Xmmm's Log ...

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reineke
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Re: Xmmm's Pareto Log

Postby reineke » Sat Oct 13, 2018 6:43 pm

Hmmm...
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Xmmm
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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby Xmmm » Mon Oct 15, 2018 4:38 am

In the interest of keeping it real ...

TurkishAssessment20181013.png


from here 17 Minute Languages Turkish Placement Test. This is a quick test, and seems accurate to me (a least at a low level like mine). I would have guessed A2 and 1400 words, but I forget that I know a few advanced words as well, so 1700 is probably spot on.

Not a great result, but you pays your money and you takes your choice. Study or goof off? Hmmm ...
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby Xmmm » Wed Oct 17, 2018 5:33 pm

Week 1 of my attempt to be cool and do like Expugnator and jeff_lindqvist.

And of course I started with the typical tyro mistakes. Do a couple lessons in Irish, make some flashcards, and of course I have to do Glossika. Pretty soon an hour has gone by and what happened to sustainable dabbling? That's the real trick -- the discipline to do 20 minutes of something and then shut it off.

Irish -- I did the first ten lessons of Buntús Cainte and made 217 flashcards. An fear ramhar sa teach, ceart go leor.

Georgian -- I'm working through "Conversational Georgian Made Easy" at Udemy.com. Very lightweight, but seems better than the Peace Corps course, or less boring anyway. მე ვარ, შენ ხარ, ის არის, ჩვენ ვართ, თქვენ ხართ, ისინი არიან. And I made 90 flashcards. I also watched a 23 minute documentary called "The Trader" on Netflix, which is great except the first 8 minutes are entirely in Russian. For some reason I found the Russian very easy to understand, but couldn't make heads or tails of the Georgian.

Turkish -- 2600+ flashcards, 12% finished with The Delights of Learning Turkish, doing the exercises this time. And I'm taking a break from watching my favorite show. Instead, I'm watching a mediocre soap opera Netflix has relabeled as Black Heart because they didn't like the original Turkish title of "Wet Blanket."

Russian -- 2 hours of Italki this week (ouch) and a ton of Невский. I'm on episode 26 of 32, but there's a whole second series with another 42 episodes so I'm in good shape for a while. It's funny because on First Channel, the first episode of Операция «Сатана» was not geo-blocked for some reason. I watched it, and realized First Channel is a lot like Masterpiece Theater back on public television in my childhood. First Channel has big budgets, but does very highbrow stuff -- that can be a bit boring. I actually prefer НТВ shows. I'm also reading Sapiens: краткая история человечества.

Italian -- 1 hour Italki, another audiobook. I'm getting a little bored and directionless here. I've downloaded some of Lorenzo Pieri's recordings of Gogol and will see if listening to Russian authors in Italian is too weird or not.
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby StringerBell » Thu Oct 18, 2018 6:28 pm

Xmmm wrote:I'm getting a little bored and directionless here.


Probably a stupid idea, but it came to mind, so I figured I'd suggest it. I remember reading a while ago that Vladimir Nabokov (who was from Russia but emigrated to the US) wrote Lolita in English and complained that he regretted writing it in English because he viewed it as a crappy language (obviously I'm paraphrasing). A few years later, he eventually translated it into his native language, which I think he was more satisfied with. I have also found an Italian translation on AMZ. It might be kind of cool to read the same book in Russian and Italian to compare the translations. Or maybe that's the worse, most boring idea ever. You decide. :D
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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:35 pm

Xmmm wrote:Week 1 of my attempt to be cool and do like Expugnator and jeff_lindqvist.


Welcome to the dark side.
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Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby Xmmm » Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:45 am

I'm trying something new where I try to read 20 pages a day in Italian and 20 pages a day in Russian. My old system was that I would read when I had time and energy, but I don't like slacking off for several days and then feeling like I have to spend my whole Saturday reading 100 pages in each language. So reading was not happening that much, and even less in Russian than in Italian because Russian is harder.

Italian:

I'm reading Vuoto a perdere [Digital Edition] Le Brigate Rosse, il rapimento, il processo e l'uccisione di Aldo Moro which is right at my level and much more interesting (frankly) than Mani pulite.

