth of Physics/Mathematics teachers worldwide, thankfully.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Thu Dec 09, 2021 4:58 pm

I'm still keeping up with French, and trying to update this regularly to keep some semblance of accountability for myself.

Over the past few days, I've done a few lessons out of Colloquial French, and redid chapter 4 in NM and moved on to chapter 5. It's interesting to see some of the differences between the two (c'est always versus ce sont, which is specifically pointed out in Colloquial French as being used even if 'technically' incorrect), which comes from NM being published in the 50s/60s, I guess. It's still a good source and I doubt basic grammar and vocabulary have changed that much, so I'm going to keep going with it. I've also started to do some lessons in Grammaire Progressive de Français, which is quite nice and it gives me a good guide to help practice grammar. What's more important is I've found a syllabus course for the Alliance Français courses in New Zeleand, and I hope I can port that over to the classes in Dublin. This gives me a rough guide of what I need to know, grammatically and vocabulary-wise, in order to get into the upper A2/lower B1 courses by February, when the next session starts. Then I'd likely have 24 weeks, or three sessions, of classes to hone in and hopefully get good enough to do this masters, if I ever hear back from them. Though if I don't before Christmas, I'll likely email them back right after I return to Dublin from the holidays, taking care to email the specific people in charge of the tracts as opposed to the general secretary. My only issue now is which tract do I want to study -- both sound super interesting, and I would love to learn Old Irish, Middle Welsh, Middle Breton along with the modern equivalents. Maybe I can find a way to combine the two in some sort of study at how some cultural aspect has shifted over time. Maybe idioms, or star names, as I've suggested before.

As to audio, I've been listening to the Comprehensible French Input videos, one a day. They're short, but they're generally 100% intelligible for me which is great. I've also found a podcast on intermediate French that I try to focus on and pay attention to. I find actively listening to it I can understand about 50% of it usually, mostly common words and sometimes enough to get the gist thanks to all the Latinate borrowings in English. It's good practice, though he does speak slower than normal speed. I've also found another podcast on YouTube that goes normal speed, so I'm going to try that too just to get trained with it. Because I'm studying for finals, I don't have time to transcribe them quite yet, but I hope to over the break and when I return. Otherwise, I really just need to start putting words and cloze-deletion type things into Anki to get practice with it. Mainly the words from CF, though there is an foreign language bookstore in Dublin that I intend to visit when I go in to the city tomorrow to do some book shopping (Irish books, rare books, French readers, perfect combo) so hopefully can find some simple easy graded readers I can sentence mine there and then get back to adding to Anki. I have bought the iOS app, if for no other reason I've used it off and on enough to feel I should support the creator for his great work. But I am getting audio exposure in French, and often over an hour of it a day. I got some TV recommendations from a friend who speaks French after living there for two years, so we'll see if I sit down and start learning that. I might also start trying to play some of my Switch games in French after finals, and just rely on Google Translate for the plot.

With Irish, not much. Reading mostly, and use online. No radio so far this week as I've been sleeping in since I don't have to wake up for classes currently. I need to be more consistent on audio exposure, but it's sad as most Irish is just of such poor quality online, including the official TV channel.
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Amandine
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby Amandine » Fri Dec 10, 2021 12:07 am

Re audio resources. Whatever you think of Duolingo the website/app, Duolingo the French podcast is I think legitimately excellent and there are full transcripts. It can be used standalone without the "regular" Duo.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Fri Dec 10, 2021 3:37 pm

Amandine wrote:Re audio resources. Whatever you think of Duolingo the website/app, Duolingo the French podcast is I think legitimately excellent and there are full transcripts. It can be used standalone without the "regular" Duo.


Thanks! I'll definitely look into these then. I admit to being hesitant because they were Duolingo, and it's safe to say I'm not a fan of the program. Definitely will listen to them and download them for my flight back to the States for the holidays. Thanks!


On top of that, I'm thinking of moving away from Grammaire Progressive, the beginner level, into the A2-B1 level. This will hopefully be more in line with my goals for the courses I need to take in the Spring, and apparently covers a lot of the same material as the other one, just more streamlined, while also expanding on A2 and B1 material. Or maybe I'll rush through A1 then move on to the other when I start courses, hopefully to get to the level I'd need (again, assuming I hear back...I'm quite impatient about things like that).

The one downside to all this is that I did just apply for a part-time job, hopefully starting next term, teaching online to students in the US (yay US teaching certificates!) Hopefully it won't take away too much of my time for French, but since it's flexible hours and I have Friday off school, it should be fine, assuming I even get it. Plus, it'll help get me some more money saved up to go to Brest, le cúnamh Dé.
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby guyome » Sat Dec 11, 2021 9:21 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:Also, on the topic of star names, I'd love to hear what they're called traditionally in your languages. Constellations, individual stars, etc. So much culture tied up in them (for instance, I learned the Breton for the Big Dipper was 'Arthur's Chariot'), that's sadly being lost as everything homogenizes and we move away from the night sky (light pollution is a major issue to me). Doesn't matter if it's a minority language or not, I'd love to hear it!
For Walloon, you can check parts 18-20 in volume 3 of the Atlas Linguistique de Wallonie (the maps' key are in French but the many Walloon variations are given in the pages just before or after the maps).
Apart from the Milky Way and the Big Dipper, it doesn't seem that many constellations' names were in use at the time of the survey (1920s-1950s). Notice #20 gives quite a few names for Orion (The Three Kings, The Three Marys, The Three Candles, The Rake...) and The Pleiades (The Hen, The Chicks,...). After these, things become very patchy.

Image
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sat Dec 11, 2021 9:35 pm

guyome wrote:Atlas Linguistique de Wallonie



Thank you for bringing this to my attention! It's super neat, and useful, that things like this exist, especially with so many languages dying out. There's one for Irish collected in the 40s that contains some of the only information from terminal speakers of dialects; it's absolutely invaluable. There's also one for Scottish Gaelic. Seeing this makes me wonder if there might be others out there for minority languages I don't know about, even if they don't contain star names -- I am thankful for those too, I'll definitely look into this, especially as it might help me practice my French!
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Tue Dec 28, 2021 2:03 am

Whoof, it's been a crazy past two weeks. Had 4 finals, then a flight home the next day (and all the fun that goes along with that), and then all the holiday stuff. Finally had a few days to just relax. The problem is I've been binging on my Switch, not on my French learning, which is what I really need to focus on, especially if I want to get in to upper A2/lower B1 courses at the end of January. I have continued listening to the podcast some while I walk, but otherwise I've really done nothing. Hopefully when I get back to Ireland on the 6th of January I'll be able to -- I'll have about 10 days before modules start up, which should give me plenty of time to focus on it there. Hopefully me posting this will kick me into gear.

With Irish, I've read some Irish studies stuff, and keep interacting in Irish on Discord, but nothing serious. As much as I'd love to take a C1 course in the spring, I'm going to have to put it off for French. I have been reading lots of Irish/Celtic Studies works, though, mostly relating to magic and charms. They're quite neat.

That said, it's also really weird being home. As I said in another thread, I'm from the part of Kentucky that got hit by the tornado -- pictures from one of the houses destroyed here ended up over 200 miles away. Thankfully, in my home county nobody was killed, but many others were not that lucky. Nor was anyone I know in Bowling Green, which suffered a lot more damage (and where I lived for four years), harmed. It really was a blessing, but going through and seeing all the destruction, even a week afterwards was a little surreal. Especially in the more rural areas, where cleanup hasn't really started yet at all. It's just crazy, and it definitely wasn't the return to Kentucky I was expecting. Again, extremely thankful that the worst here was only destroyed homes, something that can be fixed and not more. I am worried as we're currently at 20 C again in late December, and there's a 30% chance of snow on Monday, which is perfectly conducive for even more bad weather.

I'm just going to end with John Prine (ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam), a native son of Kentucky (even if he wasn't born here, his ties here are strong), singing the state anthem -- "My Old Kentucky Home" (still a song that gives me chills, even living abroad for four months and having many quibbles with the state). It's really something else, and I honestly can't tell you how many times I listened to that song in the week before I came home for the holidays.

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