I'm not listening to anything in Italian at the moment, but that's because I've re-organized my whole language life. I'm doing my experiments in the morning or lunch break, the reading at night. For listening, Italian now shares time in the car with Russian and I do audio books or mp3s ripped from Youtube (thanks, Axon, for reminding me that one could do that). This week is Russian, will try to do Italian next week.

Russian:

I'm reading Sapiens: краткая история человечества. I like it. Much easier than literature. I'm definitely burnt out on struggling with stuff that's too hard for me and I'm looking for n+1 wherever I can find it.

I've been listening to кукла на привязи, which is a translation of a book by Alistair MacLean. The good news is that I understand more than 40% of it. The bad news is that 40% isnt enough when you're driving ... my mind wanders. So I'll finish it up, and then maybe I have to step down to mp3 recordings of Невский or something.
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby Xmmm » Sun Oct 28, 2018 8:46 pm

Vuoto a perdere is getting better and better.

"Se le BR avessero reclutato un killer della malavita per operare in via Fani e avessero optato per un confidente dei carabinieri, le ipotesi che è possibile avanzare sono due: le BR hanno chiesto l'aiuto della 'ndgrangheta, i calabresi hanno informato i carabinieri e questi hanno infiltrato nel commando un loro elemento. Oppure ..."

(If the Red Brigades had recruited a killer from the criminal underworld to operate in via Fani and had opted for a confidant of the police, there are two hypotheses that can be advanced: the Red Brigrades asked for the help of the Calabresian mafia, the Calabresians had informed the police, and [the police] had infiltrated one of their own into the [Red Brigades assault] team. Or ...)

There's a motorcycle that may or may not have been there with two people on it. There's some film that disappeared. There's a down on his luck CIA agent. There's a Machievellian guy from the US government who is in cahoots with Henry Kissinger. The mafia might be involved. The Pope might be involved. There are also some missing briefcases and a possible scandal with Lockheed!

And this is non-fiction ...
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby Xmmm » Sat Nov 03, 2018 12:16 am

I did another 2 hours of Russian and 1 hour of Italian on Italki this week, bringing my all time totals to 58 and 35 hours respectively.

With Italian, since I'm on some crazy flashcard kick I figured I might as well overdo it. Italian is my laziest language and I refuse to do even five minutes of something I don't want to do there, but I thought it might be marginally useful to occasionally make flashcards for words I don't know when I read. I'm reading Vuoto a perdere so I have words like: tronchese, cofano, portiera, piastrella, subdolo, sparatoria, spericolata, fondale (!), seduta spiritica (!!), mitomane, and soffiata. I still think this is a great book, and heartily recommend that nobody else reads it because you will find it deadly boring.

I'm also listening to Racconti by Dino Buzzati, but I'm starting to think this may be a mistake. My Italian comprehension is already pretty good and it might make more sense to increase my Italian reading to 30 pages a day, cut my Russian to 10 pages a day, and swing most of my listening time over to Russian. I haven't decided about that yet.

I was reading Sapiens: краткая история человечества and wanted to laugh when I saw the word богословие. It's not very often that I can actually guess what a Russian word means by looking at its component parts. Turkish is the opposite. Anemia is kansızlık, blood-less-ness.
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

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reineke
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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby reineke » Sat Nov 03, 2018 2:44 am

You will find basso fondale here:
Language ITALIAN
Category Graded Readers
Series Imparare leggendo
Genre Love
Level B2
http://www.blackcat-cideb.com/en/books/ ... venezia-en

Was the (!) supposed to mean something? :)
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Xmmm
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Re: попытка не пытка

Postby Xmmm » Sat Nov 03, 2018 3:13 am

reineke wrote:You will find basso fondale here:
Language ITALIAN
Category Graded Readers
Series Imparare leggendo
Genre Love
Level B2
http://www.blackcat-cideb.com/en/books/ ... venezia-en

Was the (!) supposed to mean something? :)


I can't be specific because I don't want to spoil the book for anyone.

There was a lake in the mountains, a false communique, some freemasons, some ice and dynamite, everything being filmed from by RAI TV from a helicopter at 2 in the morning.

I gave the seance two exclamation marks because it was a seance. That part of the story is a little murkier to me, but seems to point back to the Russian orchestra leader who had ties to either the KGB or more likely Mossad and was married to a woman whose father had been a high ranking member of the Stassi.

This book has like ten books worth of conspiracies, it's giving me quite a workout trying to keep everything straight.
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Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел


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